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.

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.

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.