I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the times people have asked me, or posted to discussion forums a request for membership site scripts to start their own paid membership site – and they want something for nothing!
Here’s a recent one…“I want to start a membership site for eBay power sellers, anyone know a script under $100 I can use to get started?”
What! Are you mad man?
Reading this fellow’s information, it seems he has a great deal to offer, some good personal experience and it’s definitely a hot market – all of this means there is very BIG potential to earn significant money with such an idea…so it begs the question…
Do you really want to build a $100K membership site with thousands of members based on a $100 script?
Don’t get me wrong, there are some decent scripts out there and just because something is more expensive (and in some cases MUCH more expensive) doesn’t automatically make it better, but jeez louise, understand you are investing in an underlying system that you will build your online personal furtune with in the next couple of years.
When I researched the membership site script and software solutions for InfoMarketersZone, my business plan showed a $100K business opportunity in a relatively short period of time – and to accomplish that I needed lots of flexibility, high reliability, strong support, features that help me organize masses of written and multimedia information into simple, usable formats and lots of communication tools such as surveys, forums, blogs, etc…
Membership Site Selection Case StudyÂ
We did weeks of research because I knew how difficult it would be to change systems once you have your first few hundred members – our research involved combing through months of reviews and discussion forums for comments, working through free demos and trials, talking personally to the developers of the system, talking directly to references, testing the support systems and more.
In the end, we decided on Membergate for our solution – and it turns out 1.5 years later to have been 110% the correct decision.
Even still, there have been dozens of support issues, lots of software updates, a definite learning curve and product suggestions along the way – mostly because I demand that it fit my business model. Happily, the response has been nothing short of amazing – I can’t even imagine nearing this level of satisfaction with most of the other $100+ scripts and software out there.
So – please, whatever you do as you search for your own membership script or membership software, follow these simple tips:
1. Have a business forecast worked out – project your membership and understand how much you will bring in with your membership site – if you are in a space where a membership site makes sense, then even a few thousand dollar investment will seem tiny compared to the profit you can earn.
2. Understand what you will be adding to your membership site – if there will be allot of content, then make sure the system you decide on has strong content management capabilities. Believe me, things can get very confusing in a hurray if you are posting several pieces of content each week.
3. Be careful regarding how they interact with payment processors. Operating membership sites means that you have lots of confusing billing issues – recurring billing (likely at different levels), affiliate payment calculations on recurring billing, an optional 1-time payment fee, renewals, cancellations, reinstatements (after credit cards fail and another must be added), etc…Also – you want to be careful about who processes your payments. Many third party payment processors are great for one-time ebook or infoproduct sales, but when you consider a recurring membership site customer who will be with you for years, it may make more sense to have better control over that customer through your own merchant account. Banks don’t tend to disappear, whereas payment processers have in the past – and then how do you get your customer back?
I don’t want to harp on the point, but imagine having 1000 members all under a combination of recurring billing plans (some monthly, some quarterly, some annually) at potentially different price points over time – then your payment processor decides to change the rules, or worse, go out of business altogether! Can you even imagine trying to make sense of all this and get your customers to signup all over again on their particular plans? Not on your life, you can literally kiss your membership site business goodbye for a few years until you could build it all back – can you say disaster?
4. Understand what it really takes to operate a money-making membership site online. Recurring profits are great, it should be something that many online businesses strive to achieve but with that comes a responsibility and quite a drain on your time and resources.
It’s one thing to spend a month developing an ebook and then marketing it for months to come, quite another to commit to a weekly content development and management plan required to continue building a successful membership site.
It comes down to this…
Time quickly becomes your #1 concern. A good deal of that time is taken managing content, forum posts, and support questions on your membership site. When your membership site ramps up, you will quickly understand that the difference between a $100 script and a $1,000 system is peanuts compared to the ongoing problems and time wasted – you will more than recover your investment through a well thought out, content management system, it’s should not even be a consideration.
5. Don’t be fooled – It’s near impossible to change after. I’ve seen this copout excuse given by many new membership site owners – well this $100 will do until I get some serious money coming in, then I can change to a new system when the time comes.
Nope! Sorry, not that simple. Most of the investment in any new membership script or system is up-front learning, training, loading of content, integration with payment systems, customization, personalization, and helping your customers get a feel for the system. Not only is a gigantic pain in the ass to have to go through all of this again 6-mionths into your business, from my experience it won’t work! You will lose most of your customers and be right back at square one – having lost all of those paying customers.
Please, whatever you do as you search for your membership script or system – do not make a decision without talking to other membership site owners (I mean serious membership site owners who are making a living from their sites), trying out demos and thinking through your financial plan.
Make sure you consider the leading system online – at least to use as a benchmark against which to compare other systems.
Jeff
Trackbacks/Pingbacks