Tools For Successful Membership Site

There are certain types of tools that you will need to build and operate your membership website. There may also be tools that you need to make available to your site members as well.

Obviously, you need a domain name and web hosting services. The domain name should state what the topic of the site is, so do not select this until you’ve read the section on niche membership sites.

When it comes to web hosting, however, you have numerous choices. You may not require a great deal of disk space, depending on the content that you have in mind, but you will most likely require a great deal of bandwidth, depending on the number of members you expect to have, and how they will use the site.

On the other hand, you do need a great deal of both bandwidth and disk space if you will have a lot of media, such as audio and video on the site. Consider the content that you will be using carefully before selecting a web hosting package. Also, since your members will be paying for access, the web hosting company should have at least a 99% uptime guarantee, and you do want it to move fast – so consider a dedicated server, as opposed to shared hosting.

You will need software to either create or manage your membership website. This comes in two flavors, basically. First, there is software that simply manages. It creates the doorways to your membership site, and handles billing for you. It may do numerous other things as well, but as for the actual pages that make up your membership site - this management software does not provide that.

Then there is software that includes all of the bells and whistles. It will not only help you to easily create your pages, it will also provide overall management and make maintenance much easier.

Features that you may want to look for include:

The ability to bill customers, automatically
Automated signups and expirations
The ability to create various subscription types
Logging of IP numbers, so that when it becomes obvious that someone is sharing their account information with non-members, that account is disabled.
The ability for the administrator to email members
Automated password recovery
The ability to add content pages, with the use of preset templates.

You will also want an autoresponder. One may be included in your membership software – but make sure that you have one so that you can easily communicate with your members.

Obviously, you need a way to accept payments, and a way to bill members automatically each month. Most membership software and management software have this ability, but will only work with certain services. Find out what they are.

If your membership software does not handle content pages for you, you will need an HTML editor, and an FTP client to upload the pages that you create. You may also need a graphics editor to create or edit graphics.

The tools that you make available to your site members depend on the niche that you have chosen. For example, a diet membership site may include a BMI calculator or a calorie calculator. Think about the types of tools that your members might appreciate, remembering that everything that you provide adds value to the membership.

You may be able to purchase a license for existing tools, or have new tools created. To have tools created for your members, visit a site such as Script Lance or Rent-A-Coder to find freelance programmers to get the work done. You will be amazed at just how affordable this is!

To work with these sites, you simply sign up as a buyer and post your bid request. The sellers on the site will make bids on your bid request, and you should be able to look at their profiles and their ratings. You then choose the one that you think will do the best job for the money, and the funds for that job are then put into escrow through the site.

Once the job is completed to your satisfaction, you approve the work, and the funds are released to the seller. If you are not satisfied, the funds come back to you. Make sure that you discuss how copyrights and documentation will be handled before you award a bidder with your work!

You may find that you need additional tools as you go along. The important thing is that you do indeed obtain the tools that you need. It really does take money to make money, and even though you have to shell out some funds now for those tools, think of it as the cost of doing business, and just make sure that you keep receipts so that you can deduct it all from your tax bill at the end of the year.

Filed under Membership Sites by Almin