Developing a WordPress Membership Plugin with Blair Williams

In this episode I talk to Blair Williams – creator and founder of MemberPress – about the history of the plugin, essential features membership sites need to get ahead, the state of the WordPress membership plugin market and what the future holds for MemberPress.

Improving the Member Experience with Nathalie Lussier

In this episode I talk to renowned digital strategist and co-founder of AccessAlly, Nathalie Lussier. As well as discussing her transition from programmer to online marketer, Nathalie shares tips and insight into list building, creating compelling online courses and how to improve your member experience.

Which membership model should you use?

Your membership model is the backbone of your site and dictates the type of membership that you are actually running, so it’s important to understand the core elements when deciding the best approach for your membership site.

How difficult is it to change your membership platform once your site is up and running?

For the most part, the majority of membership plugins work exactly the same in terms of their core functionality – but it’s in the details where the decision making gets tough. This is why it’s so important to pick the right plugin. But what happens if you make the wrong choice and want to move plugins later on?

Should My Membership Site Be Always Open or Time-limited?

One question which comes up regularly is whether you should keep your membership site open all of the time, or whether limited joining periods are better. Find out what we think…

Why you should add a community to your membership site

Creating a community for your membership site or online course is one of the most valuable things that you can do, and it’s something we really consider that all membership sites should have in one way or another. In fact, including a community benefits not just your members, but you as well, making it a win-win situation.

Are you using risk reversal to increase membership sales?

Every buying decision is a risk. You could get ripped off. What you’re buying mightn’t be as described or live up to the hype. You may be over-charged, or billed more regularly than you expect.

So, for your potential members, you need to find a strategy to alleviate that risk.

Creating Your Membership Content

Your content is the lifeblood of your membership site. In this post we’ll take a look at the different types of content that you might want to create, as well as our top tips for making the content creation process as stress free as possible.

Our Membership Launch Part Three: The Launch

In the concluding part of our membership website launch diary, we encounter last-minute tech meltdowns, and we also discuss our launch strategy, what worked, what didn’t and other lessons learned.

Should You Charge a One-off Fee or a Recurring Payment for your Membership Site?

Deciding on the pricing for your membership site can be one of the most difficult and frustrating things to figure out.

It’s not just trying to work out how much to actually charge; but also what sort of billing method to go with too.

Should you charge a one-off fee to access your membership site, or is billing people monthly better?

There are a number of things to consider when weighing up those options, so we’ve put together some pointers to help you figure out the best approach.

How to establish yourself as an authority in your market

The majority of membership websites are based around online education and being established as an authority in your chosen field is often crucial for membership site owners.

So here are our tips on how to establish yourself as an authority within your chosen market.

Our Membership Launch Part Two: Final Preparations

Last week we opened the doors to our own membership community – the Membership Academy. Check out part two of our launch diary, in which we discuss the challenges, strategies and lessons learned from the weeks leading up to launch.

5 ways to leverage the forgotten pages of your membership site sales funnel

With so much attention given to fine-tuning and fussing over sales pages and lead generation pages, it’s easy to overlook the other core elements of your sales funnel that could be working much harder for you and your business. So here we take a look at how you can make things like your thank you pages a much more effective part of your sales funnel.

Our Membership Site Launch Part One: Pre-Launch

This week we opened the doors to our own membership community – the Membership Academy.

Nothing quite compares to the experience of bringing your own project to market; so we thought we’d share some of the details of the build-up and launch of the Academy with you guys in the hopes that it will give you insight, ideas, inspiration or guidance for anyone currently planning their own launch.

How to Deal With Member Cancellations

Like it or not, cancellations are par for the course when it comes to running a membership…

And as much as we’d like to think that our members will stick around forever…

Because why wouldn’t they?!

That’s rarely the case.

Cancellations are a natural part of the member lifecycle…

And something that even the most successful membership owners can’t avoid. 

While you can’t prevent cancellations from happening, you can take steps to determine why people are leaving…

So you can put measures in place to make sure you manage the situation in a way that won’t burn any bridges… 

Leaves the door open for those members to return should they want to…

And ensure you’re not losing members for the wrong reasons! 

So why do members cancel their subscriptions? 

Let’s find out… 

Using Offline Marketing to Grow Your Membership Site

In this episode we discuss how you can use offline marketing techniques, including business networking, to promote and enhance your membership website.