With some pro bloggers seeing AdSense earnings drop in the past few weeks, people are wondering how to make money online. Some are thinking of putting up membership sites that charge either a one-time, or a monthly fee. How's that for recurring passive income, right? Anyway, here are some things to consider when it comes to building WordPress-powered membership sites...

Where will you store your videos?

Yes, forget about offering only text and images. Boost the value of your membership site by offering video tutorials as well. There are thousands of people who cannot stand reading long lines of text, because they prefer to learn when they hear a voice explaining to them what to do step-by-step, as well as screenshots synchronized with the voiceover to help them easily retain the topic that is being taught.

You will also need to store your videos on a separate server (I mean, different from the one where your regular webpages are stored in), because if you get a lot of members and they view the videos at the same time, the strain on the server can bring your main site down.

By storing your videos in another server, a surge in visitor web traffic will not affect your main site. Your visitors will still be able to read your main webpages, where you can post announcements and updates regarding the status of your video webserver. You will then have the time to interact with your visitors via regular webpages and WordPress comments, while you add bandwidth to your secondary video server.

How do I protect my material?

It is quite difficult to protect your content, because electronic or softcopies can easily be copy/pasted. Even large software companies are still struggling with this problem, right? But here's what you can do to minimize the impact on your video tutorials...

Use a third-party webserver that has user-protection in place. For example, you can specify that your video tutorial can only be accessed by certain people (i.e., paid customers).

How do I protect the passwords?

There are may ways of transforming your WordPress blog into a members' blog, but most of these plugins cannot stop people from simply sharing or passing around their passwords. As I mentioned to my followers on Twitter, there is one plugin that helps secure your membership site. Yes, nothing is 100% fool-proof, but some amount of protection is better than none at all.

In a WordPress blog environment, protecting your membership site will involve the use of certain PHP scripts, as well as PHP codes that you will need to copy/paste or directly type into your blog posts. Since you will be dealing with one or two lines of PHP, you will also need plugins that will allow WordPress to interpret your codes properly.

The key to making money online with WP-powered membership sites is to have relevant content that your paying members will appreciate and value. If you already have such content in video format, then you are a good candidate for projects similar to this.

In such cases, it will be to your benefit to outsource your technical requirements (i.e., setting up secure video servers, tweaking WordPress themes, installing WP membership and password protecting plugins, correctly setting up each for-members-only blog post), so you can either focus on either Content Development, or Marketing.

Eventually, as your earnings rise and you reinvest these into your business, you can even hire people who will handle Content, Technical Production, and Online Marketing, and in the process create a true source of passive income for you and your family.

So, are you still slaving away publishing post after blog post in hopes of earning (only) from AdSense? Please consider publishing premium content and charging customers who get value from what you have to teach online. Yes, there is merit in providing free instruction on the web and earning hundreds of dollars in advertising revenue, but it's time to expand your portfolio by creating your own WordPress-powered membership site.

Here's to your prosperity in the coming months! :-)

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"WordPress Powered Membership Site"
First Posted: December 8, 2008 | Filed in: Make Money Online

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