Drupal For Membership Sites

If you are looking to build a membership site and are considering Drupal, you should give it a try.

When I tried various software in the past, I’d struggled with the coding side of drupal.

However, these Opensource Software programs like Drupal, Joomla and WordPress just keep getting better and easier over time.  Eventually you find one you like, master how it works and start having fun building membership sites that make money.

With Joomla, Drupal and WordPress, you do not have to worry because they are free on most basic hosting packages.

To install Drupal and see how you like it, simply use Fantastico on the CPanel of your hosting account.  If you do not know what that it, it is the thing you see when you sign into your hosting account.  It has a dashboard (cpanel) and you find the button that says Fantastico.  Then you follow the wizard to set up your drupal membership website.

If you play with Drupal for a couple of hours and do not like it, then you switch to another one and uninstall Drupal.  No big deal.  Really.  Go give it a try.

How to build a membership website

There are several broad areas that you must consider if you are going to build a membership website.

#1 – You must pick your market.  While it is great if you know a lot about a market, you also have to assess if it is a market that will buy your product and can be effectively marketed to.

#2 – Pick your membership site software.  Do some serious research on membership site software before you buy one or choose a free membership site software solution.  Don’t let free be your number one priority when for less than $100 you can get a solution that is better and will greatly help you improve your product.

#3 – Design your base content – You need to lauch it and then improve it.  What is the base content that you will need to write and what is your publishing schedule?

#4 – Set up your offer.  Get some people into your membership site and then solicit feedback.

Obviously there are a lot of steps in these points, but this is basically how you build a membership site.

Membership Site Testing

If you have some membership site ideas and you want to test them before building the site, here are some things you can do.

1. Do keyword research on your target audience.  What are they searching on and what are they buying?
2. Set up a blog with your keyword research.  Can you quickly get traffic to your membership site?
3. Sell an ebook or affiliate product to see if there are buyers in your market.
4. Do a survey to get membership site ideas from people in advance.
5. Research how many books are published on the topic – if there are a lot of books, there are usually a lot of buyers.

10 Ideas to Retain Members

Are you having trouble retaining members in your membership website?

First, don’t panic.  It is normal to have a regular turn over of membership.  That is why it is essential to have good marketing that is always generating new members into your membership site.

If you do want to retain people longer, you not only have to have great information, but you have to have something to look forward to every week.  Here are some of the ideas for membership site retention that I have seen.

1. Monthly Software Download
2. Monthly WordPress Templates
3. Monthly Niche Websites ready to publish
4. Job Leads and Job Matching
5. Monthly Interviews
6. Directory Listing with Backlinks
7. JV Partnership Opportunities
8. Affiliate Program for Members Only
9. Regular, Interesting Emails
10. Publishing Opportunities (Such as guest posting on blogs)

How Fast Can I Make Money with a Membership Site?

You might be asking yourself how fast can I make money with a membership site?

The fact is, membership sites are harder than a normal ebook site and will take longer to make money with.

However, membership sites have a great monthly reoccuring revenue, so they are worth the effort as long as you are willing to put in the work up front.

There are several places that you will get slowed down if you are setting up your first membership website.

1. Membership Site Technology.  I went through 6 different technologies until I found the WONDERFUL WP Wishlist.  If you are familiar with WordPress and you buy that plugin, you will save months of headaches setting up membership sites.  Since I was already using 1ShoppingCart to integrate my membership site, it was even easier.
2. Membership Site Content Creation – It is easy to get lost in too much content creation upfront.  You have to have a core value and then you need to keep adding to it monthly.  People spend too much time here initially before they even know if the concept is going to sell well.
3. Membership Site Marketing – Even before you set up your membership site, you need to set up a blog or basic website to start marketing the domain where your membership site will eventually reside.  Search engines look at the age of the domain and the content and topic of the domain as a way to rank your membership site in search engines.  Start now and get your domain noticed in Search so when you really launch your membership site you are ready to get some traffic.

How fast you can make money with a membership site really depends on how fast and efficient you can master these three issues.  There are some other issues like retention and your sales page, but ultimately they fall into being part of the membership website content creation and membership site marketing categories.

iLearningGlobal Membership Site

One of the most difficult things with a membership site is to market it.  Nothing is worse than putting a ton of work into building your membership site and then realizing that you now have to master marketing.  Another option to learn how to market a membership site is to resell a high quality membership site.

I learned a lot from selling iLearningGlobal.  You can read about it on one of our iLearning Global Blogs or if you are serious about joining visit iLearning Global Liquid Learning and findout about all the great free  iLearningGlobal Marketing bonuses.

Membership Site Ideas

Here are some membership site ideas that may be profitable if you have time to do a little research and develop the membership site.

• Parenting the Middle School Years
• HR
• Online Training
• Local Internet Marketing
• Book Keeping & Financials for the Small Business Owner
• Write your first book.

These are just some membership site ideas off the top of my head.  A couple of these membership sites I would probably join if they were resonably priced.

Membership Site Growth

If you are growing your membership site organically (not by paying for ads) then be prepared for it to grow in fits and bursts.

You may go weeks getting steady search engine traffic and no new members.  Then, you get a week -  or even an hour – when you get a flurry of new members for your membership website.

You should test and try different membership site sales copy, price points and bonus offers, but do not give up on your effort before it has had time to work.  You only know if it is effective if you have had 1,000′s of people look at it.

Wishlist Member Setup for WordPress

We get a lot of visitors to this site that need help setting up the WordPress Wishlist Member Plugin.

First, they really do have great videos on their site that make it easy for anyone to add the Wishlist Plugin to WordPress.  It should not be a technology issue.  It does take time to configure and get working just the way you want, but that has more to do with your shopping cart and how you want your membership site to flow.

Wishlist Member Setup for WordPress

I offer our Membership Site Setup service not because it is my primary money steam, but because I have gotten better and better at doing this and I can save you time and hassle and put those membership site skills to use.

If you are thinking that there are people out there that will set WordPress and Wishlist Member up cheaper for you, you are right.  Have fun hunting them down and working with them, then firing them and finding another.

Personally, I would rather work with someone that feels like they better do a great job because they value you as a client.  But that is just me.

Remember, you can do Wishlist Member Setup for WordPress yourself.  It just depends on how much you value your time and if you want to work with a professional with experience working with Wishlist Member and WordPress.

Wishlist Member – Website Membership Plugin

Have you thought about having your own membership site?

About a year ago I launched my first paid membership site.

And relaunched 6 times in total. Painful.

The reason? Never happy with the software. Finally, via hard lessons, I decided simple is better and I set up a WordPress Membership Site with Wishlist Member.

Finally, a solution I love.

If you are someone that has considered premium content membership sites as something you might want to do, go watch the videos on the Wishlist Member Site.

I bought the multi-site license, and not only do I make money from membership sites, but I also set up free private membership sites as bonuses for clients and team members. It is a great upsell item and easy to maintain.

Talk about adding some buzz to existing products!

Watch the videos and see how easy the tech part can be.