Creating a membership site is fast, easy and can be very rewarding.  The good thing about a membership site is that you can set it up to get paid as often as you’d like.  Most membership sites I’ve seen bill monthly or yearly, but it’s entirely up to you.

The first thing you need to do is find your niche or topic for your membership site.  Once you have an idea for a membership site you need to find something to control it (a script).  When looking for a script to control your membership site you want maximum flexibility and you want everything to run on auto-pilot.  You don’t want to spend all day messing with the backend trying to get things to work.  Everyone’s needs are different so there are tons of choices for what scripts you would use to get your membership running.

Did you know that you can use WordPress to completely control the inside of your membership site and automatically update it?  This site for example is based off of WordPress.  I wrote this post 5 days before you were actually able to read it.  WordPress has a great feature where you can schedule the date and time you want your posts to be made.  Since this site updates daily I write every post in advance and schedule everything in advance.  This is a great feature to have and there aren’t a lot of scripts out there paid or free that do this.

WordPress is also extremely flexible if you don’t want your membership area to look like a blog you can customize it to the point where it looks like a regular static website.  You can even remove the date and timestamp from the posts (search WordPress for a tutorial on how to do this) so your content doesn’t look like it’s old.

Of course WordPress isn’t your only option for the content section of your membership site.  You can use regular HTML or PHP pages, a CMS, a forum, the skies the limit.

Now that I mentioned forum.  I know that VBulletin has a built-in paid membership system with the default install.  I’m sure other forum scripts have them or have plug-ins or hacks that do this.

Anyway back to WordPress.  There are plug-ins available that can help you with sign ups and dealing with the actual members and billing.  EasyPayPal is one option.  It’s completely free and has the basic functionality you need to start your membership site.   MemberWing is another that has a free version.  Of course there are much more advanced scripts, but most of them cost money.  I was just showing you a couple of free options, since if you can get it for free why pay.  The truth is for membership scripts you might be better off paying depending on your needs.  Of course if your needs are simple these might get you to the right start.

Some paid one’s are: Scratch that.  If you want some paid scripts just google membership site script.  You’ll find plenty, all with different features.  There are tons of them.

It’s extremely easy and it’s possible to make your membership site with the administrative backend and auto-billing completely free.  You just need to have a good idea and start getting members.  Once you have a good amount of revenue from your membership site you can change your backend and customize everything.  It’s not always good to pay big money up front.  Sometimes you have to test the waters before putting out your hard earned cash.

Once your site is setup remember a quality membership site can make you money for years to come.  There’s nothing better than recurring revenue.  Make sure you put some of what you make back into the site.  Don’t let your site die out or your members will stop paying.

Here are a few scripts that you can try out to run your site:

Membership Millionaire

Multiple Memberships

Membership Site Manager

Instant Membership Site Creator V3.2

These are the full scripts.  They even come with resell rights if you want to sell them.  You don’t need WordPress for any of these scripts you can just put up an HTML page with your content, if that’s what you want to do.  These are just to take payments and make sure only paying members are accessing your membership area.

Out of those four I like Membership Site Manager the most.  It’s easy to install and setup.  Instant Membership Site Creator is also easy to setup, but I don’t care for working with CGI scripts.  All the other scripts are written in PHP.