It’s hard to be creative when you’re worried about money. Running ads on your site helps, but for many creators, ad revenue isn’t enough. Top publishers and creators sustain their businesses by building reliable income streams through ongoing contributions.
Our new Recurring Payments feature for WordPress.com and Jetpack-powered sites lets you do just that: it’s a monetization tool for content creators who want to collect repeat contributions from their supporters, and it’s available with any paid plan on WordPress.com.
Let your followers support you with periodic, scheduled payments. Charge for your weekly newsletter, accept monthly donations, sell yearly access to exclusive content — and do it all with an automated payment system.
With recurring payments, you can:
- Accept ongoing payments from visitors directly on your site.
- Bill supporters automatically, on a set schedule. Subscribers can cancel anytime from their WordPress.com account.
- Offer ongoing subscriptions, site memberships, monthly donations, and more, growing your fan base with exclusive content.
- Integrate your site with Stripe to process payments and collect funds.
Enable Recurring Payments in three steps
Start accepting ongoing payments in just five minutes, without any technical background.
1. Connect (or create) a Stripe account
WordPress.com partners with Stripe, one of the internet’s biggest payment processors, to make sure transactions are fast and secure. You’ll need a Stripe account to use Recurring Payments.
Head to your Earn page and click Connect Stripe to Get Started — we’ll walk you through the setup and help you create a Stripe account if you don’t have one.
2. Put a Recurring Payments button on your site
Recurring Payments takes advantage of the powerful block editor. To start collecting revenue, open a post or page, click the (+) to add a new block, and insert a Recurring Payments button.
3. Customize the details of the recurring payment
You can create as many payment plans for your site as you’d like—different currencies, amounts, payment frequencies, and names, so you can offer different tiers or subscriptions.
You can also choose one of your previously created plans when you insert a new button.
Bravo!
You just set up Recurring Payments for your site. Now your fans can support you, just like they do on Longreads.com and around the web.
For more detailed setup instructions, visit the Recurring Payments support page.
So many options to grow your supporter base
With Recurring Payments, you can turn your content into revenue, accept donations, or fund your next big idea.
- Sell access to members-only newsletters.
- Collect club membership dues automatically.
- Let fans fund your next art project.
Some people even collect rent with recurring payments!
It’s easier than ever for your visitors to support your site
Recurring Payments make it easy to purchase a subscription or become a supporter on any WordPress.com or Jetpack-connected site — your subscribers will be able to use the same payment information and manage all their subscriptions in one place. To do that, they’ll just need a WordPress.com account.
During the checkout process, they will enter their email address. If they already have a WordPress.com account linked to that address, we will associate the purchase with that account. If they don’t, we’ll create an account for them. When they complete the purchase, they’ll receive an email with more info and login instructions for their new account.
The transaction is between you and your subscriber. WordPress.com only facilitates the processing and management of the subscription. We don’t save your subscribers’ credit card information, either — it’s stored by Stripe, the payment processor, so that the charge can renew automatically. Your subscribers can manage, edit, or cancel their recurring payments on their own, without your intervention, by visiting Me > Manage Purchases > Other sites.
A competitive fee structure helps you share your work far and wide
Recurring Payments is available on all paid plans, for both WordPress.com and Jetpack-connected sites. You pay a percentage of the revenue your site generates through Recurring Payments, which varies depending on your plan. As you collect more subscribers, you might consider switching to a different plan in order to retain more revenue.
| WordPress.com Plan | Jetpack plan | Related Fees |
| WordPress.com eCommerce | — | None |
| WordPress.com Business | Jetpack Professional | 2% |
| WordPress.com Premium | Jetpack Premium | 4% |
| WordPress.com Personal | Jetpack Personal | 8% |
In addition to the fees you pay us, Stripe collects 2.9% + $0.30 for each payment made to your Stripe account.
Make the most of our collection of monetizing tools
Recurring payments is the latest addition to the monetizing tools available on WordPress.com. Here are the other tools you can find by visiting WordPress.com/earn.
- Use Simple Payments to take one-time payments, or to sell digital or physical products with minimal configuration.
- Add WordAds to run advertisements on your site, and earn revenue from your traffic.
- Move to WooCommerce when you’re ready to create a full shopping experience for visitors — it’s the most customizable online-store platform on the web, with thousands of extensions.
Ready to add Recurring Payments? Head to your site’s Earn section right now.
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