Tools of the Trade

Ok lets move on now and look at some of the tools that you’re going to need to run each site, a checklist of sorts, or even a little bit of hindsight to show you exactly what each entails. You might be surprised at just how similar these are.

 

• The membership site. The first thing you’re going to need is an affiliate system capable of calculating recurring commissions.
   

• The second thing you’ll need is a payment processor capable of processing the payments you’re looking to charge, which is not as easy to find as it sounds. Some won’t let you reoccur your billing forever, some have trial price limits, some don’t do free trials, some have a maximum recurring price and so on.

• Next you’ll need a membership manager, something that ties into the affiliate program and payment processor that revokes access from a member on auto when they cancel. With all of that maintenance going, you won’t have time to do all this yourself.
   

• Next up, you’re going to need your content. Whether it’s scripts, information, business admin, consultation services, whatever it is, it needs to be planted inside the members area.

• Next on the list is your hosting. A massively important aspect due to the importance of keeping tools that are invaluable to your members and possibly even their businesses functioning at all times. Take into account your bandwidth if you’re offering audio, or if your scripts are particularly demanding.
  
   

• Freelancers on demand. Create yourself an account at freelancers' site, Scriptlance or Elance, or similar. This is handy when you need emergency work done. Set this one up even if you don’t have scripts as primary product, because it takes a real programming pro to make fixes in a live reoccurring system without screwing anything up, something I wouldn’t dare attempt myself. Once you have a good programmer it’s worth sticking with them.

• Autoresponder system. Of course for the management of your resources, your list, your customers, your affiliates, your long-term customers and for follow-up purposes. You’re also going to need a system of this type for notifying members of changes to the site, cancelled memberships and so on.

That’s it, that’s all there is to a membership site. It doesn’t seem like a huge amount, and in fact it isn’t, when everything works. It’s also not expensive to set all this up, and the best thing about it? Once you have everything you need, and you’ve created one membership site, or single sale site, you have what you need to create another, and another again and again, making the outset costs look even less significant.
 

So now we’ve had a look at the basic tools needed for running a successful membership site, let’s move on and take a look at what it takes for a single site.
 

Without repeating a bunch of stuff that we’ve just talked about, I’ll tell you that actually, things are very similar with only very slight differences.

• In single sale your affiliate system doesn’t need to be capable of recurring incomes.

• A payment processor is much easier to find and use, and there will be no problems with trials, trial price and length, recurring limits and tying all of this into an affiliate system and access manager.
   

The conclusion? Cost is not something you need to take into account when deciding between the three options of membership, single sale and limited membership. Your time and your product are the two biggest factors when making your choice.

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Commitment Factors