Aweber and membership site

Right. That's the logical way to do it, if you want to go that route. When they sign up for your membership site, they would be subscribed to your Aweber list. I believe that with Aweber, you would need to have them confirm their subscription (double opt-in). If you are using Getresponse, it will automatically add them to your list without confirmation (single opt-in). I could be wrong about that. Aweber may now allow single opt-in through their API, but as of 2 years ago when I last checked, they did not.

However, I would use double opt-in anyway with a membership site. A very simple way to do it would be to set up the landing page/sales page for your membership site, and when they opt-in, they get sent the confirmation email. Once they click the link inside the confirmation email, that link would send them to the page to fill in their information to register for your membership site.

This way you do not even have to go through their API.

For example, you just make a squeeze/lead capture page offering membership to your site (if it's free), and ask for name and email only. Then, they subscribe, get sent the confirmation email, click the link inside, and end up on the page to fill in all their details for the membership site. I would imagine you would want to collect more than just name and email for the membership site registration. If not, you should.

You might even be able to pass along the "name" and "email" parameters to your membership site registration page so that they don't have to enter that information in again. It would already be filled in for them when they arrive on your registration page.

That's how I would do it, and the reason is because if you just let them sign up on your membership site and then send out the confirmation email via API, if they don't confirm, they will not be added to your membership site or your list.

If you do it the way I suggested, I would think you'd get less abandonment because if they want to get into your membership site they need to confirm. Also, using double opt-in is always best as it reduces spam complaints.