Free Open Source Membership Site Software

This article is about Free Open Source Membership Site Software which you can set up in seconds.

There is a catch with open source software.  You need to be able to install it, upgrade it and customize it yourself – or hire someone to do it for you.  There are great forums and a lot of information on the web, but it is not easy.  Open Source means that the code is open and you can use it.  It does not mean that it is easy or will do what you want it to do.

Also, your open source free membership site software is free, but you have to put it in a place that people can find it.  That means you need to host it on a server (not your home computer) that is always on and is set up to serve webpages and run the kind of software you choose.  That costs a little money.

You will also need a domain name for your membership site.  That should cost you $10 or less per year.

I recommend Bluehost for an inexpensive place to host your open source membership site software.  I have short occasional outages and problems, and you will need to back up the site yourself, but overall it has been a great, low cost solution.  I have also had my own servers – and the cost is huge and the headaches are much higher.

Open Source Membership Site Software

If you use Bluehost, or many other hosting companies, you should get a Linex server (usually that is your only choice) and you should make sure they have a C-Panel, Fantastico and/or Simple Scripts.  (Simple scripts may be only a Blue host tool)

These tools make it easy for you to manage your website and set up the open source membership software.  Typically, you need to do things in this order.

1. Register Your Membership Site Domain - If you do not do it through your host, you will need to configure it to point to your hosts IP address or name server.  If you do not know what that means, just register it at your host and you will not need to know.
2. Using Simple Scripts (or Fantastico) Set Up Membership Site – With those tools, you just select the open source membership software you want and it will walk you through the install of the membership site software.
3. Customize your Membership Site - The hard part is learning the software and customizing it.

If you are not fairly technical, keep things simple.  You can spend months getting to know the open source software, trying out various plug-ins, uploading and changing various hemes, etc.  I really suggest you hire someone to do this part and keep it simple.  Your goal should be to launch a professional, stable membership site that makes money and has great content.  Don’t get lost in too many bells and whistles.

Review of Open Source Membership Site Software

The reason I went into so much detail above is that I am going to review open source membership site software that I have used on my Bluehost account.  There are other options out there, but the ones I am going to discuss are the most common, are easy membership sites to set up, and there are a lot of experts out there that can help you customize these open source membership site solutions.

1. WordPress – You may think of WordPress as just a blog, but with the right skills on setting up your WordPress Theme, your WordPress blog can be a great membership site.  This is the only solution I use now because I focus on valuable content and not too many tools and such.  I use Wishlist Member to easily automate the membership sign up and access.  I use 1Shopping Cart integrated with Wishlist Member to automate monthly billing and build my membership site affiliate program.

   WordPress is a good option if you want to focus on fresh, quality content each month and not get lost in the technology.  I also see that WordPress sites usually get the best search engine results out of the box.

2. Joomla – When it comes to these open source membership website software solutions that are open source, it really comes down to how much time you spend with them.  I really like Joomla and it does a great job of building a membership site.  However, I found customizing it more difficult and the resources for it were more scattered.  It is much better as a community tool if you want each member to have their own blog, communicate back and forth more, etc.  From my experience, most of those community features do not get used by the majority of the membership.
3. Drupal – I loved how quickly I could build a site in Drupal.  I did not love trying to customize it.  As with all the open source membership site solutions, if you spend enough time with it you can make it do almost anything you want.  With Drupal, I got frustrated after two days of trying to find how to change stuff so I stopped.  However, some tech people I know love it and my experience was over a year ago, so it may be much better now.
4. Moodle – The first open source product I used to build a free membership site was Moodle.  Moodle is the open source learning software that many universities use.  However, it was far too complex for what I wanted to achieve and it never looked nice to me.  I am fairly technical and I can use photoshop alright, but I spend days trying to make Moodle look good and it was just never to my standard.

   The reason you may want to try Moodle is that it has things organized in courses with quizes, threaded chat, etc. all integrated.  However, I found it to be very confusing and way too many options for a simple membership site.

The good news about all four of these free open source membership site software options is that they are free, can be set up in seconds and you can spend a couple of hours getting to know each one.  Then pick one and stick with it.  It is better to become really good at one of these membership site software options than to keep dabbling with all four.

Membership Site Participation

If you are just setting up a membership site, your challenges are technology, payment, hosting and membership site setup.

Once you get past that, and by no means is that easy for new people, you have a couple of additional issues.

Marketing a Membership Site

Marketing your membership site is essential to your success.  You may feel proud of finally launching your membership site – but if no one finds out about it, you will not be proud for long because you will be the only member of your membership site.

• Do not assume that your marketing site, no matter how good, will create members.  You need a membership site marketing plan.
• Promote your membership site every day.  There are a lot of ways to promote your membership site online.
• Don’t assume 3% of china will buy your membership site.  If you are a new entrepreneur, this is for you.  A common error people make in a marketing plan for membership sites or any other product is that they will look at the big market and then say, “I just want 1%” – Come on and get real.  Look at your market and ask yourself – “how many of these people in this market can I reach 5 times with my marketing budget?”   That is a more realistic number.

Membership Site Participation

This is the other thing that will annoy you the first time you start a membership site.  Many of the members of your membership site will not participate, or even use the membership site.

• Know that it is coming and don’t be dissapointed.  People join because they like the idea, but they sometime do not take action.  For that reason they stay in but do not use it.
• Members may hit a stumbling block in your membership site.  You might need to find out where people get stuck and create better content to get around it.
• You need to participate to get other people to participate.

Membership Site Reality

The simple membership site reality is that even when you launch, you will have a lot of new, ongoing issues around membership site marketing and membership site participation.  Be ready for them.

Membership Site Warning

Warning:  7 Things Guru’s do not tell you about starting a membership site.

1. Selling your membership site is not easy.  You will need to test and write multiple landing pages and learn about seo and/or Google Adwords to generate traffic and sales to your membership site.
2. Affiliate programs need to have some valuable JV partners that are heavy hitters.  The average affiliate produces little sales and traffic.
3. Creating Content is tough – While you can try to charge for some general articles each month, you are only going to retain a decent number of members in your membership site if you produce great, valuable content.
4. Charge Cards Fail – A surprising number of charge cards simply fail after a month or two, and those people often do not update their cards.
5. Creating community is hard – Getting people to participate is hard work and you really need to reach out to people.
6. Focus – you do not want to keep adding things that are outside of your core value proposition.  You end up with membership site creep and it is hard for people to figure out what they should focus on.
7. Lax Usage – One of the hardest things for me was the fact that many users paid each month but did not use the site.  I know, I should not complain, I am getting paid.  However, I want everyone to be wildly successful with our membership site and it was a hard lesson to learn that many people do not want to take the time to use things they are paying for.

I hope this is helpful to you.  Membership sites are great, but instead of selling you on how great and easy they are, I’d rather see you know what some of the issues are before starting your membership website.  Then you can make an educated decision.

Website Membership Ideas

You might be wondering what kind of membership site to set up.  Maybe you have set up one membership site and now you are thinking it is time to do another.  For whatever reason, here is how to get ideas for membership sites within your area of expertise.

First, know what you are good at and what you can teach online.  It does not have to be a career.  For example, if you have lost weight you may want to start a membership site about that.

Second, remember you are not trying to conquer the entire industry.  It is far better to go after a hot industry and get a small percentage than to try to make up some new, odd topic and then have to figure out how to market it.

Now we have the basics in place to start generating website membership ideas.

Take what you are good at and what you want to teach, and find ways to niche it into different segments.

For example, if you work with business executives and you have lost weight, maybe you create a specialty site for travelling executives on how to loose weight and keep fit.

Does this mean you are excluding people that might benefit as well?  Absolutely.  However, it is always easier to sell to a smaller, targeted group.

So knowing this, create a matrix of your skills and targeted segments that might be trying to find information on your skill online.    The most specific you are while brainstorming your website membership ideas the better.

How to create a membership site

I am very pleased that we finally launched the free eGuide on how to create a membership site.

If you do not mind toying with technology a bit, I assure you that you can do it yourself.  Just download this free membership website ebook for the steps you need to consider to get started.

I realize that some of you will not be very comfortable with setting these things up on your own.  That is why we have set up very simple help that you can get for setting up your membership site.  Read aboout our membership site setup.  The beauty of the program is that you simply buy 5 hours of our time at a time and we help with with items related to membership sites.

Can we do everything in the world?  No.  But we have extensive experience with 6 different membership site software solutions as well as having built membership sites for major universities.  If we do not have direct experience with your need, we will either figure it out or refund your pre-bought time and let you know that we do not work with your particular technologies.

Some people want to know why we charge 5 hours at a time.

The first reason is to make it worth our while.  We are simply not available for a thirty minute project.

Next, it is small enough that you have low risk.  If you are not happy with the work we get done in 5 hours, simply do not buy more time from us.  No long term contract.

It is not hard to create a membership site.  However, if we can help you with the technology, you can then focus on the two more important aspects, which is creating content and marketing.

Virtual Assistant Interview Questions

One thing I strongly recommend if you want to be a successful Membership Website Publisher is to learn how to outsource much of your work.  A talented Virtual Assistant can free you up to do the critical tasks and be more profitable.

The key to hiring a Virtual Assistant is to first know why you are hiring them.  One virtual assistant will not be good at everything you want done.  You would not hire a book keeper to build your website, so why would you hire a virtual assistant to do both kinds of tasks for you either?

Initially, you will want to define the exact task you want done.  Later you can expand it.

Then write your virtual assistant interview questions with that task in mind.  Here are some example virtual assistant interview questions, assuming you are hiring a va to help you manage your membership website.

1. Have you ever managed an online group before?
2. What do you think gets an online membership site more active?
3. What do you think is the most important elements of a successful membership website?
4. Do you belong to any membership websites?  What do you like about them?
5. Do you maintain an active blog?  What is the address?
6. How would you handle a disruptive member or a member that is spamming?
7. Have you worked with online shopping carts that manage membership sites?
8. Have you worked with WordPress Wishlist?

Of course, modify those questions based on your needs.  Interview questions for virtual assistants should give you a clear picture of whether they can meet your exact need, and also get links to work that they have done.  Otherwise, you may be paying for someone to learn on the job, and that is rarely a good value, even at a cheap price.