Everything you need to know to get your membership site off to a fantastic start.
A multitude of tips, hints, checklists and best practices.
A collection of articles covering a wide range of topics that you would do well to read because there is something there for you.
Some topics are specific to running an internet business, other topics are more general. Either way these are subjects and issues that you will encounter or need to consider in setting up your own business.
You would be surprised as to how many things are common to running a business, any business. No matter what type of business you are whether you are a single start-up or a multi-national the only difference is the scale of what you have to consider.
Anyway have a read and pick the bones to get yourself the most out of them.
Membership websites are a proven way of successfully launching your on-line presence. They provide you with a fantastic opportunity to share your knowledge with a hungry audience and even have the capability of providing you with a means of making a living from them.
You know what you want to do, how you want to do it, now all you need is the software to drive the system. Where do you go from here?
Well you may be surprised to find that the cost of setting up your business model is more expensive than you think. Of course if you listen to one of the many on-line gurus and they will guide you right into following one of their unique training programs that will ultimately guide you into purchasing one of their customised software packages and support plans.
Well nothing wrong with that you may think, I get a working
system and will be up running making millions in minutes. On the face of it you could be right. Or could you be wrong?
It can be expensive, very expensive.
Well how much are we talking about anyway; surely it can’t be that expensive. Let’s take a look at a few well known systems
| Name | Monthly | Year |
| ClubRunner | $79.95 | $1,158 |
| Membee | $99 | $3,687 |
| MemberClicks | $135 | $2,965 |
| Membergate | --- | $3995 |
| NEON by Z2 Systems | $50 | $1,179 |
| SubHub | $97 | $997 |
| Tendenci | $195 | $4,340 |
| Wild Apricot | $50 | $540 |
| YourMembership | --- | $5,995 |
| Drupal @ Bluehost | $6.95 | $84 |
| Drupal @ Heart Internet for UK/EU | £8.99 | £108 |
This is just a few of the most popular systems out there but I think you get the picture. Some may be appropriate for you depending on the level of support you can put in to it, timing of your program launch, your personal skill set and so on. But I think it is fair to say they all attract a cost, in some cases a significant one at that.
So what’s next?
Well money talks, so save yourself thousands of $ and build your own site using Drupal, for FREE.
Get the added advantage of having COMPLETE control over your website.
Tailor your website exactly as YOU want it.
So go on, all you need now is to ship yourself over to Bluehost or Heart-Internet. Sign up for an account and get Drupal going with a 1-click installation.
Then of course you can also take advantage of my Drupal training course and learn everything you need to know about installing and optimising Drupal to best promote and operate your business.
A step by step guide to setting up your membership business
1.Develop what your course is about.
You have an idea and know what you want to offer now you need to get down to filing in some of the detail.
What are the objectives of what you plan to offer?
Is the subject in demand in the market place, do your own search to see what’s out there. Make sure you have an audience before you commit your energies.
What is your unique selling point, why will people come to you instead of the competition?
Define who your target market is. Understand your customers and you have a better chance of successfully pitching to his or her wants and needs.
Update your objective now you know a bit more about your strengths, customer and where you are positioning your business.
2.Decide on the business model
Is a Memberships Site business model is most appropriate for your enterprise?
You can also consider;
Or indeed a combination of all three supporting the main membership site.
At this point you should be developing a structure or workflow of how the business should operate.
3.Develop the content
Do some in depth research into your subject.
Identify the main topics you intend to cover.
How are these topics going to be broken down into manageable chunks, look at how a book is broken into chapters for instance.
What course materials are you going to provide. Written is easier with the benefit that you could sell e-book, with the rise in popularity of youtube video is becoming more popular with the potential of DVD sales.
What tools are you going to need to create your content? In the main you will have something to create documents and slide with, but do you have setup to produce your very own video series.
4.Build your site
Decide on your site name, the look and feel.
What system are you going to use.
Choose your ISP host.
Load your software and get it going.
Load your content.
5.Market and launch
Decide on how you are going build your launch.
What marketing you are going to use.
Are you going to call on any affiliates to help you launch.
Get your advertising in place, such as Google adwords.
Launch it.
Of course this is an idealised situation, reality is not so sequential. At each stage you will likely do something and have to go back and revise something you did earlier, but that is in the nature of things, incremental development as they say. Undoubtedly this is not a definitive exhaustive list but rather a framework on which to build.
Each section warrants its own course of study, should you be so inclined. But with a bit of experience and knowledge under your belt you should be able to cope with the basics of each of these topics admirably.
You are serious about setting up your membership website, lets face it if you weren't you wouldn't be reading this.
And what's more you want to be taken seriously by your members; therefore establishing and maintaining credibility is crucial to your success.
So you need to take a professional approach to your enterprise, in how you set it up and how you operate it on a day to day basis. All of which means you need a plan. A business plan.
There is an old adage "Fail to plan, plan to fail" a simple fact overlooked by the many people who just 'have a go' at a project, falter, get fed up and then drop the idea.
Planning is not something that should scare you off and dampen your entrepreneurial spirit. Put it into context. The content you put into it, how much time you spend compiling it, the level of detail contained in the plan should all be appropriate for your business.
Even if you are setting up alone, developing a plan will encourage you to think. To think about what you are trying to achieve with your project. How you plan to put in place the business model. The to do list of all the things you need to complete in order to get things going. It's not simply a template completing exercise just for the sake of it, you do and will get something useful out of it.
A business plan consists of the following elements:
The elevator pitch the 'one liner' to describe your business, as they say. The answer to the question 'What business are you in?'. Essentially a description of the unique benefits of your product or service, concisely, focused and to the point. It's important that you can also support your assertion with evidence or an endorsement.
Mission statement describing what your company does, how you intend to achieve your goal, mentioning the values of your business.Explaining why does your business does what it does, what's the driving force behind it.
The sales plan, what and how you intend to sell your products.
Any strategic alliances that you will draw on support and to help you achieve your sales and delivery plan.
How you will deliver what you intend to sell. The mechanism of how you deliver your product or service.
The resource or people plans needed to help your enterprise realise it goals.
Financial details and projections the start-up finance you may require, the flow of funds as you begin to get sales and have to pay bills.
Again keep things in context, your plan can be anything from a concise one pager, to 50 pages or more of complex analysis, charts and drawings.
So do what's appropriate for your business and situation.
Go plan and get your business going.
Now it’s obvious you have a computer and internet connection otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to make it to this web page. So you have the basics of what’s needed to get your site up and running.
Okay what’s next, well you are going to create documents, graphics, videos e-book and so on in support of your enterprise so how do you do it. With FREE software of course.
Top of the list is probably going to be a program to create documents, yes you do have a text editor of some form that was supplied with your machine but at the point you want to become more adventurous and add images or hyperlinks you have just gone past the plain text editor’s barrier of capability.So what are the alternatives out there? Well to be honest I use OpenOffice products and find that the excellent WRITER word processor has the edge over Microsoft products in a couple of ways if your use is to predominantly produce material for the internet.
First of all the ability to create a standards compliant PDF document directly from the program is great, no need to install extensions or file convertors.
Secondly in my opinion it has better support for internal document and external internet hyperlinks and so on that make it much easier to create interactive PDF documents and e-books. And in addition to this the program is fully compatible with Microsoft Office file formats so you can produce transferrable document with ease.
The other package you will make use of is the presentation package IMPRESS also part of the OpenOffice suite, a fully featured presentation program to help you communicate your message in the form of slide shows, handouts and presentations. Insert text and images freely with this program and using the template based presentations maintain your formatting and style.
You can use IMPRESS as a very effective backdrop for your video presentation series, matching word and image transitions with your commentary.
Talking of images the creation of logos, manipulating photographs and creating images is fundamental to the medium of the internet, a medium that is rich in imagery and colour.
Don’t think Photoshop think GIMP. Sounds like a wimpish product you may think but I can assure you that there is almost no image creation or manipulation technique that you can’t achieve with GIMP. I have used it exclusively now for years and nothing comes near it in terms of flexibility and capability. It does have a learning curve but when you have the basics under your belt you will be flying.
Now one word of advice here, you can get these programs in portable application versions at portableapps.com which means that you can carry them about with you on your USB memory stick and do your work anywhere there is a pc with a USB port.
Right let’s get back on track. So I have covered words, charts and images what’s next. Well how about a means of recording videos to put online.
Now there are two things to consider here, do you want to record a commentary overlaid on a screen capture and recording of some activity on your computer screen, well here I can propose something that is easy to use, CamStudio. CamStudio will enable you to produce AVI or flash files for you to load onto your site with absolute ease.
On the other hand if you wish to stand in front of a camera and present your information, well in that case you will need a decent webcam or camcorder to capture you material. Whilst decent webcams or camcorders are certainly not free, if you want to edit the files they output then there are a couple of choices you can go for.
I predominantly use VirtualDub to do simple file editing, VirtualDub may display a quirky interface but is very effective, particularly if you utilise one of the many plug in filters.
There is also Handbrake, which has a bit of a friendlier user interface but with similar features and good file format conversion options.
So there you have it, a whole suite of software to fulfil all of your needs that will cost you absolutely NOTHING, not a bad deal hey?
Right, you have a basic Drupal installation and now you are raring to go, you want to know how to tune your site to get the best Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for your Drupal site.
Well here is my initial list that will direct you to all the standard modules mentioned in my whitepaper.
The modules are in no particular order you can just download them all in on fell swoop.
Once you have each module downloaded to your machine you need to un-archive each of them to their respective folders. Remember to use the default name so they don't get confused later on if the module gets updated.
Then move the files to the appropriate directory in your Drupal installation. Normally from the root Drupal directory its in the sites/all/modules/ directory, which you may have to create.
Now simply enable these modules at the admin/build/modules/list administration page, remembering to hit the save button at the end of the page.
For each of your modules go to the configuration page and enter your site specific details, hit the save button and you are set.
So there you have it, the foundation list of modules required to get the best SEO out of your Drupal membership site, or indeed any Drupal site, and get you going into the business of marketing your website.
With such a firm foundation you are now ready to go further; tune and optimise these modules, hone their parameters so that you beat the competition.
To beat the competition get hold of a copy of my Drupal training course and do just that by optimising Drupal to the full, there will be no stopping you with all that knowledge under your belt.
You have carefully crafted your web copy. It’s uploaded to your site and published for your eager readership to digest.
Your promotional activities have drawn in your audience and you are getting the viewing figures you have expected.
Is there anything else you can do, well what’s one of the best forms of advertising; yup, you guessed it, its word of mouth.
You have already excited your audience enough to read your material and now how about making it easy for them to spread your message for you.
Another Drupal module comes to the rescue and surprisingly it’s called the AddThis Button module. Undoubtedly you have seen that this button on many websites on your travels around the web, now you have a chance to add it to your own site.
Just download, install and configure and there you have it an AddThis button on each page, node or teaser however you like it.
Whenever a visitor clicks the button he can either send a relevant email to a friend, or alternatively he can send a message to one of the many social networking sites out there getting you a free plug each time.
Exposure and readership is everything to your site so don’t miss this opportunity to get that bit of extra help from your readers.
Stuck for ways to advertise your website or get your name known?
Don't know where to go next!
Well to help get you started I have listed over 30 ways you can get your site noticed. Using simple, free, and low cost techniques you can get your name noticed and out in the public domain quickly and effectively.
The point is there are many different methods of promotion, you just need to find the most appropriate to your situation, tune it and exploit it.
Remember that what suits your particular situation may not suit another, so don't worry if you cant apply all of these ideas. But, feel free to bend, twist, merge and wring them into your particular method.
Be imaginative, if you have a wacky business then a wacky promotion would probably go down well with your audience. More sober and 'professional' situations would suit more traditional methods and approaches.
By the way these suggestions are in no particular order other than alphabetic, so dive in and help yourself.
So now you have no excuse for getting out there and promoting your business. As usual its all down to YOU.
This could also be titled, publishing content to a schedule because that’s exactly what I am going to talk about. As a bonus you also get the option of time limiting the publishing of your content, with the opportunity to also un-publish at a certain time.
Creating content is a dynamic thing affected by the vagaries of life, your mood and whether you have something to say or not. It may be that one day you are feeling particularly verbose and will shell out articles like the proverbial peas but you don't necessarily want to publish them all at the same time.
Alternatively you may have a particular regular publishing schedule, you could even just want a day away from your machine and want to prepare your material in advance but don’t want to release it quite yet.
The question is how do you do it, well it’s quite simple you use the Scheduler module. Download, install and enable this module. Update the content type settings to ensure the workflow call in the scheduler.
This adds a new field to your content entry form titled logically enough “Scheduling options”.
Simply compose your article and when you are finished enter the publication date in to the “publish on” field, remembering to take note of the formatting method.
Then you hit the publish button as normal and your article will sit there waiting to be published on the date you require. It does this by watching the date as part of the normal cron run, when the date has been reached and behold you article appears.
It’s just as if you were there, so give it a try.
A follow-up autoresponder (FUA) is a marketing tool. An important one that delivers a series of emails in a pre-determined sequence, on a schedule set by you the sender.
They are generally prompted after advertising a giveaway in return for a subscribers email address that subsequently will be used for your autoresponder series.
The autoresponder series will generally have several emails and they will be in a structure such as:
Day 0 - Welcome message
Day 1 - Establish a Need
Day 2 – Provide technical product information
Day 3 - Ask for questions? comments?
Day 4 - Provide testimonials
Day 5 - A last chance reminder
Day 6 - On going follow up
The delivery of these emails is all handled automatically, by software integrated into your Drupal setup. Once it's set up, you focus on promoting the series, and you can forget about mechanics of how the emails are delivered.
Although I have called the emails by a day number in reality the period between sending this up to you. Certainly the day 0 email is sent when the subscriber signs up, day 1 is the next day and the subsequent mails over a period of one to two weeks
So what do these emails contain?
Day 0 - Welcome message
You are trying to develop a relationship with your subscribers and most of the sales resulting from your follow up series will come from the very first message. So keep the message relatively short maybe up to 400 or 500 hundred words.
You will include a reminder for the subscriber to obtain the free material you have offered.
Remember that you are marketing the benefits of your product and make sure you are including the soft sells.
Day 1 - Establish a need
Use your second message to explain why your product is necessary, maybe through a case study.
Day 2 - Provide technical product information
In this message you describe the technicalities of your product or service, how it is used in practice and most importantly how the subscriber will benefit from its purchase.
Day 3 - Ask for questions or comments?
Your prospective customer has been emailed a lot information, so do they have any questions? In particular, does he have any questions that may be stopping him from buying your product or service?
You could include a list of previously asked questions appropriately answered.
Day 4 - Provide testimonials
Reinforce the benefits of your product or service with testimonials from satisfied customers or recognised industry experts. Scan the original documents if you can.
Day 5 - A last chance reminder
A reminder, this is the last chance for the subscriber to get your products. Summarise the contents of your previous emails. Remember to focus on the benefits and reinforce with testimonials.
So there you have it, a series of automated marketing emails to promote your products and services. Sent to subscribers who have provided their email address in return for the giveaway you promised and provided in the day 0 email.
So its up to you, make the best of it.
Each instance of creating and sending an e-mail to your existing or potential customers is unique. So unfortunately I can’t give you the perfect email to use in your particular situation. But I can give you the list of crucial factors in ensuring that you get the best performance from your email.
So you need to recognise that your email has a structure, and each element in that structure has its part to play in effectively getting your message across.
WARNING: If the structure is wrong you can’t lead the reader through the path of your message, he will loose interest, miss the call to action, hit the unsubscribe link and your mail is wasted.
Taking each element in turn, let’s go through each one and bring out the important characteristics.
Subject Line
The subject line has to compel your reader to open and read your message. You need to entice the subscriber, appeal to his sense of curiosity and interest.
Ensure your main message appears in the first few words; remember often the subject is often truncated in the email client.
Refer to the email you sent on sign up if this is an auto responder.
Spam filters look for certain words, symbols and clever constructions of phrases, try and resist them
First paragraph
This should set the tone of the message, explaining why the reader will benefit from continuing to read your message.
Remember when the message is opened only so much information can lie ‘above the fold’ as they say.
You have to get your main message across here.
Add your first call to action as well, some people ignore the massage and go straight to your landing page.
Main Body
This is where you put your carefully crafted copy.
Remember to do the simple things right, you must spell check and get the grammar correct. Using a word processor to create the copy and then paste in place when you are sure it’s correct is not cheating just practical.
Ensure your links are inserted correctly, and they have the ‘alt’ tag completed so that there is a hover over indication of where the link is going to take the reader.
Same applies to graphics, some users may have them switched off to save bandwidth, reduce spam, so having the ‘alt’ tag set lets them know what should have been there.
Last paragraph
Here is your last chance to reinforce to the reader why they need to respond to your ‘call to action’, before its too late.
Entice him by offering an exclusive special offer or incentive to get that click through.
Footer
Last but not least, this space should include things such as;
Now test it
Finally you need to make sure your email looks exactly like you intended. Ideally you should have a test option in your email system to send an un-published message to a test account so you can go through the following test check list.
Finally, check your message in as many email clients as you can. Many people use Outlook, Thunderbird hosted on their PC, but a large proportion use online web mail readers. Each has their own peculiarities when it comes to rendering a message, so the wider you can check the better your chance of success.
Let’s define what a whitepaper is, according to Wikipedia it’s ‘an authoritative report or guide that often addresses issues and how to solve them. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions.’
So whitepapers are a document that shows you how to solve a problem for yourself. In the area of marketing your product how does it work, well essentially you identify a problem that needs to be solved. You educate the reader in how to solve that problem because as an expert in that field you know how it can be resolved. And if he can’t manage to solve such a complex problem himself you offer your services or product in order to do so.
When you offer problem-solving information like this, you will build your credibility as a quality source of information. And they are likely to listen to you in the future.
But it isn’t just a sales pitch which will just destroy everything you have worked for so far. Remember you will have captured the readers email address in return for this document so don’t throw it away at the first opportunity.
You want to engage the reader and entice them into your environment where you are the expert, so be factual, interesting and authoritative.
The whitepaper doesn’t have to be a massive document 15 to 30 pages seems to be a good range. If you haven’t got enough information to stretch that far or want something just as effective the 1-page guide can work just as well, if not better.
Look around at people’s workstations and what do they have hanging about. One page cheat sheets or reference guides to all kinds of things, something that is easily photocopied by colleagues, friends and family. So long as your contact details and logo are on the document these are just as effective in your marketing.
And finally in creating your whitepaper or reference guide how do you get your readers attention? Well the same way as the latest blockbuster video, book or computer game shouts to you from the shelf, with a good title. Look around, see what works and use the same type phrase to describe your materials. Emulation is a form of flattery after all.
So to recap, a whitepaper should not be a simple tutorial, it has a structure that can be broken down into a three stage process.
So there is a lot to consider when you put your whitepaper together, good luck.
Just as you have a professional approach and persona as part of your on-line presence the same applies to any back office functions you may have to support your on-line activities.
It’s no good spending a lot of time, effort and money in your on-line world if you let yourself down subsequently with poor physical product delivery, handling of materials and so on.
So a few simple tips;
Snail Mail
When writing snail mail letters it’s always better to individually address envelopes, look at all those personalised mail shots you have. But did you notice the takeaway, the timesaving professional element you can utilise.
Nope. Well it’s simple, its window envelopes. You prepare your letter using a template, keeping the address details in the window area, you then fold in half to fit the envelope, then you can hit the post.
No more typing on the envelope or printing address labels, and then trying to match label / recipient.
Invoices / Delivery notes
Printing invoices and delivery labels to match your product shipments can become a bit of a chore. Mixing and matching what documentation goes with what can get confusing.
So what do you do, well when you had a delivery from Amazon did you notice the delivery note was a single piece of paper that included an area where a self adhesive label had been removed from. That self adhesive label was then attached to the outside of the box with your address details on it.
These address details were duplicated from the details further up the page when the invoice was printed. So the answer is use a template to print and print on these integrated paper and label pages for your invoicing and shipping. Look for local stockists of these forms; I have my supplies locally from Integrated Labels.
A fax machine
Although they may be a bit out of fashion get a fax number. Most people still like to have somewhere to send something physical, it confirms your existence.
So subscribe to one of the on-line fax services. You get your own fax number, when any faxes are sent to you they arrive in your assigned email address as jpeg image you can just print out. The service is supported by the money made out of the incoming call.
Low cost marketing materials.
Now where do you get these? Well it’s easy enough to sign up to one of the many promotional material companies who run on the ‘special offer’ premise.
I use Vistaprint and have obtained business cards, flyers, window stickers all for almost nothing. Sure they may be expensive if I was to buy them direct in one lot, but if you can afford to wait for the special offers and you can save a bundle.
Virtual secretary services
There is a definite advantage to having someone on the end of a phone or available to answer emails live. You probably won’t be able to do it since you will be developing your business, in a meeting, or may be on holiday. So an extra pair of hands can be invaluable in ensuring you don’t miss any potential business opportunities.
Many companies offer what’s called a virtual secretarial service, where you get a unique phone number that is answered in your ‘corporate style’ by the service provider. This message is then relayed to you through whatever communication channel you prefer, email, SMS text etc. they can also receive company mail, host meetings at their offices, a whole range of services just as if they were part of your company.
Charges vary depending on the services you want and so on but they normally start with a relatively low fixed monthly subscription charge, with subsequent charges for each service you make use of. It can be as low as £20 a month for a professional secretarial service. I even know of some that are a total ‘pay as you go’ service, so if you don’t use it you don’t pay. Who can say fairer that that.
So a few quick tips to help you look professional, remember it’s a perception of you and your business you are presenting taking every opportunity in building up trust wherever you can.
If you are a member of the ‘Why are we bothering about backing up, my web host does that for me, all I want to do is run the site’ group then look away now, find your cheque book or credit card to pay someone to do it and keep your fingers crossed.
Look at the T&C from your host you may find yourself both surprised and disappointed at how they address back ups and the guarantees they make. Often it’s another opportunity for them to ‘up sell’ you their all singing and dancing service.
But remember; I am showing you how do things for FREE, so you don’t waste money on simple things you can do for yourself.
So, get down to it save a ton lot of money, and most of all sleep soundly at night.
A quick recap of how a membership site works.
Membership sites, such as one based on Drupal, run a form of content management system (CMS) software. CMS software is based on the premise that content and structure of the website is separated. Content is served from a database when it’s requested; the structure or presentation of the content is set in the CMS framework supported by the software.
So what does all this technobabble mean?
Essentially that there are two parts to your site, the content, stored in your database and the structure, created by your CMS and the way you have configured it.
So, you have two lots data to backup, so where do you go from here?
Well lets deal with the easy one first, backing-up the structure of your site.
Your CMS is the package you run and administer your website through, our Drupal installation. Once you have set the structure of your website its setup is not likely to change very often, if at all, EXCEPT that is for software updates and patches.
The decision on how and when to back up this element of your site is now all of a sudden much easier. Things don’t change often so there is less need to frequently perform a backup, maybe just when you add functionality or updates.
So how do you back up; simply download the contents of the root directory from where your program files reside with your web host, the same way as you uploaded them previously. Use your favourite ftp transfer program; I use Filezilla, or the up/download interface provided by your web host.
Once you have downloaded these files simply zip them up into an archive file, maintaining the file structure and appropriately identifying the resulting file with name, date and time etc.
So that was the easy one out of the way, now for the important part, backing-up your data.
Your data is stored in the database associated with your website and to get at it normally you would use some form of software to extract and back it up.
With Drupal it is most likely that your database is MySQL based, and most of us have access to a graphical interface tool provided by our web host to simplify dealing with MySQL. You probably have access to a cPanel admin screen were you can access phpMyAdmin.
Assuming it’s highly likely you have access to phpMyAdmin, the process is relatively simple. Select the database on the left-hand side of the screen that you want to backup, if there is more than one. Once selected you will see all of the tables it contains.
You now select the ’Export’ tab; tick the box for ‘All tables’ and hit the ‘run’ button.
The program now goes away and starts to create a backup file complete with the .sql filename extension. When it’s complete you will be prompted to save the file, simply select a location for the file to be saved to and that’s it. Job done!
Restoring your files is the opposite to the above procedure, but look out for my corresponding article to get the details explained and what to look out for.