Start Your Own Membership Site - A Checklist

There are a lot of factors involved in creating a successful membership site. Sometimes you can have so many things going on at the same time that important details can get overlooked. Here is a handy checklist to help organize and streamline the process:

Find your topic - Research things you are interested in. If you are passionate about it, others are likely to be too. Besides, it is more enjoyable to spend time working on something you are passionate about.

Identify your niche - You want your site to stand out from the crowd. This will take some research within your topic, but it is probably the single most important decision you will be making.

Buy your domain - This is where you figure out your website name and make sure it is available. A good rule of thumb is to keep the name under twenty letters.

Create a list of content you want to offer your members - The key to a successful site is a compilation of all the resources possible on your topic, as well as unique content like cheat sheets, reviews or checklists.

Check out the competition and see what they are offering and at what price they are offering it - This doesn’t mean undercutting them, but you don’t want to price yourself out of the market either.

Design your site - It doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to clearly and compellingly communicate what you are offering. Organize your site content in a clean, uncluttered, easily accessible way.

Secure your automated tools - This can include (but is not limited to) an email auto responder, a shopping cart, and ad tracking. Figure out what you need. You can purchase these separately or bundled together.

Generate some buzz - You can do this any time after you have identified your niche. You can create buzz by submitting articles to various sites, sending out press releases, or with an early bird membership rate. I would also recommend putting up a tickler page offering something free related to your site (like a report or newsletter) to generate an email list.

Create your affiliate center - This is for your affiliates’ use, and normally contains their stats, articles for them to use on their sites or ezines, graphic ads they can use, etc.

If you put up a tickler page, now is the time to replace it with your full site - Test everything to make sure it’s all working perfectly. Keep offering something free that visitors can sign up for, in order to grow your mailing list.

Hire assistants as needed - At some point in this process or maybe a little further down the road you will likely find you need some help handling all the facets of your site efficiently. You may want to “promote” one or more of your best affiliates or hire a virtual assistant that specializes in affiliate marketing.

No one can guarantee you success. But using this checklist will help you monitor your progress and help you make sure nothing important gets overlooked. If you follow each of these steps and do your research carefully and completely, there is no reason in the world why your site won’t make you money.