Ristvin Marketing Blog

A couple of years ago Membership Sites (sometimes called subscription websites), became the buzz of the marketing community.  A bunch of so called gurus sprang out of cyberspace never land with courses on how to build membership sites and how to manage them.

Truth is, I even bought a couple of those courses cuz I saw this as a new business model that should be looked into…. After all, recurring income is a great idea.  Nothing beats creating a dependable and constant income stream. 

Launching a membership site compared to a one time product launch where the sales usually come through a big bang, Jeff Walker type product launch… where most of the money comes into your coffers in the first few days or weeks before the sales trickle to zero and you have to make a new product, membership websites offer many great advantages.

Recursive Income is a Subscription Site’s Biggest Advantage

When you own a membership site, the biggest advantage is that you are creating consistent, recurring income for your business…. Plus, you can make money in any “hungry” market or niche.   I say hungry because you have to have an audience that is craving for information and products to make a membership site work…

This is even more true is you decide to make your site in a market or niche that you are passionate about and know what the audience want… because you’re one of them.  In other words, don’t make a membership site in a niche just because you think you can make money in it.

The Realities About Membership Sites

Before you go jumping into making your own subscription site, there are a few things you should know:

Membership sites take work… more than static websites and yes, even more than a plain old blog.  You not only have to attract members, but you have to keep them too… This means having to create quality content to appease your member’s appetite for information. 

Even when you supply quality content to your members, the reality is that most will unsubscribe after a period of time anyway…  To continue collecting your recurring income, you must be constantly driving new traffic to your site and attracting new members.

To do this right, you need to build a relationship with your membership and listen to what they want and use that feedback to give them what they want in new content, materials, and product that they can use.  Listen and react to your market.

With that in mind, there are two types of subscription sites… Those with no end date.  These are the traditional type.  But now a days, fixed term membership sites have become popular.  These are especially nice if you are having members subscribe to a course that you will supply them with various module over a set period.

Fixed term sites are easier to maintain as far as having to create content, they’re easier to attract members to, take less of your time and they are easier to keep your subscribers active and involved in.  For certain niches they work better than the traditional, no end date type of site.

Managing a membership website takes the right software… and the right platform… Most membership site scripts are written in PHP.  This makes WordPress the ideal platform for hosting a membership site.

Membership Site Scripts

For most membership models, you’ll need a membership site script to manage it on autopilot.  What do you want out of your script?

• It must handle the payment, whether recurring or one-time
• You must be able to set the billing period
• Allow for different levels of members (i.e. free, standard, silver, gold memberships)
• Control the access to content by the various membership levels
• Have a way to email the members
• Be able to backup the system
• Allow for members to have access to multiple information or courses for a single membership

It was the membership site script that was my stumbling block when I was first thinking about implementing the membership business model.  I Googled to find out what was out there.  Quite a few scripts could be found.  The first thing I found out about membership site scripts is that most were beyond my budget at the time….

So, I kind of gave up on the idea of my own membership site…. Until I got some emails from a couple of marketers that had developed their own scripts… I checked them out and two looked promising (mainly because they were inexpensive).  I bought the cheapest one to see if it would work for me.

I couldn’t get it installed on my website.  So, I emailed their support… what a joke!  They didn’t offer any answers to my questions.  Instead, they wanted me to pay them a hefty fee to install it for me…

On to the second script… I bought it and actually got it installed after figuring out a couple of the problems I was having with that process, but configuring it turned out to be the nightmare of this script.   They had a number you could call for help… So I gave them a call…

The “techie” that I got walked me through the configuration process…. I did everything he told me to do, step-by-step… But the script still didn’t work… The techie then told me that the script didn’t work with every web host… Maybe I should consider one of the hosts that they knew the script would run on…. Only some of the most expensive host you could find…

WordPress Micro-Membership System

Once again I gave up on my own membership site…. then, a couple of weeks ago I was told about a new membership site script and checked it out… It works with WordPress Blogs and is called WordPress Micro-Membership System and is a simple WP plugin.  Actually the system also includes plugins that allow you to generate opt-in forms (integrates with my aWeber account and builds a new list for me), back-up the database for your membership site, and a secure link generator (that might be one of the coolest plugin). 

I uploaded all the plugins to the blog that I wanted to have my membership site on and installed them (took less than 30 minutes)… a breeze.  Then I began to configure them… Another 45 minutes or so… what a dream from what I had experience from the other scripts I had tried…

Since that, I’ve been creating my content… I’ve been told that the golden rule of fixed term membership sites (the type of business model I’ve settled upon) is creating the content before before you launch the site to the public….

So, the moral of this post is this:  Make it easy on yourself and use the WordPress Platform to host your membership site… And, grab the WPMembershipPack for your membership site script. 

PS: by the way the WordPress Micro-Membership System IS inexpensive at a mere $27 (at least till the first of the next decade then the offer is being taken down). And you get some WordPress theme templates for your new membership site

Related Blogs

• Creating A Membership Site With Wordpress | How To Wordpress
• The Ultimate Membership Site Model book | FREE BOOKS DOWNLOAD
• Business Strategy Part 3: Taking Membership and One-Offs Online
• eHow Earnings | Passive Family Income
• Business Strategy: The Recurring Income Trap
• Wordpress Micro-Membership System | Netpreneur News

Tags: membership site, membership site script, recurring income, subscription site, WordPress Micro-Membership System, WPMembershipPack

Related Posts on Ristvin Marketing Blog

• No Related Posts on Ristvin Marketing Blog