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

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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.

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.

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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Over the past half decade, there was a giant boom and bust of premium WordPress plugin developers and WordPress membership plugins are no exception. For some people, this can make finding the right premium membership plugin difficult because you don’t want to end up buying a lifetime license, only to find out that it is no longer supported or on its way out the door. For the most part, there are three key things that you need to focus on when choosing which plugin is right for you – features, reliability, and support.

The features are normally what most people look at first, but in the end you just need to make sure that it does what you want and can grow with your membership site. More importantly, you need to give a little extra attention to reliability and support because this will tell you whether or not the plugin will be a good long term solution or not.

1. Magic Members
Magic Members is a little bit newer than some of the others on this website, however it has quickly become one of the premier WordPress membership plugins. It has proven to be extremely reliable and the support is definitely solid. One of the things that has made this plugin stand out from the rest is how rapid updates are released. More impressively, these aren’t simple coding updates but major function updates that gives you more payment processors and similar types of integration advances.

2. Wishlist Member
Wishlist Member is another popular membership plugin that has been around for some time. They has a solid track record in terms of reliability over time. This is largely because they offer several premium WordPress plugins. They will likely be player for the foreseeable future because along with their plugin, they have also created the Insider Community, which is a membership training opportunity. Keep in mind that throughout their training, they rely solely on their products, so if you are going to integrate other competing premium plugins such as Magic Affiliate then you may need to look elsewhere.

3. MemberWing
MemberWing used to be considered the top premium WordPress membership plugin, but it seems to have tapered off over the past few years. This is largely because they are one of the only premium plugins that have 3 different versions with varying features instead of the standard single-site and multi-site licenses.

4. Digital Access Pass
Digital Access Pass has been in the background of premium membership plugins for a while. It never seems to have really become a major player, but at the same time, it is considered to be a solid option. While it does allow you to create a variety of different membership sites, it is most well known as a product-based membership site or download site-style plugin.

5. eMember
eMember has always been considered to be in the top handful of premium membership plugins, but is rarely in the very top. While it has the features and functions that you should expect from a premium plugin, it still seems to have a larger list of non-compatible plugins than other options on the market.

6. S2Member
S2Member is a decent option, but the difference between the free version and the pro version is negligible compared to the other options on this list. S2Member pro does provide some additional payment gateways and features, but it tends to test poorly compared to the other options on this list.

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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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Designing a basic WordPress plugin isn’t inherently difficult which is why there is a growing trend to hire a freelancer or company to create customized plugins. While this may serve a purpose in some cases, this isn’t always the best idea. If you are thinking about this for a membership plugin then you might want to reconsider. There are a number of potential hazards that you could run into, especially if you do not have a freelancer developer who you work with on a consistent basis. Here is a closer look at what these problems are and why purchasing a commercially available membership plugin is likely to be the better option.

The first problem, or group of problems, all arise if you do not have a freelance developer who you use often. While some people do have WordPress developers on retainer, it is fairly rare. The first problem is that you are going to have to test out a handful of candidates just to find the right one. While this may not sound like a big deal, you cannot get sample projects done for free. In many cases, testing out 5 developers will be more expensive than buying a plugin outright. Not only is it expensive, but you may not be happy with the results. This could be a time frame issue, workability issue, or communication issue. Regardless of what it is, if the project ends and you are unsatisfied then you have wasted a lot of time and money.

The next problem is dealing with the future. WordPress is constantly updating its core which means the plugin could become incompatible at any moment. If you purchase a custom membership plugin and in a few months there is a problem you don’t have anyone to turn to. You can either re-hire the first developer to fix it or you may have to go through the entire hiring process again. Plus, the second developer will not be familiar with your custom plugin which means that they will have to spend time understanding it before they even start working. Another future-related problem is expansion. What happens if your demographic changes and your new members want to use a payment processor that you didn’t have integrated?

There are a number of additional problems that can arise as well depending on how the creation process goes.

As you can see, there are several major hazards that you can fall victim to if you hire a developer to create a custom membership plugin. The better option is to simply purchase a commercially available membership plugin that meets all of your needs. There are several high quality option on the market and they are very cost effective when you consider how much time and effort goes into creating and supporting them. As an added bonus, the commercial plugins were built after weeks or months of testing, plus they are designed based upon the feedback that users give them. This means that not only will you be purchasing a great product, but it will always be changing and adapting to meet your needs.

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