How to create a successful membership website in 2025

Memberships have been around for a long time, and all sorts of brands and businesses are now launching membership websites to bring in more revenue. In fact, membership websites are a type of business model perfectly suited to digital entrepreneurs and content creators alike, and they can be used to lock down additional revenue streams with speed and efficiency that’s hard to match.

In this article, we’ll look at what you’ll need to create a successful and profitable, and distill the art of building a great membership website into seven steps that you can follow today.

Understanding the goal of a membership website

A membership website is a platform, website, or even app that allows its owner to control access: both full and partial. You can give your members access to different types of goods and services, from traditional memberships like a gym which lets members use certain facilities, to more modern online memberships where content creators drop extras and exclusives.

What’s common across the vast majority of these memberships is that members are paying customers. Today, the internet is full of creators, whether that’s people who Tweet, create art or videos, deliver educational content, write books, create courses, and much more.

These creators have audiences, and through a membership website, those audiences can be converted into customers.

How to create a membership website in 7 steps

1. Pick your membership model

Choosing your membership model is the single most important step you take when building your membership website, because it’s going to dictate a lot of things going forward.

Put simply, your membership model stands for how you are going to deliver goods and services to your members, and how you plan on collecting dues from them.

Let's take a look at some common membership models.

All-in membership

Perhaps the most familiar membership model in use today is the all-in membership. This is common across traditional membership organizations including sports clubs, gyms, and libraries, and you’ll even find it on streaming services like Amazon Prime—people pay a subscription, and then get full access to whatever membership entails.

If it’s a gym, they can work out as long as they want to. A library, and they can read books there all day. Prime lets you stream as much content as you want, nothing is stopping you from having it running 24/7.

This is also a membership model you might deploy if you have educational content to offer, such as online courses and downloadable resources. Members can benefit greatly from having a library of these to access when they sign up to your membership website, and gaining access to tons of content like that can contribute to customer satisfaction.

Fixed term membership

This model is also quite common across different membership websites. It’s perfectly compatible with all-in membership as it describes member access, and not what they get for becoming part of your community. Fixed terms are periods of time, and could range from a day or week all the way to a month, six months, or a year.

Annual and monthly memberships are the most common form of fixed term, and the former has been popular for a very long time.

However, monthly memberships are starting to take over because of how effective they are for the business offering the membership—taking in money every month in the form of dues is great for cash flow, and coincides perfectly with the usual term for expenses that you need to pay.

For customers, it’s also usually a lot more affordable than a lump sum payment every year.

In the above image, you can see the different membership options offered by ProfitSweep, a whop membership focusing on FBA. They’ve got two different fixed-term subscriptions with different feature sets, plus a high-ticket option offering lifetime membership with comprehensive access.

Drip feed membership

Drip feed memberships are exactly what they sound like—you’re going to be giving your members content a little bit at a time, generally at set intervals. This model is very much opposed to the all-in model, but it has its benefits.

For instance, the all-in model might overwhelm new members, while drip feed controls the intake and ensures they are getting your content in the correct sequence.

One of the biggest benefits of drip feed membership is the fact that it encourages retention. With all-in, members might consume all of your content and then terminate their plan—but with drip feed, they know they need to stick around for more. It’s up to you to make sure it’s worth it.

Online course model

Online courses are an extremely popular and fast-growing form of digital product, and they can also power your membership website with everything that comes along with the course. Most online courses come in video format, but certain extras add incredible amounts of value—think assignments, interactive quizzes, downloadable reading materials, tests, discussion forums, consultation, group activities, demos, and much more.

All of this can be put together behind a single membership rather than offered distinctly, since once someone purchases access to your course (read: buys membership) they can access everything they need or are drip-fed course content according to your specifications.

Private community model

Sometimes, the biggest draw of membership is, in fact, the community itself—becoming part of a network that can open doors. This is one of the oldest and most powerful driving forces behind many of the world’s most famous (and infamous) membership groups, and it’s a powerful model even though the aims of your own membership website may be a little bit less lofty.

Many great membership websites devote themselves to different topics and start to build a reputation as the place to be for anyone with a more-than-passing interest in whatever that topic is. Often structured like a traditional online forum, these memberships are relatively easy to create, and turning them into an exclusive, private community is generally just a matter of adding a private forum function, and adding entry restrictions including passwords.

The challenge here is to have your membership website become the authority in your domain, and that takes time and effort. You’ll have to keep at it for a while and build your own brand and voice as an authority to then associate with your site.

Product model

Last of the major membership website models, the product model describes a membership platform that’s centered around receipt of that product—think traditional newspapers, where the whole point is for paying customers to get a copy every day, and they, in turn, comprise the reader group and often are polled by the paper and so on.

Today, though, the product model can go a whole lot further. Selling a product by bringing buyers into a community first creates a ready-made customer pool for future products as well as feedback, consumer research, and more—that is, if your buyers are happy to remain part of your membership website.

Special sales, discounts, and other offers are a good way to encourage this, and you can end up combining digital products by adding things like newsletters to the mix.

Here’s an example courtesy of Closer Cartel, a whop that helps members learn how to master remote sales. You could argue that the Remote Freedom membership could fall under either the Product or Online Course model or even be a mixture of both given the community element on top of the value they provide members with via the subscription.

2. Select a membership platform

Once you’ve decided what sort of model you want, it's time to figure out how you’re going to get it set up. This is all about the nuts and bolts of your operation, and it’s worth getting right at this stage. Once you’re up and running and have plenty of sign-ups, migrating to a different system can be a bit of a headache.

Some membership website operators choose to go it alone and set up their own website. This can work if you have plenty of web development experience or have a team ready for the task, but it’s a whole lot harder if you’re alone or don’t quite have that department covered.

Luckily, there are plenty of platforms out there that can help you set up a robust, powerful membership website with a minimum of fuss—and today, rather than requiring extensive coding knowledge, these platforms let you build your own website by just dragging and dropping the requisite elements into place exactly how you want them.

Some platforms will even provide hosting and allow you to pick a custom domain name, meaning that your site will look every bit like its own entity—the difference being that everything’s in one place in terms of the website and membership platform functions you need, and it’s easy to manage and make changes.

The platform you choose should be able to handle payments, subscriptions or membership fees, be able to house and deliver any members-only content you want to serve, automate member processes to make life easy for you, and even drive member engagement on your behalf. Whop does all of this and more and is a fantastic option when it comes to setting up your membership site, fuss-free without the costs.

For more about membership platforms, check out our guide to the top membership website builders.

3. Design your website and branding

Once you’ve picked out the website builder that has all the features you need and the best price offering, it’s time to think about branding. A custom domain name really helps in this regard, and a lot of businesses have had to pivot their branding structure because the domain they needed was unavailable.

The website builder you choose should provide you with a high degree of customization via its templates, which in turn lets you tweak your chosen colors and fonts to match your branding perfectly. Your brand is something that should extend across the different channels you use, and while you don’t need to be over-the-top about it, your members should be able to tell with a glance that they’re on your platform and looking at your products.

It’s also worth noting that your website needs to be optimized for mobile browsing too. A growing majority of customers are using their phones to do everything online, to the point that needing a big screen to do things like book flights is becoming a bit of a millennial meme. So, make sure your website and membership platform are mobile-friendly, if not mobile-first.

Your UX also needs attention paid to it, as members won’t stick around for long if your site isn’t convenient to use. Make sure content is easily accessible, the sections of your website are signposted, and using it is intuitive.

Here are a few things you should consider including in your membership website:

• Call-to-action buttons. Make it easy for interested visitors to subscribe, or for existing members to upgrade their plans. If you don’t ensure you’ve got your CTAs in the right places, you might miss out on a lot of sign-ups.
• Quality visuals. Videos and images make up a big part of any website these days, and while there are times when you really don’t want them around (think video ads in email or ebook reader software) they usually add lots of value to your membership site.
• Clear content. Whatever text content you use on your website, making sure it’s clear and unambiguous is a good idea. Choose your font and formatting to work with your brand, but also to make your content easier to read.
• Consistent branding. Every color you choose, every visual element, every bit of typography—each is an opportunity to reinforce the message of your branding.

Check out these slogans to inspire your brand and our list of personal branding examples.

4. Plan content for your members

There’s plenty to be said for the advice of “just get started!” that’s often given to new creators. However, membership websites need a little bit of planning, because the value you’re going to deliver to your members is so central to the entire enterprise.

Some of the membership models we mentioned earlier also demand special attention. The drip feed membership model, for instance, requires you to plan a content release schedule well in advance so that members are able to access your materials at the right times. If the drip slows dramatically, they might quit, and a deluge to begin with could overwhelm.

Beyond the content and frequency of its delivery, you’ll also want to start thinking about how your membership structure is going to work. Membership structures might come in different tiers. This is something you’re probably familiar with already—just about every subscription service or SaaS platform operates multiple membership tiers or plans.

Just look at Kaizen, one of Whop’s top trading memberships. They’ve got just the two pricing tiers, with one essentially offering interested parties a cheaper trial option to get a feel of the community itself and the chance to get involved. Their main membership option unlocks access to all of the good stuff, with content and value delivered in multiple forms to paying members.

5. Pick a payment processor

If you decide to build your own website and not sign up with a membership platform or website-building service, one of the biggest considerations that’ll come up is going to be payment processing. If you did choose one of the membership website platforms we linked earlier, you don’t need to worry as much since each platform should come with its own payment processing partners and integrations.

A payment processor isn’t going to be a part of your business infrastructure that you can live without unless you want a membership website that’s somehow handled via cash collections. That could work for a high school book club, but if you want to rock a robust membership-based business, the right payment processor is really going to help.

When your members sign up via your website, you’ll want to be able to have them initiate payment right away. A payment processor will do this, ensuring that money leaves their pocket and finds yours at the agreed intervals. They also secure the transaction, ensuring that it goes through without any hitches, and they also make sure the customer’s account is either funded well enough or has sufficient credit—with a good payment processor, those checks won’t bounce.

Furthermore, linking up with a best-in-class payment processor means you can accept payments from customers in more countries, letting them pay in their local tender or currency of choice without having to jump through the hoops of currency exchange or forex accounts. Some payment processors today even allow you to take payments in crypto.

Check out this guide to find the top ecommerce payment processors.

6. Start marketing your membership website

With your membership model decided, a platform and payment processor chosen, your branding in place and content already under production, most of the hard work is now done. However, your membership website is all about one thing, and the clue is in the name—you’re going to need members.

It’ll help if you already have some sort of audience because these people are already consumers of your content and would likely enjoy having more. Not every person in your existing audience is going to convert to your membership, though. For some people, any sort of premium may be too much to pay. For others, even a single click and a couple of data fields to sign up may be too much effort, even if it’s a free community.

Nevertheless, an existing audience is where you should start. From there, you can look outwards by promoting your website, building your brand up in your niche, spreading awareness about your membership, and even paying to advertise in different ways.

Here are a couple more techniques you can use to market your membership website:

• Free trials or tiers. A paywall is one of the biggest barriers when it comes to conversion. The need to make any kind of payment is inevitably going to see at least a small portion of website visitors click away.
  
  Offering people a way to check out your membership or content for free and get a taste of what’s on offer behind the paywall is a surefire way to pull some of those visitors in. Not all will pay for the full experience, but some will, whether you give them a free week of full membership, a peek at premium content, or even some sort of free consultation. 
• Influencer and affiliate marketing. We’ve pointed out that having an existing audience is a big plus when it comes to building a membership, but what about other people’s audiences? That’s where using affiliate marketing or micro-influencers comes in.
  
  If you link up with the right voices in your niche, you could have other people promote your membership to their audiences. Sure, you’ll have to pay them a cut of each sign-up, but awareness of your brand will start to grow, and let’s face it, every sign-up they bring is likely one you wouldn’t otherwise have had at all.

Here’s the offers page of another trading Whop, Options Insider. There are two separate premium plans, but a free content membership gives anyone interested a sample of what the group is cooking—and it also dangles the carrot of a short-term free trial of two of their key digital products.

And just like the vast majority of Whop’s membership businesses, they’ve also got an affiliate program!

7. Engage with your members

With your membership website now up and running, the job’s still not quite over. When your members join up and pay their first subscription, it’s your job to ensure they remain in your group into the next billing period, and the next, and the one after that.

Whop's guide on retention in Discord communities goes into the concept of member churn and retention, and those words are going to become very important to you alongside the customer acquisition that you’re doing via marketing. Getting new customers isn’t enough, because as a membership business, you want to keep them for as long as possible.

In cold business terms, a customer gets more valuable the longer they stay a member—not only are they contributing outright to your top line on a regular, predictable basis, but the likelihood is that they’re already evangelizing on your behalf and doing a little word of mouth marketing too since they’re happy to stay and keep paying.

Aside from the general steps outlined in the guide above, the main thing you can do to ensure that your members stay members is to engage with them. Be present and active in your community, and not just visible from a distance—those one-on-one interactions, however brief, are well worth it. They can also be a source of very valuable feedback that’ll help you strengthen your membership offering even more in the long run.

Many membership websites keep their members engaged with regular events or activities, as well as email updates and opportunities to provide feedback like surveys. You can also try and organize various benefits for your members, such as discounts with related businesses. 

Critical elements of a membership website

We’ve gone over the different steps involved in establishing a membership website and indeed starting a membership-based business, but there are a few things you absolutely need to get right. They are:

• Value proposition. This one sounds obvious, but that’s because it’s so central to the piece—why should members pay their dues? This defines what sets your membership apart from others, and differentiates you from the competition.
  
  Always keeping your value proposition in mind will also help with retention, since one of your enduring aims will be to ensure that members feel that their subscription represents good value for money.
• Content quality. The quality of the products or services you deliver to your members will play a big part in your long-term success. Sure, you can boost your acquisition numbers with good marketing, but actual retention and maximization of customer value will come down to maintaining and even improving the quality of what you offer.
• Engagement. Engagement is another big factor that encourages retention, and keeping your members active and participating will foster a strong spirit of community and show your newer members that your group is active.
• Pricing strategy. The pricing mix is another that many memberships fail to get right. Subscriptions are part of almost every consumer’s budget these days, and the value proposition you provide is going to be weighed against the other regular payments they’re making.
  
  If your membership website comes off as too expensive, especially in comparison to options that offer more or better content, you’re going to run into a problem. Remember, this is perceived value, not actual value. So, make sure members are aware of all of the different benefits you’re providing them with.

Membership websites vs subscription websites

We’ve used the word subscription several times in this article, and you’ll often find that the terms “membership website” and “subscription website” tend to be used interchangeably. While this isn’t entirely wrong, membership websites and subscription websites tend to focus on slightly different elements of what the customer gets.

First and foremost, membership websites prioritize community—and in some cases, the community you’re joining or the network you’re getting access to is entirely the point of the membership.

Furthermore, memberships also tend to provide members with exclusive access to some sort of content or product. This could overlap with subscriptions, especially in terms of the product membership model, but the focus on community remains and the content at the core of the offering is often tied to some sort of brand—think the memberships run by different content creators, with members getting access to early releases, extras, and other bonus stuff.

Subscriptions, meanwhile, can eschew the community aspect entirely. They also tend to focus on a particular service or product—to fall back on traditional examples, Netflix is a subscription. You’re getting access to a big library of on-demand entertainment, and that’s it. Your local tennis club or golf course, on the other hand, offer memberships. You get to use all the facilities, but kicking back and shooting the breeze with the other members is a key part of the package. 

Launch your membership website with Whop

If you want to establish a profitable membership-based business or leverage your existing audience into a membership offering like many other creators before you, there’s plenty you need to get right. One of these elements is the membership platform you choose to build your membership website on, and Whop should be your membership platform of choice.

Already known as one of the best destinations for digital entrepreneurs, Whop provides you with all of the help you need when setting up a membership website. From giving you customizable templates and branding options to the most solid payment processing solution in the business, from all of the integrations you need to marketing options, customer service, and even a digital marketplace to bring you even more members, Whop is well worth checking out.

Sign up to Whop today and get your membership site up and running in under 10 minutes. It's that easy!