Paid Memberships Pro
Jason Coleman built Paid Memberships Pro as a specialized tool to solve the membership site problem on WordPress. Rather than trying to be a general e-commerce solution like WooCommerce or Shopify, Jason focused specifically on the membership use case—charging for content access while locking down member-only pages. The plugin is open-source and GPL-licensed, allowing anyone to use it for free while monetizing through premium support and add-ons.
Jason came from a consulting background but made a deliberate decision to go all-in on the product. "Last year was the year that we kind of unloaded all of our consulting clients and went full-time on the product that we sell," he explained. His business model avoided the typical SaaS pitfalls—instead of monthly subscriptions, he charged annually ($97 and $200 per year for the premium PM Pro Plus tier), which reduced churn concerns while building recurring revenue.
Growth came entirely through organic discovery. With 40,000 free sites using the plugin, Jason converted roughly 10% into paying customers through embedded links within the software directing users to upgrade. "Our funnel really comes through the software itself," he said. When WordPress users searched for membership functionality, they stumbled upon Paid Memberships Pro. This product-led approach meant zero paid acquisition spending—a massive advantage for profitability.
The decision to focus on a single product paid dividends. Jason reflected: "When I got into entrepreneurship, I was working on like three different business ventures at the same time... probably part of the success of Paid Memberships Pro is that when we started with it, we said, Hey, we're going to [focus on] this is the one thing we're doing." By pricing at $170 average annual revenue per customer and processing millions of dollars monthly through PayPal alone (with similar volumes on Stripe), the unit economics worked.
He kept costs lean with three part-time contractors and his wife handling operations, totaling $7,000-$10,000 monthly. This left $10,000-$20,000 monthly profit depending on owner distributions. The model was working, but Jason wanted to scale further—he aimed to hire a lead developer ($10,000/month) to replace himself so he could pursue other ventures.
By 2016, Paid Memberships Pro was doing $30,000 monthly revenue with 3,000-5,000 paying customers. The business was projected to hit $360,000+ annually while maintaining 100% ownership between Jason and his wife. Jason, living in Reading, Pennsylvania with two young children, had repositioned the business toward his long-term goal: becoming the number one membership platform for WordPress, which he noted "really means on the internet since WordPress is running so much on the internet."
- •By building an open-source plugin with free distribution, Jason created a massive funnel (40,000 free users) that naturally converted 10% into paying customers through in-product upgrade paths, eliminating the need for paid acquisition entirely.
- •Focusing exclusively on the membership niche rather than competing in general e-commerce allowed the product to become deeply specialized and discoverable through organic search when WordPress users had specific membership problems.
- •The annual subscription pricing model ($97–$200/year) reduced churn risk and simplified payment processing while still generating $30K MRR from 3,000–5,000 customers, proving strong product-market fit in a specific use case.
- •Operating with minimal overhead (three part-time contractors and one operations person at $7K–$10K monthly cost) created exceptional unit economics that turned a profitable business without requiring external funding or paid marketing.
- •Positioning the business around WordPress's dominance on the internet created a sustainable moat, as becoming the membership standard on WordPress meant capturing a large percentage of an already-massive platform.
- 1.Build a free or open-source version of your product that solves a specific, non-obvious pain point, then embed upgrade prompts or premium feature gates directly within the free software to create a self-contained funnel.
- 2.Identify a narrow vertical or use case (like 'memberships on WordPress') where search volume exists but solutions are fragmented, then optimize your product landing pages and documentation for the exact keywords your target users search for.
- 3.Price annually instead of monthly to improve cash flow predictability and reduce churn sensitivity, and calculate your unit economics to ensure the average revenue per customer justifies a lean operating model.
- 4.Start with a skeleton team (yourself plus 1–2 part-time contractors handling the most critical functions) and reinvest profits into hiring only when you can clearly show that a specific role will increase revenue faster than its cost.
- 5.Choose a platform or ecosystem with network effects (WordPress, Shopify, etc.) where becoming the standard solution in one category can create defensible, long-term competitive advantage without expensive marketing.
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