The [1] Thin Electrons membership site was the first I ever built. It’s a free service though there’s a paid level as well for ‘50K’ members and another level will be added soon for elite members. Below you’ll find some features of membership sites explained in more details, using my own site as the main example:

Membership Levels

Every membership site script will offer membership levels and most have the possibility to integrate this with a payment system like paypal or clickbank. When you decide to upgrade your membership, some of your registration data is changed and after a successful transaction you can suddenly access a whole new range of pages. All taken care of on autopilot…

You can choose between one lifetime payment and monthly subscription payments. Subscription payments of course have the benefit of recurring income that is generated without you having to work extra hours. So you can devote your time to promoting the ‘front end’ and getting more subscribers.

One Time Offer

When you register as a member you will be offered the 50K membership at a staggering discount. But that offer only comes once and hence is called a ‘One Time Offer’ - when you hear marketers discuss OTO strategies, this is the offer they are referring to.

Depending on the membership site script that you use, you can present different OTOs depending on the subscriber’s interest. For example, when you downloaded my ebook [2] Tagging for Profit, you’ll read that there’s a step-by-step guide plus process maps and action sheets that go with this book. Available to Thin Electrons members only though…

The link in the book goes to a different signup page than the regular one. The signup form on this page has a hidden field called ’site_access’ with the value ‘wordclouds1′. So when you register on this page, this information is added to your membership data. When you register at another page, the ’site_access’ field has a different value and your personal data can include values like ‘blog’, ‘index’ or ‘myths’.

Not only does this give me some insight in where my members come from, it also allows me to present a different OTO depending on where you access the membership area for the first time!

Building Your List

Another benefit of membership sites is that you automatically build your list. All the registration data is added to a database and a good membership site script will have an email feature built in so you can email your members.

Because you collect more data then with a regular signup form for a mailing list, you can also select particular groups you want to email to. Like emailing only members who have a free membership. Or (at the Thin Electrons site) all members who know who Robbie Williams is…

Because the membership site offers more than a newsletter, people are less inclined to unsubscribe from a membership site then from a regular mailing list.

Personal Pages

When you login to the Thin Electrons membership area, you will be greeted with your first name. And you will come across personal info at several points, which make the whole membership experience more personal and direct.

I’m not monitoring who’s logging in 24/7 in order to write a quick personal hello. That would be humanly impossible. It’s again all done on autopilot. But despite the fact it’s simply a technical possibility, it’s still nicer to read your name then the ‘dear friend’ page which you would find on a static content site.

Internet marketers have also found that when you are selling something online, your conversion rates increase when you address your prospects with their own name.

Easy Content Management

Membership sites are ‘template based’. What this means is that you only design your site elements once (your headers, footers, sidebars etc) and once that is done, you can add page after page simply by typing the content. There’s no need to work on lay-out other than including headlines and emphasis on certain words.

With some scripts you will have to manually add the link to your new page in the sidebar; with others this is done on autopilot again. Very similar to blog scripts where you check the category and your new post is archived. Other than that there’s hardly any work you need to do on maintenance.

I will add to this that the initial design of the site can present you with a bit of a learning curve. Most scripts are quite smart though and will offer you design options in HTML only. Meaning that if you can create a regular webpage, you should be able to create a membership site fairly easily.

In addition many script offer a set of themes. Designs for the site you can choose from if designing is above your capacities. That way you will have a professional looking site without having to put much personal effort into it.

Member to Member Communication

There are several ways you can allow members to communicate with each other. Dating sites for example will often allow members to send a personal message and have an online inbox as part of the membership area. Though this is not a feature included in the Thin Electrons membership area, in theory I could add this with a simple click of the button from the administration panel.

Integrating a discussion board is another option. I’ve seen quite a few forums which are only open to members of a membership site and with a good script the registration to the forum is automatically taken care of. Or offer a simple blog feature so members can post personal messages to all other members. Again these features can be added with a click of the mouse.

Recommended…

The script I used to build the Thin Electrons membership area is called [3] Profile Manager. It’s a great script with excellent support which you can get here:
[4] www.thinelectrons.com/recommends/profilemanager

The marketing strategies I applied stem mostly from Mike Filsaime’s [5] Butterfly Marketing Manuscript which you can get here:
[6] www.thinelectrons.com/recommends/butterflymarketing

And though my site was already live long before Jason James released his [7] Membership Riches, the method he explains to build a membership site is pretty much the same I used. You can get Jason’s book here:
[8] www.thinelectrons.com/recommends/membershipriches

Are you a membership site enthusiast too? Let me know!

Patricia

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