Whether you're charging one single price or you're charging a continuous month to month fee to allow people to access your membership tools and content, you're probably wondering how much information, how much stuff, do you need inside that membership site.

What's really sad is that many people over think this or think the wrong thing. People pile in way too much stuff in their membership site or not enough. If you're charging a single price for your membership site just add one thing. If you're charging any kind of recurring amount then add one new thing per week and on top of that ask your members if you're posting too much, or not enough content.

A membership site does not have to be recurring. You can charge, for example, $20 one time for someone to access one video or a set of videos inside your protected membership download area, and that's it. If they refund, they lose access, but after making that single payment they now have access to that membership site forever. They get what they pay for and if you have provided some information that is more valuable than that $20, then you have successfully done your job. You don't have to go out of your way to add tons of content or tons of bonuses just for that $20 payment.

Have your sales letter explain what your training will solve, what problem you will help people overcome, and for that $20 overcome that problem and that's it. Now, what if you charge $20 per month for some ongoing training. All you have to do is make a big deal and have one new item per week. This might mean that if someone is paying you $20 per month that, when they pay that first $20 you give them a couple of videos up front in the first week. Maybe every week after that you provide one or two additional videos that help them along in their training sequence. If you scheduled a new one hour video, even a half hour video, every day for that month your members would be completely overwhelmed and they wouldn't stick around as long.

Make it easy and provide just one new thing, just half an hour or an hour of training per week for that $20 to $100 and that's it, that's all you have to do. If someone is paying you $20 per month just give them $20 or more worth of value every single month.

One thing that's interesting about drip content, marketing and membership sites is that once you set it up, you might have to readjust, but because we're doing things on the internet we can adjust. What I want you to do is schedule one new piece of content per week, after someone joins your site, and then poll them.

Ask them in your blog posts, even e-mail them personally, and ask them are they making use of your information. If they are getting bored maybe you should add in some extra bonuses at the start, and if they are overwhelmed you should space out the content more gradually so that they have time to go through your training and don't get overwhelmed.

When it comes to posting content and dripping that content in your membership site, if someone is paying you one time, offer just one thing. If it's recurring, post one new item per week and that's it.

Robert Plank is an expert in setting up membership sites and dripping content. Claim your free membership plug ins at www.membershipcube.com.

When you make some kind of membership site you want to make it a site that people will revisit every day, or at least once per month, that way they have a reason to keep buying from you and possibly to keep paying a monthly fee. When you create this membership site forum you need to keep a few things in mind.

First of all, are you giving your members a reason to read that forum? Is the price point attractive enough to get enough people, and valuable enough to keep people posting month after month? Do you have some way to stir up the conversation?

The number one mistake that happens with forums or message boards is that there's no reason for people to talk. If I go to your forum and no one has posted in several months, I'm going to assume no one is reading any of the content and there's no reason to post. That's why you should make it a point to encourage your members to always post to your forum, and you should post there as well to keep people reading and talking.

The next thing to consider is can you get enough people talking? If you have a free forum, you can get more people talking but it's not going to be a very closely connected community. Likewise, if you charge money for that forum you can have people paying you month after month, in an exclusive area, but you won't have a large number of members and you'll have to make it a very valuable conversation. In doing that, a great idea to get people talking on your forum is to present a contest. For example, who has the best answer or who asks the best question. You can reward the best poster in your membership site with something like an Amazon gift card, a free month of membership site or some special bonus, or even just recognition of that member of the month.

In addition to setting up your forum you need to be posting there, replying there and keeping the conversation active. The price you charge for that forum doesn't matter so much as how many people can you get in that forum, can you give them a worthwhile reason to read and can you reward people for posting the best content.

Robert Plank will show you everything you need to know about membership sites, including the forum and community component at www.membershipcube.com.

I honestly believe that the best software combination to take orders using a membership site and to use that membership site to serve up digital videos, audios and reports, is to use a combination of WordPress, WishList Member and WP Drip. Use WordPress to set up the content, WishList Member to take payments and WP Drip to drip that content.

Although there are a million different choices you can make when it comes to the membership site software to use, your membership site should be based around WordPress. The reason for this is that it has been around for years and is the best content management system. They make it easy for you to add articles and blog posts, to embed videos, there are forums for WordPress, it's easy for others to leave comments, interact and even to have many people on staff, and have multiple users login and post content of their own.

WordPress is also very simple, it's constantly updated and it's easy for anyone to use. You use WordPress to post your content but, you need to protect your content and you need the ability to allow people to pay you money to get access to that private members area. That's why I think you should use the WishList Member plug in on top of WordPress. This plug in isn't free but if you just make a few sales in your membership site, it has already paid for itself.

With WishList Member you create a membership level, you choose which posts and pages within your membership site to protect from the outside world, and which of those posts and pages that new membership level has access to. Finally, you also set up a payment button so that someone can pay you money and then get access to a specific membership level, and in turn get access to your membership site.

If you have lots of monthly content or you simply want to drip out bonuses, even if someone only pays you once or a handful of times, you should use the WP Drip plug in which will drip out your content and your posts based on how far apart you've posted them. That means that if you add content to your site spaced a day, or a week, or a month apart, someone will join and they will see just the first day. The longer they are in your membership site the more content they see.

When you set up your membership site use WordPress to deliver the content, WishList Member to protect that content and WP Drip to gradually drip out that content.

Claim your free membership software plug in at www.membershipcube.com.

When you use a membership site to simplify your download delivery it is very easy to present an upsell which means that after someone has paid you for one item, you attempt to sell them on a second, usually a same or higher priced item. Using WordPress based membership software this is actually pretty easy.

All you have to do is first set up a WordPress page with two links on it, make sure that when someone buys that registration level they see that page, and optionally send any members of that level back to that page every time they login.

First you need to set up a page in WordPress. When you do that you present some sort of an offer. What I like to do is record a campaigner PowerPoint video and embed it in that page, when someone buys from me they now see a video that plays automatically that presents a new offer. Just the video on that page is not enough, we now need to give people an option to either take the upsell or pass on the upsell. Both of these are fairly simple.

To allow them to upgrade we add a new payment button underneath that video telling them, yes I will take the upgrade. Below that we also want to link to the inside of our members areas, to your dashboard page or to your front page of your membership site, to say no thanks I will pass on this offer. You have a page with an auto-play video, under that you have a linked upgrade and under that you have a smaller link to say no thanks and to continue logging in.

The next step in your membership software is to send people to that upsell page as soon as they register. Most membership programs, such as WishList Member will allow you to do this on a level by level basis. This means that if someone buys the silver package from you, you can send them to a page saying welcome to the silver level, here's how to upgrade to the gold level. Likewise, you can set in the settings so when someone buys access to the gold level, they get sent to a page saying welcome to the gold level, here's how to upgrade to the platinum level.

What's even cooler than this is that many membership plug ins allow you to specify an after login page for that level which means that you can show people a video to upgrade when they first buy, and even if they say no, give them a second different video every single time they login. That's how you upsell your buyers using a membership site. Create a WordPress page with an auto-play video, a linked upgrade and a link to continue logging in. Then in your settings specify that level's after registration page and optionally specify that level's after login page.

Robert Plank is an expert in installing, tweaking and maximizing the profits on any membership site, let him show you how to set up your membership site the exact way he does it at www.membershipcube.com.

There are two common misconceptions that happen with membership sites. The first misunderstanding is that membership sites need to charge on a monthly basis, that's simply not true. The other misunderstanding people have is that a membership site can only serve up one download or one product. In reality you can use one single membership site as the unified customer center, where someone can pay you money multiple times for multiple products and get access to them all in one place.

Google does this and Amazon.com do this. With Amazon.com you can view your order history of any physical items, you can watch movies online and you can even download digital books all from the same Amazon account. If you want to reduce the amount of customer support and work on your part, and make it more convenient for your customers, then you should set up a membership site that serves up multiple products.

How is this done? There are three components to it. First of all you set up membership levels, second you give those levels access to certain pages and posts within a protected WordPress blog, and finally you integrate those levels with a payment processor. Someone can pay you money which grants them access to a new level, which in turn lets them see new pieces of content.

When many people explain membership levels they might say something like, you can have a bronze, silver and gold level in your membership site. The way I prefer to look at it is that you can have levels in your site called module 1, module 2, module 3 and so on. That means that you can have module 1 for sale for $100, module 2 for $100 and module 3 for $100. Someone can just buy module 1, go through it and if they decide they want to continue, then pay you for module 2. If they decide they want to continue with that, pay you for module 3 and so on.

For now don't even worry about taking monthly payments, just worry about charging one set price for one piece of content. Once you have members on one or more levels, they can now see content in your membership site. That means that you can have module 1 give access to posts 1, 2 and 3. Module 2 gives access to posts 4, 5 and 6. Someone sees you have something for sale and they buy just module 1. Now their account has access to posts 1, 2 and 3 only. They like what they see and then decide to then purchase module 2 from you. Now that single account has access to posts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

One membership level can have access to just one post, one membership level can have access to many posts, or one membership level can have access to the entire membership site. You can create a membership level called full, someone pays you $1,000 for that full level, and now they can see everything you have posted in that membership site.

The final piece of the equation is the payment integration. Every membership software does this differently but, they all provide instructions on how you can create a payment button and take money using a service like Paypal, Click Bank or One Shopping Cart, where a prospect can pay money. They are then given access to a specific level and in turn that levels allows them to see pieces of content within your membership site.

Claim your free membership plug in and get all the membership and marketing training you'll ever need at www.membershipcube.com.

When you have anything for sale online one of the first issues you are going to run into is should you deliver that video or digital report using a simple download page or with a membership site. A regular download page is easier and faster to set up, but a membership site allows you to charge more and do more with your customers. A simple download page is very easy to create, simply upload any html page to your web server, create your sales letter and when making the payment button, using a service like Paypal or One Shopping Cart, specify the URL of that download page as the successful checkout URL after someone pays. It's that simple, now you can stick anything you want on that page including a link to pdf documents, embed video and audio, and more.

But, there are many problems with this download page set up. For one, you cannot easily follow up these customers and it can be passed around. A better alternative is to set up a membership site, this means that people will see what you have for sale, they will pay you money and after buying, they will register themselves an account within your membership site. Even though it is a little extra step for them and slightly more work for you to set up this site, it now means that you can easily add updates, notify them of updates and they can easily grab a replacement copy or upgraded version of your training at any time you want. One thing that many people miss about membership sites is that you can serve multiple products and take payments for different offers using the same membership site.

When choosing between a simple download page and a membership site you should do your best to go with a membership site. A download page is great if you only have a few minutes to set something up, but if you can devote even one hour to creating your very own membership site, you can now have much more control over the delivery of your content to your buyers.

Robert Plank wants to give you a free membership plug in for WordPress at www.membergenius.com.