How to Create a WordPress Subscription Website

Have you ever wanted to create a website where you can sell and promote your products, but found yourself paralyzed by the thought of all the work that comes with it? You’re not alone. Every entrepreneur has felt this way at one time or another, and when you’ve finally gathered enough courage to follow through and create the website you know will make your business thrive, you’ll discover that this fear of unknowns is completely justified.

Even experienced entrepreneurs have been known to wrestle with this fear. Maybe they’ve tried freelancing and seen how vulnerable that can be. Or, they may have launched a successful SaaS business only to discover that owning and operating a physical store is far more complex than they’d anticipated. So they shy away from starting a company that requires a massive physical presence.

But what if there was a way to create a WordPress subscription website that allows you to test drive the functionality of a web store without the fear of failure that plagues so many would-be entrepreneurs?

In this article, we’ll walk you through the steps to create a fully functional, money-making WordPress subscription website that you can use to your advantage.

Get Inspired

You can find thousands of ready-made WordPress subscription website templates that you can simply install and start using. But if you want to craft your own unique solution free of templates, you have to get inspired by existing successful businesses.

What do the businesses you admire most have in common? One word: customer experience. Now, you can’t will creativity and innovation into existence. But you can inspire it. When you find yourself drawn to a business you admire, that’s a good sign that you’re experiencing the right feelings. This is how you begin to map out the features that your new site will possess.

Determine Your Niche

Now, you don’t have to decide on a specific product or service to offer. But you do need to determine what kind of niche you’ll occupy in the minds of your readers. This is a crucial step, because the niche that you choose will define the type of content you’ll produce and the products you’ll promote. So, take your time here.

Consider the type of people you want to attract to your site. What are their interests? What are their needs? Are they looking for information, or do they want to find something to buy? Make a note of all the questions you can think of, and don’t be afraid to be as specific as possible. This will help you determine the best possible niche for your website. To get inspired, check out these popular niches and see how others are meeting the needs of consumers.

Define Your Website’s Vision And Mission

A vision and mission are simply two sides of the same coin. When you define your website’s vision and mission, you’re declaring the direction that your business will take. You want to make sure that your website has clear and concise goals. The vision should be concise but comprehensive, while the mission should be detailed but concise. Consider the following excerpt from the Sole Trader website’s foundational documents:

“Our vision is to provide small businesses with the tools they need to grow and succeed. We want to remove the stress that comes from needing to find the skills to operate a business. We aim to provide access to quality information via online resources that make it easy for anyone to setup and operate a profitable business.”

If you’re looking to create a business that focuses on eCommerce, then you’ll want to define your vision and mission in terms of what a functional eCommerce website entails. For example, if you want to create an online shop where you can sell women’s clothing, your vision and mission for this website will be to provide a store front that is just like any other online store. But what makes your store special is that you’re the sole trader.

Choose A Name For Your Website

There’s nothing worse than having a half-finished website with no idea what to call it. So before you start making any content for your site, you need to come up with a name for it. There are a variety of tools available to help you find the best possible name for your site. To get started, use Free Website Name Checker to search the net for possible website names. Don’t worry; you don’t have to commit to anything. Just type in a word or two and you’ll get a list of websites that match your needs. Check out these popular domain name tools to see how others are meeting the needs of customers.

Pick A Hosting Provider

You don’t need a large quantity of expensive machines to run a website. You simply need a solid hosting plan that provides you with everything you need to make your site available to the world. For this reason, You can’t go wrong with Bluehost. Not only do they provide you with a free domain and hosting, but you can install WordPress itself with their One-click Installer.

You’ll also want to pick a content delivery network (CDN) to make sure that your website’s content is delivered fast and efficiently to your readers. Using a CDN is like having an expert web designer work on your behalf. All they have to do is point their browsers to your website, and all your content is delivered from a server that is close by.

Create A Sign Up Form

Visitors to your website are likely to want to receive regular updates from you. So you’ll want to create a sign up form on your website for people to subscribe to your newsletter. You can use the form or the newsletter plugin for WordPress to get started. It’s a simple matter for the plugin to automatically fill in the fields for you, so you don’t have to worry about entering the information by hand.

Install WordPress

WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world. It’s a completely free, open source platform that allows you to build websites without any technical knowledge. Despite its popularity, installing WordPress can still seem overwhelming to someone who’s never done it before. But don’t worry—this is a simple process that anyone can follow. To ensure that your visit is as quick and painless as possible, download the One-click Installer that comes with the hosting package you’ve chosen. Once downloaded, connect to your hosting account and click on the installation button to install wordpress.

Create Your Online Store

As you might expect, creating an online store is fairly straightforward once you’ve installed WordPress. From here, you can use the dashboard to browse through all the different sections of your site. When you’re ready to launch your store, you can click on the Store tab to add products. From here, you can add a product to your shopping cart if you want to buy that item. But you can also add a product that you’ve just discovered and hope to sell later. Keeping a record of your sales in the My Account section of your dashboard is an easy way to keep track of your earning power. When you reach a certain income level, you can open a paypal account and link it to your credit card to continue receiving payment for your products.

This is the basic structure of a WordPress subscription website. From here, you can scale your business up or down as you see fit. Make sure to read our ultimate guide to running a successful eCommerce store to learn more.