So, you want to create a paid newsletter website, using woocommerce and mailchimp.

Recently one of our clients asked us for some help with their website. They publish a paid newsletter and the first thing I thought to my self was “This must exist” So I went looking for a solution and it actually does exist, but it’s not very direct.

Once the right pieces of the puzzle are in place, it comes together well in a nice front end user experience.

Though Paid Memberships Pro (the plugin we will be talking about) can run as it’s own cart, our client wanted to keep WooCommerce as their functional cart, because they intend to sell retail product as well, this would apply to someone who wishes to sell digital content also. So having TWO obvious cart systems was not logical, instead they needed to be brought together.

To accomplish this you are going to need a few tools and plugins for your WordPress.

For basic integration:

1. WooCommerce : What I personally think is the BEST WordPress cart system on earth.

Cost: Free

Learn More: http://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/

2. Paid Memberships Pro: A plugin that I did not know existed, It turns out its a VERY NICE plugin.

Cost: the PMP plugin is Free

The developer offers a support package which I encourage you to look into if you are  new to WordPress or run into trouble.

Learn More: http://www.paidmembershipspro.com/

3. A add on plugin for Paid Memberships Pro called PMPro MailChip Integration

This works wonderfully! For both types of integrations we will talk about here.  It is worth noting that PMPro has add-on integrations for other contact systems, such as AdWeber, ConstantContact, etc. click here for a list. 

Cost: Free

Learn More: http://wordpress.org/plugins/pmpro-mailchimp/

4. SSL Certificate: PMPro will not function properly without it, but really there is NEVER a downside to having a SSL Certificate and proper security established on any website you are collecting customer data.

Cost: Varies (SSL requires you to have a dedicated IP address that also costs, for example my clients pay $9.00 per month for a dedicated IP if you have your own VPS your already doing this. )

Note: You may need to work with your web host to install your SSL and it make take up to 48 hours.

My Clients can click here to order. 

5. A Paypal Account: The idea here is to get paid with a subscription!

For the More Advanced integration which allows us to use the WooCommerce cart system exclusively.

1. WooCommerce Subscriptions: This is recommended so that woo can manage your subscribers. The only downfall of WooSubscriptions is that it is a little expensive.

Cost: $199.00

Learn More: http://www.woothemes.com/products/woocommerce-subscriptions/

2. Paid Memberships Pro add-on PHPPro WooCommerce, It integrates with WooCommerce to sell Memberships as a product, set a global % discount on products by level or set a per-product members-only price.

It is also IMPORTANT to note that The membership will not be applied until the WooCommerce order status is “completed”. If you want to change this behavior, you will have to mark your WooCommerce product as a Virtual Product and use a plugin such as WooCommerce Autocomplete Order If you are ONLY selling subscriptions.

That does not work in this instance because our client will be selling product as well, so our client will need to complete each order.

Cost: Free

Learn more: http://www.paidmembershipspro.com/add-ons/third-party-integration/pmpro-woocommerce/

3. Stripe Payments: You already have an SSL and WooCommerce why limit your customers to Paypal when you can use Stripe payments, I recently started using stripe and I love it! Both PMPro carts and WooCommerce carts have stripe integrations.

Cost: Free to setup, rates are currently at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

Note: This is not an affiliate link, they don’t have an affiliate program 🙂

Learn more: https://stripe.com/

4. Stripe Gateway: If you are going for the Stripe Payments and the seamless cart your going to want to grab the stripe gateway from WooCommerce.

Cost: $79.00

Learn More: http://www.woothemes.com/products/stripe/

Now that you know what you need, lets get started with installing software, setting up our memberships and connecting to WooCommerce. Sounds easy peasy!

Step 1. Install WordPress:

Really, I think everyone has done this already, so step one is install WordPress. Here is a easy video by WPMU if you have never done this.

Step 2: Install WooCommerce

Download and install WooCommerce the easiest way to do this is from your Dashboard navigate to Plugins -> Add New then search for WooCommerce, you just want to install the WooCommerce framework for now, so don’t worry about all the other results. Click on WooCommerce and Click Install, I am not going to cover setting up WooCommerce in this tutorial, there are LOTS of tutorials about that.

Step 3: Install Paid Memberships Pro

Using the same Dashboard -> Plugins -> Add New action, Search for Paid Memberships Pro and then install.

After you have installed WooCommerce the next thing you are going want to install is the Paid Memberships Pro plugin I highly recommend you use the video guide that PMPro has to install and setup your PMPro http://www.paidmembershipspro.com/2012/02/paid-memberships-pro-installation-and-setup-tutorial-video/ 

Okay now that you have done that and your back with me..

Step 4: Install the PMPro MailChimp AddOn

You can get this from the link above, or you can install from the PMPro dashboard under AddOns

Step 5: Create your membership Levels in PMPro

Create your subscriber levels before connecting to MailChimp.  Follow these steps in creating your membership levels. Remember that each Membership Level = 1 Product in WooCommerce so keep it simple.

Step 6: Connect to MailChimp.

Head over to MailChimp and get your API Key ( How to get your MailChimp API Key ) After you have your api key, go to your dashboard and then to Settings -> PMPro MailChimp. Enter your API key, and click save, after the save you will see your lists. (You do need to create some lists in your MailChimp account first)

For your paid subscribers connect them to the “Opt-In” lists All users lists is for a NON paid list, and you should not force someone so join something they are not paying for.

Because they are paying, this is the Opt-In. So in this case I disable the double opt-in. This will automatically connect the user to your MailChimp list, once the order is marked as completed in WooCommerce.

Make sure to connect the correct list, to the correct membership level, if you have both an annual and a monthly you will want to connect to both.

Step 7 : Install WooCommerce Subscriptions

Once you have purchased and downloaded your plugin from WooThemes or where ever you get it install it using Dashboard -> Plugins -> Add new -> Upload -> Activate 

After you install your are going to want to setup PayPal in your payment gateways, You will need to set your Paypal Instant Payment Notification

Here are the basic steps:

1) You’ll need a Business Account with PayPal which basically means they are taking 3% or less fee on every payment they accept on your behalf.

2) You’ll need to setup PayPal for Instant Payment Notification (IPN). And this is where people are running into problems since you can’t easily figure out how to do this from the PayPal website. Hunt and peck doesn’t work as well as it does in most instances. So I’m posting this in the hopes that it will help make it easier for others to find these instructions. Works well for Woo Commerce Subscriptions Extension setup as well.

3) Here’s an easy to follow solutions for PayPal IPN setup from YouTube

After you have setup your IPN in WooCommerce for good measure I recommend also placing the settings in PMPro do this from Dashboard -> Membership -> Payment Settings 

One of the reasons I am teaching you to create a seamless cart integration with WooCommerce is because PMPro only supports one gateway at a time. Where as with WooCommerce we can use both Paypal and Stripe, which is great, because payment options = conversions.

Step 8: Install the WooCommerce PMPro Add On.

From this link use the same search add plugin method as we have used above or direct download from this link http://wordpress.org/plugins/pmpro-woocommerce/ once you have downloaded the plugin, Click on Activate.

Step 9: Create the WooCommerce Product

Okay now we are getting somewhere. There are many tutorials on adding products to woo, this time were going to add a Membership Subscription with recurring payment. If you have followed the instructions up until now navigate to Dashboard -> Products -> Add Product and your product window should look like a new post window, but it says Add new Product. Lets pay special attention to the type of product we are creating.

We are going to want to create a product that matches the same settings as we have set for our membership levels in PMPro. So in this case I will see my clients settings as an example.

Under Dashboard -> Membership -> Membership Levels we will see the membership levels (products) we have created already. Mine look like this.

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Now looking at the Add new Product Window in WooCommerce you will see that I want to create the product to match these settings. Remember that we have installed WooCommerce subscriptions so Click on Product Data and from the Drop down box select Simple Subscription this will give us the parameters for a subscription billing product, IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS, your product will not have recurring billing. Enter the product data to match the data from PMPro as seen above in this case.

Normally You should select (Virtual product) this disables shipping. However in our case here, my client is sending a free DVD to their annual subscribers so we are going to need that address and phone billing information. Which is why it is not selected here.

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And then I need to click on the Membership Tab (at the bottom of the product data window) so that I can connect my new product to PMPro.

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Now I want to connect the product, so from the drop down menu find the Membership level that you created in PMPro that matches the prices you have entered on the General area of Product Data. Enter The price.

Now Click Save Draft, or Publish, So that you have saved your product, Don’t forget to add the good stuff such as your product image, description and title.

Step 10: TA-DA! You did it!

If you have followed this guide you have just created a Membership product in WooCommerce using Paid Memberships Pro, that will SELL your paid newsletter list which you can manage and publish from MailChimp. YAY!

The next things you will want to do are connect Stripe to WooCommerce if you have elected to use Stripe, Install Security Software to help keep things secure, and of course page caching. Make sure that your extra pages from Paid Memberships Pro are added to your do not cache list in your caching software.

 

How did it go? Did this work for you? Do you have something to add? Please leave a comment below, and have a happy day!

-Joshua Patterson

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