Membership site experts, have i got this right?!?

There are quite a few solutions both with a monthly fee and no monthly fee but transaction only fees which will vary. I saw one that charged 2.9% and $1 transaction fee but there were quite a few limitations on types of products and services you could sell through them.

There are several threads in this forum that go into details of what is available and there are pages of results on the search engines.

I have personally built from scratch membership sites that have generated millions of dollars for past clients. What I would recommend you focus on with the membership site is:

1: Content and keeping that content updated and adding new content.

2: Support, being able to handle support requests and dealing with customers.

Get those put into place first.

Then the backend should consist of:

Membership site control that can handle automated subscriptions and canceling.

Webhosting that can handle the traffic, member activity and not come to a halt or blink in and out when under load.

The rest of your budget should be focused on marketing and bringing in new members.

I wouldn't just have one payment processor but if you have a full fledged merchant account also add paypal as an option. Most of the third party services do not offer a merchant account instead you process through them directly.

If you go with one of those shopping cart services they will handle the processing for you and may also provide member control, depending on the type of services offered. Usually it is hosted on their service and not on your own hosted account. You will pay a higher monthly fee but it is all taken care of for you. Except the marketing and getting new members that you have to do yourself.

Thanks for the input Terry...

Just my 2 cents.

Have you heard of Profits Theme? Super cool, has all these cool things to offer a membership site AND they have an affiliate section/add on that you can set up your own affiliate program right from your own site. I think that's an awesome feature.

Does OP have that ?

Just my 4 cents.

Robert C.

Cheers mate, ill check it out now

I use EasyMemberPro - it can do all you are asking for in one low cost package.

Martin

Looks solid, but only looks like it could replace DAP from list - Obviously anything could replace OP2.0, it just makes life easier - but if I did invest in EMP EasyMemberPro it appears Id still need a cart and a payment gateway

You may want to consider Zaxaa - https://www.zaxaa.com

They offer a free Wordpress plugin that will protect and drip feed your content (so you wouldn't need any other membership plugin)

They handle affiliate commission payout through PayPal Adaptive payment so you wouldn't have to worry about a payment/affiliate platform. (similar to JVZoo or W+)

If you use their free option, there would be no upfront cost to setup your site, only a cost per transaction fee in addition to PayPal fees.

Hey,

try constantcontinuity.com, you will get every thing under 1 system i.e sales page editor, blog, digital products and shoppingcart/checkout with 1SC or payal. PM me so I will let you know more

If you are doing just a membership site then you don't need a shopping cart. Those are for people with a huge number of products to sell from a single site.

You can find many membership scripts that meet your needs and I suggest you look at as many options as you can before deciding on a single solution. They all are different and have different uses.

One main consideration is do you want a Wordpress plugin to handle your membership or a standalone solution that doesn't require any other software to handle your needs. Each has it's own good and bad points.

If you need a blog then go with Wordpress and plugins but make sure your site is secure. Wordpress is very easy to hack and many people have problems with sites being hacked because Wordpress is installed.

Stand alone software is more secure usually but not all of them are easy to set up or maintain. Stand alone options also bring up the issue of scalability for the future.

Before you decide on a single solution know what you need and find something that best matches your own personal needs.

Really appreciate the input people, helped a lot! Thanks!

Interesting post as I'm creating a membership site, too.

Usually, you can create your own lead in or splash page. Although the program you mentioned, Optimize Press, the one that was mentioned Profit Themes, and there is also lead pages. I think all three have affiliate programs. Check their websites.

One place to always go for programs (like support, etc.) is in the Control Panel of your website. Most now have easy plugin's through Fantastico and QuickInstall (I use quickinstall because they update their versions more often).


membership site wise, I'm looking at this one s2Member® | A powerful (free) membership plugin for WordPress® and would appreciate any comments on it.

Besides it offering a lot, they have a nice looking friendly website (many other membership sites are horrible, and that attention to detail is important to me), and they have an affiliate program.

Number 1 and 2, spot on, its the set up I use for my membership sites.
Number 3, DAP doesn't integrate with 3dcart or Shopify at this time but they do integrate with 1Shoppingcart. But, DAP also has its own cart. Mind, you, if you just use PayPal standard you don't need number 3 at all.
Number 4, If you use PayPal Pro it has an integrated Gateway. If you need to use a separate merchant account, then yes you need a gateway like Authorize.net. Or you can also go Stripe which integrates with DAP.

With Number 2, you have your affiliate feature already set up (DAP comes with affiliate module standard).

DAP allows you to drip easily and it also integrates with a ton of stuff.