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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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

No, this isn’t about eating your membership site, it is about making sure that your members are happy and find value in what you are offering. It can be quite a balancing act to make sure that you are providing enough content to warrant your monthly fees, while at the same time making sure that you don’t overwhelm your members. While there is no “right answer” in terms of how much content to deliver, your membership pricing model should give you some insight into how much content your members expect. The more expensive it is, the more information they want to receive. If you are billing them on a weekly basis, then they will want new content every week. If it is monthly, then maybe every other week.

The Importance of Finding Balance

It goes without saying that if your members are not receiving enough useful content, they will likely cancel their subscription. This is because they don’t feel like they are getting enough value for their money.

What most people don’t realize is that providing too much content can cause people to cancel as well. Even if your content is the best on the market, overwhelming your members will lead to a high attrition rate – essentially it is too much of good thing. This is normally a problem that arises when you get too focused on over-delivering. While over-delivering is important, it shouldn’t be taken to extremes.

In the end, both over-delivering and under-delivering will lead to cancellations

The Solution

The trick to finding a good balance is making your information easy to consume. This can only be done by understanding your target audience. If you’re membership site is designed to introduce or teach a certain concept, then don’t pile everything on at once. More importantly, make sure that every member can actually benefit from the information that you are providing.

The easiest way to do this is by providing the same content in multiple formats. The easiest way to do this is to make a video and have it transcribed. You can even include an audio file as well. Everyone learns a little bit differently. Some people prefer to read, while other would rather watch or listen. In order to make sure that your content is easy for everyone to consume, you need to address all three of these formats.

As an added bonus, it will also make it appear that you are providing a lot of content without overwhelming your members. Remember, it doesn’t matter how great your content is if it isn’t consumable. This means delivering both the right amount of content and in a way that is easy for your members to utilize

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It doesn’t matter where your membership site is in your overall sales strategy, the most important step is creating a front end or introductory product that converts. There are two primary uses for a membership site. The first is to use it as your introductory product. This is normally done when the bigger ticket items such as conferences, personal training, and coaching programs are directly related to your membership site. It can be difficult to get people to sign up for an expensive coaching program cold turkey. A membership site is a great way to build trust and prove that you have information that your members can value from. The other approach is to sell small digital products in order to get people to sign up for your membership site. This strategy becomes more important as your membership site becomes more expensive. Regardless of what your front end product is, if it doesn’t bring people in, your main money makers will not be very successful on their own.

3 Things You Must Do to Create a Successful Front End Product

Offer an Irresistible Value
The whole point of your front end product is to simply get people in the door. Don’t hesitate to provide much more value in the product than the price reflects. This product is your only chance to create a first impression, so over-delivering is extremely important. At the same time, you shouldn’t give away everything. Normally the front end product will tell people the why, but not the how.

Offer Bonuses That Compliment Your Primary Product
If you want to get people through your sales funnel as quickly as possible, add a few bonuses that are more closely tied with your big ticket items rather than your introductory product. This is a great way to pre-sell your primary products without your customers even noticing. Plus, adding bonuses is a great way to make the overall value of your front end product more irresistible

Keep the Cost Down
Unless your goal is to generate most of your income off your introductory product, then make sure to keep the cost low. In most cases, anything over $20-$30 is too much, although this may not be true for certain niches. Remember, the ultimate goal is to get people to buy your more expensive products. The most important step is the initial contact. With a low cost front end product, making these connections is much easier.

1 Thing You Absolutely Cannot Do

Create a Low Quality Product
It doesn’t matter how great the rest of your sales process is if your front end product isn’t very good. If it is an ebook, then make sure you are giving your customers something that they can’t get anywhere else. Otherwise, you will have missed an important opportunity to show them that you have something unique to offer. Not only does a low quality product make it impossible for you to build value in your products, but it also makes it more difficult to build trust and credibility which will need to be leveraged for future sales on your more expensive items.

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It doesn’t matter what phase of membership site creation, promotion, or maintenance you are in, there are certain things that can quickly doom your site. Not only can these factors cause a mass exodus by your members, but also generate a lot of negative comments within your niche and across the web. Fortunately, all of these problems are easily remedied with proper planning.

1. Choosing the Wrong Topic
If you choose the wrong topic for your membership site, there is nothing that can be done to make it successful. There are two different ways that this can happen. The first is that you choose a topic that doesn’t include enough information to justify a membership site. This is rarely a problem as long because you can create a one-time payment or free membership model to compensate, however if you are only interested in recurring payments, then this can be an issue. The other way that your topic could be wrong is that there simply isn’t a market for it. If the information isn’t something that people are willing to dedicate their time to, then it will be a tough sell.

2. Updating Doesn’t Reflect Your Membership Model
Another common problem is that you may not update the content in a way that matches your membership model. For example, if you are charging people a monthly fee, then they will expect new content at least once a month, if not more. On the other hand, if you charge a one-time fee, then you don’t want to update it every week, unless you are using the membership primarily to market other products as well

3. Poor Sales Letter
A poor sales letter is another way that you can doom your website. This is not only because you will have a low conversion rate, but also because affiliates won’t want to promote your product. They do most of the heavy lifting in terms of promotion and expect their efforts to pay off. With a poor sales letter, you will drive away the top affiliates in your niche.

4. To Much Emphasis on Retention
Trying to minimize your attrition rate is essential for the long term management of your membership site, but the hard truth is that almost every member will leave at one point or another. This means that new members are the lifeblood of your site. If you place too much emphasis on attrition and ignore the importance of recruiting new members, you will definitely doom your membership site in the long run.

There are a lot of mistakes that you can make and still run a profitable website, even if it does reach it’s maximum potential. However, there are also mistakes that will doom your membership in either the short or long term. 4 mistakes that you absolutely cannot make include: choosing the wrong topic, not creating the right updating process, using a poor sales letter, and placing more emphasis on retention over recruitment.

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