Comments on: Building a Membership Site

By: Georjina

Georjina — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 22:56:16 +0000

Hello Paul,
I’m doing the same thing except in a different market:) My ‘stuck point’ in putting it together has been the same as yours…allowing founding members to dictate the amount of content and pace. As for the affiliate program, because this is going to require sales materials, graphics, etc at some point I’ll likely include it but for a new site I want to see what my results are.

My question is how you will determine the pace? Will you use a survey for members or simply send the first, say 100 members, an email.

By: Seamus Anthony Ennis

Seamus Anthony Ennis — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Hey paul,

Have you done or are you doing the TeachingSells course? It is precisely about building websites like this, co-run by Brian Clark of Copyblogger fame. It’s great, I did it for the first trial three months and although I am no developer so I didn’t need to go further, it did give me some awesome insites into the potential for online course content delivery. Best of luck with the project

By: Elijah

Elijah — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:23:21 +0000

And stick with WordPress… It’s by far the best CMS bang for your buck!

By: Elijah

Elijah — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:20:10 +0000

Paul, I’m with you on both points you asked for feedback on…

I find programs with an evolutionary structure will allow you to measure the speed and effectiveness of your “lessons” and “assignments”. Combining this with the founding members approach will allow you maximum monitoring before the hoards of anxious members come rolling in, as I know they will!

The early affiliate system always works well when driving a high quality membership service. If you look at guys like Frank Kern, who will build an insane amount of hype through early affiliates, like he did with his Mass Control system, It benefits you to have those select affiliates out there getting their PPC and article campaigns running to promote the launch of your membership site. The downside to this (or the downside of great results) would be if the early affiliates did so well that on launch day you had 8 zillion people sign up and everything overloads and comes crashing down!

I’ve heard horror stories, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed with 24-48 hours (worst case scenario).

Great post!

By: Simon Stapleton

Simon Stapleton — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:01:42 +0000

Hi Paul it sounds like you’ve done your research! A platform I have used before is Moodle, but this is a bit old now and lacks some of the features you mentioned, but has stacks of functionality for online tutoring and managing the learning process. Maybe Moodle and aMember can be integrated – I don’t know without trying it!

By: Lucy Lopez

Lucy Lopez — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:21:30 +0000

PS And yes, I was disappointed with the themes/templates that are offered, which is why I tried to modify them or create my own without any success I shall have to learn html or else….

By: Lucy Lopez

Lucy Lopez — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:18:20 +0000

Paul, I am glad that you realize how complicated Site Build It can be for the likes of me. It is one of those ironies I think, that I had to spend that money in order to help me recognize how serious I was about blogging in my area of interest/passion AND making money through it. Even if I don’t recover that money through my SBI site, I believe I will through the other blogs I have since been working on using the information/lessons from SBI. Lucy

By: Paul Piotrowski

Paul Piotrowski — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:36:35 +0000

@Lucy: I have looked at the Site Build It package from the “outside” as I haven’t bought it, but from my “outsider” perspective it looks way too complicated for my liking.

Meaning, as a programmer I’m sure I would be able to figure out everything they offer, but for the average person I think it’s too complicated. My membership site is going to focus on helping people leverage the power of WordPress to build sites. I think WordPress is an awesome platform and you don’t have to mess around with HTML trying to hack together a website that looks like something from 1998.

The founding members would simply be the first X number of people. Like the first 100-300 members for example. Essentially it would be the first group of people going through the program.

By: Lucy Lopez

Lucy Lopez — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:27:25 +0000

Hi Paul! I commend you on the research and study that you have been putting into what is likely to be an extremely useful aid for so many people. I know that I could benefit from something like this.

I want to mention SiteBuild It as a possible model for study. I bought the package but am not having much joy with the technical aspect. I do not know (how to use) html to get my pages to look just the way I want them.n However, the reason I mention it is because it does have many of the features you’ve mentioned here although there are a few significant differences. I am sure you know about it already but just thought I would mention it just in case you don’t.

The idea of the founding members is a really good one. How would you select these people? Would you go for a cross-section of people with various levels of skills they already have? Or would you go for a homogeneous group of people with the lowest skill level?

As for Affiliate sign-ups before the launch of your Lightworkers Learning site, I think it’s a great idea too. Speaking for myself, if the method of payment could be offered in a variety of ways (including deferred payment), it might make it (more) affordable. This is just a thought.

Hope you find this useful and once again, thank you for making this one of your goals!

Lucy