The Devil is in the Detail of Setting up Your Membership Site.

Anybody that has created a membership site will tell you that it is no easy task. There are so many little things that you have to keep in mind. Even if you make use of the best software solution there are still lots of things that need your attention. And I am not talking about the design and layout of the system. That will be the least of your problems.

First you have to decide what type of membership it will be. Will you have only a free membership and monetize it with back-end sales or will it be a paid membership? Will you have a single tier membership or multi-level? Each of these types of membership has it's own pros and cons.

Secondly you have to decide if you are going to allow affiliate promotion of your membership and how you are going to handle it. Will you offer a single tier affiliate system or multi-tier? What percentage commission will you offer?

Thirdly and most importantly you have to make up your mind about the content you will offer to your members. Will you make use of PLR content or are you going to create the content yourself? This last option can be a daunting task to keep up with month after month. Or would you concentrate on providing software and scripts for your members?

As you can see it is not something that can be accomplished overnight and many days of long hours can be your cross to carry. Then only do we come to the detail. Say you have decided to offer an affiliate program. Do you offer your affiliates promotional material or a tracking system for their ad campaigns? If you can, it will make their life so much easier and you will see better results. Will you password protect the content and how will you handle your customers login details? Will you send it by email or will it be displayed on the download page?

There are several options for the distribution of the content. Will you offer only personal use of it or will you allow resale rights? And what about Master Resale Rights or even Private Label Rights? Do you have the means to re-brand reports, e-books or even software? These are basic things that you need if you want to go the viral way. That is to make content available that will entice your members to distribute it quickly to earn good income but at the same time it will give you exposure for your membership and other back-end offers.

One of the best pieces of advice I discovered in my research of memberships is to offer Wholesale Memberships. This offer will allow your JV partner to sell a predetermined number of your memberships for their own account. This will immediately build your numbers substantially and although you do not make any money directly, you will have the opportunity to bring your up-sell offers to proven buyers. Your JV partner will be happy to promote the site because they can easily earn a substantial monthly income without having any headaches about support and delivery of content. To sweeten the pot you can even offer them a Platinum upgrade for that matter. This will enable them to promote your site even better when they see everything that you have to offer.

The main objective should always be to deliver just quality content and if you can find or create original material it will always be in high demand. The cost of your membership should be about 25% of the value of the content. An easy way to determine the value is to break it down in chunks. For example the cost of an original article, like this one you are reading, can be about $7 while that of a 10-15 page report can be about $15. Say you can create an e-book of 35 pages for $50 complete with e-cover. Now add a sales page, order page and thank you page for $200. If you supply 10 articles, 3 reports, an e-book with complete sales page then the total value would be about $365. You can then easily charge $91 per month and it would be good value for money.

Now what is the point of this article.

I went through this whole process the past few weeks and just wanted to share some facts with you. If you would like to take a look at what I was able to put together it would be my pleasure to show you around. The site have not yet been officially launched seeing that it is still being beta tested but you can take a free tour. Any feedback will be much appreciated and if it is of value to me it might just mean that you earn yourself a Gold level membership. Testimonials will be placed prominently on the sales page and you can add your photo, audio, video and URL.

Sign up at no cost now and you will find our Forum under help in the top menu. Post your remarks there or send me a support email if you are interested in a wholesale deal.

Here is the link to take a free tour: http://mattmare.ws/suggests/freetour

Carpe Diem - Seize the day!

Matt Maré
Founder of CapturePros.com