Putting A Paid Subscription Portal on a WordPress.com Blog

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  wpmri731 · Member · Oct 20, 2014 at 8:27 pm

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  Howdy, friendly engineers. I’m trying to incorporate a paid option on my website, Brave New Web. Basically, I’d like to set up a forum or group and charge people access to it on either a monthly or an annual basis.

  I know you can do this in wordpress.org, but I’m not sure I’m up to the learning curve. I could just as easily set up a Google group or other forum/group software and link a page on my website to it. I might just do a subscription through a PayPal button.

  I’m wondering if there’s some way to manage this with a business upgrade? I’m not selling physical products. Actually, at this stage all I’d be selling would be subscriptions, although I might add downloadable training materials at some point in the future. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for cobbling something like that together?

  I’m a big fan of WordPress.com and actually teach a five-week course at our local community education center. I’ve got a lot of people who’d like some kind of follow-up and I’d rather do it without building their websites for them. I’ve got a few irons in the fire over at wp.org (buddy press and bbPress), but that’s a whole other order of magnitude!

  Many thanks in advance,
  Margy

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  pmciano · Member · Oct 21, 2014 at 3:46 pm

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  @wpmri731

  WordPress.com offers several options for those who want to generate some revenue from their blog or site, including affiliate links, advertising, and PayPal and eCommerce integration.

  You can read more about affiliate links and the types of advertising allowed on WordPress.com here:

  http://en.support.wordpress.com/affiliate-links/

  http://en.support.wordpress.com/advertising/

  If you would like to sell your own work or solicit donations using Paypal on your WordPress.com site, this link will give you instructions for setting up a PayPal button:

  http://en.support.wordpress.com/paypal/

  WordPress.com Business users can integrate eCommerce features in their site by using one of our eCommerce partners. If you have a store at Ecwid, Shopify, or Shoplocket, you can showcase and sell your products on your WordPress.com site:

  Sell Online on WordPress.com

  If you require eCommerce/shopping cart functionality beyond this, you might be interested in a self-hosted (WordPress.org) installation. There are no restrictions on eCommerce if you set up a self-hosted WordPress.org blog instead of a WordPress.com blog, but there are some added responsibilities.

  Please see this link to learn about the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org:

  WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

  If these options are not sufficient for your needs, you can always migrate to a self-hosted, WordPress.org instance.

  This guide will step you through the process of moving your site to a WordPress.org instance:

  http://en.support.wordpress.com/moving-a-blog/#moving-to-wordpress-org

  As we only support sites hosted here at WordPress.com, all issues with the new site – including the importing of the file – must be taken to the WordPress.org support community:

  http://wordpress.org/support/

  If you’d like assistance moving your WordPress.com site to WordPress.org, we have a service called Guided Transfer that does all the work for you. Check it out to see if it’s right for you:

  http://en.support.wordpress.com/guided-transfer/

  Let us know if you have any more questions.