Thomas Griffin — October 17, 2019 Are you thinking about starting a membership site?
A membership site is the best way to share content with paying members in a secure way. The most common membership site example is an online course. Membership sites can restrict access to only users that have joined your site and have permission to view content they are subscribed to.
Membership sites are also useful to create a space for a community of people to discuss specific topics. Communities can revolve around brands, hobbies or can be built for support in different areas of life. Membership platforms make it possible to prevent content within the site from being viewed by other people online.
It’s a way to create exclusive content that creates value for users. It can help build a brand community that fosters brand loyalty and improves conversions.
Membership sites can boost your business’s growth. When done right.
And getting it right can be challenging if you don’t know what pitfalls to look for. Let’s dive into some of the key mistakes you should avoid when creating a membership site.
Rushing Your Membership Site
Unlike a blog or even a company website, building a membership site takes a long time. This is because you need to have your entire content prepared ahead of time. Most membership sites have different subscription packages. To ensure that your subscribers only have access to specific content, you need to have all the material ready beforehand. It’s only then that you can create rules to manage access.
Rushing a membership site will lead to mistakes. You need to develop your membership site with care and make sure that all the features are working by testing them out. You will lose your customers’ trust if there are too many problems on the site they paid to join.
Plan and create your membership site step by step so that you cover every possible problem. Testing it out and making changes will lead to customer satisfaction and more conversions.
Not Creating Free Content for SEO
While it’s important to have the most valuable content behind a paywall, you shouldn’t forget about creating enough free content on your site. Content that is freely available when non-users visit your site tells users what your membership site is all about and why they should join it.
Your open content also impacts the search engine ranking of your website. Search engines like Google do not index content that’s behind a paywall. This means that even though you’ve created great content, there’s no way for anyone to know. Your site won’t appear on search results.
You can manage this by creating free content available to the public early on. This makes it possible for search engines to crawl and index those pages, and you’ll be able to improve your website’s rankings.
Cakeflix offers free content and gated tutorials
Not Investing in Good Tools
There are many free themes and plugins available for WordPress that can help you build a membership site. But it’s not a good idea to make your membership rest on free tools.
Free tools often have limited functionalities. Many of them are dated and no longer support the latest versions of WordPress. You are also unlikely to get support from the developers of these tools.
A membership site plugin is great for creating a membership site. You’ll have access to all the functionalities you need. There are several addons available for additional features.
Using premium plugins ensures that you’re creating the best experience for users. They help you protect your content and manage members with little to no issues. You will also get support from the development team if you run into issues.
Not Adding Automation
As your membership site grows, you’ll find it difficult to manage all your members and their concerns. Even if your membership site is new, it’s important to add automation at the beginning to manage members and content.
You can automate your email marketing so that members anywhere receive a welcome email as soon as they join up. Automating payment collection removes the need for manual intervention. Every month, your site members are billed automatically. They can cancel, upgrade or downgrade their subscription on their own.
There are helpful marketing automation tools like drip content and drip email marketing tools. You can use them to send information to users at specific times. These tools allow you to control access to your content. They also ensure that users consume your content in the right order so that your members are using your material correctly.
With automation, you’ll save time and effort. It will make it possible for you to manage a large user base seamlessly. You can use the time saved with automation to focus on creating great content and to handle unusual issues.
Not Creating Fresh Content
Even though you’ve created great core content that forms the foundation of your membership site, you need to keep working on new content.
Users won’t have an incentive to remain a subscriber on your site unless you send them fresh content. It’s important to show that you’re creating value for your members with up-to-date articles and posts.
You need to refresh your core content and find new ideas or resources that can continue helping your site members. Creating more content also helps you attract more new users to your site. It gives your site members a reason to be subscribed.
Launch Your Membership Site to Success
Building your membership site can be very rewarding. You can share content and build a community using a membership site plugin.
However, there are many things that can go wrong. It can take a lot of time and effort to fix them and it’s likely to be stressful. However, by using the tips mentioned here. You can give your membership site the best start possible.
By avoiding common mistakes and using the best tools, you can create a great membership site that helps your users.
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