mat t hewwo o dward.co .uk http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/start-pro fitable-membership-site-step-step/

Jason Chesters

How To Start A Profitable Membership Site Step By Step

Matthew Woodward - Tried & Tested SEOOn 17.04.14, In Tutorials, by

Membership sites can be a great way to earnmoney online. The greatest benef it of running yourown membership site is the recurring payments thatyou receive every month!

Once you have established a good membership base then you can start to earn a lot of money f rom yourbusiness!

What you will learn

Why membership sites are so prof itable

How to create a membership site f ree

How to drive traf f ic to your site

How to get new members

How to keep your members happy

My successf ul business model revealed

So who am I to tell you how to set up and run your own membership site?

Well, my name is Jason Chesters and I run DoSEOyourself .com. For the past 10 years I have been making andrunning membership sites online, and these have served as my main source of income.

Last year alone my membership sites brought in over £108,000 (around $172,000).

The Benef its Of A Membership Site

There are a ton of benef its to starting a membership site or adding one to your current online business.

Here are just a f ew of them:

Increased Revenue

As I already pointed out, the f inancial benef its of membership sites are massive. It ’s like selling a product, andthen getting paid again and again each and every month!

And that’s without having to worry about driving more traf f ic to your site.

Imagine having just 100 members paying you $40 a month!…. Yes, that’s $4000 a month. A steady stream ofincome every month is what most Internet marketers strive f or.

Build loyalty

When you sell a one of f product you never really get the chance to build a relationship with your customer. Thelast interaction with them is probably the invoice you send to them!

If on the other hand a customer becomes a member, you are providing a service and providing new inf ormationto that member on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Doing this builds loyalty and respect.

This makes it much easier to promote new services and new products in the f uture. I still sell new products tothe same people that I did 10 years ago!

Now that is a solid f oundation f or a successf ul business!

No Physical Product

Almost all membership sites provide inf ormation as their service. Inf ormation is FREE. It does not cost anythingto provide it, no shipping f ees and no stock to purchase.

You get to keep almost 100% of the prof its!

Lots Of Free Traff ic

One of the benef its you probably didn’t think of is a consistent f low of traf f ic. Take a look at this screenshotof one of my current membership sites….

Over 29,000 visits and 6000+ unique visitors!!

This site is not ranked f or anything; it picks up hardly any search engine traf f ic.

I have no social media accounts linked to this site and it is not promoted anywhere else other than one of myown sites – which I’ll be explaining more about later.

Step By Step Guide To Setting Up a Membership Site For Free

I am going to presume that you already have a website, or you know how to set up a website using WordPress.

If not you can get a domain & hosting really cheap to get started with.

It ’s important that your site is based on the WordPress Platf orm as we are going to be using a membershipplugin to take care of all of the back end stuf f that is required f or the running of membership sites.

JustHost of f ers a one click installer f or WordPress if you get stuck.

In your WP dashboard, go to ‘Plugins’ > Add new

In the search box type: ‘S2member’ and click search

Now select the S2member plugin and Install it on your site:

I have f ound S2member to be an excellent plugin. They of f er a completely free version and a paid version, Ihave f ound that the f ree version is more than enough f or the majority of site owners!

The capabilit ies are superb and it of f ers many f unctionalit ies including easy payment integration with theleading payment gateways (Paypal, Clickbank, Google wallet, Authorize.net etc…).

Now that you have S2member installed, I am going to run through exactly how to set it up correctly.

How S2Member Works

It ’s important that you understand how the sof tware works. So here is a brief description on how S2memberhandles everything!

Step 1

When your visitors decide that they wish to join, they will be taken to a ‘membership options’ page (I usually callthis page, ‘join’ or ‘subscribe’).

This is where you contain details such as the price of your product or service, and the actual payment buttons(PayPal button) f or them to click on to ‘subscribe’.

Step 2

When the visitor clicks the ‘PayPal’ button they will be taken to the PayPal website where they check that thedetails are correct and agree to the terms.

Once they have f inalised the payment they are returned to your site where you provide them, or of f er them ausername and password of their choice, which enables them to login to the member’s area!

The new member is also sent an email automatically, which contains instructions.

Step 3

Once the new member has completed this, they will then be allowed to login. The f irst page that they come to isthe ‘Login welcome’ page.

From here you can then direct your members to other areas of your site that are protected by S2member.

If at any stage a ‘non member’ tries to access any of your ‘protected’ pages, they will automatically be re-directed to the ‘membership options’ page!!

Step 4

S2member handles this whole process automatically. You will also be re-billed every cycle until the membercancels their subscription.

S2member even handles this f or you. For example, if your member cancels their subscription on June 7th, theyhave actually paid up until June 25th.

S2member will realise this and sync with PayPal so it allows the user to still be able to login up until June 25th.Af ter that they will no longer have access to your protected content!

Sett ing Up Your Membership Site

The f irst thing you must do is create 2 new pages called:

1- ‘Subscribe’ – This is your membership options page.

2 – ‘Members’ – This is the f irst page that new members will see.

Once you have done this we can set everything up. Here is everything you need to do:

> In your dashboard, click the S2member tab

> Click on ‘General Options’

You will be presented with this screen:

We’ll now work through each tab to conf igure the settings…..

Deactivate safeguards… Select ‘YES’

Security Subscription Key… Click ‘auto generate’ and then copy and paste your unique key into notepad andsave it somewhere saf e!!

Local Host WAMP/MAMP Developers… This does not af f ect you unless you are setting up s2member in alocal host, so just ignore this

CSS/JS Lazy loading… Leave this on the def ault setting

s2member Security badge… This is optional. I don’t bother with it but you may wish to display a securitybadge!

Email Configuration… This is important. Be sure to enter the email address that you want associate with yourmembership site, enter the ‘f rom name’ and your ‘email support’ email address if it is dif f erent.

I usually leave the ‘New email user conf iguration’ set to ‘NO’

Open registration…. If you want to of f er a Free level of membership then select ‘YES’ if you are only of f eringpaid levels of membership then enter ‘NO’. I’ll explain more about this later!

Membership Levels/Labels… This is where you set your dif f erent levels of membership. You can re-namethem to anything you like. I will be covering this topic later in the post and it ’s not something you have to set upstraight away!

Login/Registration Design… S2member uses the standard WP login f orms, but you have the option to

customise the login page to f it the design of your site! there are lots of options here and it ’s really down toyour pref erence. You can add a logo, change f ont, size, background colour etc.

Registration/Profile Field options…. I select ‘YES’ f or all options, but if you pref er the user to have an ‘autogenerated’ password then you can choose this option:

Login welcome page… Remember the 2 pages we created at the beginning? Well this is where you select you‘Members’ page.

This tells the S2member plugin that your Members page is protected f rom none members and it also re-directsall members to this page af ter they login!

Membership Option page… This is where we select the ‘subscribe’ page that we created earlier! This is thepage that displays your payment buttons and is the page that ‘non members’ are directed to when trying toaccess a protected members page!

Member Profile Modification – This is optional. You can allow your members to edit certain criteria in theirprof ile.

URL shortening service preference… I just stick with the def ault option which is ‘t inyurl’

HIT ‘SAVE ALL CHANGES’

ok, you now have the f oundations of your membership site set up! It ’s now time to set up our payment options.

Set Up PayPal Payment Options

S2member allows us to f ully integrate with our PayPal accounts so that everything is handled seamlessly.

However there are a f ew things you need to set up in S2member and your PayPal account.

I have everything covered right here…..

Click on ‘PayPal options’ in the S2member tab.

As you can see, there are 6 tabs f or us to customise.

PayPal Account Details

If you are using PayPal as a payment option then you will have to f ill out all of the required f ields. You will needyour:

1. PayPal merchant ID

2. Your PayPal email address

3. Your PayPal API username ( In PayPal click >Prof ile >API ACCESS)

4. Your PayPal API password

5. Your PayPal API signature

You will have to access your PayPal account to f ind these details. Once you enter them you will be asked if youwant ‘Developer/Sandbox testing. Make sure you select ‘NO’ when your site is live.

Enable Button Encryption… I always select ‘YES”. This will produce encrypted PayPal buttons, which makes itsaf er f or you!

Enable logging routines… Select ‘NO’. If you ever experience any issues then turn this f eature on and youcan view all of the logs to detect errors!

PayPal IPN Integration… This does not require you to enter any details but you do need to login to yourPayPal account and enable your IPN

>Account prof ile > Instant Payment Notif ication Pref erences > Enter settings and turn IPN ‘ON’

PayPal PDT Identity/Auto-return Integration… Login to your PayPal >Account Prof ile > Website paymentpref erences > Make sure the auto-f eature is turned ON

You will then be shown a PDT token. You have to enter this here:

Sign up confirmation email…. This is already pre-f illed f or you but it allows you to edit the conf irmationemail that will be sent to your new member af ter they have completed payment.

This is usef ul and you should customise it as you wish!

Specif ic Post/Page email… Similar to above except this is f or when your visitors Pay to access a certainpeice of content on your site as a one of f !

They don’t actually become a member. I’ll discuss more about this later!

Automatic EOT behaviour… This is a pretty clever f eature built into S2member. There are a f ew options f oryou to choose f rom but the pre-f illed settings are good!

Basically, this tells S2member to cancel a members account if they cancel their subscription payment, open adispute or have a ref und. This is what makes the whole thing run so easily!

Here are the settings that I use:

Congratulat ions! You just set up a fully funct ioning membership site

Ok, that is all of the required f ields that you need to f ill out f or your membership site f unction properly.

Now you may notice that there are a f ew other tabs that we have not covered, but don’t worry, as we don’t

need to worry about some of these.

There are some extra f eatures that you can f ill in if you are operating a more advanced membership site, f orexample, you can integrate an af f iliate program into the mix!

You can conf igure all sorts of download restrictions if you are selling downloadable products!

Sett ing Up Your Payment Buttons

This is really simple and only takes 2 minutes!

Go to S2member > PayPal buttons

For now we will presume that we have just 1 standard level of membership, and we want to charge $30 permonth, but we also want to of f er a discount to more committed members.

So lets of f er 6 months membership at $150.

Click > PayPal buttons f or level #1 Access

Fill in the options. For our example above, this is how we f ill it in:

As you can see, we are of f ering $30 on a monthly basis! You do have the option to of f er f ree trial periods,new member discounts etc.

Once you have f illed in the options simply hit ‘Generate Button Code’

Copy the code that becomes highlighted and then simply paste this code onto your ‘subscribe’ page that youcreated earlier. It ’s as easy as that!

Now you can create a completely new button f or $150 on a 6 month recurring basis. Generate the button andthen copy/paste it onto your ‘subscribe’ page!

Your options are endless. There are so many dif f erent variations that you can make any payment of f er thatyou wish!

Advanced Membership/Payment Options

The example above is probably the most basic set up you can have.

This is great when starting out, but you f ind that as your site grows, you want to add dif f erent levels ofmembership, or even a pay per post option!

I’ll show you how to set up dif f erent levels of membership:

Lets go back to the > S2member > PayPal Buttons page.

In the RED box I have highlighted the dif f erent possible levels of membership. Let me explain how they work:

In the earlier example we set up a PayPal payment button using the ‘Level 1 Access’ and we were charging $30per month!

Now lets say that you introduced even more great content or a more exclusive service. You can create a newlevel of membership (Level 2 access) and charge more f or this service.

So you could charge $50 per month f or your ‘really top notch’ stuf f !

In the f uture you might introduce a new product or piece of sof tware and you can create a 3rd level of

membership, and you could charge $70 per month.

You see where I’m going here!!

The def ault ‘names’ f or the dif f erent levels of membership are:

1. (Level 1 Access) Bronze

2. (Level 2 Access) Silver

3. (Level 3 Access) Gold

4. (Level 4 Access) Platinum

These names are quite f itt ing and work well, but you can actually call them anything you like!

Ok, so lets say that we have set up the 3 dif f erent levels of membership like I showed you above.

This is how your members would be able to see your content, because s2member does a great job of applyingrestrictions to areas of your site.

This is how it would work-

Level 3 Member ($70 per month) would have access to > ALL level 3, level 2 and level 1 content

Level 2 Member ($50 per month) would have access to > level 2 and level 1 content only

Level 1 Member ($30 per month) would have access to > JUST level 1 content

As you can see, this can come in very handy and it ’s extremely easy to set up! It is even possible f or existingmembers to upgrade or downgrade to a dif f erent membership level without taking out a new subscription!

Pay Per Post/Page Option

This is the tab that I have highlighted in Green, and this gives you the option to charge your visitors to view acertain page or post on your site as a one of f f ee.

The visitor does not become a member as this f eature works totally independent of the membership levels, butthey do gain access to 1 piece of content.

There are many instances in which this f eature is usef ul.

You could write a great ‘How To’ guide and then cut of f the content half way through so that your visitor has topay you to unlock the remainder of the guide!!

You could just save your really good articles and charge visitors a small f ee to view them!

So here’s how to set them up:

In Green I have highlighted the ‘PayPal pay specif ic post/page buy now button’. Click on this tab

As you will see, this is the same as the previous ‘PayPal button’ set up, except this t ime you must choosewhich Page or Post you would like to restrict!

To do this you must go to:

S2member > Restriction options >Specif ic post/page access > You then need to enter the page ID of the

posts/pages you want to charge f or!

Basically this ‘restricts’ the page and stops people viewing the page who have not paid!

Once you have done this, go back to the ’PayPal pay specif ic post/page buy now button’ tab and f ill in thedetails like we did previously.

Entering your price, description and currency. You also have to select the post/page that you are creating thebutton f or. You will see a drop down list, simply click on that and select the page!

Click > Generate Button and copy the code

All done!

Setting up ‘pay per posts’ is really easy and quick! This is a very powerf ul f eature of S2member and I’m sureyou can think of some great ways of using it.

How To Set Up Your ‘restricted’ Content

Now that we have our membership site set up, it ’s t ime put it all together and add ‘restriction’ rules to all of thepages, posts and categories that we want f or ‘members only’.

If you have just 1 level of membership, then you simply assign ‘#level 1 access’ to all of the content that youwant hidden f or members only.

The easiest way to do it is to go to the posts or pages you want to use, and click edit.

You will notice in the right side bar that there is a options box f or S2member:

Simply click on the drop down menu and select:#level 1

Make sure to click ‘update’ af ter you have donethis to implement the changes.

What this has just done is:

a) Made this post/page viewable to payingmembers ONLY. They can only access thiscontent by logging in.

b) It restricts all ‘non members’ f rom seeing thiscontent, and if they do try to access it,S2member will re-direct them to your ‘subscribe’page.

Allocat ing mult iple levels of membership

Just as we have done above, except this t imeyou have to choose which content you want f ordif f erent levels of members.

#Level 1 being the lowest and #Level 4 the highest.Simply select which level you want f or each of yourpost/pages.

That’s it ! you now have a fully funct ionalmembership site ready to accept new

members and payments!

This is the basic set up and it works very well.

How To Build Your Membership Base

One of the toughest tasks that most site ownersf ace is actually building a membership base ofpeople willing to pay you a f ee every month!

Don’t worry; I’ll share with youeverything I know about getting payingsubscribers and how to keep them f ormonths and even years!

The key is to build trust with yourmember

But how do you do that bef ore gettingthem to sign up? Easy….

You give them a Free membership!! Youcan either:

1. Of f er a Free trial, say f or 1 week.

2. Of f er a f ree level of membership

Or, use the method that I pref er….

3) Of f er a FREE membership service on a dif f erent site, but in the same niche!

You can either do this on 1 site or like I do and have a completely separate site f or building a f ree membershipbase, or in other terms, an email list.

I actually describe how I built one of my lists to over 36,000 subscribers which made $172,000 prof it last yearalone!!

Method 1 - Offer a Free Trial

People love to try things out bef ore actually jumping in and purchasing.

One of the f eatures of S2member is the ability to set up a payment option that gives the subscriber a trialperiod, and unless they cancel within the trial period, they are then automatically billed at the end of their trialand their paid membership begins.

Your of f er may look something like this:

“Free for 7 days, then £19.99 a month”

I showed you have to set this up previously. The PayPal button options with S2member are endless and youcan create all sorts of scenarios!

THE ADVANTAGES of using this method is that you greatly increase your sign up rate. Providing yourinf ormation/service is good, you will gain a lot more members than if you didn’t of f er a f ree trial.

Method 2 - Offer A Free Level of Membership

Another great f eature of S2member is that it gives you the option to use dif f erent levels of membership, as wehave already discussed.

Subscriber (When a member cancels, they become a subscriber and are denied access to all paidcontent)

Bronze

Silver

Gold

Platinum

This allows you to of f er dif f erent levels of membership and charge dif f erent amounts depending on dif f erentlevels of service you of f er!

This gives you the opportunity to of f er 1 FREE level, and 1 or more multiple levels.

How To Set It Up

Go to > General Options > Membership levels/labels

Here you can re-name your levels, #Level 1 is called (Bronze) so re-name this to something like: ‘Free Access’or whatever your pref erence.

Obviously this will be your lowest level of membership. Now all of the posts/pages that you want available to‘Free Members’ you just select #Level 1 access.

You can do this on the actual ‘edit view’ of the page like I showed you earlier, or you can go to > Restrictionoptions and select the page ID’s.

Now this means that all members f rom your lowest level (Free Access) members & upwards will be able toaccess these pages!

For your paid members, Re-name #Level 2 access to something of your choice ‘Paid member’, ‘elite member’‘whatevermemberyouwant’

Now these will be your paid members and every post/page that you only want accessible to paying membersyou simply add the appropriate restriction option to that page.

Non members can’t access any of your restricted content

Free members can only view certain pages which you have specif ically chosen

Paid members can view all content on your site

Optional… you can create higher levels of membership as we have already discussed

Method 3 - Build Your Membership Base On A Separate Site

This is the f oundation of my business model and it ’s something you should seriously consider doing!

All of the big sites do it including all of the big earners online. Even of f line businesses have started to do it.

I was in the Ralph Lauren Shop yesterday and when I went to the checkout they had an iPad set up on every tilland they ask every customer f or their email address in return f or 20% of f vouchers!!

Email marketing is powerf ul, trust me!!

If you can build a f ree membership base then you can set up new paid membership sites and have real payingmembers anytime you like:

Why Is This My Favourite Method?

You only have to f ocus your attention on building traf f ic to 1 site:

- Every time you launch a new membership site in that niche, you get paid subscribers f rom day 1 without anyother source of promotion!

- Every time you release a new product or service, or want to promote an af f iliate product, you already have aclient base to sell too.

- Loyalty and trust. This is the most important f actor. By of f ering a separate ‘f ree service’ you get the chanceto build trust with your subscribers. Help them out when they need it, give them good quality ‘f ree content’.Of f er them something of value f or nothing!

When you have done this you have just massively increased your chances of gaining paid members!

Why does Matt earn great af f iliate prof its? Because he provides us with great inf ormation f or f ree, including anumber of detailed tutorials.

He has our trust, theref ore we are much more likely to purchase products that he recommends!!

Build a big subscriber base and then build mini sites around it

How To Build Your Free Subscriber List, Traf f ic & SEO

Building an email list requires targeted traf f ic to your site. There are a number of ways to drive traf f ic to yoursite and Matt has it covered right here on his blog.

You can f ollow Matt’s Buzz Bundle review on how he drives traf f ic to his blog.

There is also this article on how to steal your competitors visitors.

If you want to take the SEO route then you can f ollow Matts Tiered Link Building Video’s or my guide on ‘Howto build a private blog network‘, which is something that will boost your rankings!

If you have f unds available you can always take the ‘paid’ route and the most popular Pay Per Click sources areGoogle Adwords and Facebook Ads. Bef ore diving into paid traf f ic you must be certain that your landing pageconverts well.

The main purpose of your landing page is to capture the visitors email address. So make this as easy aspossible f or them!

Give them a reason to sign up. Of f er them something of value. Try to spark excitement, or curiosity!

For example…. “I have something really amazing for you…. But I can’t show it to you right here!! Enter your emailaddress and join me on the other side”

Not great I know, but this sparks curiosity with the reader and they are more likely to sign up!

Building an email list is a totally new post in itself so I’ve only touched on the basics right here.

How To Keep Your Members Happy

Building a f ree subscriber base and then getting them converted to ‘paid members’ is only half of the job.

If your members are going to keep paying you every month you better make sure to provide them with valuable,up to date, and f resh inf ormation!!

There are dif f erent types of membership site that you can create, and these are the most popular, and usually

the most prof itable:

Software Subscript ion

One of the most popular types of membership site is a Sof tware license based site where you pay a monthlyor yearly f ee to access certain sof tware!

There are lot of these kind of sites in the SEO and Internet marketing niche and you have probably comeacross a f ew of them already. Examples are Aweber, Link-Assistant and Link Emperor.

To keep your members subscribed, you need to make sure that your sof tware does exactly what the userwants. Customer support is an important f actor along with regular sof tware updates!

Teacher/Mentor

There are a lot of membership sites that of f er tuit ion or advice on specif ic subjects.

If you are going to run this kind of site you could either update it every month with new content and tutorials,or you could have all of your content pre-written and automatically send it out to members via an auto-responder!

I’m sure many of us would be happy to pay to access Matts Blog f or the quality of inf ormation he provides!

Another good example would be to of f er a course.. ‘How to build a successf ul online business in 12 months’

Or, ‘How I built a top 100 blog in 12 months and how you can do it too’

Service

Of f ering a service such as Forex tips, sports betting tips, stock and shares etc. are a good way to run amembership site because the member is paying you f or updated inf ormation.

Provide good tips and your members will keep paying you!

Adult

Probably something you don’t want to get involved in but the adult industry is set up perf ectly f or membershiptype-sites, as you may have already guessed

Community

If you have built up a really good quality community then you could charge your visitors to become exclusivemembers! we see this with some of the top f orums online.

You can pay to access an ‘elite’ group of people

Although there are lots of dif f erent types of membership sites, building long term members boils down to onesimple rule: Of f er a great service!!

Just give your members inf ormation that they could not f ind elsewhere and solve problems to their solutions!The majority of searches on Google are f rom people search f or a solution to a problem.

Give these people the answer and you are on your way to a successf ul business.

Wrapping It Up

This post has become f airly long, and this is because I didn’t want to leave anything out. Starting or adding amembership site to your business can reap massive rewards!

If you have a lot of inf ormation to of f er then this maybe a great opportunity f or you to boost your income.

When I f irst started out there was no ‘membership sof tware’ or plugins like S2member, everything had to bedone manually.

These days everything can be set up to run automatically, and as I’ve just shown you, creating a membershipsite can be f ree!!