I ran a few and made $2000/mo during my peak before selling them off. Ask away!

My partner and I are just getting into a membership site, this is great timing, would love to know the do's and don'ts.
Thank you.

any opinions about Dolphin 7?

how did you promote ?

The Do's and Don't your question is a bit too broad, can you make it more specific?

I promoted by having affiliates. I used paydotcom.com, and a lot of them did press release. Press release are a great of way getting free targeted traffic. I also posted on paid forums such as warriorforums, sitepoint, and others.

I paid for review post on blogs. Let me post more later today.

what were the sites about ?
i mean members paid for what ?

They were photoshop niches, how-to niches, drawing,
I did also internet marketing courses, and many small niches where I did a newsletter.

what was your most effective promotion method? I like the review blog posts idea.

If you are running a make money membership site.

These blogs are effective for paid reviews:
http://www.tylercruz.com/
http://www.jonathanvolk.com/
http://courtneytuttle.com/
http://theuniversitykid.com/
http://www.carlocab.com/
http://www.johncow.com/
http://internetbabel.com/
http://onemansgoal.com
http://www.infectedbybugs.com
http://theblogentrepreneur.com

The idea is to always measure the number of CLICKS vs. impressions. So to test out your ad copy, you want to put your offer up at
1. warriorforum.com
2. forums.digitalpoint.com
3. sitepoint.com
4. v7n.com
5. internet-earners.com

You want to see the number of people who VIEW your thread, vs. the number of people who actually click through to your website.

A simple way is using a mysql database:

PHP Code:

CREATE TABLE `referer` (
`id` INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
`timestamp` TIMESTAMP NOT NULL,
`referer` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
`destination` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL
); 


And put this on every page:

PHP Code:

<? 
// set your domain 
$mydomain = "mydomain.com"; 

// only log if the referer isn't this domain 
if( strstr(!$_SERVER['HTTP_REFER'],$mydomain) 
{ 
  // insert record 
  $result = mysql_query("INSERT INTO referer (referer,destination) VALUES('" . $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] . "','" . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . "')"; 
} 
?>

Then track which referrer sends you how many visitors. And divide the number of click throughs by the thread impression.

You need to test out different ad copies at different forums to find the one that will convert the BEST for you.

You want to use AIDA writing style. I recommend a good copywriting book.

Once you find the write pitch,

that's when you want to test it out on the paid blog posts that I recommend.

The price varies from $35 to $350. You have to remember that different prices have different click through rates. More traffic doesn't not necessarily mean more click through.

Their rates keep going up since more and more people are asking for paid reviews. These paid reviews are NOT biased and they will only put report the honest opinion of your product.

Sometimes you can negotiate to give the webmaster a cut as an affiliate and write up unique content for them. But this is RARE and I don't recommend you depend on it.

Facebook is really ineffective for paid membership sites. Most users are not interested in investing real money.

Originally Posted by trooper

any opinions about Dolphin 7?

how did you promote ?

It's effective and cheap, with a lot of add ons. But it depends on what you're trying to do. Can you describe what you're trying to do?
And I'll tell you if it's suitable for your needs or not.

Would you be willing to hep with a launch? More information offline though...

Would I have 1000 member in my site within a week?
If yes then say me how?

I am really interested in starting up a membership website, however I don't have enough money for an autoresponder. Would I be able to create a successful membership site without an autoresponder?

Originally Posted by exodian1

I am really interested in starting up a membership website, however I don't have enough money for an autoresponder. Would I be able to create a successful membership site without an autoresponder?

mail chimp has a free level that allows you to send quite a few emails before you have to pay anything. It's branded with their logo but if that's the only thing standing in your way, it's an option.

Originally Posted by mandom

mail chimp has a free level that allows you to send quite a few emails before you have to pay anything. It's branded with their logo but if that's the only thing standing in your way, it's an option.

Yes I was thinking about mail chimp, but what happens when I exceed that limit? I won't really be able to get any more subscribers unless other one's leave. But I guess that is an option. I was also thinking about trying to use Interspire Email Marketing Software on my website, but I'm having some issues installing it on Hostgator. Anyways, I'll try out mailchimp for now.

what membership site script your recommend?

Originally Posted by exodian1

Yes I was thinking about mail chimp, but what happens when I exceed that limit? I won't really be able to get any more subscribers unless other one's leave. But I guess that is an option. I was also thinking about trying to use Interspire Email Marketing Software on my website, but I'm having some issues installing it on Hostgator. Anyways, I'll try out mailchimp for now.

By that time, hopefully you'd be making some money and can pay for the upgraded service. If you want to make serious money you'll need to spend at least a little. Free tools are all well and good but usually they're free for a reason.

Originally Posted by mandom

By that time, hopefully you'd be making some money and can pay for the upgraded service. If you want to make serious money you'll need to spend at least a little. Free tools are all well and good but usually they're free for a reason.

Yes I understand... the only problem is that I don't have a credit card to pay for many of these email marketing sites. Luckily I've found one today, Imnica Mail, which accepts Paypal so I might be going with them. But I will try Mail Chimp first to build up my list.

Hi! Not sure how much specific help you can give me. I'm a bit unusual in that my talent is in writing fiction. People love my work, I don't want to publish novels as I prefer the close interaction with my readers, so obviously a membership site would seem to be the way to go.

My problem is that I don't know of many people who actually make money this way. I just think that it's actually a fairly good model and would, I think, be quite popular - if properly promoted. I know that many readers love the idea of personally interacting with the author and would be willing to pay a small fee to gain access to their writing, so it's something that has been percolating for a while. I'd just like some input from someone knowledgeable in this arena - creating membership sites.

Any help would be appreciated.

If I actually had any experience in running a specific fiction membership site I'd create a 'how to 'product around it as I think it's something other writers would appreciate.

I am new to the whole building a web-site and domain thing (although I've been visiting this site for years building knowledge...heehee) I would like to know if you could recommend the best pre-built site or templete that I could use.

Here's what I'm trying to do... I want to have a site that lists every city in the country for a service im promoting. The vendors that sign up will be charged a minimal yearly fee to be on the site and the end users will use it as a search engine to find this service in thier immediate area...the site will then match them to my vendors in thier area....

A free templete would be awesome as I am a black hatter just gettin started which means shoe string budget....lol

Anyone's help is greatly appreciated!

I'm planning to start a membership site using WordPress and S2 Member. Do you think it would work?

The site is related to graphics, will that be in demand?

Thanks

I'm planning to start a membership site using WordPress and S2 Member. Do you think it would work?

The site is related to graphics, will that be in demand?

Thanks