Building Your Membership Site Step by Step
Free membership websites can help Internet marketers in so many ways and they are relatively easy and inexpensive to set up that it’s a wonder there aren’t more of them. Don’t ever underestimate the power of ‘free’! Everybody loves ‘free’. Those who don’t have a lot of expendable income like free for obvious reasons but those who have plenty of expendable income LOVE ‘free’… maybe that’s why they have so much expendable income. 
The fact is that people who are surfing the Internet are all looking for the very same thing… INFORMATION. Granted, they are not all searching for the same information but they are nevertheless searching for information… and they love nothing better than free information about whatever topic they are interested in and that is where a free membership website comes in.
There are two major parts to building a successful free membership website. The first one is to actually construct the website on the Internet. The second one is to get members to join the free membership website. Here is how to go about doing both of those…
Building a Free Membership Website:
Building a free membership website is pretty much like building any other kind of website with just a couple of additions.
1. Choose a topic for your free membership site.
This topic should be one that will attract the specific group of people to whom you want to market your products or services. In most cases you are advised to narrow your topic but in the case of building a free membership website, it is better to make your topic a bit broader.
2. The next step is to register a domain name that reflects the subject of your free member ship website.
3. It is true that web hosting comes with a domain name but you need a web host that will allow you to have as many domains as you want on the same server.
(I wrote about some great resources for registering domains and web hosting in my previous post.)
4. You will need a membership script for your free membership site.
(I also wrote about three membership scripts that you can check out in my previous post.)
5. You might want to add a ‘Refer a Friend’ button, as well.
Two sites on which to get this program are Send to Friends , and KC Scripts Refer a Friend.
6. You might also want to include a helpdesk option on your free membership website. This is strictly optional.
7. You need content for your free membership website.
The name of the game for free membership websites, as for all websites, is content, content, content. There are many ways to obtain website content. You can download and reprint articles from article banks or you can join a PLR website and get articles which is better in that you can do some rewriting of the articles to avoid duplicate content and make them your own. Check out PLR Wholesaler for some great plr content and training.
If you have the ability you can write your own articles or you can hire a ghost writer to write them for you.
The above are the information and tools needed to build a free membership website (or a paid membership website for that matter). Now you either build your site or have someone build it for you. Your web host service will have features that will provide for you to set up a blog or forum on your website and you will need to include that when you are constructing your website. Additionally, there are other features that will likely be included in your web hosting service such as polls or content management systems that you might also want to include in your website.
Promoting Your Free Membership Website:
Promoting a free membership website is done exactly the way any website is promoted. When you build any website the only person that is aware that it exists on the Internet is you so it is up to you to promote and advertise your site and let the rest of the world know where to find you.
You accomplish that task while you are building your own credibility. One will not exist without the other. A free membership website builds credibility and credibility builds a free membership website. There are several very well established ways to promote a website on the Internet…and the first three listed here are free.
1. Write (or have written for you) short articles, 300 to 400 words, and put them into article directories for others to use.
Your resource box will include a link to your free membership website. The same is true for eBooks. Either write short 10 to 15 page ebooks or have them written for you. List these ebooks at free ebook sites for others to download and be sure that there is a link to your free website on every page.
2. Post to blogs and forums on other related websites after you join them.
Don’t go in promoting your free membership site outright…Simply include a link to your free membership site in your sig tag and post thoughtful and helpful information.
3. Find link exchange partners and exchange links with them.
Since you are not actually selling anything it should be very easy to find link exchange partners.
4. Buy advertising for your free membership website in related E-zines.
This is a very cost effective method of advertising. The cost of advertising in E-zines is usually less than $20 and the advertisement is sent directly to those people who are going to be your best prospects for your free membership sites as well as for the products and services that you will be marketing to them.
In no time, your membership site will be off to a rip roaring start…
Feel free to check out these free membership sites, see how they run, how things are operated. You’ll see that it’s really not that complicated.
Free Monthly Websites
Social Bookmarking Exposed
Resell Rights Weekly
Filed under membership sites by on Jun 29th, 2009. Comment. 
What You Need Before Getting Started
Building a free membership website is actually easier than it may sound..not super easy, but not that complicated either. There are so many associated advantages to having a free membership site that the little bit of trouble and expense will be well worth the time and effort that are required.
To get started on building your free membership website you are going to need some tools. The first thing that you will need to have is a web hosting service. There are actually two web hosting services that are excellent, reasonably priced and effective. You will have choices to make when you visit either of these two websites.
Web Hosting:
(This one is my personal favorite and the only one I use) You will see that there are several choices of servers ranging in price from a measly $6.95 per month to a whopping $174.95 per month. The service that will most likely serve your needs for a very long time can be found under the fist choice of ‘Personal Hosting’. When you click on the ‘learn more’ link, you will see that there are several choices beginning with a ‘hatchling’ account and all the way up to a Semi-dedicated account.
When you visit this site, click on the middle button that says ‘$14.95 more info’. You will see that you are being offered 500MB of disc space and a site builder for $14.95. Larger amounts of disc space are available for more money each month. I’d start with the $14.95 and then add additional disc space as needed. There is a Site Studio offered with all of the plans but it isn’t free with any of them.
Domain Names:
Now you need a domain name. Domain names are very specific and completely unique. When you type in a domain name, your computer takes you to that website and ONLY to that website. To start with you should think up several possibilities for your domain name. Using your own name in the domain name will make it easier to find one that hasn’t already been taken. But a better way to think is to use keyword specific words related to your memberhips site. You aren’t very likely to find the simplest ones to be available so you are going to have to get a bit creative. Here’s a two places that you can register your domain name. There are others…
Here you will see that it will cost you only $8.88 to register your domain name. There will be many offers for additional names and products. What you really need here is a domain name for no less than two years. You do not need to pay for anything additional that is offered.
Here you will see that you can register your domain name for $8.95 per year. Again…you will be offered many extras but all you really need is to register your domain name for two years. The reason you need to register it for two years is that search engines really don’t like domains that are only registered for one year. Spammers tend to only register for one year at a time because they won’t be at the same location for anywhere near that long.
Membership Software:
If you are going to have a membership website, then you must have the software that will accomplish that. There are basically three sites that you should visit and look over the product offered on each site.
1) aMember
Theme and Content:
As with every website, there must be a theme as well as content. There is a saying among Internet marketers that, “Content is King” and that’s pretty accurate. The only way that you can keep members visiting even a free membership site is to keep it constantly updated and loaded with fresh and relevant content that pertains to the theme of your site.
There are many ways to get good content. There are article banks where you can download free articles for reprint. There are sites where you can get PLR material that will provide good website content. You can also hire ghostwriters to write fresh content.
Blogs or Forums:
Most hosting services (both of the ones mentioned above) have included a utility called Fantastico. This feature allows you to set up a blog or forum on your membership site. In addition you can install such things as customer support, content management systems, polls and a host of other things. You really need to poke around in your hosting service to see what all is available.
Help Desk:
Installing a help desk is entirely optional. It is, by no means, a required feature for a free membership site. The software can be found at the HelpDesk website at http://www.perldesk.com/. The cost of the HelpDesk software starts at $99.95. Although this is not required the HelpDesk software can be very beneficial. It will allow you to you to organize your companies customer relations to a database backed browser based help desk. This can save you a whole ton of headaches particularly if you have multiple businesses.
Okay, that’s about it. You need a hosting service, a domain name registered, membership software, a theme and website content, a blog or forum and maybe a Helpdesk. This will be enough to get your free membership website off of the launch pad.
Stay tuned…and check out these examples of great free membership sites…
Filed under affiliate marketing, membership sites by on Jun 25th, 2009. 3 Comments.
