Monetization

There are lots of ways to make money online and over the last several years I’ve used most of them. But I’ve learned that not all of them produce consistent income results. Some months are better than others for ad revenue. Affiliate sales are not always predictable. And direct sales of products or services is still a process of selling one sale at a time no matter how you dress it up.

That got me thinking. What I really need is a system that produces income every month beyond the initial sale. What I really need to do is to build a membership site where I can offer a targeted audience a product or service in exchange for recurring monthly payments.

So, that’s exactly what I’m doing now. I’ve been using WordPress and a handful of WordPress Plugins to build my own membership site and over the next several articles I’m going to share that experience with you. When it’s all finished, I’ll even give you a sneak peek inside so you can see the finished product.

Before I started putting the site together though, I sat down and came up with a list of features that I thought a membership site should offer. Here’s my list.

1. Salesletter
2. Payment Method
3. Registration Method
4. Membership Management System
5. Member Level Controls
6. Member Dashboard
7. Lesson Delivery Method
8. Member Forums
9. Protected Download Area
10. Email Communications

Feel free to use this list as a starter for planning your own membership site. You can add on to the list or combine some of these items together to create a shorter version, but the idea is to define what you want the membership site to do and how you envision it doing it.

For me, it means I know I’ll need a sales letter to present the offer to prospective buyers. Once they decide to buy, I need to have a way for them to pay me that will support monthly subscriptions. Once payment has been made, the new member needs to be registered in the system and they need to be assigned to a membership level that will give them instant access to course materials, member forums, download areas, etc.

After registration, the new member needs to be redirected to the member dashboard where they will see a one time welcome message that introduces them to the program, familiarizes them with menu options, and let’s them know how they can get account support, if they have questions. New members should also get a confirmation email that includes their login details in case they forget their new login.

Once the member clicks through to the actual member dashboard, they will be able to see their first set of lessons along with links to the member forums, downloads area, are the resource directory. The only thing I couldn’t fully integrate into WordPress was a support ticket system. There aren’t a lot of WordPress plugins available for this at the moment, so I opted to use contact forms as a way to provide membership support.

Ultimately, my goal will be to automate or delegate as much of the daily operations as possible so I can focus on content and community. For now though, that’s my list of what a membership site should offer.

In the next series of articles I’ll show you exactly what each of these pieces look like.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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