One of the biggest reasons that a membership website will fail is because it is not supported by a solid business strategy.  Fortunately, there are a number of small steps that you can take to make sure that you start out with an effective plan of action.  Here is a quick look at some of the steps that you must take in order to run an effective membership site.

1. Create a Business Plan

One of the biggest mistakes that many people make is that they never create a business plan.  Even if your membership site is a small part of your overall buisiness, having a business plan specifically for your membership site is beneficial.  One of the most important parts of a business plan that many people never consider is their exit strategy.  If you have no idea where you going, then how do you plan on getting there?

2. Be Pessimistic

While no one like a perssimist, being pessimistic is an excellent way to create projections and strategies.  By over-estimating your potential expenses and expected cancelation rates, you will have a built in safety net for when things actually do go poorly.  If you are creating your projections and plans based upon the “best case scenario”, then you will not have a game-plan for when things go poorly.  While it is great to think positive, there are time when being a pessimist is beneficial.

3. It’s a Long Race

If you are planning on creating a membership site solely to sell it quickly, that’s great.  But if you plan on creating a membership site for long term recurring profits, then you need to remember that it’s a long race.  This means that your plans need to focus on the short-term and long-term alike.  If you can keep your time frame in mind, then the entire process will likely run a lot smoother.

4. Expect to Work

It doesn’t matter if you are doing everything yourself or outsourcing everything, there will always be some work to do.  Running a membership site is not a “get rich quick” scheme, so don’t treat it like one.  Membership sites can be extremely powerful and profitabile, but it won’t happen overnight.  There is a lot of work, as well as ongoing work, that goes into creating a sustainable membership website.

Running a successful membership site is not only very rewarding, but also very profitabile.  Alot goes into creating a membership site which makes having a plan essential.  Here are four tips to creating an effective plan for success: Create a Business Plan for the Membership Site, Be a little pessimistic about your projections, remember it is long race, and always expect to have to work to do.

It has long been said that “Content is King” and this is as true as ever.  It is especially important to understand in order to create a successful membership site.  It is not only important to supply quality content to your members, but also it in a way that provides the most value to them as well.  Here are 5 content rules that will make your membership site more valuable to every member.

1. Multiple Forms

People can learn in a variety of ways.  Some people like to read, some like to listen, and some like to watch.  This means that you should be providing your content in all three forms.  By utilizing the power of multimedia content, you can move beyond simple PDF’s and include downloadable MP3′s as well as videos.  This ensures that everyone gets what they want.  You also get the added bonus of multiplying your content without as much original substance.  You can say everything in 3 different ways.  This will make your membership site 3 times larger than it really it.  This will add value to you membership site because it makes your site appear larger as well as suited for all audiences.

2. Give Away Some Content

It doesn’t matter if you have an ultra-premium membership site or a free membership site, it is important to give some of the content away to the public at no cost.  This will boost your search engine rankings, act as a free method of attracting new members, as well as act as a method of building a relationship with everyone who visits your site.  Many people recommend that membership sites share about 20% of their content with everyone.

3. Utilize Guest Writers

Guest writers can be a tremendous value for any website, including membership sites.  They provide a few very distinct advantages.  The first is that they lend additional credibility to your site.  Because they chose to write for you, they are acknowledging that your site provides value.  Second, they are a source of free content.  This allows you to spend more time doing other things.  Third, they will often provide you with free exposure.  When someone guest posts somewhere else, they will often alert their followers that they have done so.  This provides your membership site with additional exposure.

4. Utilize a Content Plan

One of the fastest ways to kill your membership site is to not continually add fresh content to it.  If your members are not receiving anything new, why should they remain a member?  The best way to ensure that you are always adding new content is to create a content plan.  Ideally, it will plan ahead for 90 days, however a minimum of 30 days should used.  This will ensure that you are never left wondering about what content you should be adding next.

There are a lot of ways that you can maximize the value of your content.  Four content rules that you should follow include: utilizing multiple forms of content, giving away some content, utilize guest writers, and creating/following a content plan.

Magic Affiliate is running a contest, where winners will get 2 single user license (worth $79 each). Well, you guys know what Magic Affiliate is. Lets say it once again for newbies.

Magic Affiliate is a premium WordPress Affiliate Plugin that allows you to have unlimited sales team for your products. Only thing that you should do is to set the commission level for your affiliates and watch the growing money in your bank.

If you are interested in expanding your business through affiliate marketing, Magic Affiliate is the perfect tool for you. It is a superior WordPress affiliate plugin that could bring unlimited online income to your e-commerce or membership site. Your products can be promoted by an unlimited sales team so you can enjoy faster sales and revenues without additional hard work.

That’s why Magic Affiliate Plug-in is # 1.

You may expect to pay thousands of dollars for such an easy to use, full-featured affiliate application that does not require you to switch to a different system. Magic Affiliate is a fully integrated WordPress affiliate plug-in that quickly takes your sales team from 1 person to unlimited.

Built specifically for WordPress blogs and 100% integrated with WP Shopping Cart and Magic Members. The easy-to-use interface gets rid of the “technical” side, allowing you to create and manage your affiliates without worry.

To participate in the contest and win free license of Magic Affiliate, All you have to do is just :

1. Just leave a comment.
2. Use valid email ID in the email box.
3. Not necessary, but you can subscribe to our rss feed (To track this contest and for future updates)
4. And thats it!

So what are you waiting for now? Let’s participate in the contest and good luck!

Most membership websites rely primarily, if not solely, on their their subscribers in order to become profitable.  However, it is very possible to generate a substantial amount of additional income if it is set up correctly.  This has been illustrated many times by the free membership sites that have become profitable over the last decade.  Here are 5 ways that you make additional profits with a membership website.

1. Understanding What Profit Is

Many membership site owners get so caught up with generating revenue that they forget about their expenses.  In order to maximize a membership websites profits, it essential to not only increase revenue, but also minimize expenses.  One of the best ways to minimize costs, while boosting revenue, is to create a strong affiliate marketing program and maximizing the ROI of your marketing expenses.

2. Provide Multiple Purchase Options

It is vital that commercial membership sites allow their members to pay in a variety of ways.  Most commonly, membership sites will offer monthly, quarterly, and annual subscription options.  By giving potential members more options, they will be more inclined to actually join.

3. Know Where to Compete

One of the most common practices of many membership websites is to try and compete based upon price alone.  However, this will directly impact how profitable it is.  It is a much better option to forget about competing based upon price, but rather boost the value and keep the price high.

4. Profit From Every Page

Just because you are making money from subscriptions doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t profit from elsewhere on the website.  To increase the profitability of your membership site, it is essential to have at least one place to profit from on every page.  This could be text ads, CPA offers, paid advertising, or other offers

5. Highlight Profitable Areas

Once you know which offers are the most profitable, it is a good idea to remove other distractions.  If you have 10 offers on a page, there is a much higher chance that your members will never take any action.  However, if you only have the most profitable offer for them to focus on, they will consider it much more seriously.

There are a number of ways to increase the profitability of your membership website.  5 tips to boost profitability include: understanding profits, having multiple purchase options, not competing based upon price, profit from every page, and focus your members attention on the most profitable offers.

It doesn’t matter how good your membership website is if no one known about it.  There are a variety of different techniques that can be used to increase the visibility of your membership site, however some are more effective than others.  By taking advantage of some fundamental marketing tips, you membership website will be able to consistently increase its base of members.

1. Don’t Go For the Sale Right Away

One of the biggest mistakes that you can make when marketing your membership website is to try and go for the hard sell right away.  Instead of pushing for sales immediately, it is much more profitable to focus on lead generation, by gathering email addresses.  Unlike many products sold online, a membership site is not a one-time sale, rather it is a recurring sale.  The best way to ensure that your members will continue paying for access to your membership site, is to start building the customers trust immediately.  Utilizing email marketing from the very beginning is a great way to establish trust with your prospective members.  This trust will go along way towards building a profitable long term relationship with your members.

2. Offer Discount Trial Memberships

Free trials have always been a common marketing ploy both online and offline.  However, when it comes to membership websites, it is a better idea to have a paid trial membership rather than a free one.  There are several reasons for this.  The first is that a paid trial will eliminate freebie seekers.  Not only will this ensure that your trial members are serious about joining, but also decrease the amount of the refunds that you will owe.  A lot of freebie seekers will not get around to cancel their subscription for a day or two after the trial period is over and then they ask for a refund once they are charged.  If you offer paid trial memberships, everyone who signs up already expect to be paying for access to your membership.

Another advantage is that by offering a discounted trial period, your membership inherently has a higher perceived value than membership websites offering a free trial.  Additionally, it is a great way to gain additional income as well.

3. Keep Testing

One of the worst mistakes that you can make when marketing your membership website is to not test your marketing efforts.  Only testing can help you maximize your conversions.  Once your ad is fairly refined, you should still be tweaking small aspects of your ads in order to maximize their efficiency.  If you believe that there is no more testing to be done, it might be time to create a whole new ad campaign and start the process all over again.  Keep in mind that while general ads are a great basis, creating ad campaigns towards specific types of people is important as well.

There are a lot of ways that you can market your membership website, however keeping these 3 tips in mind can make all of your marketing efforts more effective.  Remember not to push the hard sale right away, offer discount trial memberships instead of free ones, and always keep testing and tweaking your ads.

It seems like membership sites have become one of the most popular ways to create a long-term, residual income.  However, just because you create a membership site, doesn’t mean that you will make money.  One of the biggest mistakes that someone can make is choosing a subject for their membership site that no one is interested in.  Here are 5 quick tips to help you choose a great topic for your membership website.

1. Don’t Be Afraid to Go Small

One of the biggest mistakes that most people make when choosing the topic for their website is to focus on a category that is too broad.  As a general rule, many people will argue that choosing a niche that is too small is much better than choosing a niche that is too large.  The reason for this is simple.  If your membership site tries to cover a wide range of large topics, the overall focus will be lost and the content will become too diluted.  On the other hand, if you focus on too small of a niche, you may not get thousands of members, however every single member will be interested in your exact topic.  This means that they are more likely to remain a member over time.

2. Find an Involved Audience

One of the biggest keys to ensuring that your members will remain members is to choose a topic or niche where the participants are active.  If you choose a topic without an active niche, your membership site will likely have a large number of members that will leave after only a few months.  However, if the niche is very active, then there is a much higher chance that your members will find a reason to stay in your membership program.  A good way to gauge how active a community is to look at how active open communities within niche are, such as discussion boards and forums.  The more there are, the more active the community probably is.

3. Why You?

People naturally want to turn to “authorities” within their niche.  This means that you need to be able to establish yourself as a person that can trusted.  You can establish a sense of authority by becoming an active participant in the niche using blogs and forums to get involved with others.  You also need to make sure to research your competition.  Can you make a membership website that is better than other membership websites?  If not, then you may want to look elsewhere.  You should also make sure that your membership website can provide more value that free resources as well.

One of the most important aspects of creating a profitable and sustainable membership website is choosing the right subject.  Not only is this one of most important decisions that you have to make, but also one of the first.  3 tips to choosing a profitable subject is to opt for a niche that is too small over too large, making sure that audience is active and involved elsewhere online, and making sure that you can become an authority figure and offer something that the competition cannot.

Choosing a CMS is one of the most important decisions that a webmaster can make.  The CMS that is chosen will play a large role in determining how the website is created as well as what tools will be available.  There are a variety of popular options, most notably Drupal and Joomla, however WordPress has done an excellent job of standing out from the crowd.  Here is a quick look at some of the reasons that WordPress has become the best CMS option available.

1. Fast Development

WordPress seems to come out with both minor and major updates much faster than either Drupal or Joomla.  The most recent major update was earlier in June when WordPress 3.0 came out.  It was long anticipated because it integrates WordPress-MU as well as added several options to make creating a website easier.  Additionally, WordPress reacts to discovered security threats extremely quickly when compared to their counterparts.  Additionally, WordPress makes it extremely easy to update both the core and complimentary plugins simple.  With the strong development community surrounding WordPress, it should be no surprise that updates are released on a regular basis.

2. Flexibility

WordPress was designed to be able to utilize plugins to create any type of website that a webmaster might need.  It is no longer a simple blogging platform, but can be turned into full-fledged websites, sales pages, squeeze pages, and even membership sites.  With so many plugins that can be used to mold a website into anything a webmaster can imagine, it is no surprise that WordPress continues to grow in popularity.

3. Designed to Be Search Engine Friendly

WordPress is one of the few content management systems that has been designed specifically to be search engine friendly.  It allows for incredibly fast load times, which is becoming increasingly important, but has a lightweight core that makes adjusting the settings to meet the needs of search engines easy.  Additionally, there are a growing number of plugins that can further enhance search engine optimization.

4. Short Learning Curve

Compared to Joomla and Drupal, WordPress seems to have a much smaller learning curve.  The back-end is designed to be very intuitive and user friendly.  Webmasters can even download and install plugins from inside the dashboard.  You can update the core and plugins with a single click and if any updates are available you are notified on your dashboard.  The back end is designed so that it is easy to understand as well as manipulate to fit your needs.

It seems like WordPress will continue to gain more and more followers, which means a continually stronger and active community.  This will ensure that WordPress is consistently changing to meet the needs of the average webmaster.  This coupled with its fast development, overall flexibility, built in SEO, and small learning curve makes WordPress the best choice for many webmasters.

The release of WordPress 3.0 has been in the making for some time and the official release has finally taken place.  As with all major releases, the instant reaction of many people is to find out how these releases will affect their website specifically, and this is an especially important question for people who are using WordPress to manage their membership website.

Downtime is never good for any website, but membership websites have even more pressure than most to be available to users at all times.  This is because members have already paid for access to the content.  This makes planning out the process of upgrading to WordPress 3.0 incredibly important to webmasters of membership websites.

WordPress 3.0 Shouldn’t Affect Your Membership Website

1. Testing

WordPress 3.0 went through a very long and thorough alpha and beta phase.  This should have given every plugin developer plenty of time to update their plugin so that it is compatible with WordPress 3.0.  This is especially true for commercial plugins.  It is very rare that commercial plugins are not ready to go when WordPress releases a new update.

2. Modified Features

The main features that have been modified for the WordPress 3.0 release should not affect how a membership website will operate.  The biggest changes include: integration with WordPress-MU, a new default theme, different editor styles, modified navigation menus, and bulk upgrading.  Very few membership plugins should be affected by this.  However, there may be some potential problems because of the “custom post” changes, however the remedy should be fairly simple.

Keys to a Safe Upgrade

1. Create a Test Site

It is important for every website to also have a test site as well.  This is where you can test out any changes before actually making them to your live site.  By upgrading to WordPress 3.0 on your test site first, you should be able to find out if any complications may arise.

2. Always Create a Backup

It is important to always back up your files before updating your WordPress membership site to WordPress 3.0.  While this is advice that everyone seems to know, many people either forget to do it or just don’t think they will need to.  As long as you have backup, you can always quickly restore your website in the case the upgrading to WordPress 3.0 causes some problems with your membership website.

There are a number of reasons that upgrading to WordPress 3.0 should not affect your WordPress membership website including the features that were modified and the extended time that it spent in the development and testing phases.  However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t double check this issue for yourself.  This means that you should always create a backup for your website as well as utilize a test site before upgrading on your live site.

An Benefit Overview of WordPress – 1Shoppingcart Integration

WordPress has quickly become one of the most popular CMS platforms used by webmasters today.  While it started out as a simple blogging platform, it has quickly blossomed into a feature rich system that allows for a variety of websites and has become a favorite of membership website designers.  As with all ecommerce platforms, choosing which shopping cart to integrate is a vital decision.  1Shoppingcart has become a popular choice for WordPress integration because of the many benefits that a webmasters can gain from it.

Benefits of Integrating 1Shoppingcart and WordPress

1. Design Flexibility

One of the best features of 1Shoppingcart is the flexibility in design that webmasters can have, without additional customization.  1Shoppingcart has an easy to use interface that will allow you to consistently and effectively brand yourself from the initial sales steps throughout the entire transaction.  You can customize all of your shopping cart pages in regards to both layout and cart options.  With the simple user interface, you will be able to customize your headers, footers, order form, and checkout page.  You can even add upsell messages to the “view cart” and order form pages.

2. Excellent Security

One of the biggest barriers to getting someone to make a purchase online is making them feel secure.  The PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards) have gone a long way in promoting internet security and making consumers feel safe.  1Shoppingcart was one of the first shopping cart softwares to become PCI/CIS certified.  Since 1Shoppingcart does not require you to host it, you can avoid the time consuming process of becoming PCI compliant on your own.  This also negates the possibility of being at risk of being fined or falling victim to security breaches.  1Shoppingcart offers a variety of additional security benefits such as: regular monitoring and testing, HTTPS/SSL encryption, and a vulnerability management program.

3. Flexible Recurring Billing System

The 1Shoppingcart recurring billing system makes it easy to run WordPress websites that require subscriptions or monthly fees.  1Shoppingcart provides an automated recurring billing system that will auto-bill your customers for you.  It also provides the flexibility so that you can set up as many different billing installments and billing cycles that need.

4. Additional Customization

There are a number of other additional customization features that make 1Shoppingcart easy to integrate, yet remain personalized.  It offers custom “Thank You” pages, custom colors/logo/background, integrated IP/Credit Card/Email blacklist blocking, and even customizable discount options (including coupons).  The best part is that no programming skills are required in order to complete this customization on your own.

Integrating 1Shoppingcart with your WordPress website makes the entire checkout process much simpler.  With bolstered payment security, yet a variety of customization options, you can make your customers feel safe, while still promoting your brand.  With so many recurring billing options, you can set up exactly what you need with only a few simple clicks.  All of these benefits make 1Shoppingcart and WordPress an excellent integration candidate.

Drupal has long been one of the most popular content management systems among webmasters.  However, with the growing popularity of membership websites, many people are wondering whether or not a Drupal membership website is the best choice.  This decision, for many people, will come down to how much work they want to do in order to set up and integrate the additional modules into their website.  While there is no “right” answer, by understanding what will need to be done in order to create a Drupal membership website, making this decision can be much easier.

Drupal historically has been considered to have a steeper learning curve than many other popular CMS options.  This makes integrating additional modules to create a membership website simpler for seasoned users than for newer Drupal webmasters.  In order to create a membership website, there are several common modules that will need to be installed.  These include: the Content Access module, CCK module, and a membership module.

Once you have Drupal installed, the first thing that will need to be done is to create a new “Role” for paying members.  Many people will name this role something like “Premium Member”, “Paid Member”, Bronze/Silver/Gold Member”, etc  Along with creating the name for the role, you must also create a new “Content Type” for the paying members.  This is where the CCK module comes into play.

Once the new Content Type has been created, you can use the Content Access module to rebuild/alter the node access permissions.  Once this has been taken care of, you must make sure that your new Content Type has been configured so that only Paying Members will have access to it.

Once all of this has been set up, it is now time to integrate the membership module of your choice.  In order to create a Drupal membership website for paying customers, there are several functions that a membership module must have.  The first is a way for members to register for your membership site.  During registration, this will include things like setting up a password, selecting a payment option, selecting a tier (if you are creating a tiered membership website), a way to connect to payment processor or payment gateway, as well as a way to set up trail memberships.  It is also important to make sure that you have the ability to utilize recurring billing, automatically renew subscriptions, and much more.  This may be taken care of with a single module or may require several modules, depending on which ones you choose.

As you can see, there are a variety of modules that will be necessary to create a Drupal membership website.  It is important to understand that you will need to know how to properly integrate all of these modules as well as manage them, whenever needed.  For some people, this will be, at most, a very minimal problem.  However, for others, this could be very frustrating, almost to the point of overwhelming.  Depending on how familiar you are with Drupal, it may be a great choice for a membership website.  Deciding whether or not a Drupal membership website is the “best” choice is entirely up to you.