How to Make a News Website Using WordPress (Step by Step)

News websites used to be built only by big media companies with big budgets. At least, that’s what we thought, too, until we created our blog back in 2009 and learned that anyone could become a publisher.

Over the years, we’ve built dozens of news and magazine websites for our partner brands and clients. We’ve tested pretty much every news theme and content plugin out there, and we’ve developed a simple system that works every time.

In this step-by-step guide, we’ll show you exactly how to create a professional news website using WordPress, without any coding knowledge required. We’ll share the exact themes, plugins, and settings we use to build successful news sites that get real traffic.

Here is an overview of everything we will cover in this guide. You can click the links below to jump ahead to your preferred section:

Why You Should Start a News Website?

People are always on the hunt for the latest information on pretty much everything.

Whether it’s current affairs, the newest tech gadgets, lifestyle tips, fashion trends, or even just what’s happening down the road in your local area. Starting a news website can open up a whole world of possibilities.

For starters, it’s a fantastic way to reach a much wider audience. You can pull in readers from all corners of the globe and really boost the traffic to your website.

It also allows you to make money online. You can partner with brands and companies in different countries. Or start a subscription service like The New York Times and offer exclusive access to premium content to your loyal readers.

A news website also lets you create a brand for a specific niche. You can cover training topics or the latest news from different industries and build brand recognition over time.

Another great thing about running a news site is that you can get creative with your content. You could turn written news articles into engaging videos, start a newsletter to keep your subscribers in the loop, or even launch a podcast.

News sites are also a great way to make money online, thanks to reader-supported revenue models. For example, successful publishers often combine ads, affiliate offers, and paid memberships at the same time.

Don’t worry if that sounds overwhelming! We’ll walk you through all of these monetization options in detail later in this guide.

Before any of that, though, there’s one decision worth making first: what your news site is actually about.

Choose Your News Niche and Audience

Before you pick a host or write a single article, it helps to decide what your site will cover and who you are writing it for.

Trying to report on everything is the fastest way to blend in with every other news site out there. A clear focus is what gives readers a reason to come back to you specifically.

Your niche can be as broad or as narrow as you like. A few options that work well:

• Local or community news for a town, city, or region
• A tech or gadget beat covering launches and reviews
• An industry or trade publication for a specific profession
• Sports coverage for a team, league, or event
• A lifestyle vertical like food, travel, parenting, or personal finance

Picking one focus pays off in three ways. It is easier to rank for a tight set of topics than to compete with national outlets on general news.

It also builds a loyal audience, because readers know exactly what they will get from you. And it helps with Google News and Discover, which both surface content tied to the specific interests people already follow.

Once you know your focus and your reader, every choice that follows gets easier. So let’s look at what you’ll need to make your news site.

What You’ll Need to Start a News Website

There are many platforms that you can use to make a news website, but each one of them has its own pros and cons. You can learn more by seeing our comparison of the best blogging platforms.

For example, you can start for free on WordPress.com, Tumblr, Blogger, Medium, and more. However, free platforms offer limited features and flexibility, which makes it hard to monetize your site and scale your business.

This is where WordPress.org comes in. It powers around 43% of all websites on the internet. Plus, it is a powerful website builder that gives you full control and ownership of your website.

In fact, many notable news brands like CNN Press Room, Microsoft News, The New York Times, and more use WordPress.

Do note that WordPress.org and WordPress.com are two different platforms. Please see our comparison of WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org to learn more.

Once you’ve selected WordPress.org as a platform for your news site, you’ll also need:

• Web Hosting: This is the home for your news site where all the files, content, images, and other data will be stored.
• Domain Name: It is your site’s address that users will enter in their browser (like wpbeginner.com or google.com)
• Your undivided attention for the next 30 minutes.

In just a few minutes, you can easily create a news website using WordPress. Let’s get started.

Selecting Web Hosting and Installing WordPress

When creating a WordPress website, there are several costs you’ll need to look after.

For instance, a domain name usually costs $14.99 per year, and web hosting costs $7.99 per month. If you add an SSL certificate and more features to the web hosting plan, then this cost can go even higher.

That’s a lot for beginners and new website owners.

Luckily, our friends at Hostinger are offering an amazing deal where you get a free domain name and free SSL with each hosting plan. That’s up to a 79% discount on hosting for our readers.

So, you can get started for as low as $2.69 per month.

To start, you’ll need to visit the Hostinger website and click the ‘Claim deal’ button.

Next, Hostinger will ask you to select a pricing plan and click the ‘Add to Cart’ button.

We recommend that you start with the ‘Premium’ plan, but you can always upgrade to another plan later on.

On the next screen, you’ll need to select a hosting time period. For instance, you can choose to host for 1 month, 12 months, 24 months, or 48 months.

The 48-month plan gives you the best discount and maximum savings.

After that, you can create a new account on Hostinger.

There is also an option to log in using your Google or Facebook account.

Next, you will need to enter your personal details and select a payment method.

From here, simply complete the payment process and finish your purchase. After completing the purchase, you can go ahead and create a new website.

Simply head to the ‘Websites’ tab from your Hostinger dashboard. From here, click the ‘+ Create or migrate a website’ option.

This will launch the website setup wizard by Hostinger.

Next, you can choose the type of website you want to create. There are multiple options like online store, blog, business, portfolio, and others.

To create a news website, go ahead and select the ‘Blog’ option.

In the next step, Hostinger will ask if you’d like to create a new site or migrate an existing website.

Go ahead and select the ‘Create a new website’ option.

Next, Hostinger will ask you to select a platform for your news website.

You will have to choose the ‘WordPress with AI’ option and click the ‘Select’ button.

After that, Hostinger will require setting up login details for your WordPress account.

Simply enter an administrator email and select a password. Once that’s done, click the ‘Continue’ button.

In the next step, Hostinger will ask you to automatically install specific WordPress plugins on your website.

You can simply choose the plugins you want and click the ‘Continue’ button. Or skip this step and install plugins later on.

After that, Hostinger will show different website templates to choose from.

You can simply skip this step and choose a news theme later on for your WordPress site.

In the next step, Hostinger offers you the option to automatically create a few pieces of content using AI. You can add a brand name and description and let ChatGPT handle the rest.

Or you can skip this step and create content for your news website later on.

After that, Hostinger will ask you to select a desired domain. You can claim a free domain, buy a domain, or use a domain name that you already own.

For this tutorial, we will select the ‘Claim a Free Domain’ option.

If you need help, then please see our guide on how to choose the best domain name for your news site.

After choosing a domain name, the WordPress installation will start.

To view your newly created site, you can go to the ‘Websites’ tab from your Hostinger dashboard.

Go ahead and click the ‘Admin Panel’ option to open the WordPress admin area.

This is where you can choose a theme for your news site, install and manage plugins, add content to posts and pages, and more.

Choosing a Theme for Your News Site

So, your WordPress news website is live, fantastic! Now, to keep readers coming back for their daily dose of news, you need to make sure it looks professional and is easy to read. This is where WordPress themes come in.

Think of WordPress themes as professionally designed templates that control the entire look and feel of your news site.

Choosing the right theme is essential, as it should display your latest and trending news prominently while making the reading experience pleasant.

Straight out of the box, WordPress gives you a basic theme. If you visit your new site now, it’ll likely have a fairly standard appearance, something like this:

This is a generic WordPress theme with limited features, so you’ll need to replace it.

To add a theme, simply head to Appearance » Themes from your WordPress dashboard and click the ‘Add New Theme’ button.

Next, you’ll see different WordPress themes.

You can filter them by ‘news’ and choose the one you like.

If you’re looking for a beginner-friendly theme to get started, then we recommend Sydney. It has many customization options and is a perfect choice for news websites.

The best part about using Sydney is that it supports popular page builders out of the box. Plus, it’s optimized for WordPress SEO (search engine optimization) and ensures fast performance.

The free version of Sydney is a solid starting point on its own, with page builder support, fast performance, and SEO-friendly code. If you want ready-made news and magazine starter templates like the preview below, you’ll need Sydney Pro, which also unlocks its Templates Builder for designing custom headers, footers, and archive layouts.

Want to learn more? Then check out our detailed Sydney review. Alternatively, you can see our list of the best WordPress newspaper themes for more options.

Another option is creating a custom news theme using SeedProd. This clever tool lets you build a theme visually and comes with loads of ready-made templates, including some specifically designed for news websites.

These news templates are built to show off your latest stories in a really eye-catching way.

They also come with features to help your readers find exactly what they’re looking for, like search bars, filters, easy-to-use navigation menus, and sections for ‘trending’ news.

We’ve been using SeedProd for ages to design all sorts of websites, and we’re big fans. It even has an AI website builder that can generate an entire custom website for you in less than 60 seconds.

Want to learn more? We’ve put together a detailed SeedProd review sharing our honest experiences with this popular page builder.

If you decide to give it a go, our guide on how to create a custom WordPress theme will walk you through everything.

Adding Content to Your News Website

WordPress offers two default post types called posts and pages. Posts are part of the blogging functionality. On the other hand, pages are static content used for different landing pages, like an about us or contact us page.

To start adding content, you’ll need to use the WordPress block editor (also called Gutenberg).

Unlike the old Classic Editor, you get modern features and more flexibility in creating content in the block editor. It makes it very easy to format text and add media like videos and images to your content.

We recommend starting with the static content, as it will not change on a regular basis. There are pretty common kinds of static content that almost all websites on the internet share.

These include a contact form page, an about us page, a privacy policy page, a terms of service page, and more.

For instance, here’s a preview of what the Contact Us page from OptinMonster looks like. You can use a page builder to create custom landing pages just like this.

Next, you can start creating news articles as blog posts.

If you need help, then please see our guide on how to add a new blog post in WordPress and utilize all the features.

We recommend publishing new content on a frequent basis. Large news sites post multiple news articles daily. You can start with a few posts per week and then gradually increase the frequency.

Consistency matters more than volume when you’re starting out. From our experience managing editorial calendars for partner sites, publishing 3–5 well-researched articles a week is always better than publishing 15 rushed posts. Google News also rewards sites with a steady publishing rhythm over sites that spike and then go quiet.

Bonus Tip: If you’re having trouble coming up with new topics, then you can follow our guide on how to generate 100+ blog post ideas or try out our free blog post generator tool.

Adding Images, Videos, and Media to Your News Articles

As a general rule, news articles without visuals don’t perform well. Readers scan first and read second, so a strong featured image and 2–3 supporting visuals per article can dramatically increase how long readers spend on your site.

You can add images directly through the WordPress block editor using the Image block, and WordPress automatically creates multiple sizes for different devices.

If you want to display multiple images in a nice layout, then you can use the Gallery block or a dedicated plugin like Envira Gallery.

When it comes to videos, embedding content from YouTube or Vimeo is as simple as pasting the URL into an Embed block.

Setting Up an Editorial Workflow

If you’re running your news site with multiple contributors, then you’ll want an editorial workflow in place before you start publishing anything.

WordPress has five built-in user roles (Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, and Subscriber), and each one has different permissions for creating, editing, and publishing content.

In the past, we’ve set up freelance writers as Contributors and staff reporters as Authors, while senior editors got the Editor role to approve and schedule posts.

This setup works well because Contributors can write drafts but cannot hit publish, meaning an Editor must review their work first. Meanwhile, Authors have permission to publish their own posts immediately. This prevents accidental publishing and keeps a clear chain of review, ensuring that every article meets your standards before it goes live.

For larger newsrooms, we recommend using a multi-author plugin like PublishPress. It allows you to add editorial comments, create custom statuses, and build out more robust approval workflows on top of the default WordPress user roles.

Customizing and Adjusting Your News Website Settings

After adding content to your WordPress news site, you can tweak different settings on your site and customize its appearance.

Let’s look at some of the things you can adjust on your site.

1. Edit the News Website Title and Tagline

You can change the site title and add a tagline to your news site.

The site title will be the name of your website, like WPBeginner. While the tagline helps describe your website briefly.

Simply go to Settings » General page from the WordPress dashboard. From here, enter the site title and tagline.

Note: Even if you are using an SEO plugin like All in One SEO (AIOSEO), it is highly recommended to fill in your site title and tagline here. Your SEO plugin will automatically use this information to create optimized technical titles for search engines.

2. Create Categories to Organize Your Content

WordPress categories are a powerful tool that helps sort your content. Users can quickly view news from different regions, industries, or topics by navigating different categories.

Categories also develop a proper structure for your site. This is great for your site’s SEO, as it helps search engines understand what your page is about.

You can easily create categories and subcategories by going to Posts » Categories from the WordPress dashboard. Then, enter a name and click the ‘Add New Category’ button.

You can see our guide on how to add categories and subcategories in WordPress to learn more.

3. Add a Navigational Menu to Your News Site

The navigational menu helps your readers to browse your site. It also lets you organize your content and make it easy for users to access important articles and pages.

For example, The Guardian shows a menu at the top of its website where you can access content based on different categories, like news, sports, culture, and lifestyle.

Many news themes come with built-in menus, and you can also create your own using WordPress’s powerful navigation menu system.

To learn more, please see our guide on how to add a navigation menu in WordPress.

4. Enable Comment Moderation on Your News Site

You can allow users to leave comments on your news article and participate in discussions. This is great for boosting engagement on your site.

However, if you don’t have comment moderation enabled, then it can lead to a lot of spam on your site.

To ensure that comments don’t automatically appear on your site, head to Settings » Discussion from the WordPress dashboard. Next, you’ll need to scroll down to the Before a comment appears section and click the ‘Comment must be manually approved’ checkbox.

You can follow our beginner’s guide on how to moderate comments in WordPress.

As your news site grows, manually approving every single comment can start to take up more of your time. In that case, you can use a plugin like Akismet to automatically combat comment spam.

Optimize Your WordPress News Site for Search Engines

The next step is to ensure that users can easily find your news website on the internet. This is where optimizing your site for search engines is essential.

You can drive a lot of traffic from search engines like Google and Bing. By optimizing your content, you can rank higher in search engine page results and get more people to visit your news site.

The best part is that WordPress is SEO-friendly out of the box. However, you still need to ensure that your site is optimized correctly.

The easiest way to do that is by using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin. It is the best SEO plugin for WordPress and helps you configure your site for search engines without hiring a professional or any technical knowledge.

AIOSEO offers powerful features like TruSEO on-page analysis, rich snippets schema markup, XML sitemaps, breadcrumb navigation, social media integration, and more. It handles all the technical SEO optimization for your WordPress news site.

Getting your news articles seen is important, and that’s why we rely on AIOSEO to optimize every piece of content we put out on WPBeginner. It’s made a real difference to our search rankings! Because of this, we’re happy to recommend it to you all.

If you’re after more information, have a look at our in-depth AIOSEO review.

Once you’ve read the review, our guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress will give you the full rundown on how to get started with AIOSEO.

Besides using AIOSEO, you can also ensure that you’re following the basics of SEO. For instance, check your site is visible to search engines, your site has an SEO-friendly URL, you’re using HTTPS, adding internal links to your content, and more.

To ensure your news site is properly optimized, please follow our step-by-step guide on WordPress SEO.

Submit Your WordPress News Site to Google News

Aside from following the basics of SEO, you can go a step further and submit your site to Google News. This can greatly increase your website traffic, attract a new audience, and build authority.

Google News is a news aggregator that shows the latest stories and news from different sources. Getting your site featured in Google News can improve visibility and also help capture the Top Stories featured snippet.

Before submitting your site to Google News, you’ll need to ensure that you follow Google News policies. For example, your content should not be dangerous, deceptive, hateful, sexually explicit, violent, or manipulative.

Once you’ve followed all the policies, you can use the AIOSEO plugin to set up a news sitemap. The news sitemap helps Google to quickly discover your content and show it in the news section. The news sitemap is part of AIOSEO Pro, which unlocks the full set of news and video SEO tools.

After creating a sitemap, you can head to the Google Publisher Center website.

Here, you can enter your news site’s URL and follow the onscreen instructions to submit it to Google News.

For more details, you can follow our step-by-step guide on how to submit your WordPress site to Google News.

Optimize for Google Discover Traffic

Google Discover is the personalized news feed inside the Google app on mobile, and for many news sites it now drives more traffic than traditional search.

Unlike Google Search, you can’t directly opt in. Google decides which sites to surface based on quality and engagement signals.

Now, here’s what consistently works for our partner sites:

• Use high-resolution featured images. Google specifically recommends images that are at least 1200 pixels wide. Your site also needs a special snippet of code called the max-image-preview:large tag. Fortunately, if you use AIOSEO, this tag is added to your site automatically.
• Avoid clickbait headlines. Google Discover aggressively demotes content that uses misleading or overly sensational titles. To succeed here, you should stick to clear, descriptive headlines that accurately reflect your story.
• Publish about topics people actively follow. Discover is designed to surface content tied to specific user interests, such as sports teams, celebrities, technology, or niche industry news.
• Optimize for mobile. Since Discover is primarily a mobile experience, it is non-negotiable that your site loads quickly and looks great on smaller screens.

For more on this topic, see our guide on how to get your WordPress site Into Google Discover.

Get Cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews

Today, a growing number of people start their search in an AI chatbot rather than a traditional search engine. If your news site isn’t being cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews, you are missing out on a massive and fast-growing traffic source.

Based on our experience, here’s what works best to get your content featured by these AI engines:

• Lead with a clear, fact-based answer. AI engines tend to pull information from the first 1–2 paragraphs of an article, so you need to make sure each article answers the headline directly and concisely.
• Cite primary sources. Linking out to original studies, government data, and official press releases is a major trust signal. AI engines prioritize content that includes verifiable citations to back up its claims.
• Add a Q&A or FAQ section. Structured, question-and-answer formats are significantly easier for AI agents to parse and quote. The FAQ section we added at the end of this article is a great example of this in action.
• Publish an llms.txt file. This is a new file format, similar to robots.txt, that gives AI crawlers a clean, plain-text guide to your most important content. It’s quick to set up and low-risk, so it’s worth adding while the standard takes shape. If you use AIOSEO, you’ll get access to a built-in llms.txt generator, so you can set this up quickly.

Optimize for Core Web Vitals and Mobile Performance

Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal, which measures loading speed (Largest Contentful Paint), interactivity (Interaction to Next Paint), and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift). News sites with heavy ads and images often struggle here.

To pass Core Web Vitals, you will need to take a proactive approach to site performance.

Because breaking news can cause sudden, massive spikes in traffic, your server can easily get overwhelmed. That’s why we recommend using a caching plugin like WP Rocket to drastically reduce server strain and keep your site fast, even when an article goes viral.

It’s also important to keep your third-party scripts to an absolute minimum, as these are often the biggest culprits behind slow load times.

For more tips and best practices, please see our guide on how to boost speed and performance.

Ways to Grow Traffic on Your News Website

While SEO plays a huge role in driving traffic to your site, there are more ways to attract visitors to your news articles.

Let’s look at some of the ways to grow your website traffic.

1. Convert Visitors into Subscribers

Did you know that most people who visit your news site will never come back again?

You can change this by using OptinMonster. It is the best lead generation and conversion optimization software for WordPress. OptinMonster lets you create popups, spin-to-win campaigns, floating bars, and more. Plus, it offers powerful display rules, allowing you to show the campaigns to the right audience at the right time.

For example, you can offer free resources, coupons, discount deals, and other incentives in exchange for users’ email addresses.

As always, we’ve done the hard work for you and created a detailed OptinMonster review, giving you all the information you need to decide if it’s the right fit for you.

Once you start getting subscribers, you can build an email list and set up a newsletter to send the latest news, trending stories, and more. This will help bring people back to your site and build authority.

There are plenty of email marketing services to choose from. We recommend starting with Constant Contact, our top pick for beginners, though Brevo and HubSpot are also solid options.

You can take a look at our detailed guide on how to create an email newsletter.

2. Send Push Notifications to Your Audience

Website push notifications help you stay in touch with your audience after they’ve left your site. They get a higher engagement rate compared to social media or email.

You can use PushEngage to get started. It’s the best multi-channel customer engagement platform for WordPress.

It’s super easy to use and helps you set up automated campaigns, like an alert every time you publish a new article, create segments for different subscribers, track detailed analytics, and more.

You can send notifications to inform users about new articles, breaking news, the latest trends, and more.

For more details, check out our detailed PushEngage review, or dive right in and learn how to set up push notifications in WordPress.

3. Share Content on Social Media Channels

Another way to grow your website traffic is by sharing content on social media platforms.

For instance, you can send out a tweet on X (formerly known as Twitter) about the latest news and share news articles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more.

You can also add social sharing buttons on your site so visitors can share the news with their friends and followers.

With WordPress, there are ways to automate the process and automatically share content to social media when they’re published. Simply use Uncanny Automator to create automated workflows and integrate social media profiles with your website.

You can follow our guide on how to automatically post from WordPress to Twitter and Facebook for more details.

4. Build Backlinks Through Digital PR and Journalism

Backlinks from authoritative news sources are one of the strongest ranking signals for news sites. Journalists and editors link to original reporting, exclusive data, and expert sources, so you should aim to produce things other publishers want to cite.

We’ve had success publishing original surveys, data studies, and expert roundups that get picked up by other outlets. You can also pitch yourself as a source on platforms like Qwoted and Featured (the service that revived the old HARO name), where journalists actively look for subject-matter experts to quote.

5. See What’s Working With Built-In Analytics

You can’t grow what you can’t measure, so it helps to know which stories are pulling in readers and where they came from.

To see how your news site is performing, we recommend MonsterInsights, which is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

It connects your site to Google Analytics and shows your most important stats right inside your WordPress dashboard, so you don’t have to dig through GA4 to find them.

You can see your most popular posts, your real-time visitors, and where your traffic is coming from, all in one place.

For a news site, the real-time view is the part that matters most. When a story starts spiking, you can spot it as it happens and double down on related coverage while the topic is still hot.

The free MonsterInsights Lite plugin is enough to get started, and you can upgrade later if you want deeper reports.

To learn more, see our detailed MonsterInsights review.

Tips to Boost Engagement on Your News Site

Once you start adding more content and attracting more visitors, you can take your news site to the next level.

Here are some tips for boosting engagement on your website.

1. Adding a Scrolling News Ticker in WordPress

A scrolling news ticker is a single line of text that appears continuously across the screen and shows small snippets of information.

For instance, you can use it to show breaking news, sporting results, live financial and currency information, weather, discount deals, upcoming events, and more.

The easiest way of adding a scrolling news ticker is by using the Ditty plugin. It is a free plugin that is very easy to use and set up.

For more details, please see our step-by-step guide on how to add a scrolling news ticker in WordPress.

2. Show Popular and Trending News Articles

Another way to boost engagement on your site is by displaying popular and trending news articles within or at the end of your content

You can also show related news articles and other blog posts on similar topics within your content. This makes it easier for users to discover new content and stay longer on your site.

To learn more, you can see our guides on how to display popular posts by views and how to display related posts in WordPress.

3. Turn Your Site into a News Aggregator

You can curate news from multiple sources and display them on your site as an aggregator.

News aggregators are useful for many niches and allow users to view news from their favorite websites in one place. It also lets you make money online by selling subscriptions, advertisements, and sponsorships.

Some popular news aggregators include Feedly, Google News, and Alltop. You can also create your own news aggregator site using a plugin like WP RSS Aggregator.

For more information, please follow our guide on the best news aggregator website and how to build your own.

4. Add a Live Blog or Breaking News Feed

Live blogging is perfect for covering elections, sports events, product launches, or any breaking news story that evolves in real time. Unlike a regular article, a live blog updates in-place and keeps readers on the page for longer.

You can set up a live blog on WordPress using a plugin like 24liveblog or by pinning a sticky post with frequent updates.

Live blogs are also great for SEO because Google often features them in the Top Stories carousel during trending events.

5. Enable Dark Mode for Late-Night Readers

A surprising number of news readers browse late at night, and dark mode can make your site more pleasant to read in low-light conditions.

Modern news themes often include a built-in dark mode toggle, or you can add one with a plugin like WP Dark Mode.

How to Monetize Your WordPress News Website

Once your news site is getting steady traffic, it’s time to turn that audience into revenue. Here are the most effective monetization models we’ve seen work for news publishers.

1. Display Advertising With Google AdSense

The simplest way to monetize a news site is by running display ads through Google AdSense. You get paid based on impressions and clicks, and the ads are chosen automatically based on your content and the reader’s interests.

Once your site gains traction, you can upgrade to premium ad networks like Mediavine or Raptive for significantly higher rates. Mediavine’s entry-level Journey tier now starts at just 1,000 monthly sessions, so you may qualify much sooner than you would expect.

2. Paid Memberships and Subscriptions

If you produce in-depth reporting or niche analysis, a paid membership model can generate predictable recurring revenue. Publications like The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, and countless niche newsletters use this model successfully.

You can set up paid memberships on WordPress using MemberPress. It lets you create multiple subscription tiers, lock premium articles behind a paywall, and even offer free content trials.

For a full walkthrough, see our guide on how to create a paywall in WordPress.

3. Affiliate Marketing and Sponsored Content

Affiliate marketing lets you earn commissions by recommending products within your articles. Tech news sites often review gadgets, lifestyle sites recommend books and kitchen tools, and finance sites promote credit cards and investing apps.

You can also run sponsored content deals directly with brands relevant to your audience.

For more strategies, see our affiliate marketing guide for beginners and our list of the best affiliate marketing tools for WordPress.

4. Launch a Paid Newsletter

Paid newsletters have boomed in recent years. Platforms like Substack made them popular, but you can run one directly from your WordPress news site and keep 100% of the revenue instead of handing a cut to a third-party platform.

There’s no separate plugin to buy for this. You gate your premium issues with the same MemberPress paywall you’d use for the memberships above, then send each issue through your email service, like Constant Contact.

Paying subscribers get access to the gated content, while everyone else sees a preview. For the full setup, see our guide on how to create a paid newsletter in WordPress.

Frequently Asked Questions About Making a News Website With WordPress

Which is the best WordPress theme for a news website?

Sydney is our top pick for beginners because the free version is fast, SEO-friendly, and easy to set up. To get ready-made news and magazine starter templates, you can upgrade to Sydney Pro. And if you want full design freedom without touching code, you can build a custom layout with SeedProd.

How do I get my news site on Google News?

You submit your site through the Google Publisher Center after making sure your content follows Google News policies.

You’ll also want to set up a News Sitemap using AIOSEO so Google can discover and index your articles quickly.

Do I need technical or coding skills to run a WordPress news website?

No. WordPress is designed for non-technical users, and with the block editor you can format articles, embed videos, and lay out pages without touching any code. Hosting providers like Hostinger also handle the technical setup (installation, SSL, backups) for you.

How do news websites make money?

The most common revenue streams are display ads (Google AdSense, Mediavine), paid memberships and subscriptions, affiliate marketing, sponsored content, and paid newsletters.

Most successful news sites combine two or three of these instead of relying on a single income source.

How often should I publish articles on my news site?

Start with 3–5 articles per week when you’re launching and scale up to daily once you have a rhythm and traffic.

Google News and Google Discover reward publishers who maintain a consistent schedule, so consistency beats volume in the early days.

Can I use WordPress for a members-only news website?

Yes. MemberPress and similar plugins let you gate articles behind paid subscription tiers, offer free teaser content, and manage member access. This is a popular model for niche publications, investigative journalism sites, and industry trade publications.

What’s the difference between a blog and a news website?

A blog typically focuses on personal opinions, tutorials, or long-form essays, while a news website reports timely events, breaking stories, and industry updates. Now, many successful sites blur the line by mixing news reporting with long-form commentary and op-eds.

We hope this article helped you learn how to make a news website step by step. You may also want to see our guide on how to make a gym website in WordPress and our list of best WordPress migration services.

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