How to Create a Paid Newsletter: WordPress and FluentCRM

In this tutorial, you will learn how to integrate FluentCRM and Paid Memberships Pro to offer a subscription based newsletter.

Introduction

Creating a paid newsletter is a fantastic way to monetize your content while providing valuable information to your audience. With the right tools, you can set up a seamless process that handles subscriptions, payments, and/or content delivery. In this tutorial, I’ll guide you through the steps to create a paid newsletter using FluentCRM and Paid Memberships Pro (PMPro).

Why Offer a Subscription Based Newsletter?

Offering a paid newsletter is a strategic move for content creators and experts looking to generate consistent revenue, build a loyal audience, and maintain creative control. With the right approach, a paid newsletter can become a significant and rewarding aspect of your content strategy. Your users could be willing to pay for your subscription based newsletter if they already value your content and expertise.

Some other benefits of a paid newsletter include:

• building a loyal community
• generating recurring revenue
• adding value through exclusivity
• closer relationship with your subscribers

Preliminary

Before we get started, there are a few plugins you need to have installed: FluentCRM, FluentCRM Pro, and Paid Memberships Pro (PMPRO). Once installed, activate all three. Furthermore, make sure to activate FluentCRM Pro by entering your license key. Once complete, you should spend some time customizing the settings of each plugin to your liking. We will start with Paid Membership Pro. Going through the settings is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but I recommend you check out the video Paid Memberships Pro Tutorial #2: Installation and Setup.

PMPRO Membership Level

To create a membership level, go to the left sidebar and click on memberships. This will bring you to the PMPRO dashboard. Under Initial Setup, click Create a Membership Level.

Once you do so, a popup will appear for you to choose a membership level type. For our example, I will choose Monthly.

Once you choose your level, you will need to enter you membership level details:

General Information Section

• Name: give your subscription level a name.
• Description: enter the subscription details; be as detailed as possible.
• Confirmation Message: write a message that each of your subscribers will see once the subscription payment is complete. This can be what to look forward to or next steps.

Billing Details Section

• Initial Payment: this is the initial first month’s payment when a user subscribes.
• Recurring Subscription: for our demo, I will check this box, since this is a monthly recurring subscription based newsletter.
• Billing amount: enter the subscription cost per month; this can be lower or higher than the initial payment.
• Billing Cycle Limit: 0 is default for unlimited.

Once you’ve filled out the above 2 sections, scroll down to the end of the page and click the Save Level button. Now that we’ve created a membership level for our paid newsletter, it is time to move on to the FluentCRM newsletter list setup.

FluentCRM

FluentCRM has a ton of features and settings to boot. Setting up FluentCRM is beyond the scope of this article article, but I highly recommend you check out the video FluentCRM 101 | Mastery | The Ultimate Video Tutorial to Boost your Email Marketing Strategy.

Newsletter List

After setting up FluentCRM, you’re ready to create your subscription list. To do this, hover over FluentCRM in the left sidebar and click on Lists. Then, in the upper right corner, click Create List.

After you click the Create List button, a popup window will appear. Enter the name of your email list in the title field and the system will automatically generate the slug. Once you’ve created your subscription list, the next step is to create an automation funnel.

Automation Funnel

Under FluentCRM in the left sidebar, click on Automations. On the next page, click on the blue Automation button to create a new automation, and a new popup will appear.

In the popup window, give your new automation a name. Then below it on the left sidebar choose, Paid Memberships Pro, choose Membership Enrolled to the right, and click Continue.

Once you click Continue, a new window will slide out. For subscription status, leave it on Subscribed since this is a paid newsletter that doesn’t need a double opt-in. And the most important thing, is to set your Target Membership Level. If you don’t and you have multiple membership levels set up, every level will be subscribed to your list.

Next, you will need to add your first action. Under the new trigger that was created, hover over the + and two options will appear. Select Add Action / Goal.

In the popup window you will need to select which list or lists should be applied to the contact.

After clicking Save Settings, hover over the + under the action you just created to create a new action. When the popup window appears, at the end of the CRM section, choose the action End This Funnel Here and click Save Settings. On the top right of the Automation Funnel, set it from draft to published.

With everything now in place to offer a paid newsletter to your users, the final step is to test it. Navigate to Memberships > Settings > Payment Gateway, set the Payment Gateway to Testing Only, and click Save Settings at the bottom. Then, log out, visit the membership levels page, and subscribe to the membership level you created. Once you go through the process, unless you’ve changed a setting, the system will automatically log you in, and take you to a confirmation page. You can then log out, log into the backend, and check to make sure the system placed you into the correct paid newsletter and membership level

If you run into any issues with setting up your paid newsletter, have questions, or need help, I am available for hire.