How to start a Membership site

Starting and running a membership site can be a lot of fun and very fulfilling, however you need to know what’s involved in setting one up, and then managing it effectively. Planning and allowing for auto-responders, automated sign-ups, credit card processing, automated cancellations, etc is all part of a successful membership website.


Things You Need To Consider

Her are some things you need to consider before starting your first membership website:

- What is it about?
- Are you passionate about the subject?
- Who is your target audience?
- Who is going to create fresh content for your members?


Creating or having the content for your membership site

The second thing that needs to be done is to create the content for the site, and make it so good that very few members will ever want to stop paying you their monthly fees.
You have two options here: Either do it yourself or just find an expert in your membership's niche, and ask him or her to write something for a fee.
Depending on what the membership site is based around you could also hire someone on Elance.com or one of the other freelance websites to write a bunch of relevant articles that will help your members.

Get the template, the service or the Membership Software

The first thing you need to do is to get some good software to create the membership site.

The most simple, best and cheapest that I know of is Instant Membership Site Creator or use Wordpress with special pluggings for paid content. Instant site creator can bought right now for just $17.


Finding the customers


Getting As Many Members As You Can As Quickly As You Can
Here are 4 ways to get massive amounts of traffic to your paid membership site quickly.

1) Setup an affiliate program. By using sites like Paydotcom.com, you can setup as many membership sites with affiliate programs as you want.

2) Give away free trial subscriptions. Paydotcom.com allows you to use the trial subscription mode in your membership site. This means you can charge $0 for 30 days access to your membership site to get members in the door. Then you can rebill them for the second month at your normal price.

3) Price your membership site low and make the money on selling your own or other peoples products on the backend.

4) Let other people sell your membership site for you. If you go to one of the popular marketing forums like warriorforum.com you'll find people who will help you. It is a great place to make connections and letting other people promote the membership site for you.

Combine these methods and you will have no problems getting all the membership subscribers you want.

Good luck with your new membership website!

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Marisol Diaz is a Small Business Facilitator and Online Business Implementation Expert. I help small businesses take their business online. I provide services to solopreneurs and small business who wish to sell or promote their products and services online. Online Business Implementation Expert @ www.hinenimedia.memberlodge.org