So you're all juiced up and ready to setup your own membership site, but then you hit a brick wall...
You have little if no idea HOW to make it all work! Well in this tip I'm going to give you the nuts an bolts of how it all comes together.
You'll discover all the 'pieces' you need and where to find all the help you need putting it all together. So let's get started...
Let's start with a break down of the 3 main components that make up a membership site system
- The membership management software
- The content delivery system
- The payment processing system
- Email Marketing System
Now, My aim here in this tutorial is to "Make it simple" so I'm not going to cover hundreds of different options, what I am going to do though is to cover what I believe to be not only one of the most affordable options around but also one that will give the most "Bang for your buck"
So here it goes:
Membership Management software
The membership management software is basically the component that will manage your users, their passwords, set access restriction to content, and make sure that only paid members get access to paid content. Naturally you'll also want your membership management software to restrict access when a user cancels their payment.
This part of the system also needs to integrate with both your content delivery system and your payment processing system.
Joomla Subscription Sites is a complete membership management system that literally plugins in to you joomla website, and turns your site from a simple content management system into a powerfull membership delivery system.
It has all the features you'd expect from a professional membership management system including, user management, access restrictions to all types of content on your joomla website including articles (you'll use articles to create all your web pages in joomla) components -such as forums, blogs, social system and much much more, integrationg with payment processors such as, Paypal, Authorize.net and MoneyBookers as well as many customizable options such as your pay now buttons, member messages and more.
Content Delivery System
As you've probably guessed, I'm going to recommend Joomla - Now I know a lot of people use wordpress for membership websites, and personally I think wordpress does quite a good job of running membership websites BUT not a great job.
You see, wordpress is still essentially a blogging platform, and really doesn't have the framework in place to add sophisticated features such as forums, helpdesks, and social communities. Joomla on the other hand is PERFECT for this type of expandibility, with some fantastic extension such as:
Kuena - very powerful fully integrated forum software
Jomsocial - One of the most powerful and feature rich social network extension for joomla
and ton's of other extension which can literally be installed in seconds to create powerfull, feature rich membership sites. Not to mentions of course Joomla excellent content management system.
Joomla's concept of sections and categories makes it a perfect candidate for organising content in a simple and logical system.
Payment Processing System
By far the quickest and easiest system to get started with is Paypal. Paypal allows you to collect both single one off payment as well as recurring payment (the type many memberships sites use) and deposit them directly into your paypal account.
Depending on which country you live in Paypal also allows you to link your Paypal account with your bank account, which means you can tranfer your membership payments directly into your bank account.
Fortunately JoomlaSubsciption sites membership site software integrates flawlessly with paypal to provide a smooth payment experience for you members and an easy to manage system for you.
Email Marketing System
One of THE biggest assets you have as a membership site owner are your members - but unless you have some sort of easy to use, effective way to communicate with your members you may as well be living on a deserted island.
Making sure that you capture your members details - their name and email address at the least, and get them into some sort of follow up email marketing system is critical. That's my Joomla subscription sites as been design to integrate flawlessly with some of the most popular email marketing system such as Aweber and Getresponse (we use aweber ourselves for ALL our email marketing campaigns)
The conclusion
So let's take a look at what's involved overall here:
- Membership Software (JoomlaSubscriptionSites) - $97
- Content Management System - $0
- Payment Processing System (Paypal) - $0
- Email Marketing System (Aweber) - $19
- Web hosting - (Hostgator) - $5
- Domain Name - $10
That's a grand total of: $131!
That's $131 to get started with you very own, online business, and it even includes all the training you need to setup your very own membership website, from start to finish.
The joomlasubscriptionsites membership site software helps you create and manage all our content delivery whether it's written content, audio, video or even forums and blogs, joomlasubscription sites membership site software integrates directly with the joomla content management system to make it quick and easy to setup multiple individual subscription plans.
I hope this tips proves helpful and useful to you.
Get in on the conversation by leaving a comment below, we'd love to hear what you've got to say about it.
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