Did that sound…. spammy?

Probably.

But, give me a minute. Because, what I have to tell you is indeed the real deal.

See, there are two ways to go with affiliate marketing as a blogger:

#1 – Build an authority blog and go big.

(This is the way I do it, and what I usually teach.)

or…

#2 – Build an ARMY of smaller blogs targeting tight little niches.

Even though I don’t do this personally (yet), the truth is…

It DOES work.

It doesn’t involve you being an authority. In fact, often your name isn’t even attached to the sites you build.

I have a friend locally here in the Tampa Bay area who generates his income online in this way.

His name is Ryan Magin. He comes mostly from the fitness niche.

I knew Ryan before he started hitting in big with affiliate blogging. In fact, I remember him when he was selling a little DVD on BMX biking. We were meeting with a bunch of dudes at a Panera Bread and, in the middle of the meetup, Ryan excuses himself, goes outside, and does a live Ustream broadcast over Panera’s free wifi.

And he sold some stuff and made some money!

Today, Ustream doesn’t factor into what he does. Things are more automated now, and he’s scaled up like crazy.

But, that story shows… he’s a hustler. He does what it takes.

So, I’ve invited Ryan to come do a webinar with me. I want him to tell you more about what he does…

And how.

And, he sure does have an interesting story on how get got to this point.

What’s Working Now – Secrets From The World Of Affiliate Niche Blogging
(click that to RSVP and save your spot)

On the webinar you will learn…

• What makes a super affiliate and how to think to succeed as an affiliate marketer in todays ever changing IM world
• How to find proper money making keywords that will make you sales for year to come.
• Simple SEO tricks that will have your sites ranking in Google in no time flat
• A little known secret that all super affiliates do to cash in from affiliate products daily (most fail at this miserably)

I even convinced Ryan to do A live Q & A at the end of the call to help you guys start profiting today from your blogs.

Make sure you sign up for this webinar.

Even if you don’t know if you’ll be available when we do it live, be sure to RSVP since I’ll be making sure to give you guys priority to the recording.

One more time…

What’s Working Now – Secrets From The World Of Affiliate Niche Blogging
(click that to RSVP and save your spot)

See ya there.

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However, today, I want to tell you about something which I think truly is a no-brainer. Because the cost is FREE and yet it can make you money.

I want to tell you about VigLink.

VigLink does one thing and does it very well. It is an ad network (essentially) that works by turning any outgoing links to merchants into affiliate links automatically. It is totally hands-off. It doesn’t even modify the appearance of the link on the site. It just works.

There are two ways to go about it:

1. Link to a merchant manually and VigLink will automatically monetize it.
2. Using their link insertion, VigLink will dynamically insert affiliate links to things even if you forgot to link it up by hand. So, for example, if you mention a book and forget to link to it on Amazon, VigLink can do it for you.

My Personal Experience with VigLink

I don’t recommend things I haven’t tried. I’ve actually been using VigLink for many months now.

In my case, I am using it over on PCMech.com. As of this writing, I have generated about $5,300 in extra income with VigLink. Considering that this is essentially “found money”, that’s pretty decent. VigLink is basically monetizing links for me which probably would not have been monetized otherwise. Note, too, that if you manually link to something with your own affiliate link, VigLink leaves the link untouched.

One of the biggest helps of VigLink for me has been in my PCMech forums. In that environment, people are talking about new PC hardware all the time. NewEgg happens to be a favorite among many in my forum audience. I certainly can’t expect members to use my affiliate links whenever they link to Newegg (obviously). So, I have VigLink in place to automatically take care of it. Any time a member links to something on NewEgg, it is turned into an affiliate link automatically.

On the average, this setup has been generating around $400/month in extra income for me. And this is without me even trying.

Now, as you can tell, this is very non-strategic on my part and it still brought in $400 in December. But, it was also a LOT of clicks to pull that off. Certainly, if I were actually trying, I could pull off a lot more revenue out of 8,400 clicks. But, Newegg has a pretty crumby payout (as do most computer hardware companies). I’d be better off pushing Amazon a lot more. Their payout is better plus there is commission on residual sales.

But, this brings me to the idea of how to make the most money with VigLink…

Maximizing Income With VigLink

Obviously, the revenue generator with VigLink is essentially your readers buying things. It is no different than any other affiliate marketing, except that we’re primarily talking about real-world things (not info products).

So, the way to maximize revenue is to be in a niche where talking about things like this would be natural. I have a tech blog, so linking to hardware and software items only makes sense. Another niche that pops to my head might be digital photography, seeing as that is a great niche for linking to all kinds of equipment.

VigLink has relationships with a LOT of merchants. Amazon is obviously a big one. But, to give you an idea, here are some of my top merchants for PCMech:

• Newegg
• AVG (anti-virus)
• Geeks.com
• Kaspersky
• Ebay

I’ve never formed an affiliate relationship with any of these companies, but it is just being done for me by VigLink.

VigLink also provides handy analytics so you can see which merchants are performing best for you, which of your posts are driving the most revenue, which products people are buying, etc.

For example, here’s part of a graph showing my best merchants for a particular week:

The top two are Newegg and Amazon. The third one is the free AVG anti-virus. Considering the high per-click rate for that, it tells me it is converting pretty well and that I should probably talk more about that on the site.

So, by monitoring stats and strategically working in product links to top merchants, you can maximize the revenue from VigLink.

This also has the potential (if worked properly) to out-perform Adsense. And, I believe that there are a lot of bloggers out there who might be limping along with Adsense who could probably do better with VigLink because of the nature of their content. Relevant links in content always perform better than banner ads off in the sidebars.

Give VigLink A Try

It is absolutely free and I bet it will generate some revenue for you. How much is going to depend on the nature of what you write.

Now, full disclose: I am writing about it because I am paid a small referral percentage if you sign up through me. I would, of course, appreciate it. But, as I said, I’ve been using VigLink myself for close to a year now. Not only that, I’m here to help you make more money. So, its only natural.

They will help you recover lost revenue potential. If you manually link to something with your own affiliate link, they won’t touch it. But, if you just forget, VigLink will take care of it and you’ll make residual income. And if you work it, you can make more than residual income.

Sign up for VigLink for free and implement this on your site. There is simply no reason not to.

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I even talked in there about how I arrived at that…

It is the story of how I “sold” PCMech.com to a company called eFront Media. This was in the height of the dot-com boom and everybody thought that online advertising was the new gold rush.

So, this company offered me about a million dollars for PCMech.com. And, I was like – Holy Shit!. And I took the offer.

Of course, it was a horseshit contract in retrospect. Most of it was stock options – in a company which wasn’t even public and had no real plans to be. I was an idiot to enter into that deal, but that’s the kind of thing that happens when 7-figure paydays are floated in front of a 21-year old kid.

The cash portion of the payments dried up when the reality of the dot-com boom was upon us. All that value out there was fake. And since eFront was no longer bringing much ad revenue, all of a sudden they weren’t paying me for a site I was running, but didn’t legally own anymore.

But, I wasn’t about to let my income dry up without a fight.

As I held eFront’s feet to the fire, I embarked on the creation of my first product.

See, at the time, CD-ROMs were still a cool thing. And, I had written this tutorial on how to build a PC.

So, I took that tutorial and put it into ebook form. This wasn’t a PDF ebook… it was a compiled HTML ebook. People don’t really make those anymore. In the same fashion, I also created a “PC Mechanic” reference book, pretty much made up of the content of the online version of my website.

In other words, probably 75% of my offer was stuff that was already available on my site. However, I had made it more accessible, searchable, and easier to get onto your computer (seeing as we didn’t have high-speed internet back then).

The value wasn’t just the information, but the convenience.

But, I had this CD-ROM and it could hold about 650MB. My ebooks didn’t take up that much room. So, even then, I was thinking “thud factor” like a lot of internet marketers used to like. So, I put a bunch of open source / shareware programs on the CD, too. Basically, software which I was legally allowed to distribute. I put it on the CD, again, as a convenience because, for many, it would take hours to download these things over their dial-up connections.

To make the CDs, I went down to Staples. I bought blank CD-ROMs on a spindle, a labeling kit with labels. I designed a label using the template they provided. I burned the CDs one at a time right there on my PC. I then “stomped” the label on, packed it into a Staples envelope, licked my own stamps, manually hand-wrote the shipping addresses, and drove them down to the post office.

I remember the lady at the office asking me what I did. I told her I was selling these online. She thought that was pretty cool, especially seeing as she saw me once or twice per week.

Eventually, I graduated up to the idea of printing my own labels rather than hand-writing them. Microsoft Word mail merge was my friend.

I sold that CD for several years. At one point, I even had a vocational school buying them en mass – usually about 150 at a time. The volume got to a point where I eventually outsourced the printing to another company and I, instead, simply managed inventory.

That’s History Now… But, It Led To bigger Things

I eventually stopped selling that CD because times had changed. More and more people were using high-speed internet connections. And the medium of delivery was very much turning to the Internet rather than CD.

But, it all started somewhere.

With a necessity. And with me simply providing a convenience to my readers.

I helped them solve a problem and I packaged a solution and sold it.

It was my first offer. And it led onto much bigger things – obviously.

Things are so much easier now than they were then. The tools we have to work with are things I could only dream of when I started in this business.

But, the rules haven’t changed. Help your audience solve a problem, package up a solution, and offer it to them.

When did people make this stuff complicated?

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He reads a lot about stores. And then jumps right into setting up a store. He puts the shelves in there. He buys one of those big glowing “OPEN” signs. He makes everything all pretty. He looks forward to those hoardes of people who will, of course, come by to check out his pretty store.

Let’s say he even gets people to come in. He has the place all decked out. And he’s happy that he’s getting a little bit of foot traffic each day.

Then, one day, he sits down. And he asks…. “HOW AM I GOING TO MONETIZE THIS STORE?”

W.T.F?!

“Monetize” Means You’re Doing It Wrong

When Steve Jobs and Wozniak started Apple, they didn’t ask themselves “How am I going to monetize Apple?” They didn’t build computers, THEN try to figure out how to “monetize”.

When Sam Walton started up Wal-Mart, he didn’t open up his first store then ask himself how he was going to monetize.

“Blog monetization” is a buzzword phrase in this space. And, as a blogger in this space, I’m basically forced to play along. It is the language of the marketplace, after all.

But, the language we use often has a huge impact on our actions. He who controls the language controls the conversation.

The truth is that the idea of “monetizing a blog” is complete and total bullshit…

Because it means that you start a blog, do all this work to build something up, then figure out how to make money with it. It means that money is an afterthought. It means you didn’t give an ounce of thought into your business plan before you started the blog.

So, in many cases, you’ve built this… thing. It isn’t making a dime, and because you didn’t build it as a business, it might not even be possible. There might not even be a demand there.

Monetization is for business light-weights. It is for the unserious. It is children’s playtime. It is for hobbyists.

Professionals run businesses. They are building a business. They don’t “monetize” because they were building a business from day one. They had a plan. They execute it.

Blog monetizers work day jobs. Business owners end up hiring them.

Blog monetizers waste a lot of time on things which don’t matter all that much (like Twitter for hours per day). They waste time on low ROI activities. They dream about making a full-time income from their blogs. But, chances are, they won’t make it. Because they’re trying to “monetize”. They’re not building a business.

So, I’m not saying any of this to rip into you. I know a lot of my readers are trying to “monetize”.

But, I’d be doing you a disservice if I pussy-footed around this “blog monetization” thing and didn’t tell you the cold hard truth. There are a ton of other blogs on this topic who will do that for you. If you’re a dreamer, go read those guys. Once you realize you’re on a dead-end, remember, I’ll be here.

I’m a blogger, yes. But, I’m a business owner. I’m running a business. I’m better than “monetization”.

I think you are, too. But, it starts with you deciding you are.

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–> CLICK RIGHT HERE. <–

Anything with a promotion like this has to be good.

What a bad ass.

But, seriously…

The product is Robo Commissions. It opens up today. Ryan Lee is behind this, and he’s a marketer I highly respect. He’s been known to create products that rock the boat… and this one is no different.

Here’s the jist…

I spelled out how you can use webinars to make money without your own product. But, its still a lot of work. In fact, when you attend a webinar as a guest, you probably have no idea how much work really went into that.

RoboCommissions democratizes webinars and makes it so anybody can use them to promote. “Done for you” webinar replays.

To learn more… and learn why the heck Ryan called this thing “Robo Commissions”, check out this video. Its pretty well done.

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If you’ve read my Six Figure Blogger Blueprint, you know what I think of banner ads. They’re not the best way to make money with a blog. After all, the only way you get paid is to send traffic AWAY from your blog. And you’re only getting paid a few cents to do it.

That being said, a LOT of people still use Adsense. I do as well (over on PCMech.com). The truth is that Adsense can be a great way to make money. It works better on some sites than others and you certainly need to throw a lot of traffic at it to make real money with it, but still… anybody can do it.

So, the question is… how do you maximize Adsense? How do you make as much money as you can with it?

Here are some tips for you to look at and apply to your own Adsense blogs:

1. The most popular ad sizes are 300×250, 336×280, and 160×600. A lot of people tend to use 468×60 and 728×90 on their blogs, but the performance on those isn’t as high. Besides, those sizes just look like banners to your readers, too, so they’re more likely to go blind to them.
2. The best place to put them is always right in the eye path of your reader. My recommendations:
   1. Top left
   2. Top of content (right below the headline)
   3. Right below the post (but above comments, social buttons, etc.)
3. Consider a left-aligned sidebar. A lot of blogs have the sidebar on the right, but if you’re trying to drive revenue with Adsense, a left-aligned sidebar can help you put one of the top-performing ad sizes into the top left. In other words, put a 300×250 at the top of a left-aligned sidebar.
4. For banners right on top of posts, you can place a throttle on it so that you don’t annoy your repeat readers. Use a plug-in like Ad Injection to make such banners only show up on posts older than, say, 7 days.
5. When setting up your ads, be sure to use custom channels. This allows you to assign a plain-English name to each of your banner slots. The “why” on this is simple: So you can tell exactly which slots are bringing you the most revenue.
6. When you set up your custom channels, make them targetable. What this does is makes that ad slot available to advertisers to target specifically. An advertiser who specifically targets your site will usually net you more revenue.
7. Use Google custom search engines and replace your WordPress search with it. Not only does Google provide a really great search engine for your blog, but you can display ads on the search results. Typically, the eCPM on those ads is much higher than regular banners because of the highly targeted nature of the ads.
8. Monitor your Analytics specifically as regards Adsense (you can find an Adsense report under “Content”). Interesting to note are the top-performing articles in terms of Adsense revenue to your site. With this kind of intelligence, you can see what topics are bringing in the highest paying ads and then target those topics with further posts in the future.
9. Sometimes less is more. Do some testing to see what the right number of ads are for your blog. Even though Adsense TOS allows 3 banner slots per page (excluding link units), that doesn’t mean you necessarily want to cram 3 of them on each page in the idea that it will generate more money. Sometimes, having less banner slots means that the one or two you keep generate more revenue.

Hope that helps. This is something I’ve been working on lately over on my other site.

Want To Delve Deeper?

I’ve scheduled a workshop for my Inner Circle members for Monday, 7/25 at 9PM EST. This will be a strategy-packed workshop where I will be covering the above tactics – and many other ones – and going into more detail on exactly how to do it. All of it is geared toward making YOU more money with Adsense (if you choose to use it, of course).

I’ve never done this before, but since I know that there are a lot of people who might potentially be interested in this, I wanted to open up an avenue for you to attend this workshop even if you’re not in the Inner Circle. Now, of course, it won’t be free. This is an intense strategy workshop and nothing will be pitched at the end. Just pure “how to”.

So, if you use Adsense, you can be in on this workshop for a one-time fee of $39. After you enroll, you will be sent a link to RVSP for the workshop using the same link my Inner Circle members are using. In addition to being able to be on the live call, I’ll also give you access to the high-def recording, audio MP3, and transcript.

OK, here you go…

NOTE: If you don’t see a form above, or are reading this in an RSS reader, click here for the order form.

If you’re just randomly throwing Adsense on your blog – and are disappointed with the revenue – you might want to consider being on the call on Monday.

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It is one thing to enroll a new member into your membership site. It is quite another to KEEP them.

The industry average retention period for a membership site is 3 months. That isn’t very long, and with a high turnover rate like that, the pressure will really be on to keep enrolling new people in order to grow your cash flow. There are, however, many things you can do to increase retention and keep people around.

Before I delve in, I’ll send a quick shout-out to Stu over at Wishlist Member, as some of the ideas below I got him from.

1. Welcome video on your member dashboard. you don’t want new members logging in for the first time and wondering, “What now?”. If they have to think too much, they’re a lot more likely to turn around and cancel.
2. Have them take commitment steps. Get them busy and start participating as quickly as possible. Get them to become mentally committed to the experience. For example, have them fill out their profile (photo, etc.) and post their first comment in your member forums. In my Blog Masters program, I have a Blog Masters pledge they go through. It is a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but it is also a form of commitment.
3. Build a community. People often sign up to get content, but they stick around for awhile because of community. If you can get your members interacting and gaining value from each other inside your membership site, retention is better.
4. Public recognition. Occasionally send a shout-out to new members by name. You can do this in your member email list, for example. The Wishlist folks have a program called Wishlist Insider, and they do a weekly live VIDEO show inside their membership site. One of the things they do is acknowledge new members who signed up that week. Cool idea.
5. Clean design and navigation. It makes sure they don’t get confused (and confused people leave). Optimizepress is awesome for a well-design membership portal.
6. Set up a point system for participation, with bonuses/prizes. You could give them points for logging in, for commenting, for starting a new thread, for replying – whatever. A plug-in called Cube Points can help you do this pretty easily.
7. Grandfathered pricing. Raise the price, and keep all your existing members at the old price. I did this with my Inner Circle, and everybody who enrolled before I increased the price stays at the old rate.
8. Overlapping content with cliffhangers. Using WP Drip, you set up the content drip. But, when you set up the drip, you set it up so that at the end of the month, it partially releases the next block of content, but they have to wait until the following month to get the rest of it. The following month, you finish that month, then partially release the NEXT month. And so on. So, essentially, you’re leaving them with unfinished stuff and it entices them to stick around to finish the story.
9. List upcoming content. Tease them.
10. Spotlight members. Increases the sense of belonging, of exclusivity.
11. Unite around a group goal. Stu told the story of how he got his Insiders mutually involved in his charity efforts in Africa. Touching story, but also unites your member base behind a good cause.
12. Shared experience. This one can be a little more involved, but basically you can put on a live event somewhere for your members.

The overall key is to not overwhelm people, provide them quality stuff, help them, and get them involved.

If you do that, you should be able to keep them longer than 3 months. It takes a little time to do this and to set it up, but I know first hand the drawback of NOT thinking about this stuff.

This is part 4 of 4 of a series on Membership Sites & Recurring Income.

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OK, step 1 is to build your membership site. Step 2 is to populate it with some content. Step 3 is…. (drum roll)….

Selling it.

The question is – how?

Creating An Automated Marketing Funnel For Your Site

You have your blog, yes. But, you must also build a more robust marketing funnel which consists of a squeeze page, perhaps an autoresponder sequence, and a stand-alone sales page. Here’s a diagram to show what I’m talking about:

So, let me walk you through those components:

1. Your blog promotes the membership directly as well as converts people into your email list.
2. You also develop a squeeze page which is designed to put people onto that same email list. Squeeze pages typically convert at LEAST 10-20X better than the typical blog, so it is an absolute no-brainer. While I’ve recommended Optimizepress for your membership site portal, it also makes GREAT squeeze pages.
3. Once people get onto your email list, they get a series of pre-written emails as part of your autoresponder sequence. Aweber makes this really easy. Those emails should ideally be written as content, not pitches. Help subscribers with a component of what they’re looking for, with your membership a logical step for further action. Another way to go about it is using what’s called an “evergreen launch”. This is essentially a product launch on replay. So, you use the email sequence to build buzz, build pressure, then finally offer them the product. There are a lot of creative things you can do as part of that.
4. You also need to have an actual offer page for your membership site. This page does the selling and points to the sign up. Ideally, your prospects will be a warm prospect by the time they get here (via your list, etc). The page will convert better that way.

A system like this is more robust, gives more selling opportunities, and is more automated. You’re constantly feeding content into the main blog (which attracts leads). You’re putting people onto your list which provides multiple automatic selling opportunities.

So, you keep fueling the system. It keeps sending traffic into your membership site. Your job from there is to have a good enough offer and communicate it effectively such that people who arrive actually want to enroll.

Having A Front-End Offer

One of the things I’ve realized and learned from is that it can sometimes be difficult to sell a monthly membership. There is a fear of commitment there, even if they logically know they can cancel.

A solid (and common) way to get around that is by selling a front-end offer. So, you have some concrete product that they’re buying rather than an ongoing membership. Then, you…

1. Deliver that front-end offer by way of the membership site. So you position it as something they’ll get right away as a reward for enrolling.
2. OR…. Offer the membership as an upsell. I do not recommend “forced continuity”, where the rebilling is automatic. You need to always be VERY clear with your prospects that it is a monthly program and give them the option. So, either be very upfront with them about the rebilling before they buy the front-end, or make the upsell completely optional.

So, as an example, if you’re selling a membership site with ongoing tutorials about widgets, a front-end offer might be a 10-video training course showing them how to create their own widgets. So, the idea is that they get the training course – they’re BUYING the training course – then they can stick around for more value in the monthly program.

Last Minute Tips

You can also use your membership site as upsells or cross-sells during purchase of any other products you might have. So, for example, if they buy an ebook from you, you can offer the membership site as an upsell. You can even put a pitch for your site INTO the ebook they purchased.

Always consider how you can leverage one product to market another.

Lastly, open your membership site up to affiliates. Empower your members and blog readers to market your site for you (for a commission). You can’t do this if you use Paypal as your payment system (not without buying yet another script). So, this is a good reason to use a real shopping cart like Nanacast or, perhaps, Clickbank.

OK, last in this series, we’re going to talk about member retention. In other words, how to KEEP your members once they’ve signed up. So, stay tuned!

This is part 3 of 4 of a series on Membership Sites & Recurring Income.

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Pretty much anything you might think of releasing as a standalone product could very easily be released into a membership site. In fact, any form of content could go in there. Blog posts, videos, ebooks, etc.

I think a lot of people (especially beginners) tend to think about the ebook when it comes to product offerings. The problem with ebooks is that the perceived value has dropped since so many people now do it. Depending on your niche, there are a lot of ebooks being given away as opt-in bribes. This makes the power of a PAID ebook diminished. Many people’s hard drives are littered with PDFs they haven’t yet read.

So, a great solution to that is to use a membership site instead. In fact, what many people might not have realized is that a membership site does NOT have to be a monthly billing cycle. It could simply me a one-time payment, and instead of sending them an ebook, you give them access to a membership site.

The key to the content for your membership site is simple: Make it useful and design it to get a result for your member. Whatever your niche is looking for, solve it for them inside the member’s area.

The Common Confusion – Free Versus Paid

There’s a good chance that any membership site you start is going to be in the same niche as your main blog. The plan would be to use your blog as a traffic generator and lead generator, then refer people into your membership site from there.

The obvious question that comes up, then, is this: What do you give away for free and what do you keep for members only?

There are many ways to go with this. One common approach is the idea of blogging about the “why”, and teaching them the “how” inside the membership site. Another way is to give them some how-to on the public side, but tell them you have a more detailed tutorial (and perhaps even a video) inside the member portal. Also, blogs tend to be fairly random, whereas part of the value of your membership site could be the structure and the simplification.

The other thing to keep in mind is that membership sites don’t have to be just about content. In fact, the best ones are NOT just about content. You can also offer enhanced access to YOU for members only, forums where people can interact with like-minded people.

My Inner Circle is an example. This blog is obviously designed to refer people into that program (just look at the top menu). This public blog has quite a bit of stuff in there. The major “sell” of the Inner Circle is the enhanced access to me (via live webinars and group calls) as well as the group interaction (via the forums and a private email group). Members can even schedule calls privately with me once per month. So, it is all about increased ACCESS, not simply content.

Think About Content Structure

Sometimes, a big part of members-only content is not necessarily just what you say, but HOW. See, blogs are usually full of noise and it is harder to learn and get things done.

When you create member content, you want to work to make it digestible so as to get results. Videos are great for this. Screencast videos are nice. I also recommend multiple formats in order to suit people’s learning styles. For example:

• A video
• The audio of that video (in MP3)
• A transcript of that video (in PDF)

Doing this increases the real value to the member by allowing them to take it in whatever form is most convenient. It also increases the perceived value and that’s good for price justification.

Lastly, make sure to take a bird’s eye view of your presentation and make it easy to follow. Make sure people don’t log into your membership site and go cross-eyed. Some ways to go about this are:

• Quick start videos
• Checklists on what to do and when.
• Category or module-based structure.

I previously mentioned WP Drip as a way to “drip” content to your members. This is the reason why I recommend drip content. Because you don’t want to overwhelm new members, so it is best to distribute stuff to them on a pre-determined schedule that gives them time to digest and process what you’re giving them. Plus, drip content automates your site a lot more and also keeps members around longer.

Next in the series, I’ll be discussing ways to get new members. So, stay tuned.

This is part 2 of 4 of a series on Membership Sites & Recurring Income.

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1. Free Versus Paid? When Do You Charge?
2. How To Market Your Membership Site
3. What You Need To Create A Membership Site

There are many different ways to build a membership site these days. Quite frankly, it can be pretty overwhelming.

I’ve tried a lot of different options, so I’m going to share with you what I believe is the easiest and best combination of tools to build your membership site.

The Essentials

1. WordPress. WordPress has so many plug-ins and so many opportunities for expandability, it is a great platform for a membership site. I recommend a new and separate installation of WordPress (separate from your main blog). You can still have it on the same domain if you wish.
2. Wishlist Member. This is the easiest way to set up a membership site with WordPress. The last time I heard, Wishlist powers over 24,000 membership sites, so you’ll be in good company.
3. OptimizePress. This will be your theme for your membership site. While OP does other things, it is AWESOME as a membership site portal. You can customize many things and it also automates things like video players, menu generation, etc. Using OP as your member training portal, you will look VERY professional even if you have no idea how to code anything by yourself. I use OP for several sites now and it is, without a doubt, one of the single best purchases I’ve made in the last several years for my business.
4. WP Drip. I recommend you set up what is called “content drip” on your membership site. In other words, you don’t give everything you’ve got to your members right when they sign up. You “drip” content to them over time so that they’re not overwhelmed and they stick around longer. All this means is that they’ll get pre-scheduled content released to them over time. Wishlist Member’s way of doing drip content is pretty tedious. So, if you couple on WP Drip, you have a very powerful and flexible drip system for your membership site.

Obviously, none of this will work unless you hook it up to some form of payment system. A lot of people use Paypal because it is easy. But, you might want to consider Clickbank, since they have the built-in affiliate program.

Of course, the best option is to get your own merchant account. When you process cards yourself, you have the ultimate in flexibility, you’re able to do things like 1-click upsells, plus you retain full control of all renewals. For that, I recommend PowerPay and coupling it with a shopping cart. My favorite shopping cart right now is Nanacast (which you can integrate with Wishlist Member using this plug-in).

The Optionals

There are a few other components which can be nice to have, but aren’t really necessary:

1. Gravity Forms. This is a very powerful form builder for WordPress. It really is the best form plug-in out there. While it is usable in a variety of ways, I love using it for all my membership sites as a contact form as well as a testimonial collector. Not only that, you can use it to collect questions from your members. It is handy, too, because it will easily pre-fill the name/email of your member based on their membership, so it saves them the hassle.
2. Easy Video Player. While Optimizepress has a built-in video player which is perfectly suitable, one of the (many) capabilities of EVP which make it nice is the fact that it can secure the location of any videos you put into your membership site. Which means tech-savvy people can’t find the location of your video and link to it while bypassing your membership site. EVP does a lot of other nifty things that make it truly the best video player on the market, but for membership sites, the security is pretty handy.
3. SimplePress. This is a very capable forum system which integrates directly with WordPress. This means it will work beautifully with Wishlist Member and embeds beautifully into Optimizepress. If you want a members-only forum, Simplepress is great. There are other awesome forum options out there, but if they don’t come with built-in WordPress integration, you’ve just given yourself a big tech hurdle to deal with. And who needs that?

So, it might seem as if there are many parts here. Actually, it isn’t complicated at all. All of these things are plug-ins for WordPress and they install VERY easily. And, my recommendation is that you buy licenses which allow you to use them on multiple sites. This way, you buy one, and you never have to buy it ever again – even if you create 100 membership sites.

Lastly, if you’re the cynical type, you might think I’m linking to these because many of them are not free and I’m using affiliate links (which I am), but rest assured, I personally use every single solution on this page. These tools are what I use to build my membership sites. For me to list any other option than these would be disingenuous.

To end off, I’d like to invite you to watch the following presentation. This is a recording of a live webinar I did, called The Quickest Path To A Market-Ready Membership Site. I also have a supplement document which you can download below, and goes with the presentation.

Click here to download the reference PDF which goes along with this presentation.

To see the rest of this series, visit the guide on membership sites & recurring income.

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2. The Quickest Path To A Market-Ready Membership Site [VIDEO]
3. How To Market Your Membership Site