Membership Site Tips
360 words | Last Updated: June 7, 2007 |
Creating a membership site can help drive more traffic to your site. The trick lies in creating open, semi-public, and inner circle areas of your site.
The open or public area of your site can display your blog or your free articles. This is where you can attract people coming from the various search engines. This is also where you gain credibility by showing your expertise and willingness to help others.
The semi-public section is an area where people need to sign-up and indicate their email address, in exchange for more information. This is where you can share more tips, or provide more entertainment material not found in your public area.
The inner circle is a paid portion of your site. People who have signed up for the semi-public area can upgrade their status, so that they can have access to even more specialized information.
How You Can Create A Membership Site
I've tested the MembershipEase.com, and it works pretty well (and installs quickly!) in web sites hosted at Liquidweb and Dreamhost. There were some installation problems with sites hosted in ASmallOrange.
I'm also going to test the more robust membership script from Amember.com, as soon as I finish uploading the installation files (it's been 32 minutes now, and the upload hasn't completed yet).
I foresee, however, that the semi-public / inner circle approach will be easier to implement with Amember rather than with MembershipEase. Perhaps that will make the wait worth it.
How Membership Sites Increase Traffic
Required sign-ups? Paid access? How exactly will this drive more traffic to your site?
Write about what you've added to the semi-public and inner circle areas. Post those announcements or teasers in the open area of your site. That will whet the appetite of your readers enough to entice them to sign-up.
And as you develop more premium information, keep on promoting those additions and you'll have people returning to your site over and over, just to see what new things are in store for potential members.
(The Amember scripts upload took a little under 34 minutes. I'll go tweak it now.)
Free Trial: How To Accept Online Payments For Your Downloadable Ebooks.
Secure Digital eCommerce Service - Get your Free Lifetime Basic Account today.
Find out how you can make this work for YOU. Fast and Simple.
"Membership Site Tips"
First Posted: June 7, 2007 | Filed in: Web Traffic
Subscribe to RSS Feed
How is the amember script working? Is it for the novice or advanced web developers? I read there were bugs intergrating with paypal...any issues there? Does it integrate seamlessly or issues with different pieces?
Thanks,Art
Amember works well, Art. It's for intermediate web developers, although novices can get help (sometimes, for free).
I haven't tested Paypal integration, but the "problems" I found online relate to changing subscription prices. Other potential integration issues involve Aweber.
Hi Manuel,
I'm new to the membership site creator. I have just created my membership site and every thing works fine except that I can't access my email to check for the emails sent by the program to verify the email for signed up members. I keep getting a message that reads "Default mail client is not properly installed". Can you tell me what needs to be done and how to do it so that it works?
Thank you,
Raul
Hi Raul! Which web host are you using? Sounds like a PHP mail client setting issue that can be tackled by the support team of your web host. Thanks!