Cody Moya’s article “Choosing the Best Program to Create Your Paid Membership Site” is reprinted here. [Article]


Cody Moya’s article is reprinted here.

Choosing the Best Program to Create Your Paid Membership Site

When it comes to designing the perfect paid membership web site, it is important to choose the software carefully, based on what you intend to get out of the web site, and what you intend to offer to your paying customers.

There are quite a few companies and software products out there, all claiming to be the best and to offer the most value for your money. Many of these software programs are quite costly, to it is important to do plenty of research, solicit the recommendations of experts in the field, and fully understand the capabilities of each program before laying down your hard earned startup cash.

Some of the most popular web design software products are Microsoft Front Page and Macromedia Dreamweaver. In addition, there are options for adding Java applets, streaming audio, streaming video, animation, and just about anything else you can imagine.

It is important to decide what software you need for your new site, and what features are most important to you, as this will influence how the site is designed. If your web site is database driven, you may find yourself using products like Microsoft’s ASP or Java Server Pages (JSP) the drive the web site interface.

If, on the other hand, the content on the web site is mainly static, the pages could be designed using basic HTML coding and some simple scripting.

Scalability is a huge factor to consider when designing a paid membership or subscription based web site. Even if your web site has only 10 or 20 subscribers at the beginning, you will want to design your web site to be easily scalable to hundreds or even thousands of paying customers. After all, the larger your subscriber or member base becomes, the more profitable your web site will be. The economies of the Internet are such that the cost to add each new member is very small, so making your site easily scalable is important, even if you start off very small.

It is also important to think about features you may wish to add to your web site in the future, and to make sure that the web host you choose is capable of handling them. If there will be additional charges associated with these extra features, it is a good idea to find out what they are at the outset.

For instance, as your paid membership web site grows, you may want to add features like video, audio or chat capability to provide additional value to your customers. You may also want to incorporate forums, blogs or other added value features. You may want to add a download section where visitors can easily capture the information that is most important to them. You may want to add additional email accounts, for customer service and other features. It is important to design your web site with these additional features in mind, even if not all the features are in place when the web site is launched.

The web hosting arrangements that you make for your paid membership or based site are important as well. It is important to remember that your web site is a full fledged business, and as such you should aim for nothing less than 24 hour a day, 365 day a year availability, and round the clock support from the web hosting company you choose.

There are quite a number of web hosting companies out there, offering a variety of services for a variety of different prices. There are even free web hosting services available, but these are not recommended for business web sites. That is because these free web hosting services pay for their service through placing ads on your web site, and this detracts from the professional look and feel of the web site, and could draw customers away from your site.

When seeking a company to host your web site, it is important to consider the amount of help you will need, the amount of storage space you will get, how many email addresses are available with the site, how much bandwidth you will get, and the availability of special tools to help you create and update your site. It is important to choose a web hosting company that will allow your site to grow, and one that can handle the increased traffic demands of your site as that growth occurs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cody Moya writes about Profitable Memberships in his Free Courses on Internet Marketing. You can sign up for his free Courses and get additional information at his website: http://FreeInternetMarketingCourses.com

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*IMNewswatch would like to thank Cody Moya for granting permission to reprint this article.

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