Your Membership Site Startup Checklist

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Your Membership Site Startup Checklist

Starting a membership site is easier than you think. Although there are a lot of requirements involved, you can breeze through them all with this simple checklist. Once you get through this list you’ll be in prime position to launch your own membership site and start gathering a consistent monthly income from your site.

Domain name

Your first step is to get a domain name. Use the most popular keywords in your niche and add a community-oriented suffix like club, group or team. For example, your weight loss membership site could be hosted at www.loseweightclub.com. Using keywords can help with search results. Or you can include it on your website and point the domain to the website.

Website

Your website design will have a big impact on how your members use your website and how often they come back. You’ll need a welcome page, a blog, a member’s area and/or course area and perhaps a forum, depending on the nature of your membership site..

Sales Process or Funnel

Your sales process or funnel should guide prospects through a meaningful sales process. It may be a sales letter that should convince visitors why they should join your membership site. It may also be a Webinar with a powerful call to action at the end that sends the person to your shopping cart with a program summary. Some would consider it to be the most important part of your business because it gets people in through the door. The sales process needs to emphasize the benefits of your membership site as well as mentioning the features. By the time you have guided people through your process, they should be ready to say: “Hell Yeah!!”; you’ll make the decision easy for them.

Order Processor or Shopping Cart

You won’t make any money with your membership site unless you have this set up properly. While many people use Paypal, Stripe or another credit card processor, to process their monthly subscriptions, you will need the technology to facilitate this. I use LifterLMS as my Wordpress plugin for my site and I use it’s built in shopping care along with Stripe. There are also options such as WooCommerce, ThriveCart, 1ShoppingCart and more. If you are hosting on a membership platform such as Teachable, or GoHighLevel, then you will set up their system and probably connect it to Stripe or Paypal.

Membership Site Script, Plugin or Host

A membership site script or plugin will keep your website secure. The script/plugin will build a registration form into your site, which will allow paying members to sign up and access the site. It will also keep visitors from accessing your content without paying. Thanks to membership site plugins/scripts you don’t have to hire a coder to set up a custom script for you. You can also host on a learning platform such as Teachable, Udemy etc.

Email Autoresponder program

You’ll want to keep in touch with your members and let them know what is going on inside of the site. Using an autoresponder e-mail list is a great way to keep people active in the site. You can send out a new message each time there is a content update, or you can e-mail a weekly newsletter. Place an opt in box on the welcome page that members get to after they’ve successfully subscribed.

Startup Content

Before you launch your site, you should have several articles, reports and other forms of content available for your members to enjoy. If you plan on having a certain amount of updates per month, you should have at least twice as much content when you start. This way the members know that theyll be getting quality from you in the future. Write the content yourself or have a ghostwriter do it for you.

Editorial Schedule

Just like traditional newspapers, your membership site needs an editorial calendar. You dont want to scramble around each month trying to get your content together. Plan ahead at least a few months of content and get it prepared before you need to post it.

By following these steps, you’ll be ready to promote your membership site and start earning monthly income.