How to Offer Your Customers a Free Membership

There are couple of different methods that you can use to offer your customers a free membership. The first method is useful if you have only one free membership level. The 2nd method is useful if you want to offer multiple free levels on your site.

What is a Free Membersip?

A free membership level is where the user gets access to that membership lever for free. Anyone can signup to it for free without having to pay anything.

If you don’t know what a membership level is or how to create one, read this page to learn more about it.

Creating a Free Membership Level

Before you offer a free membership option to your customers, you will need to create a free membership level first.

1. Under the ‘WP Membership’ plugin’s menu click on ‘Membership Levels’.
2. Once in the ‘Membership Levels’ menu click on the ‘Add Level’ tab.
3. Give the membership level a title. For a free membership you may like to title the level: Free Membership or Free Level.
4. Choose ‘Subscriber’ as the WordPress Role for a free level.
5. Choose the expiry. For a free membership, generally there will be no expiry.
6. Click the ‘Add New Membership Level’ button.
7. Once you click this button you should see all your membership levels. Take note of your free levels ID.

Locating the ID of Your Free Level

You will need the level ID to configure free access option so let me show you where you get the level ID.

The membership level interface lists all your levels and their IDs. In this example, the level I created has an ID of 13.

Method 1) Offering Free Membership Through the Default Registration Page

When you download and install this plugin, it will automatically create a Join Us and a Registration page (please do not delete these pages). You can use this registration page to offer a ‘Free Membership’ to your customers. This method works well to offer one free membership level to your customers.

1. Create a free membership level.
2. Click on the ‘Settings’ menu under the ‘WP Membership’ plugin.
3. In the ‘General Settings’ tab, you will see a field where you can enter in your ‘Free Membership Level ID’.
4. Enter in the ID of your free membership (your level’s ID can be found under ‘Membership Levels’).
5. Save the changes you have made to the settings menu.
6. Now when a customer comes to your website and clicks on the ‘Registration’ page, they will be able to sign up to a free membership to your website (use the information below to add the ‘Registration’ page to your website’s menu).

Entering Your Free Level ID in the Settings Menu

Registration Form Example

You can now send visitors to this page and they can signup for the free membership level.

Method 2) Offering Free Membership Through a Custom Registration Page

You can offer a ‘Free Membership’ to your customers by creating a WordPress page and putting a registration form on that page. This is useful if you want to offer multiple free membership levels.

Step 1) Grab this free addon.

Step 2) To create a registration page for a membership level, create a post or page and give it a title such as Free Level Registration Page.

Step 3) Enter in the following short code and edit in the membership ID of your chosen free membership. You will need to replace the number ’12’ with your membership level ID.

[swpm_registration_form level=12]

Step 4) Publish your page. You can now send visitors to this page and they can signup directly (for free) to the level you specify in the shortcode.

For multiple free levels, you will need to create a separate registration page for each of the levels, and then have corresponding links on your Join Us page that links to each different registration pages.

Sending Visitors to Your Free Registration Page

You can add links to the free registration page  on your ‘Join Us’ page or you can create an entirely new page just for your free membership. The way you promote your free membership is entirely up to you.

This free registration page can also be added to your site’s menu or sidebar so visitors can easily access and sign up to your free membership.

Offering Multiple Membership Levels

Using the Simple Membership Plugin you can offer multiple free memberships on a single site. To offer multiple memberships on one site you will need to complete Method 2 (described above). This will include creating a page for each free membership levels that you wish to offer. You can then link to these pages from your ‘Join Us‘ page where you describe what is included in each membership. This gives your potential members the choice of which free membership they would like to sign up to.