You can find all sorts of great reasons for setting up a membership website.  Residual income is probably the one at the top of everybodys list.  So why is it that so few people actually take the plunge and launch their own membership site.  The main reason has to be finding the right membership site software to build the site around. 

Fortunately there are really only a handful of issues to address in choosing membership site software for your own project. 

1. Expense:  Cost is a biggie for a lot of people.  Since Mike Filsaime launched the Butterfly Marketing Script, there have been no lack of software titles costing over a thousand dollars in the marketplace.  True there are also lower cost alternatives, but not what you would call fully functional options.  Searching for bargains in this arena can be pretty frustrating.  Don’t be tempted to download a free copy from a bit torrent site either, as you can end up with expensive legal troubles as the tracks your software leaves are pretty easy to follow.

2.  Technical Difficulty:  This is potentially even more important than cost, as membership site software that is too difficult to handle yourself can end up costing you even more to have someone else set up than the software itself.  You want a platform with easy to understand interfaces and that does not require any coding knowledge to implement.

3.  Fully Functioning Additional Features:  You do not want to have to implement additional scripts and coordinate them with your membership site software as they may end up being incompatible in the long run.  Your software should be able to handle an affiliate program, and be easily integrated with either Clickbank, PayPal or preferably both.

4.  Membership Levels:  This would seem to fall under #3 above, but is important enough that I wanted to discuss it separately.  The most successful membership sites offer at least two membershp levels: a free option and a paid one.  Your membership site software should be able to accommodate even more levels than this, as well as OTOs (one time offers) to entice your free members to upgrade on the spot with advantageous pricing.

5.  Promotion: Your website is going to need traffic to succeed, so there needs to be an understanding of this fact of internet marketing life in the way your membership site software is structured.  This can be subtle to detect from a sales page but you can usually get an idea by reading carefully whether or not this key factor has even been considered.

6.  Content Management:  At heart, a membership site needs a good CMS to handle your members area or your members will fall off quickly ending your dreams of residual income.  Most marketers assume a 10% monthly fall off of existing members.  If you are seeing more than this on a regular basis, then something is wrong. 

Good membership site software can make or break even the best of membership site ideas, so choose yours carefully.  Switching to another platform after you have launched your website and already have members is difficult and avoidable if you take these 6 factors into account in advance.

Jim Patterson

I recommend MemberFire membership site software.  You can even try it free on your first site.

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