PagSeguro Integration Can Give Your Website Immediate Access to Brazilian Shoppers

PagSeguro has proven to be an incredibly valuable payment processor for anyone who is even thinking about tapping into the Brazilian e-commerce market. This market has proven to be growing at an incredible rate, yet many payment processors simply don’t have access to the country. Moreover, trying to establish contracts with multiple banks and payment processors in the region is not only difficult, but also creates a variety of additional accounts to manage. PagSeguro has simplified this process by providing vendors with access to nearly 20 different payment options.

PagSeguro has become one of the largest and most respected payment processors in Brazil and can provide your website with an inherent boost in trust and credibility. Along with enhancing the reputation of your website, it also provides you a centralized location to manage your websites sales. This can prove especially useful when managing a membership site because it allows you to track all of your members and their payments with ease.

The biggest problem that many webmasters face is finding a way to integrate PagSeguro with their site, regardless of whether it is a traditional membership site, pay-per-download site, or even a pay-per-post site. Fortunately, the Magic Members plugin allows for PagSeguro integration with only a few clicks. Once your PagSeguro account is set up, the only thing you need to do in order to activate it from within the Magic Members admin area is by entering your account details and clicking the Activate button.

If you are not familiar with PagSeguro, it provides all of its payment processing services in conjunction with PayPal. This allows them to utilize PayPal’s charge back protection and fraud protection services for your account. As a result, you will also have to currently use a valid PayPal account.

While PagSeguro is trying to actively recruit integration developers in order to make their service more accessible to the average website owner. While a growing number of options are available, very few are tailored to the WordPress platform, with even less that allow for easy integration with a membership site. Magic Members has proven to be one of the few membership management plugins that can integrate so many payment processors, such as PagSeguro, without requiring any additional plugins, tools, or coding. Not only does this simplify the entire process, but also ensures that you will never have integration problems due to plugin upgrades or incompatibilities.

Why is PagSeguro Integration So Important For Your Membership Site?

Regardless of whether you plan on specifically targeting people who live in Brazil, it is not a good idea to blatantly ignore a large, growing economy. Over the past decade, Brazil’s economy has grown to become the 6th largest in the world, 2nd largest in the Western Hemisphere, and the largest in Latin America. Without providing a payment option, you are instantly eliminating a very large pool of potential customers.

Magic Members WordPress Membership Site Plugin completed PagSeguro integration. Purchase Magic Members

Since the release of WordPress 3.0, it has finally started to be recognized by the general community as an effective CMS and not just a blogging platform. While devoted WordPress fans have known about it’s power for a long time, it wasn’t until recently that the average webmaster considered it a viable, long term option. In fact, there are a number of reasons that WordPress has evolved into the perfect CMS for your membership site.

1. Development Community
The driving force behind the boost in power of WordPress as a content management system is it’s development community. WordPress has become well known for having one of the largest and most active community of developers and testers of any CMS, both open sourced and commercial. This has not only been the reason behind the vast amount of growth and improvements in the WordPress core, but also in the supporting themes and plugins as well. This means that you will not only get the power that WordPress offers, but also the flexibility and simple customization that the growing number of plugins can offer.

2. Emphasis on Simplicity and Flexibility
If there is one thing that the development community has focused on, it is flexibility and simplicity. The goal of WordPress is not only to provide a simple solution that a first time blogger can easily understand, but also the flexibility and functionality that a seasoned veteran requires. This can be seen throughout all aspects of WordPress from the customizable themes to premium plugins. With a few plugins, you can dramatically alter the appearance and function of your WordPress site within minutes. As an added bonus, there will rarely if ever be any integration issues that can’t be resolved with little effort.

3. Complete Solutions
The biggest benefit to using WordPress for your membership site is that there are premium plugins that allow you to effectively manage all aspects of your membership site and affiliate program. This includes integrating payment processors, adding members to your mailing list, and much more. With most other CMS options, you will end up either having to piece together several scripts to achieve this. In some cases, these scripts are generalized and not CMS specific, which raises the likelihood of integration issues at some point.

There are several fundamental characteristics that are necessary for any CMS that you use to support a membership site. It has to be reliable, provide you the flexibility to do what you, and be easy and efficient to use. WordPress meets all of these criteria with flying colors. Plus, it has the largest active development community that is consistently improving it’s functionality and ensuring it’s security. With the growing number of premium membership site management and affiliate management plugins, getting up and running is getting easier every day.

There are very few cases where the bulk of your expenses won’t come during the creation phase of your membership site.  The problem that most people face is that they don’t have an unlimited budget, which means that they will need to prioritize where their money will go.  Doing this effectively may be what makes or breaks the future success of your membership site.  If you are never able to get it off the ground, then the chances of long term success is next to none.  Staying within your budget is critical, but there a few places where you shouldn’t skimp.  Here is a quick look at the the areas that provide the highest return on your initial investment and why they should be a priority from the beginning.

1. Membership and Affiliate Management Software

If there is one thing that you should not hesitate to invest in, it is your membership management software and affiliate management software.  Not only will it set the tone for your site, but in some cases, will also dictate what you can do.  There is nothing worse than starting to see success, only to find out that you have to change software in order to do what you want.  The same is true for affiliate management software.  Since WordPress has become the most popular CMS for membership sites, the most widely used and well developed options tend to be WordPress plugins.  Not only does this eliminate any potential integration problems, but will also allow you to leverage the power of WordPress to create a unique membership environment.

2. Website Design

Website design can be expensive depending on your needs, but this is another area that you should definitely spend whatever it takes to get what you want.  Another benefit of using WordPress is that you can either customize a premium theme or get one designed for you.  Plus, since WordPress was designed to be very easy to use, you can save money in the long run because you will have minimum maintenance costs associated with your design.  This is especially true with WordPress because you can add content and update the look yourself, unlike with some other CMS options.

3. Content – Inside and Out

The final area that you need to invest in is your content.  This is not only the content within your members area, but also your promotional materials such as landing pages, squeeze pages, and affiliate marketing tools.  It doesn’t matter how great your site looks, if it doesn’t actually offer any content.  In most cases, it is worth the additional expense to hire content creators that will work with you over the long term because they can ensure that all of your content inter-connect well.

You might be thinking that this short list covers every potential expense and that you don’t have anywhere to actually limit your initial investment.  The truth is that if you recruit and utilize affiliates for your membership site, you can spend a fairly small amount on advertising and promotion, not only in the short term, but long term as well.

In the end, by investing into these 3 key areas right away, you can set yourself for long term success.  Plus, minimize long term expenses related to promotion and website maintenance.

One of the reasons that membership sites became popular was because they were coined as being one of the easiest ways to generate the passive income. A few years later, some of the most successful examples of online membership sites are constantly updated, advertised, and very active in social networking. With of this in mind, the real question is whether or not a membership site can actually be source of passive income. Can they create income – absolutely. Is it passive – Maybe.

The most important thing to keep in mind when answering this question is what passive income really is. The goal of passive income is that you can do something once and get paid multiple times for it. In it’s most basic form, membership sites are de facto passive income because you are only creating one membership site, but profiting from it multiple times. When you dig a little a deeper, it becomes apparent that many people have created a clear distinction between recurring income and passive income. The difference being the amount of effort or maintenance that is required. Membership sites are definitely a source of recurring income, but depending on your site, it could definitely require a lot of maintenance on a monthly basis, which means that the income may not be passive.

The primary factor that will determine whether or not your membership site becomes a source of passive income is how your overall strategy. There are a number of different variables that will affect this. One of the biggest variables is your content. If you truly want to focus on passive income, then you need to be able to create a one set of content and use it over and over again. This is most apparent in continuity sites and educational/training membership sites. On the other hand, if you plan on adding new content on a regular basis, then you would not fall into the category of passive income.

Another important factor is promotion. If you want to generate passive income, then the goal should be to do as little promotion yourself as possible. Fortunately, will a sound strategy, this is easy to achieve. As long as you spend some time establishing a quality affiliate program, then you could potentially grow a huge membership base without ever directly promoting your site on your own. Affiliates are a powerful asset and the key to turning your membership site into a passive income generator.

At the same time, there are some revenue streams tied to membership sites that could be considered passive, regardless of your membership site model. For example, if you profit from selling ad space or promoting affiliate products through your content, then those revenue streams could be considered passive, even if your overall membership model is not.

In the end, membership sites have the potential to be a source of passive income, however it all comes down your strategies. Many of the most successful membership sites may not be considered passive income, however they are also require much more effort and input throughout each billing cycle. This means that you could potentially create 4 or 5 passive membership sites and generate the same level of incomes with less total effort once they are established.

There will always be a debate over which style of membership site is better – fixed term or indefinite. The problem is that both of these models have proven to be effective. This means that you need to look at your niche and what you are offering in order to decide which one is right for you.

In case you haven’t considered both of these options, here is a quick look at what they are. Fixed term membership sites are designed so that a members signs up for a certain period of time. Essentially, it has a fixed end-date. For example, a pregnancy website designed to walk expecting parents through the process of what to do and what to expect during those 9 months is obviously not going to be useful forever. On the other hand, if you look at a sports related membership site like ESPN’s Insiders Club, there is a recurring monthly fee with new content added on a regular basis indefinitely.

Benefits of Fixed Term Membership Sites

1. When Your Done, Your Done
One of the biggest benefits to creating a fixed term membership site is that once you have created all of the content, you can leave it alone. Sure, you will need to update the information as needed, but the actual content creation process is over. It doesn’t matter if you plan on creating all of the content yourself or outsource it, there is only a one time investment. This means that you can create new membership sites at a fairly rapid rate.

2. Creates a Sense of Closure
Another benefit of a fixed term membership site is that it provides the members with a sense of closure. They know exactly what they are getting and for how long. As an added benefit, some member may stay for the extra month or two simply because they know that it will end soon. This means a lower attrition rate and more income.

3. Leverage Success to Feed Related Memberships
Another benefit is that you can leverage a good experience with one of your sites to get people to sign up for another one. Let’s stick with the pregnancy example – once they have reached the end of month 9, you can promote another membership site that will walk them through the first year of parenthood. When that is done, year 2 and so on. Since they feel like they are getting new membership sites, you can keep them as members for much longer than a traditional indefinite membership site.

Benefits of Indefinite Membership Sites

1. One Focus
One benefit of creating an indefinite membership site is that you can place all of your attention into maximizing your income from that single effort. This means more time for testing and promotion.

2. Brand Loyalty
With a single, indefinite membership site, you have the ability to build a greater sense of brand loyalty. While this is also popular with fixed term membership sites, it is more difficult because at the end of one membership, the members may re-evaluate their options and go elsewhere.

In the end, neither of these options are inherently better than the other. The key is looking at the content that you will provide and niche that you are targeting to see which style fits best.

Using a Facebook Fan Page to promote an idea, brand, or product is nothing new. However, many membership sites still haven’t created a page of their own. There are a variety of benefits that your membership site can gain once you have created a Fan Page dedicated solely to what it has to offer. At most, many people will integrate their membership information into other Fan Pages that they already have, however this detracts from it’s exposure in many cases. Here is a quick look at how a dedicated Fan Page can boost conversions and effectively promote your membership site.

1. Credibility
One of the immediate results that your membership site will gain is credibility. In general, people have become a little more skeptical when they have to give out their personal information online. This is largely due to scam websites and a number of questionable billing practices for a variety of products. With a Fan Page dedicated solely to your membership site, it acts as a symbol of trust because it is regarded as a level of transparency. If there were ever any problems, then Facebook users would know that it would show up in the comments on your Fan Page.

2. Pre-Screening
For most membership sites, list building is a vital part of the promotion process. Fan Pages can help in two ways. First, they can pre-screen potential customers. If someone becomes a fan, but never visits the page again, then you can be fairly certain that they didn’t have any real interest in your product anyways. Second, if fans take the extra step that is needed to sign up for your list, then they have shown an active interest in what you have to offer.

3. Promotion
The obvious benefit is that a Fan Page can be a central social networking asset that can be used to promote your membership site. It can also be used to promote the free content on your blog as well. Both of which can drive traffic to your site and boost conversions.

4. Pre-Selling
Along with promoting your membership site, it can also be used to pre-sell potential members. This not only true of the content that you share on your page, but also what other people say. It provides you with a more casual, low-pressure method to get people interested in your offer.

5. Social Proof
Finally, a Fan Page gives you instant social proof. You can leverage the crowd mentality to show potential customers that their Facebook Friends have already joined your membership site and have good things to say about it. Along with social proof, it also gives you a way to interact socially with potential members and current members.

As you can see, there are a number of benefits that you can gain from creating a Facebook Fan Page solely dedicated to your membership site. As an added bonus, a Fan Page that only focuses on your site, also ensures that your fans don’t get distracted with other products and promotions, thus boosting your conversion rates.

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If you are just starting to get your membership site or affiliate program set up, then it can be difficult to know which WordPress affiliate plugins are going to best fit your needs. In general, there are less options available for affiliate plugins than membership plugins, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t just as powerful. In general, there are a handful of characteristics that you need to consider, regardless of which option you end up choosing. Here is a quick look at these characteristics as well as the top several affiliate plugins that are on the market.

1. Compatibility
The most important thing to consider when choosing the right WordPress affiliate plugins is whether or not it will be compatible with your membership plugin. If the two plugins don’t place nice together, then one of them is going to need to change. Obviously, if your membership site is already set up, then you likely won’t be scrapping your membership plugin. This is a really simple thing to check, but a lot of people tend to overlook it until it’s too late.

2. Time Commitment
One of the biggest reasons that people use affiliate plugins, it is to save them time. It creates a central location that you can communicate, manage, track, and pay your affiliates. This means that the overall ease of use and back-end design will determine how much time you will need to commit taking care of your affiliates. The best plugins on the market are designed so that they are very easy to use, plus they give you a very well organized central location that allows you to take care of everything from providing your affiliates with tools (like banner ads or copy) to opening a line of direct communication.

3. Tracking and Payment
The final area that you need to focus on is tracking and payment. If you choose a plugin that doesn’t accurately track your affiliates sales, then you won’t have any affiliates after a month or two. Along the same lines, you need to make sure that you are paying them on time and that the payment amount is correct. Fortunately, with the best plugins, this is never an option. They are very reliable and have proven to be extremely accurate.

Which plugin is right for you?

In general, there are several affiliate plugins that tend to rise to the top. They are Magic Affiliate and WP Affiliate Platform, and WP Affiliate Manager. They are all reliable in terms of tracking and making payments. In terms of overall features, they are all fairly similar, however many people have noted that Magic Affiliate probably has the edge. The big thing to look at is how well they will integrate with your membership site. For example, the only easy way to integrate WP Affiliate Platform is through WP eStore. With compatibility being a key issue, again the Magic Affiliate plugin has the edge. While all three are strong options, the Magic Affiliate plugin probably has the biggest upside and highest likelihood of providing you a long term solution.

At a glance, it may seem like most WordPress shopping cart plugins are pretty much all of the same. While there are definitely a number of features that have become fairly standardized, there is still some glaring differences between the top of the line premium plugins and the rest of the pack. Depending on who you ask, the top few plugins will vary from person to person. This is largely due to the feature set as well as the overall user-interface. Everyone likes something a little different, but there are some similarities between all of the best options. Here are 3 things to consider when choosing the best WordPress shopping carts as well as a quick overview of some of most consistent highly rated plugins available.

1. Integrated Features
In general, you want to try and choose a shopping cart plugin that have as many of the features that you want as possible. This is because every feature that you need that isn’t included in the shopping cart, you will have to find elsewhere. As a general rule, you want to try and compile as many features as possible into as few plugins as possible. This is because the more parts you have, the greater the likelihood that something will go wrong. This isn’t to say that you will be able to use a single plugin to set up, create, and maintain your entire website, but this is why premium plugins are more expensive – they are more comprehensive.

2. Long Term Support
Anytime you spend money on a WordPress plugin, you should get long term support for your purchase. This is especially true of your shopping cart plugins because once they are set up, it is very time consuming to make the switch to another option. Not only does it cost you time, but can potentially cost you sales as well. With long term support, any potential problems can get fixed quickly. Plus, you can rest assured that your WordPress shopping cart plugin will also be compatible with the the WordPress core and other plugins.

3. Product Flexibility
Another thing that a lot of people don’t consider until it is too late is the products that they are going to be selling. For example, there are different features that you will need depending on whether you are selling digital or physical assets as well as products or services. If you know exactly what types of products you are currently selling (and what you will be selling in the future) then this is a little less important. However, if you can see your offers expanding into other formats in the future, then it is important to keep this in mind when choosing your WordPress shopping carts.

There are a variety of solid options on the market today, however some still stand out from the rest. For example, PHPurchase and WP e-Commerce are consistently making all of the “best lists”. WP Invoice has also gotten a lot of attention lately from people who are selling services online and need not only a shopping cart, but also an invoicing service that work together.

Raising membership rates based upon the number of members that have already signed up has been a controversial prospect. On one side, many people believe that once you have found the right price point, there is no reason to change it, which is a very valid point. At the same time, there are several benefits that you could gain by raising prices as well. Here is a closer look at how raising your membership rates can affect your membership site in both the short and long term.

1. Create a Real Sense of Urgency
One of the biggest problems that you will face when running a membership site is creating a sense of urgency. A lot of people will assume that your membership site will always be there, so there is no reason to sign up immediately. This is why introductory discounts and free trials are so popular. These methods attempt to lock people in and create a sense of urgency. The problem is that creating a real sense of urgency is still difficult. This is where raising your rates becomes a very useful tactic. If you tell potential members that the rates will increase for every 50 members that join, they know that if they don’t sign up today, the price could be higher tomorrow

2. Social Proof
Another huge benefit of increasing your membership rates is that it acts a form of social proof. Using tools like customer testimonials has long been a staple of successful sales pages, but over the years, many online consumers have become wary about their authenticity and potential for bias and exaggeration By showing how your rates have increased over time, it provides a much more believable form of social proof because it shows them how many people have become members.

3. Higher Perceived Value
It doesn’t matter what you are selling, it is essential that you build value into your product. By increasing your membership rates as your membership base increases, you are building in a higher perceived value automatically. This tactic is unique in this aspect because it provides you a way leverage social proof as much as possible. Not only does your growing membership base prove that your site provides value, but also your higher prices. Every time you increase your price, and people still sign up, it shows potential members that the value of what you offer is higher than your ever-rising price.

As you can see, there are some unique benefits that raising your subscription price based upon the growth of your site can offer. Most notably, it creates a real sense of urgency, provides a unique form of social proof, and creates a built-in higher perceived value. While this strategy may not be effective for every membership model, it is a tactic that you may want to consider implementing, especially once you see your new member recruit rates start to plateau

Blog comments, forums, and social media are all great ways to connect with your readers, but there will come a time where you need to create a form for one reason or another – normally it starts with a contact form. Fortunately, there are a number of different WordPress form plugins that will do a great job of giving you everything that you need. There are several plugins, both free and premium, that can provide you with the ability to do whatever you need.

The four plugins that tend to be recommended the most would likely be Gravity Forms, Formidable Pro, cForms, and TDO Mini Forms. The first two are premium plugins, while the second two are free. All of these plugins offer something unique, so it is important to decide which one will be the best fit for your needs.

If you want to pay special attention to easily creating very unique and attractive forms, then both of the premium plugins will likely be your best choice. Not that you can’t create a great looking form with the free plugins, but it will require a little more effort. With the premium plugins, all of the designing can be taken care of in the admin area. On the other hand, if you are only looking for a plugin that can functionally manage a simple contact form, then both of the free plugins will likely fit your needs.

Gravity Forms is best known for it’s back-end area, which is extremely easy to use. Creating a form takes seconds and customizing all of details require little more than utilizing the point-n-click interface. FormidablePro is also a solid plugin, although it doesn’t quite have the brand recognition of Gravity Forms. The one thing that it does have going for it is the ability to analyze the data you have collected. This is especially important if you are going to be collecting more than basic contact information from your forms.

Both of the free WordPress form plugins are very solid, however they lack the bells and whistles of the premium options. If all you need to do is create a contact form for a “contact us” page, then either of these plugins would be just fine. Keep in mind that they are not designed for advanced data collection or analysis. Fortunately, it requires very little effort to change from one of the free plugins to a premium plugin without any data loss. In general, upgrading can be done in just a few minutes.

Every year, it becomes more of a standard practice to allow your websites visitors to contact you directly. Normally this is done via email or a contact form. It should be no surprise that WordPress offers you a simple solution. There are a growing number of plugins that can choose from, but many of them are not actively supported, which can cause problems in the long run. If you are just starting out, then make sure to get going in the right direction. If you want to buy a premium plugin, then take a look at Gravity Forms and FormidablePro. If you want to check out free plugins, then cForms or TDO Mini Forms is likely where you should start your search.

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