Wordpress - starting membership site - advice?

I use a low priced trial offer that rebills monthly through infusionsoft and infusionwp and is processed by a merchant account. Very versatile in terms of content control.

However, it costs a fortune in merchant fees and monthly software fees. Plan to cover at least $1,000 a month to be safe as you first start building. The actual works out to be less, but with holds and whatnot your cashflow will be delayed.

I tried nanacast.com but the plugin was terrible, and at the time the design interface was hideous. They've made some progress but I'm certain they haven't matched the content control of infusionsoft. Cost was lower though.

What you want is to put *GET MORE* all over your free content points so that on almost any entry point they get pitched on the monthly. The first time they hit it, they'll likely keep browsing around soaking up all the other free info instead, but eventually be hooked and want more. Then the low price gives them safe trial-ability, further satisfying the thirst for your info. If you do your end of the deal they'll stick and be happy monthly members.

The biggest benefit is you can then offer an affiliate program and gain much more traction with other semi related blogs and websites as they start pushing your ads.

Last of all, make sure you capture email somewhere in the process, like if they decline the offer. You'll still be able to pitch one time packages and higher price points.

If you do it all properly the paid part really doesn't distract from what you already have going, and both parties will be satisfied.

I believe amember and 1shopping cart might be your lowest priced option but I'm not very familiar with those...someone else can chime in hopefully.

Looking good, original videos are hot content. I would recommend you first establish a broader reputation and produce a quality product, probably an instruction DVD with a study booklet & worksheets.
If you start locking up content (in your membership site), you might need alternate sources of traffic, perhaps your DVD becomes an affiliate marketed front end product with the membership site as an up-sell.
Some people would pay just to get a bigger version of your existing videos on the flat screen in their workout room.

I'm not really up on private video hosting ,I do know Amazon S3 may be a possibility, it's a good way to unload a shared hosted site before graduating to dedicated/virtual servers.

Man my muscles are sore from just watching a 1 minute video.

Look into the Wordpress Plugins repository, I am sure you'll find some free plugins that make you normal Worddpress site into a membership site.

Also, you can improve on the layout of the site. That way more people would trust it and eventually buy your membership.

Is it wrong that when I saw the link to your site, I envisioned a product in the food industry...

Anyways - I would have a quick look at the approach Greg Plitt uses for his membership area - short motivational previews on Youtube with links back to his site, etc...but make it your own.

Example of said video...


It seems like it is a model that could be adapted to what you are doing...

This is probably of no help, but I thought I would chime in anyways...

DO NOT USE WORDPRESS

I have made that mistake, high CPU usage, kills apache, errors, bugs the works!

Get a stand alone script like easy member pro. It is only $57 through warrior.

Regards
Owen