Many people on the internet who are promoting themselves and their area of interest are turning to membership sites as a way of connecting with others and at the same time earning recurring income. Membership sites can be great for bringing in money month after month, with a defined amount of work each month required to maintain them.
A membership site is a site that’s password protected, and generally requires users to pay a monthly fee. Most membership sites are protected by special scripts that handle the managing of the usernames and passwords of members. They also take care of canceling members whose payments don’t go through, or members who cancel manually.
Starting a membership site is relatively simple. You need a script, a billing provider, and content. The script will generally take care of the billing, member management, and protection of the members’ area.
All you need to do is set up the script, add a billing provider such as PayPal, and add content to the members’ area.
It all sounds so easy doesn’t it! Well as regular readers here will know I am not a great one for complex scripts. As good as they are I have always found the full blown membership scripts complicated! So over recent weeks I have been looking at some of the WP Plugins that enable you to incorporate a membership area into a blog – which to be honest has been exactly what I have been looking to do because I do like the blog based approach to building my sites.
I am not going to name names but let me just say that some of them do not live up to what they claim you can do with them. Some of the customer service and support has been a little less than encouraging. I have found myself out of pocket with a number which didn’t offer support unless you paid for it! Still can’t quite get my head round how you can offer a product and expect people to pay to get it working! These sort of course don’t offer a refund option if you can’t get them to work.
I must admit that I had almost given up and then I came across Wishlist! Not the cheapest option on the market but they proved without any doubt that you get what you pay for and at less than a $100 it has proven to be a very worthwhile investment!
The product is easy to install – yes even for a technophobe like me! The support is amazing and the step by step videos really do take you through every step of the process. This was even to the extent that in the first video about installing the Plugin they explained how to find Internet Explorer on your computer – I could manage that bit! But this shows how much detail they take you through to ensure that you get your WordPress Membership Plugin up and working in next to no time!
I can honestly say it was the best $100 I have spent online in a long time! If you are looking to get a membership site started and have been wondering about using a WordPress Membership Plugin then WishList is well worth investing in!
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