Decide what you are selling first. Paid memberships, paywalled individual content, or advertising you sell yourself. The setup is the easy part; deciding what your community will actually pay for is not.
Step 1 — Choose and configure a payment gateway in the admin panel. You are billed standard gateway fees by that provider directly. There is no platform commission on top.
Step 2 — Configure your monetization settings alongside it — subscription tiers, paywalled content, or your own ad network.
Step 3 — Confirm SMTP works first. Receipts, renewal notices and failed-payment warnings all go out by email. A broken mail path turns a payment problem into a support problem.
Step 4 — Test with a real transaction of your own before announcing anything.
What it costs you: the platform fee stays a flat one cent per user per month. You keep 100% of subscription revenue, 100% of paywalled content revenue and 100% of what your own advertising earns.
One honest warning: recurring revenue creates a recurring obligation. If your paid tier promises weekly content, you are on a weekly deadline indefinitely. Promise what you can sustain on your worst month.
Tax, invoicing and consumer-protection rules depend on your jurisdiction. That is a question for your own advisor.