How Developers Can Cash in on the Membership Site Movement

The popularity of starting a small business has grown substantially in recent years. In light of the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic, a record-breaking  4.4 million new businesses have opened up in the U.S. alone. 

Being your own boss is a big enough perk in itself. But many entrepreneurs are choosing to launch online businesses for the added benefits of freedom and flexibility, a larger customer audience, lower operation costs, and more family time.

And entrepreneurial movements like The Great Resignation continue to fuel the fire, as more and more workers are being called back to the office. After having tasted the freedom of working from home, they can’t imagine going back to the nine-to-five grind.

While entrepreneurs tend to be experts on all things marketing and sales, many lack the technical know-how to maintain an online business front. 

That’s where WordPress developers come in.

Web developers can provide a valuable service to business owners looking to start or expand their businesses into the webosphere. And, with the online membership business model on the rise, the need for web developers is greater than ever before.

There’s a huge opportunity out there. So, if you’re a web developer, you’d be wise to learn more about what a membership business is, as well as how to build and design a membership site for a wide range of clients. 

What is a Membership Website? 

A membership business is a website that offers protected content to its members. Content can be free, but in most cases, members have to pay a fee to access specific content or “protected” areas of the website.

There are several different types of content you can sell on a membership site, including: 

• Subscriptions
• Digital downloads
• Physical products
• Podcasts
• Blog articles
• eBooks
• Videos
• Online courses
• Coaching sessions
• Online communities
• …and pretty much whatever else you can imagine!  
  

Many membership site owners create an assortment of content types and grant access to users based on tiered membership levels. For example, a website owner may offer blog articles for free, then charge a fee for members to access their online courses or join VIP community forums.

All in all, if a website requires users to pay for access to content, it’s considered a membership site. Click here to see some membership site examples, ranging from health and wellness to educational institutions, podcasts, brick-and-mortar businesses, business and finance, and everything in-between. 

The MemberPress Plugin and Membership Sites

At the time of this writing, “MemberPress” is the sixth most-searched tag on WordPress.org – number six out of hundreds of thousands! 

As a developer myself, I built MemberPress over a decade ago to solve all the problems I kept running into creating membership sites for my clients. So the plugin addresses all the pain points:

• Super granular content protection rules
• Customizable checkout 
• Secure, flexible, and customizable payment and billing solutions
• Built-in course creator
• You name it…
  

And like the CMS it operates on, MemberPress is just plain easy to use. It really is the “all-in-one” membership plugin for WordPress.

How Developers Can Cash in on the Membership Movement 

As the membership site model continues to grow in popularity, more and more entrepreneurs are looking for super customized sites with complex functions and optimized content. Stuff only an experienced developer could pull off.

Being that the membership business model is one of the fastest-growing in the online business space it presents a huge opportunity for WordPress developers to extend their services to cover membership sites.

What Does a “WordPress Membership Site Developer” Look Like?

To channel Captain Obvious, a WordPress membership site developer is a WordPress developer who’s built their services around membership site creation and maintenance. 

WordPress installation, setup, and customization skills are a given, as is being able to build customized landing pages.

Based on the daily interactions with our customers, an in-demand membership site developer would also be skilled in the following three areas.

#1 Working with MemberPress

This isn’t to toot our own horn. The fact is, MemberPress really is the most popular membership site plugin for WordPress. So a wise membership site developer would be able to:

• Build a WordPress MemberPress site from the ground up, then maintain and manage that site
• Configure the payment gateway
• Customize pages by member
• Create customized pricing pages
• Enable and configure the regex option
• Use shortcodes and PHP snippets to enable advanced functions like hiding portions of content, creating dynamic content, and customizing unauthorized access messaging
• Configure Rules and create Groups

#2 Understanding Membership Site SEO

Membership sites are unique in that they include paywalled content. Even the best content creators can sometimes struggle with SEO, but paywalled content presents an extra complex challenge.

MemberPress has some built-in paywall SEO tools, but a web developer trained in SEO will be a boon to membership site owners in a big way.

#3 Solving Problems Common to Membership Sites

Even if the average entrepreneur is able to build a simple membership site, it’s likely they won’t know the first thing about keeping their site in tip-top shape. And, as their business grows, their time would be much better spent on production, marketing, and outreach. 

When a membership website starts to gain traction and high conversion rates, it’s a sign things are going well. However, an increase in traffic and online payments can also lead to time-consuming complications if the site isn’t equipped to handle the increases.

That said, an in-demand membership site developer would be able to solve complicated website problems such as: 

• Integrating custom analytics tracking. A membership site owner needs to know what’s working on their site and what isn’t. The best way to get that information is to employ A/B testing on specific marketing or sales practices. For example, a web developer could help determine which call to action button(s) are converting the most sales based on analytics, such as traffic, user interaction, content, etc. 
• Syncing sales with third-party accounting platforms. Speaking of crunching numbers, business owners can use all the help they can get when it comes to managing their growing enterprise. A good membership site developer will be able to set up third-party accounting systems to make things like managing payroll and taxes much easier. 
• Syncing customers with external CRM systems. What could be better for a membership site owner than having all their internal processes simplified? Having something that can also manage their external customer affairs, of course! Managing large numbers of members can be tricky, but CRMs make it much easier to provide an automated, yet personalized experience. A membership site developer can help sync customer data with the CRM's REST API to help automate the workflow. 
• Customizing membership dashboard. Membership sites utilize a lot of custom data. In many cases, a business owner will want their members to be able to see and edit this data. A membership site developer should be able to customize user account dashboards to provide a better and more personalized user experience.
• Implementing conversion optimizations. If an online entrepreneur has exhausted all marketing efforts with little to no conversions to show for it, the problem may not be their crafty sales pitches. Instead, there could be a long list of potential threats hidden within their site – a flaw in the checkout process, security breaches, page errors, or who knows what else. A membership site developer should know where to look when inevitable trouble strikes.
  

The Takeaway 

As a WordPress developer, you’ve got a huge opportunity right now. To recap…

• The membership site business model is skyrocketing, and there’s no sign of it slowing down.
• WordPress is currently the #1 CMS and is projected to hold that position for years to come.
• MemberPress is the #1 WordPress membership site plugin and is only expected to grow in popularity as the membership movement continues to gain ground. 

As a developer, taking advantage of this opportunity is straightforward…

1. Learn MemberPress.
2. Get familiar with the common issues membership site entrepreneurs face – things like customer churn, revenue leakage, and drag in the scaling journey – and become an expert at solving those problems through plugins and customized solutions.
3. Cultivate (and advertise) your specialization in MemberPress membership site development.
4. Watch your business grow!

I’ll leave you with this quote by 20th-century writer and thinker, Og Mandino:

“Opportunities, many times, are so small that we glimpse them not and yet they are often the seeds of great enterprises. Opportunities are also everywhere and so you must always let your hook be hanging. When you least expect it, a great fish will swim by.”

Here’s to reeling in your big one.