How To Build A Membership Website
As you build your online business, one of the ways to stop an inconsistent income flow from getting in the way of your success is to start a continuity plan. A great way to get monthly continuity income is to build a membership website. A membership website means that the public is blocked from the content available only to members who pay a fee to access the membership area.
When you build a membership site, you’ll need some sort of software to not only create the member’s area of your site, but to manage subscriptions, send emails (if not using a third-party autoresponder), collect payments and deliver purchased content.
Software Options To Help Build A Membership Website
One of the things you’ll need to figure out when you decide to start a membership site is how you’ll run the technology. Thankfully, today there are many options available at your fingertips for running your membership website.
The best membership site builder platform, and the most popular, is WordPress. Consequently, the software options in this article are plugins that work with WordPress. While there are other non-Wordpress membership software options, they are outside the scope of this article.
FREE Checklist: How To Build A Membership Website
Free Software To Build A Membership Website
S2member: The base version is free. The Pro versions costs $189 for a single site license. The free version supports PayPal as an integrated payment gateway, supports 4 membership levels, but does not have a drip content feature. However, the Pro version expands on all of these limitations of the free version.
Membership 2: Surprisingly, the free version of this software meets the requirements of most setting up a new membership site. It has four membership options – standard, dripped content, guest and default. It accepts Paypal, Stripe and Authorize.net for payments and allows you to protect all WordPress content on your site. Their Pro version ($49 per month) adds in additional features like coupons, more protection rules and multi-site management from one place.
Paid Software To Build A Membership Website
aMember Pro: This is the mainstay plugin in the membership community. It works very well and is very popular with online marketing experts who have membership websites. The main features of aMember Pro include its ability to operate your own affiliate program, host a help desk, send out newsletters from within the plugin, integrate with a wide variety of payment systems and autoresponders, and provide unlimited membership levels and options. It’s hailed by many users as being the perfect membership software option in delivering digital products via download.
WishList Member: Main features include unlimited membership levels, multiple membership options, along with shopping cart integration with many of the popular cart systems including PayPal, Stripe and Authorize,net. It also integrates well with the top autoresponder programs. With this membership software you can do everything that you need to run a great membership site.
Which Software Is Best For You?
Before selecting a membership software program, decide what features you need like:
- Do you need multiple membership levels?
- Will you offer dripped content or only content found in a members’ area?
- Which payment processor will you use?
Answering these three questions first will narrow down the number of programs to select from. After that, it’s deciding if a free version or paid will provide the rest of the features you want in your membership site. Many of the software programs either allow you to start with their free version. You can then upgrade later or they let you try their paid version free for 30 days. It pays to put some time on the front end to figure out what you need as it can be difficult to switch everything over to a different program if you selected the wrong one in the beginning.
Free Checklist: How To Build A Membership Website
Creating a membership site is a great way to set up recurring, passive income. You build the site and create the content once, and you receive recurring weekly, monthly or quarterly payments. Membership websites are lucrative, but you need to choose the right software for your needs. Consider your budget, how many members you want to attract, how much you plan to charge members and what you want to include. For an easy to follow guide, download my free checklist How To Make A Membership Website.
