Beauty Business Journal
A WordPress media and membership platform covering the business of beauty, combining a free article archive with a paid subscription tier.
Business
Beauty industry media & publication, digital
Built
WordPress site with article archive and Memberful subscriptions
Stack
WordPress, WooCommerce, Elementor
Engineering focus
Content categorization, membership/paywall integration
Why this project matters
Why this project matters
A media business built on a subscription model has to solve two problems at once: enough free content to prove value, and a clear enough membership offer that readers convert to paying subscribers.
Who this is for
Who they are
Beauty Business Journal is a digital publication covering the business side of the beauty industry.
What they do
They publish articles, video and community content across strategy, markets, companies, retail, technology and e-commerce, with founder Richard McKeon addressing reader questions weekly.
Who they serve
Entrepreneurs, indie founders, marketers and industry professionals in the beauty sector.
What the live site required
Not a wishlist from a kickoff call — what the delivered site visibly had to solve. Every requirement here is paired with the evidence that makes it true today.
Content organized by topic at publication scale
ContentArticles are categorized under Strategy, Markets, Companies, Retail, Technology and Ecommerce, with a dedicated video section.
A paid membership tier layered on top of free content
CommerceMonthly and yearly subscription tiers are sold through Memberful, unlocking community features and deeper analysis.
Revenue paths beyond subscriptions
ContentAdvertising, sponsorship and contributor-submission opportunities are listed as partnership options.
Why this stack, not just what stack
Every technology on this project was a specific answer to a specific problem — never a default.
- 01
WordPress
Chosen because the business is fundamentally a publishing operation, needing frequent article publication across multiple categories.
- 02
Elementor
Chosen for the homepage and category-page layouts organizing a growing volume of published content.
Trade-off — Elementor lays out the category-page templates directly, but an article only belongs to the categories it's manually assigned — there's no automatic cross-listing or tagging beyond what an editor sets by hand.
What the site can actually do
Category-based archive
Articles organized across six named topic categories.
Memberful subscriptions
Monthly/yearly paid tiers unlocking community access and deeper content.
Video content
A dedicated video section alongside written articles.
Contributor & advertising program
Named partnership paths for advertisers, sponsors and contributors.
What the finished build shows
Specific, verifiable patterns in how this project is put together — not a feature list, but how the pieces fit.
Membership runs on a separate platform from checkout
Paid tiers are sold through Memberful rather than WooCommerce's own subscription products — the paywall and community-access layer is a distinct system from the commerce stack the rest of the site runs on.
Monetization content kept apart from editorial content
Advertising, sponsorship and contributor opportunities are listed in their own partnership section rather than woven into article pages.
The live experience
Every screen, captured directly from the live site — desktop, tablet and mobile.
How this project's engineering applies to your business
The free-content-plus-paid-membership model applies to any publisher or content business — newsletters, trade publications, niche media — looking to convert readers into recurring subscribers without fully gating their content.
If you remember three things
Publishing at category scale
Six content categories plus video, organized for ongoing publication.
Membership layered on free content
Memberful subscriptions add a revenue tier without gating the whole site.
Multiple revenue paths
Subscriptions, advertising and sponsorships all supported from one platform.
Related work
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