Avoid Headaches and Prepare for Your Membership Website in 5 Easy Steps
You are the expert in your field. You have a great idea on how to generate passive income with a membership website. But you may not know what it takes to start up a membership website. You don't even know what questions to ask.
Here are 5 questions you'll need answers to when you build your membership website.
- What membership software will you use? Here are four we like and suggest you consider:
- MemberGate offers an all-in-one solution including unlimited membership levels, member reports, shopping cart, forum and more. From experience, we believe their support is second to none.
- Wishlist is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress. It includes unlimited membership levels, integrates with the most popular shopping cart systems, provides multi-level access where you can give different membership plans access to different material and more.
- aMember is a membership software program that integrates with WordPress. Among other things, it offers easy, web-based administration, unlimited membership levels, built-in affiliate program and e-mail management.
- CustomerHub is a membership site that offers seamless integration for Infusionsoft users. In fact, it is an Infusionsoft product.
- What membership plan would work for you? (You don't have to choose just one.)
- Monthly plan – Allows members to join at a lower cost upfront. They don't have to commit to a long-term contract.
- Quarterly plan – Usually you would offer a small discount to people that sign up for a quarterly membership. You get more income upfront and have more time to wow them with your content.
- Yearly plan – You normally would offer these members the biggest discount. You get more upfront and a longer time to develop a relationship with your member so they are happy to renew year after year.
- Trial Plan— This is a good way to give prospective members the opportunity to experience the benefits of joining your website. With most membership site software, you have the option to let their memberships expire after the trial period or automatically renew and become a paying member. Be sure the information you provide about a trial program clearly states if it will auto renew or not. You don't want people being unpleasantly surprised when their credit card is automatically charged.
- What content will be available to members only? What content will be available to the public?
- Provide a few training articles, audios or videos to the public to get them interested and to get a feel for your training.
- What method(s) of payment would you like to accept? What payment processor will you use?
- Research PayPal and integration with your software.
- Consider Authorize.net to manage the routing of data through the credit card payment process. You will also need a merchant account.
- Look into Stripe and integration with your software
- Do you want to offer an affiliate program?
- People can promote your website by using an identifying link and drive traffic to your site. When someone signs up as a member or purchases a product, you pay them a commission for the purchase.
- You'll want to determine what you pay out to your affiliates as well as what system to use to administer your affiliate program. Of the membership sites we listed above, MemberGate, aMember and CustomerHub/Infusionsoft have an affiliate system already included as part of the package. Wishlist has a plugin that will allow you to set up an affiliate program.
About the Author
About Joyce Wright
As a Virtual Assistant specializing exclusively in MemberGate, Joyce Wright stays current on the latest tools needed to keep your website up to date so you don't have to.
If you want help with the start-up and set-up of your membership site, contact Joyce for a free consultation.