Re-Introducing aMember Pro

The originator of this whole membership website software thing. Way before WordPress became the most widely used Blogging and CMS platform and over a dozen WordPress membership plugins popped up, aMember was the go-to software for powering membership websites.

The competition has gotten very stiff in the past few years and you can go out and find many different choices for what you need, but just because they’re more choices doesn’t mean choosing has become any easier. I’ve been running my WordPress powered membership website (Mixtapes.tv) for almost two years now via Wishlist Member and I always find my self wanting more options and not being able to get them. WishlistMember is one of the best WordPress membership plugins available and it’s still lacking.

If your in the planning stages of building a membership website, here’s a few things that’s going to become an issue once your site starts becoming more popular.

Subscription Management

When I first started I had a handful of paid customers paying me via PayPal which is the number one 3rd party payment processor and the most customizable, it’s fast and easy to setup and you can withdraw the money to your bank account whenever you want. The only problem with them is that they have no way for paid members to cancel their subscription unless they have a PayPal account, which many don’t. So they would have to contact me to do it manually, this isn’t a problem when you have a handful of members – Once I made it to 200+ members it started to become a task because I would start getting membership cancellation request daily, and once I got up the 500+ members it became very difficult to manage all the requests. Some Days it would be 20+ requests, I would then have to find the member’s info, then log into PayPal and search for the member and cancel the subscription. This can easily turn into a hours worth of work.

Guess What? Most 3rd party payment processors don’t offer the option to allow users to cancel their subscriptions automatically, trust me I’ve called most of them to check. The only 2 I’m aware of is Plimus and payment gateway Authorize.net, which is the number one way to accept payments online. Currently Authorize.net processes $1 in every $4 spent online in the US, so you would think that most membership software would support these 2 payment processors, but 90% of them don’t and the ones that do don’t offer the Authorize.net CIM (Customer Information manager) feature that allows paid customers to control their subscription.

The veteran aMember software has kept up with the times and has made many changes, one of the biggest changes it’s made is that it’s now a fully integrated with WordPress by default so there is no need to buy an additional plugin. So it’s a membership website software and  WordPress membership plugin at the same time, the only of it’s kind and it’s also the only one that supports both Plimus and Authorize.net with the CIM feature.

And of course they support all the other usual suspects such as 1ShoppingCart, 2Checkout, ClickBank, PayPal / PayPal Website Payments Pro, SWReg, WorldPay, and Zombaio for those of you who want to run adult membership websites, aka porn sites, lol.

Another problem you will come across when running a membership site especially if your using WordPress is compatibility issues, all plugins are not created equally and they all don’t all play nice together. I can almost guarantee you will run into some sort of issue with compatibility, aMember has an advantage because it’s not actually a WordPress membership plugin and doesn’t operate like a standard WordPress membership plugin and thus doesn’t mess up other plugins you might be using on your site.

Also a big problem with most membership website software, is the lack of a API or custom integration interface. This is so necessary when it comes to building a membership website because everyone requires different things for their websites.

Wishlist Member is the only WordPress membership plugin that has a really useful API. aMember has a full custom integration interface if you want to build customize functions for your website.

Currently I’m in the process of moving over to aMember and Authorize.net to achieve full website automation.

Get aMember Pro.

Actually it’s my second month running a membership website but the first month I didn’t have a payment option set up yet because I wanted to test everything to make sure there were no bugs, security issues etc. On May 1st was when I launched the Premium part of my website Mixtapes.tv. The business model I used for my membership site is the Fremium model aka the “try it before you buy it” model. In this day and age plus the type of audience I’m selling to, this model works great. I believe my product was good enough so I didn’t have any issues with offering it for free and then later offering a upgrade to unlock more features.

A little bit about my membership site.

It’s called Mixtapes.tv, it’s a site where DJs, Artists, and A&Rs can upload and share there mixtapes for free. Users are able to sign up and download these mixtapes for free as well. The key to this site is knowing what parts should be free and what parts shouldn’t be. For example users can sign up and download 5 mixtapes a month as zip files but  a premium member can download unlimited mixtapes, another feature is premium members can download individual tracks but free users can’t. The method here is that you have to make the free service good enough for them to want to upgrade to the premium service. For example a user can use the site forever as free member to listen and download unlimited mixtapes. This creates user retention and will eventually lead to upgrades.

The money is in the re bill.

Don’t know how many affiliate marketers are reading reading my blog but if you’ve ever promoted ringtone offers, you must have wondered how some of these companies are able to pay affiliates $16 to $30 per lead on a $9.90 offer, that’s because within 3 months they’ve regained 100% return on there investment. Most users will not cancel there subscription because it automatically gets added to there cell phone bill and they forget about it, and since it’s only $9.90 they don’t really pay attention to the charge. This is why low subscription pricing is so valuable. Jeremy from ShoeMoney.com touched on something similar when talking about Gym memberships and how it’s the perfect business.

My First Month Running A Membership Website

The Premium part of my site went live on May 1st, and the first 7 days no one upgraded, LOL. I was like oh shit no one likes the site but then on May 8th my first premium membership came in. I was so excited even though it was only $5.99, it feels really good when someone wants to buy something you are selling. After that first sale the upgrades started coming in with a average of 2 sign ups per day. So far I’ve had one disgruntle customer which was not my fault but as a result of a server side issue between PayPal and Wishlist Member.

Results after 30 days

I know it’s not Yacht money but that’s not my aim at this point, right now all I’m doing is focusing on making the service the best it can be. If I achieve that then I won’t have to worry about making money because the product will sell itself. Now remember these members are now in a billing cycle and this month an estimated 30 more Premium upgrades will occur which will double the earnings the following month, the real money will be made months down the line with the compounded revenue generated through subscribers singing up month after month. So far over 8,000 members have signed up 32 of which are premium members, keep in mind that 60% of those members signed up the 1st month before the premium option was available.

Not to mention I really haven’t dialed this thing in yet, I’m still testing. I haven’t implemented follow up via email marketing,  special offers, advertising, affiliate program or anything else for that matter. 90% of the traffic going to the site right now is coming from my other websites HipHopMusicDotCom.com. and a little from ComeWatchMe.com, once the traffic from search engines starts to really pick up in a couple months I’ll start to look more like the competition, who has a whopping 20,000 premium members, so I know the market is very healthy.

In conclusion.

Don’t treat a membership website like a regular eccommerce website, it’s not a sprint it’s a marathon.You think of it that way and you’ll see the real profits in the long run, I’m going to be writing a post soon about how to set up a membership site and the right tools to use to get it done.

I’m out……Chozen

One of the most popular alternative uses for WordPress is building membership / subscription based websites, with this demand a few great WordPress membership plugins have popped up.I my self just recently launched my membership website Mixtapes.TV with one of these plugins and it’s been great. Before I chose my membership plugin I researched for a couple weeks to see which plugin best met my needs, below is the list of plugins I came across.

WishlistMember: The now very popular WishlistMember plugin was not even around when I first started looking for membership plugins, but when I later ran into it, making the choice to purchase it was a no brainier because before it came along when other plugins at the time were not that great. Some of the features that stood out were Sequential Content Delivery, Multi-Level Access, Secure RSS Feeds, Control Viewed Content and features that just weren’t available at the time with other plugins, just by watching the videos on the site you can tell that the plugin was built by someone who actually has a membership site and understood how they worked. I bought WishlistMember a while back but I just started using it last month to launch my membership website MixTapes.TV which is a niche music subscription based service.

WishlistMember is also frequently updated, there next update will be a big one where there going to have new integrations with Mailchimp.com, file protection, infusionsoft integration and more. Another great thing about WishlistMember is the fact that it has a API which makes it easy to integrate with other plugins and 3rd party service in fact I’m using a in-house media plugin that is fully integrated with WishlistMember and I’ll be releasing that plugin in the future for FREE! WishlistMember most likely will have what your looking for in a membership plugin and would be a great choice for your project.

MagicMembers: Honestly If this plugin was around before I purchased WishlistMember I would have purchased it because even though I love WishlistMember there were some key features that are not available yet. Most of these features MagicMembers had because now that they had a blueprint like WishlistMember to follow so all they had to do is copy them and then add more features. Some of the key features include download manager, integration with Authorize.net and WorldPay, member only RSS feeds and more. One of the things that allot of people want from a membership plugin is the ability to run an affiliate program, MagicMembers solves this problem by offering a another plugin called MagicAffiliate which is fully integrated with MagicMembers and WP Ecommerce plugin.

Many people would argue that this is better than WishlistMember, and it’s a valid argument. It depends on what exactly your looking for, they’re both the same price so the decision solely depends on features.

wp-Member: When I first ran into this plugin I wasn’t impressed with it mostly because of it’s pricing at the time witch was subscription based, it was one of the first WordPress membership plugins and didn’t really have much features to begin with. As the competition grew they stepped there game up and rolled out all the features expected from a membership plugin and I like the fact that they support Google Checkout which MagicMembers and WishlistMember do not.

The best thing about wp-Member is how much you can customize your member registration page, something that is not as flexible with WishlistMember and MagicMembers. This is very important for a membership website and I’m glad to see wp-Member put so much work into it, below are some screen shots of a different types of registration pages.

MemberWing: This plugin is like MagicMembers and WishlistMember on steroids, they take all the best features from both of them and then add 10x more features, I mean damn near overkill. If you can’t find what you want with this membership plugin you might as well just build your own. They support more payment processors than any other membership plugin which include Paypal, 2Checkout.com, ClickBank.com, PayDotCom.com, e-junkie.com, Google Checkout, Authorize.net, and even TrialPay. if you want to run your own affiliate program MemberWing can be fully integrated with the number one affiliate management software iDevAffiliate.

They also have this really cool feature called First Click Free that allows better promotion of membership site on search engines. Implemented according to Google First Click Free Specs.

Other features include a powerful file protection feature as well as being fully integrated with TraceFusion that finds out exactly who steals, illegally shares and distributes your premium materials on internet. Detect, Trace, Terminate and Prosecute members who are involved in illegal sharing of your premium digital content. TraceFusion is like CCTV security camera with night vision and recording – but implemented as a software to protect your digital property against crooks, giving you the power to protect your online business like never before.

And that’s just the beginning of the features that they offer If this was around in the early days of membership plugins, this would most likely be my choice.

The only downside to MemberWing is that they only support 4 different membership levels but for 90% of people that’s more than enough.

WP-eMember: Along with purchasing WishlistMember I purchased WP eMember not because I wanted it but they offered an Affiliate Software that was compatible with WishlistMember, they offered a packaged deal so I ended up buying them all.

Judging by the price I didn’t think this plugin would have much features but I was was wrong. It comes with all the features that you would expect from a membership plugin and it’s compatible with a list of other plugins including there list of in-house plugins which includes Affiliate Software and WP eStore.

Digital Access Pass: This is another great WordPress membership plugin with features that rival MemberWing. Payment processors supported include 1ShoppingCart (and all private labels), ClickBank and Paypal Standard, for shopping cart Digital Access Pass directly supports Authorize.net, Paypal Express Checkout and Paypal Payments Pro. No need for 3rd party shopping carts. Digital Access Pass itself becomes your Shopping Cart.

Key features include:

Digital Access Pass has a built in affiliate program that supports both Pay-Per-Lead and Pay-Per-Sale, this is a big deal!
File protection for .mp3, .zip, .flv, .zip, .exe. .pdf, .doc. .xls, .mpeg. .swf, .js.
Pay As You Go Subscriptions, Pay-Per-View, Pay-Per-Download.

There are at least a dozen other features that make this plugin incredible, this is worth checking out.

EasyPayPal: This is a very basic and simple membership plugin that allows you to run a simple membership website using PayPal for payments. If your not looking for crazy over the top features for your blog then this is the plugin for you.

Your Members: One of the original WordPress membership plugins and just like wp-Member it didn’t have much features to begin with but it has improved it’s specs and now functions like a premium WordPress membership plugin. They also have a API in the works for easy integration with other plugins.

CMS Members: A new comer to the WordPress membership market with a few stand out features like being the only WordPress MU compatible membership plugin and easily integrated with self-hosted or online affiliate marketing systems easily. They also have a cool built in HTML E-Mail newsletter feature for mass mailing your members.

InfusionWP: I don’t know much about this plugin except that it’s a “Wordpress membership plugin that will turn a normal WordPress site into a full featured membership site, with all the imaginable protection controls at your disposal, yet drawing its data from your Infusionsoft application. You guys will have to do your due diligence with this one. “

That last one was quoted folks….

Well I gave you the list, the hard part is now finding the one that best fits your needs. Remember the best membership plugin may not be the best for your site, Digital Access Pass and MemberWing both beat out WishlistMember as far as features are concerned but they didn’t offer a API and WishlistMember did which was something I needed for my project, so that’s something to keep in mind.

Good Luck, Chozen…….

Since the year started I’ve been doing my internet business full time, and it’s been pretty good, I’ve launched two new sites one is a video site and the other is a membership website both of which I can say had successful launches. Below is run down of how my sites have been doing.

First of all let me address my original site HipHopMusicDotCom.com, this site has sure become quite the blog going from a ugly blogspot blog to now averaging over 2,000,000 page views monthly. Yesterday I did 33,000 unique visitors and almost broke 100,000 pageviews and the traffic isn’t showing any sign of slowing down. Even though the traffic is crazy that really isn’t where the success is with the website. The real success is the two new revenue streams I’ve able to create for the website, originally most of my earnings came from Google Adsense, InfoLinks and Adbrite but now I’ve been making money with selling direct ads and video ads.

If you have video content and haven’t incorporated video ads yet into your site, you need to because the payout is far more lucrative that contextual based ads. So far I’ve been working with LongTailVideo Adsolution and ScanScout, I’m going to be writing a post that covers video advertising, video ad networks and pretty much everything else you need to know regarding making money with video ads.

The second revenue stream I’ve unlocked on HipHopMusicDotCom.com is direct advertising, since this year started I’ve been getting quite a few advertising offers. With the help a little Ad Manager plugin called OIO Publisher which I use to manage all my direct ad sales, I don’t think I’d be able to handle direct ad sales efficiently without it and you can expect to see a post about that coming soon.

Between those two new revenue streams and my existing ones I’ve been able to double my monthly earnings and I needed it since I’m on more expensive servers now.

As far as Music Video Cast is concerned, I haven’t updated since the year started and will never update ever again not since I’ve launched ComeWatchMe.com in January of this year. Music Video Cast will be deprecated and all the posts will be moved to ComeWatchMe.com after running MusicVideoCast.com for almost 3 years I think it’s safe to say it’s reach it’s limit as far as growth potential. It had a few big moments in it’s life span but I just couldn’t take it to the next level the way I did with HipHopMusicDotCom.com one of the reasons being that it’s just about music videos which is a very small niche with allot of other sites people would rather go to. I did manage to get it to the top of the second page of Google for “Music Videos” which brought it allot a traffic and continues to but that’s the past and ComeWatchMe.com is the future.

ComeWatchMe.com was lunched on January 15th and since then it has been doing very well, in only 4 months it’s doubled the traffic that Music Video Cast receives. In about 3 years video ads will be everywhere this will be a multi billion dollar industry so I’m gearing up and preparing for that growth from now. Video ads will be in 2013 what Google Adsense was in 2003 and just like Adsense it’s the niche sites that are going to really benefit from this market, instead of trying to be the next YouTube people should focus on building niche on demand video sites. This is what I’m doing with ComeWatchMe.com at the moment, I’m focusing on video ads on the site currently but there is one contextual banner ad on the site but the focus is video ads and it’s already showing good numbers. I expect big this from this site in the future.

The other site I launched was MixTapes.TV at the end of March, this site has been something I wanted to start two years ago but didn’t have the tools or money to do it until now. The original name was MixtapeCast.com to match MusicVideoCast.com then I changed it to MixtapePlayer.com which was a great name until the end of last year I saw MixTapes.TV for sale on Sedo, I won it in a auction for $150.00 which is a steal for a top level domain, with this name combined with my SEO and Social Media skills I guarantee you I’ll be number one in Google for the search term “mixtapes” by September. It’s a subscription based (my first one) site built around the very popular niche of “mixtapes”. The launch was pretty crazy so crazy that I ended up moving to a new server because it just couldn’t handle the traffic. In one month I’ve already had 3,300 sign ups, I was on the second page of Yahoo for “mixtapes” in less than 2 weeks, 70,000 unique visitors, 160,000 pageviews and 200,000 media streams. Currently this site is my main priority and I’m working very hard to make it profitable before the summer is over.

I also officially have my company name now which is called “Covanant” not to mistaken with Covenant though they have a similar meaning, Covanant stands for a “Solemn Promise To Excel In Business”, yeah I invented (patent pending). I’m going to be launching that site soon. The logo is below..

That’s pretty much what I’ve been up yo since the year started, which is why I haven’t been able to update this site as much as I would like but I’ll promise that from this point I will try my best to do at least one post per day. After all I do plan one day to turn this site into big business as well.

That’s it for now, later………….

Chozen.