How to Create a Video Membership Site in WordPress

Even if you’re looking to sell video content along with your regular, text content, creating a video membership site is the way to go. However, you need a solid website builder like WordPress to help you create a video membership site for your business.

In this article, we’ll go over the essential steps you need to follow to create a successful video membership site with WordPress.

Step #1: Choose a solid WordPress video membership plugin

Since WordPress by default doesn’t have built-in functionality that lets you create a video membership site, you will need to use a WordPress plugin to create one.

Depending on your use case, and the budget you’re willing to spend, there are some great WordPress video membership site plugins including:

Paid Memberships Pro

Paid Memberships Pro is a solid WordPress video membership plugin that gives you full control over content restriction options and membership subscription levels.

You can accept recurring payments for video content and offer exclusive discount deals and products to members only.

Restrict Content Pro

Restrict Content Pro offers an intuitive solution for restricting content on your WordPress site, without having to code.

Restrict Content Pro is known for its simplicity and ease of use. This way, you can start offering premium video content to your subscribers in no time. Restrict Content Pro offers the ideal solution for business owners looking for a “one-off” solution for creating and managing their video membership sites.

MemberPress

MemberPress is a simple yet powerful video membership plugin for WordPress.

The plugin offers a great way to create a professional-looking video membership website without having to code. It offers a simple way to set up multiple payment gateways and membership levels so you can focus more on creating premium video content for your audience.

Deciding on a solid video membership plugin can be hard, especially if this is your first time. Check out our article on the best 4 WordPress membership plugins for more information.

Step #2: Set up essential membership pages

Ideally, you want to make sure your video membership site looks and feels professional. This is useful for putting out a good first impression and helps attract more registrations. Other than the look of your membership site, you need to focus on making the browsing experience of your site intuitive and easy to navigate.

This is why it’s important to set up essential membership pages such as:

• My Account page. The “My Account” page is where the user can access their personal account information such as password reset, the membership plan they’ve subscribed to, and other important account details. It helps newly registered users navigate your website better and customize their account details easily.
• Login page. The “Login page” seems fairly simple but if not set up properly, it can lead to lower engagement with your content. The login page should provide relevant text fields only and offer your members an easy way to log back into their accounts. In addition to this, you can also include a “Remember me” checkbox and a link that lets users reset their password in case they forget.
• Registrations page. The registrations page on your membership site plays an important role in encouraging more registrations. Think about it: if your registration page is easy to access and fill out, people will be more likely to sign up.
• About Us page. The “About Us” page is great for mentioning some of your business’s strong points and answering one of the most important questions learners have: Why choose us?

You can use this space to give insight into your brand and give a brief description of yourself and your staff members.

• Contact Us page. The “Contact Us” page lets prospective customers reach out to you and understand how your content can help them.

Setting up important membership pages helps attract new site visitors and makes it easy for all types of people to register with you and access your content, even non-tech-savvy users.

Step #3: Offer multiple payment options/plans

By offering multiple payment options, you make it easier for users to pay you and register for your membership plan. For instance, you can offer multiple payment options in WordPress such as Bank Transfer, Credit Card, and PayPal. This encourages all types of people to register for your membership program, without worrying about how they can pay you.

Along with offering multiple ways for users to pay you, you also want to offer multiple pricing tiers for subscribing to your membership content. For example, you can offer three membership levels; Diamond at $150, Titanium at $100, and Silver at $50. Users who go for the Silver membership plan will only have access to the video content while users on the Diamond plan will have access to the video content, downloadables, community forum, and discussion board.

Step #4: Create membership video content

Since you’re looking to create video content, it’s important to put in the time and effort into brainstorming successful content ideas. You need to consider your business’s strong points and the topics you’re most familiar with.

Here are some of the different types of video content you can create for your membership website:

• Podcasts are a great way to offer a detailed, in-depth explanation or discussion about a topic. You can create podcasts on longer topics or topics that interest your audience the most. However, recording a video podcast can take some time beforehand to set up the video equipment and make sure everything is ready.
• Webinars let you explain or teach a topic that may be difficult to explain to your audience. You can cover topics in-depth or host webinars to explain how to use a product. This lets new users, as well as existing members, connect with your brand easily through an interactive experience.
• Online events. Online events are one of the best ways to gather a huge audience and showcase your content. It’s also a great way to build your email list.
• Live streams. One of the best ways to interact with your audience and connect with them at a deeper level is by hosting live streams. For instance, you can host a “Q&A session” live stream and let users ask you questions directly, on a more personal level.
• Video courses. Video courses are mostly used to offer top-notch content, grouped together in a video course format. It’s a great way to cover longer, more detailed topics that require more than just a blog post. For instance, you can create a series of video lessons and compile them together as a video course.

Step #5: Set up a membership only video library

It’s important to note that most membership plugins do not offer the functionality to create a private video library in WordPress. Instead, you can simply upload all your exclusive video content directly to the WordPress media library. This way, you can embed video content to your members-only page and use all your existing content restriction options.

This prevents regular site visitors from viewing the exclusive video content on your video membership site.

Step #6: Measure the performance of your video membership site

To run a successful membership site, it’s essential to keep your site quick and responsive. A slow and buggy video membership site can cause a poor user experience. As a result, you decrease conversions and cause site visitors to bounce off your site if the content doesn’t load quickly.

Since video-based content translates to larger file sizes on the back-end, it can add excessive load to your website’s server. This is why it’s recommended to use a WordPress optimization plugin to enhance the performance of your membership site and ensure it’s running smoothly.

Here are some great plugins that are worth trying out for your video membership site:

WP-Optimize

The WP-Optimize plugin offers a simple and quick solution for enhancing the performance of your WordPress site.

It lets you clean and optimize your WordPress database, compresses images on your membership site, and cache content for quickly loading up pages on your WordPress site.

Autoptimize

Autoptimize offers a “one-off” solution optimizing your WordPress site, without having to put in much effort.

The plugin automatically optimizes all scripts and styles, minifies and compresses them, and minifies or cuts down the HTML code as well. This makes your WordPress website feel more lightweight and responsive.

WP-Rocket

WP-Rocket is one of the most popular plugins for optimizing the performance of WordPress sites.

It offers all the extensive functionality needed to fully optimize your WordPress site. WP-Rocket helps reduce page load times and increases response times on your website. As a result, it can help attract new site visitors and enhance SEO.

Conclusion

Creating a video membership site might seem challenging at first, but with the right “direction” in mind, it is very easy.

For starters, you want to choose a solid membership plugin for WordPress that fits your business and your budget the best. With that in place, you can start setting up essential membership pages. If the membership plugin you decided to use offers you to create private video libraries, it’s a great way to offer exclusive video content to subscribers.

However, most plugins don’t come built-in with such functionality. This is why you want to upload all your exclusive video content to your WordPress media library and embed it into restricted or members-only pages.

Do you know of any other important steps for creating successful video WordPress membership sites? Let us know in the comments box below.