Just released is a new website which contains a twelve week ecourse to help you get more new sales now – sign up if you like, but that’s not why I’m writing this article 
The purpose of this article is to take you through the processes and software I used to create this WordPress membership site so you can see what’s involved if you want to do something similar.
So let’s look at all those different elements, starting firstly with the content.
Membership Site Content
In this case, I’ve taken a newly written PLR (Private Label Rights) e-course and “modified” the content and delivery mechanism. It is a short fixed-term membership course delivered online – three monthly instalments and it’s done.
Originally, this 12 week course was delivered by a weekly auto-responder email which contained a link to download the PDF lesson for that week.
The PLR also contained a “free report” which could be offered on a squeeze page to entice people to sign up to a list. Instead of using it for that purpose, I’ve put these “tips” onsite and have created 20+ pages of publicly viewable content here:
20 Tips For Sales Success
This should earn some search engine love for a range of sales related keywords, and to entice people on each page to register for the full course.
Now the online course was created by taking “chapters” or obvious “Sections” from each week’s PDF lesson, and re-writing them into separate WordPress posts – approximately 6 to 8 posts for each weekly lesson – which are “dripped” out sequentially on the first day of every week, over the 12 weeks.
I have also created new auto-responder messages which outline each week’s lesson, and direct customers back to the membership site for the actual content. These are delivered by my auto-responder at weekly intervals.
Why Do It This Way?
Good question… Here are the alternatives:
Alternative A (as provided) – try to sell a “passive” weekly PDF download (and you just know what will happen to that…)
Or Alternative B – try to sell a “community” where members are encouraged to keep coming back to the site to get new materials, or review old stuff… where they can comment on each lesson… where they can report back on the results of their “homework” each week… where I can “learn” what they need so I can offer more relevant follow-up options (read future sales) to them later on… where content can easily be added/expanded on as needed…
The second option provides a lot more “value” to the consumer, and should be an easier “sell” to make in the first place. It means you could even charge a little bit more than you might for a simple PDF download if you wanted to.
Membership Site Plugins
What makes this possible is using WordPress as the Content Management System, and two very special plugins…
Wishlist Member
I’m using a multi-site licence (value $297) for Wishlist Member which does several things for me on this site:
uses WordPress to handle the membership user management – registration, login, password reminder etc.
allows me to easily set up multiple free or paid membership “levels” (if needed) but in this case, I have only one established.
plugs into PayPal IPN to “automatically” look after payments and cancellations.
secures individual posts, pages, comments and categories and only allows the correct level to view each item.
optionally allows for sequential delivery of content (but due to the number of posts involved, I have opted to use a different plugin for that).
personalises individual pages for each member.
Wishlist Member works with the latest version of WordPress, and needs PHP5 to be running on your webserver (which may require a simple change in your cPanel).
While a single use license is available, the multi-site license is really the only way to go
WP-Drip
This is a great plugin (value $97) which complements WishList Member, and drips out the content to the right members, at the right times.
It was simply a case of changing the post date to a date in the past – eg the first post on 1st January – and then adding new posts at specific “timed” intervals after that. In my case, a group of new lessons every seven days – Jan 7, 14, 21, 28 etc…
WP-Drip uses the date the member joined, and works out what and when they get to see, based on the interval between your posts. It shows the CURRENT date next to each post, so it looks like your content has just been released… no matter WHEN they join.
WP-Drip also has a upcoming posts sidebar widget to show what new posts will be made available in the next, say, seven days – a great incentive to keep people from canceling their membership
*** See the special “Resources Used” section below for a spectacular WordPress Membership Training offer!
Category Posts Widget is a free plugin which allows you to show the posts from different categories in the sidebar. This works well with the drip, to show ONLY the posts that are currently “published” for each member.
Subscribe to Comments is a free plugin which allows people to subscribe to a post thread they have commented in, so they can follow and respond to the conversation in that thread.
Widget Logic is a useful plugin to easily add WordPress conditional tags to ANY widget used on your site – see below to see how I used it here.
Theme Changes Needed
Use any theme you like – but the main changes you could make to any premium WordPress themes used would be to the home.php template page, and also to the sidebars (although I have since discovered a simpler option there).
Looking at the sidebars first, I have two “states” that need to be looked at when they are displayed:
when a member is logged in, they need to see one set of sidebar options/widgets.
when they are NOT logged in, they need to see a different set of options/widgets.
Now since I did NOT know about the Widget Logic plugin, I had to get really messy with the PHP code in the sidebar templates to set up a whole heap of conditional tags to make it work… But with this plugin, I can easily add ANY conditional tag combination to ANY widget, to make it work as intended.
For example… is_home() will only show that content if you are looking at the home page, and is_user_logged_in() will show content only if the user is logged in… or if not, use !is_user_logged_in().
Which brings me to the home.php template… Essentially, if this template file exists in your theme, you can use it to create a custom “home page” for your wordpress site. And, by mixing content there based on whether is_user_logged_in() I was able to create two totally different home page viewing experiences depending on whether the user is signed in as a member, or not
Where Too From Here?
OK.. so the site is done… everything is working as intended… 26 of the “free” tips pages are indexed in Google… the next thing I have to do is get some qualified traffic flowing to the site.
So the success or otherwise of your fixed-term wordpress membership site will depend on the range of marketing and linking techniques you use to get that happening!
In my case, I have a few “relevant” and authority sites which I can post articles, and put some ads and/or links on for starters. In fact, one of those links is already #1 at Google (from 738 million results) for the phrase get more new sales now.
While that will get the ball rolling, there’s a lot more that needs to be done, so we’ll discuss all of that at a later date.
But right now, I want to add a couple of extra plugins I’ve recently discovered so I can offer an affiliate program with the site. These will include:
WordPress Affiliate Platform plugin
which ties into
WordPress eStore plugin
(both plugins available as a bundle with multi-site license for $55)
and which ALSO integrates with my WishList Member!
So as soon as I can get that done, I can have an army of affiliates (hopefully) also getting the word out for me!
Another “angle” I want to look at is… this content is directed at boosting real world, off-line sales techniques. I’m going to look at adding unique “original” content, which focuses on how these principles apply to ONLINE sales – it would certainly make the product a lot more attractive.
So there you have it…
A pretty thorough outline and live example of how to use WordPress and the appropriate plugins to set up a fixed term membership site to deliver an online e-training course.
Naturally, there are many other types of WordPress Membership sites you can set up using these plugins, and these are all explained in the offer which follows…
Resources Used
WishList Member and WP-Drip CAN be purchased individually if you wish, however your “best” option is to get them as part of Membership Cube…
Here you can get an unlimited site license of the WishList Member membership plugin for free. You can get WP-Drip to drip out all your content. You can also get all the extra plugins you need to embed video, run mini-challenges, track users, and more. On top of all that, you get personal training for a couple hours a week over the next two months to get your first three membership sites launched!
And that’s just for starters
One quick link to register for Membership Cube
I look forward to seeing you inside the member’s area – yes – it IS a course I am a member of… and have been since way back in March this year… And it is training I will continue to access over and over again!
Cheers
Stephen Spry
Disclaimer
This article is to demonstrate how I have used these products to produce an actual, working WordPress Membership site. Please note that affiliate links are used here and I will receive a commission if you purchase from them. However, be assured that I HAVE used these products personally, and they DO carry out the tasks I want them to without fuss, so they do carry my personal recommendation for very sound reasons
membership sites, wordpress membership plugins