Quick & Free Membership Site

Posted in Wordpress How To

Recently, I’ve been thinking about putting some of my ebooks online  as well as having them as a digital download.    As I’ve said in recent posts it is a lot easier for me to update things as WordPress changes doing it online rather than making changes to the ebook and then sending it out to people again.   It’s also another way of adding additional things to the product quickly and easily.

Last year I updated my book WP Quick Cash and decided that it would be the first product that I put online.

But, I had a problem with that :)

People have already purchased the book and have already downloaded it.   Normally, if you have an online product then when people purchase it they sign up to a membership site system where they can create a user name and password to access the content.

Of course, I could email all the buyers and ask them to sign up at the site but that is making them do WORK!  I want to make it easy for people to access up to date content hence my reason for putting it online in the first place!

The Solution Is Easy

To solve my problem I just need a generic username and password that everyone can use that I can email out to them.   Problem solved, existing buyers don’t need to sign up for anything and wait for admission to the content they can just click the link and away they go.

Fancy Pants Plugins

I have a lot of fancy pants wordpress plugins that do all sorts of things including creating membership sites but do I need to use any of these?  No. Rather than using any of these what I opted to use was a free plugin called Password Protector by Robert Plank.    This plugin does exactly what I want – that is it allows me to create a generic username and password for everyone to use for this site.   So, no need to dig out the fancy plugins for this purpose :)   You do have to opt in to Robert’s list to get the plugin but that’s worth while.

The plugin is also super simple to use.  Just upload it and create the username and password you want to use for the site.  Simple.    No-one can access the site without completing those details (including you).

Why Not Start A Membership Site?

Membership sites are a great idea because they bring about a continuity payment that can certainly be satisfying to your bank balance but they don’t have to be the traditional monthly payment.   You can have membership sites that are weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual or lifetime payments just to name a few.    The membership site that I have just set up to protect the content of  my book is based on a one time fee for the book – the online content for the book is just a bonus to keep it up to date.

Of course, you don’t even need to set up a membership site at all to have your own continuity program.    I was once a member of a site that delivered an article related to my niche every day by autoresponder.    How simple is it to set up a site like that?   Just grab all your content for a year and pre-load your autoresponder :)

Everyone usually has an idea in their head for a membership site where they can offer some continuous value for a fee to someone.   Think of some of the things that you know about that people would gladly pay a fee for up to date information on.   If your mind is a blank then look at Amazon and Magazine.com and see what sort of books people are buying in different niches.     Books that are especially helpful for discovering niche membership site ideas are the “Dummies” series of books.     You can also bet your bottom dollar that if there is a magazine on a niche then that is a worthwhile niche digging down into for your own ideas.    For example, you might find that a lot of people are interested in fishing (they are!).   Rather than do a generic fishing membership site think about what you could offer to a micro niche within that area.    For example, I know of a membership site that charges members a monthly fee to tell them each month where the hot fishing spots are in one Canadian location.

Now, once you have got your membership site choose how to deliver it.  This is the bit that people tend to get stuck on but you don’t need to.   You can choose the free route by using the password protector plugin I told you about (you will need to buy a domain and some web hosting) or just set up an autoresponder series.

enjoy

Have fun with WP :)