Free Membership Website Software

Here are five reasons you should think twice before you try to use free membership website software.

1. Support – I think free is great.  But free plugins and software do not have any support and that means they just might stop working.
2. Affordable Options – I do not think it is wise to spend $1,000′s on membership website software.  However, there is membership website software that works great for under $100.
3. Free Membership Website Software is not really free.  You have to figure out how to set up and integrate the software, and since it is just an free open source membership website software, it may not have any instructions.
4. Versioning – When WordPress upgrades, I feel confident that the Wishlist Member team will upgrade thier plugin and I will not have any major outage.
5. Use a combination of free software and paid components for the best, low cost solution.  WordPress is free, and it is big enough so you can have faith that it will be around.  However, the free membership website software plugins for wordpress are not feature rich enough to make managing your membership website easy.  For that reason, take the free software that works well, but spend a little to get good plug ins and services to make your membership website a success.

WP Wishlist Member for Membership Websites

In an earlier article, I wrote about my experiences with using six different Membership Site Software Solutions.

Ultimately, I used WP Wishlist Member which is a premium WordPress Plugin for Managing Membership Websites.

The first thing I love about them is the extensive set of videos they post on their website.  You do not have to wonder if it is going to work for you or not.  They have many videos that show you exactly what WP Wishlist Member does.

Next, they offer a 30 day money back guarantee.  When I bought the premium membership management plugin, I fully intended to ask for my money back if it did not work.  Instead, I found the Membership Website Solution I’d been looking for over a six month period.

WP Wishlist Member was easier for me to use for several reasons.

1. I was already used to WordPress and it was easy for me to set up and customize.
2. WordPress is simpler than Moodle, Drupal, DotNetNuke and Joomla.  It is also more publishing oriented than Ning.  And yet it was far less expensive than things like aMember or other premium membership site solutions.

Don’t take my word for it.  Go watch the videos and then buy it and try it – and ask for your money back if it is not the best membership website plugin you have ever tried.

Membership Site FAQ

Here are some general facts about membership websites.  This does not apply to any particular membership site software or membership site service.  Just a general membership site FAQ that is food for thought.

#1  Will I Make Money with a Membership Site?

It is highly unlikely that you will create a great, profitable membership site on your first try, especially if you are doing all the work yourself.  Worrying about membership site technology, membership site shopping cart integration, membership site content and membership site marketing is a lot of work.  Your best bet is to outsource the parts you can and focus on marketing the membership site and guiding the content development.

#2 What Membership Website Software Should I Use?

Because it is hard to build a profitable membership site on the first try, we suggest not going overboard with expensive website membership management software.  You can get the single licence of WP Wishlist for under $100 and you can get many wordpress templates for free to use for your membership site.

#3 How Do I Market My Membership Site?

Marketing is something you get better at over time.  You need to build and test different landing pages for membership sites and try different advertising avenues.  It also helps if you use a Search Engine Strategy to generate organic search results.  If you target your niche market that is likely to join your membership site, this should produce regular members.

#4 How Do I Retain Members in my Membership Site?

The first thing you have to do is understand that you will not retain members forever.  I have seen statistics that membership sites have an average membership retention of about 4 months.  However, it really depends on your offer and what your membership site contains.  For example, we have a much longer membership site retention at the Virtual Marketing Assistant network.  The reason is that it produces regular job leads for the members and has tools people can use, like blog posting to a blog network and a directory where people can review the virtual assistant profiles.

What other questions do you have about membership sites?  Leave your question in the comments below.

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.

Choosing your Membership Site Web Shopping Cart

What do you want to consider when choosing a membership site eCommerce solution?

The first thing you want to consider is your long term goal with setting up a membership site.  The ecommerce shopping cart solution depends on your long term planning.

Do not have crazy dreams of making millions with your membership site here.  If you are setting up your first membership site, you are going to take a while to make money and it does take a lot of work the first time.  If you are going to be making this a big business push, then you will want to consider an affiliate program for your membership site.

Affiliate programs are a bit funny.  Here is why.  Many people may sign up for your affiliate program, but very few will actually produce sales for you.  The biggest reason is that they need to take action, and few people will take the action needed to develop an affiliate sale.  You will have to manage your affiliates just like you manage your membership website.  You need to interact with them and keep them motivated.

I like paypal because of the ease of use and low startup.  But this is where you have a decision to make.  The PayPal Affiliate program does not exist.   You have to buy 3rd party tools to manage an affiliate program with paypal, and at that point it seems better to go with the leader in online shoppping carts, 1ShoppingCart.

Just a warning:  This runs $99 per month if you want the affiliate tools.  That is why I said you had better be sure you want to take the business side seriously.  If you are just dabbling with membership websites as a business model, then do not invest in a professional shopping cart with affiliates.  It takes too long to get to break even.

Another option is ClickBank.  ClickBank does offer reoccurring membership fees and includes affiliate sales, but I have avoided that option because it just seems messy and full of unprofessional products.  That is my personal opinion and you should definitely check out Clickbank before you make a decision as it may be a good in-between option.

WP Wishlist Upgrade

Below is an email I got from the Wishlist Member Team. (As of January 20th, 2009)

I highly recommend their plugin for membership sites.  It is much more robust than those free membership site software options that are out there.  I have also used their support (excellent) and they are continuing to improve the product.  Purchase here

————————-

Over the last two months the WishList Member
team has been working extremely hard on
adding some MAJOR features.

These new features will not only make running
your membership site easier but they will
also save you a lot of time.

We’ll go into more detail with some upcoming
videos but here’s a sneak peak of what’s
coming on Thursday (Jan.22)…

———————————————
1)  Full PayPal and Clickbank Integration
———————————————

With the Full Integration, you can now have
two-way communication between WL Member and
these payment processors.

So if one of your members were to cancel
their subscription or their payment doesn’t
go through, they will be automatically
blocked from accessing your site

———————————————
2)  Email Broadcasting
———————————————

If you’ve ever wanted to email your members
right from within WordPress, now you can!

The Email Broadcasting feature now gives you
the ability to send an email boradcast
message straight to your members.

The best part is, your messages don’t have to
be generic because you can specify which
membership levels you want to send them to.

———————————————
3)  Autoresponder Intrgation
———————————————

We know many of our customers use various 3rd
party autoresponders (we do too).

So what we wanted to provide was an easy way
to send the registration info directly to
your autoresponder once someone registers for
your site.

That way you can design a follow up sequence
to keep them excited about your site.

Now that’s possible as major services like
Aweber and AutoResponse Plus have just been
added.  Plus we are working to add others as
we speak!

———————————————
4)  Email and IP Blocking
———————————————

If you have troublesome customers well now
you can keep them away from your site!

We’ve beefed up the security of WL Member by
adding email and ip blocking which means you
can keep those pests away for good

———————————————
5)  IP Login Security
———————————————

Along the same lines, we’ve also increased
the member security by giving you the option
to limit the number of logins per ip address.

That means people won’t be able to share
their login and password info to your site
with all their friends.

And if they do reach the limit, they will be
automatically blocked and you’ll be notified.
How you handle them is up to you

—–

That’s just a quick look at some of the
upcoming features but there are also a lot of
other modifications that we’ll share later
this week.

The good news is, you’ll get the upgrade to
WL Member v2.0 absolutely free (If you already have a purchased copy)

——————————-

Again, we use this product and highly recommend it.  The new upgrade makes it even better.

Buy Wishlist Member if you want to do a membership website.

1ShoppingCart Wishlist Review

For integrating my 1shoppingcart software with my membership websites, I finally combined Wishlist Membership WordPress Plugin with 1ShoppingCart to get nearly everything I needed.  What is missing you might ask?

The only manual thing I still need to do is to deativate people when the reoccuring transaction happens and does not go through.

Sounds like a small item – and it is – if you have a good process in place and a way to track it.

Go to the wishlist website and watch the videos.  If you are interested in how to integrate 1ShoppingCart with your membership site, play close attention to that video.

When I first set it up and tried it, new releases of browsers had come out and the Wishlist plugin did build the account but in IE it kept refreshing the screen and basically froze.  My very first sale to my membership site generated a support call.

However, the Wishlist team did a great job of troubleshooting the problem and releasing a patch within a few days.  I was very impressed with their response.  After all, it was within the first 30 days and I was very prepared to use my 30 day money back guarantee if I was not 100% happy.

1ShoppingCart is good software that is widely used.  At times it is a little bit slow, but it remains the best software I have used for a combination of eCommerce and affiliate management.  If you want to build an affiliate team, use 1Shopping Cart.