WordPress, one of the leading blogging infrastructure providers, is trying to make blogging more sustainable by allowing websites to easily accept recurring payments. How? With Subscriptions.
The new tool will be available to anyone who has a standalone WordPress website (paid) as well as to CMSs that use Jetpack tools, a multi-plugin from the company.
The truth is that blogging can be difficult to make money with, especially if you don't have the necessary traffic.
“Especially as a small publisher, or a small business, for a sustainability perspective, subscriptions are going to be a key foundational element of monetizing your site in 2019,” says Mark Armstrong, founder of Longreads and editor at Automattic (parent company of WordPress). “The idea is to create something simple that could be integrated relatively easily, so that pages can immediately start earning revenue from their visitors.”
Armstrong said an early version of the product was initially tested at Longreads.
“We had a lot of feedback,” Armstrong said.
“We've had memberships and subscriptions on Longreads since 2011. So we have about eight years of experience working with memberships and subscriptions.”
What makes this product unique, however, is that it has dual functionality – like, for example, a PayPal plugin for WordPress that allows creators to accept payments and build communities easily. It’s not a competitor to Patreon.
Or rather to put it better, Armstrong doesn't see it as competitive.
“I think we are all supporters of all the other products that exist in the WordPress ecosystem. Patreon, Memberful, and WooCommerce, which are part of our own company, will be able to have a subscription plugin as well.”
These products will serve a slightly different need and will be available to all blogs using WordPress – not just paid ones.
Armstrong says that WordPress' new recurring payments feature will work really well for local websites trying to start an income-generating affiliate program or perhaps a podcaster.
“Recurring payments are critical for any small business. And that’s something all of our users want.”
_________________________
- WPScan: How to detect vulnerabilities in your WordPress website
- The 6 main benefits of Managed WordPress Hosting
