6 Tips to Build a Successful Membership Site

With just a few steps, it’s possible to build a membership website that generates lots of money. However, the Internet is awash with so many dubious  opportunities such that people generally put every online venture “under the microscope”. This includes membership websites, whether it’s a  fee based membership site or  free membership site.
If you want to start a membership based website, then the  steps I have outlined below will prove vital for the overall success of your endeavor.

1)Pick  Niche Market
If you want to build a membership website that will succeed, you will want to choose your target market carefully. Avoid going for generic markets like weight-loss which already has thousands of membership sites. Instead, focus on a niche market that appeals to a specific category of people. For instance, you can start a membership site for 50+ year olds that want to loose weight. Of course, it’s paramount that you have knowledge in the market you are targeting. For instance, you can’t not start a health related membership site if your profession is computing. It doesn’t make sense.

2)Gauge The Market:
Snoop in  various social network sites like Facebook and MySpace to connect with users who may be interested in your niche market. In fact, you can also get new ideas from there. Look for rare information which  people and yet it’s not easily available online and start a membership which provides what rare information. Soon, you will be having thousands of visitors.

3)Draw  A Plan
It’s paramount that you understand what your members will want  if you want your site to last long. Are they want videos or authoritative information. Remember that a membership website should be built around people’s needs so it’s vital that you conduct thorough research to want your members will want.

4)Implement your plan.

Getting started is usually the hardest part in any online adventure. Your ideas may be good but if you don’t act on them, some one will do it before you and you will loose out. Make sure that you have all the articles, videos and audio if need be. They will be critical when  promoting your website.

5)Choose  the right Technology
There are practically hundreds of  membership website programs which you can use to start a membership site. Unfortunately, the majority of people need  membership site setup assistance  to get started. That’s why  our site provides useful  resources  for those individuals  who  would like to have help setting up their Membership Website.

6)Market Your Membership Website

In order to attract members, you will have to market  your membership website. There are various ways to market your website like article marketing,  social networking and paid advertising.

If you Build a membership site, you will soon discover that  running and maintaining a membership website is not hard as it seems.

Tips for Choosing Membership Site Software

From experience,it can be very difficult to start a successful membership site without using membership website software. This can be rather frustrating for tech dummies like authors, trainers and speakers who would want to start their own membership sites and yet lack the technical know-how.

Every software has it’s own flaws,that’s why it’s vital that you choose website membership software with all the features you will need. Below, I have pointed out some of the vital features that you will want to look out for when selecting the right membership website software to use.

Before you look at the software features,find out the reliability of the software or company. You can do this by looking for reviews from people who have used the software before. Not only should the software be reliable, but the company which is supplying the software should be reliable as well. Make sure that the company offers excellent customer support. Try emailing the company and if you don’t get a response within 24 hours, then try your luck elsewhere.

Obviously, the next vital thing to look at are the true features of the software. List down everything you expect of your membership site and make sure that the software you intend to use has those features that will support your plans. Whereas the majority of companies list features of their software on their websites, there are no guarantees. It’s always good to e-mail the company to get more detailed information.

It won’t make any sense to use software that is incompatible with your web hosting account. For instance, a particular software may need PHP to be installed on your server,thus it won’t do any good to install it on an ASP server since it won’t work. From experience, most membership websites are run with software which require servers running PHP.

Lastly,it’s always good to consider the cost of of the Membership website software you intent to purchase. You should take this seriously because the old adage that “you get what you pay for” applies in software as well. Of course, there are some cheap software with great features but it most cases, cheap of free software have few features.

Click here for more free tips for starting a membership based website.

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.

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.

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.

Wishlist Member WordPress Plugin

I loved WordPress long before I started publishing a membership site with it.  In fact, even though I was a wordpress expert, I was experimenting with Moodle, Drupal and Joomla trying to figure out what was best for membership site software.

Then I discovered Wishlist Member – a WordPress Plugin.

This solved so many problems for me.

Publishing and membership management became much easier.

Using the option to have content public or protected, I was able to leave some of our articles public and have others only available to the members registered via Wishlist Member.  This resulted in great search engine results and potential members are able to see some of the content before they join.

Now Wishlist Member has a new version out that even integrates with membership site reoccurring payments on paypal.  While I use 1ShoppingCart because I value the affiliate program, the option to integrate with paypal is very powerful because now you can set up a full membership site for next to nothing.

I do suggest you buy the multi-site license for Wishlist Member.  For a little more you can set up as many membership sites as you want.  I even use it to set up private, free training areas that I use as bonuses for other things I sell.  The fact that launching a whole new membership site costs me no additional costs (maybe the $10 a year domain name) and can be done in a couple of hours is incredible.

Hosting Video on Amazon S3

Video hosting on Amazon S# is both fantastic and a headache for non-technical busy people.  It is a great service but you have to understand what the service is.  There is NO way to upload your video to Amazon S3 from any interface they provide.  Amazon is simply scalable storage and bandwidth for steaming them out.

So you either need someone that understands how to work with Amazon S3 or you need to take some time to figure out how to use the tools.

Info about how to  embed video hosted on the Amazon S3 Web Service.

First, why Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 offers storage of files at a very low cost and provides very scalable and reliable storage and backup at unbeatable prices.  Its the best 50 cents I spend each month.

How to Embed a Video stored on Amazon S3

Lots of websites are offering courses and membership areas to help you embed video into your blog or membership website which are stored on Amazon S3.  I did not want to pay and I am fairly technical and  I knew I could figure it out.   But I was pulling my hair out because I kept almost getting it to work, but not quit.

After a lot of testing and effort  I downloaded JW FLV Media Player, posted the files in the root directory of my website and used the site setup wizard to get the code just right.

Finally, I found that this works with FLV files which is one video format.  So now I am making all my videos in the FLV format.

The great thing is that with this code and wizard I can now embed video into my private membership sites that are hosted on Amazon S3.

Eventually I hit another problem.  The embed code did not work well in WordPress.   I found that WordPress has disabled the embed tag because of security issues.  Luckily, I found the Wordoress Plugin pb-embedFlash – The documentation was not great because it lacked the basic examples in a clear way.  However, I experimented with it a bit and found I could simply type [flash url] and it would replace the tag with the flash player and play the FLV file.  Like most things in WordPress, once you get used to it, it works very well.

If you are looking for the best video hosting solution that will allow you to embed video into your blogs and websites, I assure you the above solution using Amazon S3 and the Free Video Player are great options.  Remember that if you are using the video player to make money, you need to buy a license.

Hosting Video on Amazon S3 is the professional option – just be ready to put some time into figuring out the details.

7 Things your Membership Website Should Have

Every membership website should have certain things.  These things will help people find your membership site and help you retain more members in your website.

1. Public Blog – I always have part of my content in a public blog to give visitors a taste of the content and get search engine traffic.
2. Monthly High Value Item – Every month your members should feel like they got one piece of knowledge that is of very high value and can be used immediately.
3. Regular interaction – your membership should not forget the member site exists.
4. Multi-media – If you are only producing text and images, you are not addressing the needs of all your members.  Some learn better with audio or video.
5. Testimonials - Your sales page should have testimonials with your website membership members.
6. Tools - If possible, provide tools and downloads as well as information.  You can often purchase resale rights of a tool or ebook and then give it away to members.
7. Automation – If you want to run a profitable membership website, you need to automate your monthly reoccurring charges and account set up.  I use 1ShoppingCart because I value a robust affiliate program, but it can also be done in paypal.

Setting up your membership site takes a lot of attention to detail and adding constant value for your membership.

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.

Membership Professional Website

Just about anyone can put up a membership website.  What is the difference between a membership professional website and a membership website that people do not take seriously?

A professional membership website does not mean you had to spend a lot on it.  It does mean that you need to have some technical know-how or hire someone to help you.  If you want a membership professional website, you are going to need some core features.

#1 Integrated Account Building – When someone signs up for your membership site – it will not seem professional unless you give them instant access.  If you send them a message that it will take a day to set up thier account, you are in not going to look professional.  Use WordPress Wishlist with 1ShoppingCart to achieve this.

#2 Choose a Great Theme – You need to carefully consider your membership site theme for your membership professional website.  If you choose the Middle Earth theme, don’t expect most lawyers to want to join your professional membership site.

#3 Updates – Your membership professional website will not seem very good if it shows no activity.  Make sure it has updates and new information regularly.

#4 Professional Offer – If you want your membership professional website to seem as professional as possible, be sure to add a guarantee, lists of associations, and anything else to give it a stronger appeal.

#5 Professional Testimonials - Solicit testimonials from professional have used your membership site and benefited from it.  Publish them on the membership professional website.

Lastly, if you expect professionals to join your membership site, you need to have the highest value information that will help your members professionally.