Two Tier Membership Sites - Tutorial
It doesn’t matter if you are running a course on window dressing or SEO the basic mechanics behind a membership site is the same. This guide will help you set up a content driven membership site and introduce the new features in Your Member 1.3.4.
What you will need
- Wordpress 2.6 or higher
- Your Members 1.3.4rc2 or higher
- Landing Page and Up sell template
- Third Party Autoresponder (optional)
Before we begin
For this tutorial we will be using a blank copy of Wordpress with no other modules then YM at least for the time being. You might like to do the same though you can easily adapt the ideas from this tutorial into existing setups.
The theory of upselling
Here is what we are doing, everyone likes free content and people are willing to give up a lot in order to get access to “free” content but people also fall for the “who wants to be a millionaire” tactic of here is a check for x number of pounds but we don’t want to give you that!
Our tutorial membership site will have a 6 week free course, each week new content will appear to free users at the end of the course the user will be encouraged to take other course etc. During the 6 week course they will be offered the chance to “upgrade” and get instant access to the complete course including chapters that free users simply don’t ever get access to.
You dangle the hook and the fish will bite is a common tactic by Internet Marketers, even if the majority of your free users never upgrade you still have their name and email address and the potential to reach them through addon sales or affiliate commission even a free member should pay for themselves.
Ok so that’s the theory, all you need to do is find a niche, write 6 weeks of content and some bonus material and off you go!
Installing Your Members
Presuming you are familiar with Wordpress and Wordpress Plugins Your Member should be a doddle to install, upload the ym folder to wp-content/plugins folder and then in your admin area visit plugins and activate. A new tab will appear in your main menu for Your Members. Clicking on the tab will bring up the activate screen for Your Members type in your email address from purchase and you are done!
Next upload the two files in the landing page zip to wp-content/themes/yourtheme – what ever its name is.
Before we setup Your Members there is one last quick Wordpress bit to do, in settings we need to tick the allow any one to register tick box.
Once activated we need to quickly set up Your Member for our initial use, the quick start and protection guides both go into how to do this so I will run only very quickly through it.
- In Payment Gateways deactivate – Trial
- In Payment Gateways edit Paypal settings and add your details as needed.
- In Member role settings – Edit the 3 month Member subscription, to a 10 year one, set the price to what ever amount you want.
- In General Settings – Data Conversion, set existing posts to Guest, existing users to Free (don’t forget to click setup button
- In General Settings – Fill in email addresses as appropriate.
- In General Settings – Use Modified Registration – Yes
- In General Settings – Completely Hide Posts - Yes
All done, give yourself a pat on the back!
Creating Content Membership Pages
Write your content
This is the bit where we hand over to you writing witty informative content is not us, once you have your content split into two categories the main free course plus the advanced section then we can plug it into your site.
First Week
The first content you will probably want them to have immediate access to after registration therefore go to write → page
You could use posts but it tends to be less messy with pages, and it leaves you posts for writing news and information on the front end.
Place the content as you would normally, on the write hand side you will see Your Members sidebar the first set of options is the access bar select guest and member. This will make this post only available to users with these account types, since we want both to have access to the content immediately lets leave it at that simply publish and that is your first weeks content done.
Second Week
Like the first write the content and select Free and Members from the access list, but this time scroll down to the post delay options and under free select 6 days. Leave the Members alone as they should get instant access.
Why 6 Days, hindsight says autoresponders are never on time if we therefore set up their access a day early then when they get the message the content is available it will genuinely be available.
Third Week and Thereafter
As second week but this time set the post delay to 13 days, and for each week repeat and add 7 days (week4 - 20, week5 – 27…) remember only add it for free account type members should have instant access.
Advanced Content
Advanced content simply don’t select the free user to have access and then as before, if you want you could set up an advanced course with post delays as well.
Landing and Up selling
So once we have our protected content its time to set up our registration and up selling pages. So in this section we are going to develop a quick way to create compelling landing pages to entice people to hand over their email address and join the course. Then when registration is completed we shall offer them the chance to upgrade to the members package for instant access.
Because of some of the logic involved we shall start with the up sell page.
Up Sell Page
In write → Page select the upsell template (if you can’t see the template make sure you uploaded it as per step 1)
Now remember this is the thank you for joining page so title it appropriately maybe provide a link the first page of content (maybe this is the first week content) at the bottom of the page will be an upgrade button, which when pushed will upgrade their account type and send them to paypal to make a payment. You might want to explain what the button is going to do, before the user hits it and gets a shock!
Now this template makes use of a custom field to let you determine which account type it should upgrade to.
The Custom Field name is subtype
the value is a little more complicated but basically looks like this 50_10_y_member
The first value is the amount so in this case $50 the second and third the period of time 10 Years and finally the account type member.
Another example 5_3_m_basic would be $5 for 3 months of Basic account type.
The account type must exist.
So put in the upgrade value save the field and then publish the post, you will see the button at the bottom hit it and you are redirected off to make payment everything else is automated.
Landing Page
note: In the Demo version the landing page template will not work if you are using custom registration fields (see workaround)
Now we have a published upgrade page lets create a sales page, write your compelling copy and then select the landing page template. This will include a sign up form at the bottom of the page, asking for a user name and email, just like normal Wordpress registration. Like the Up selling template the landing page template makes use of custom fields.
first Custom Field Name: subtype Value: 0_10_y_free (10 years free membership)
second Custom Field Name: upurl Value: complete url including http of your up sell page
The second field is important as it tells the system where to send the user when they login in after receiving their email.
Nearly there
We now have a nearly fully working site, it just needs flesh added to it, but to recap:
Users register for free membership and are also offered a chance to upgrade to “member” which gives them access to all the content immediately and advanced content. Otherwise free members receive access to a page a week at a time.
In the second part we used some HTML code and custom fields to create a landing and up selling pages. To make the whole process as seamless as possible.
Protecting your content from password sharing
One of the major problems facing membership sites is password sharing, our next tutorial shows you how with just 2 plugins you can take Your Your Members site to the next level and feel confident knowing that the people reading your content are paying for it!
