It’s part 2 of an interview with top blogger
Chris Garrett.

You can download the whole thing for free and
during this interview you’ll hear…

=> What two plugins are recommend for setting
up a forum in a membership site.

=> How to setup a “payment plan” using
for a WordPress membership site

=> WordPress plugins that help provide more
navigation throughout your site

=> Simple strategies for increasing member
“interaction” within your site

=> Tips for tracking and monitoring your
visitors and members (so you can see who
logged in and what they are viewing)

…AND…

=> A variety of other WordPress plugins
designed to help you get more out of your
membership (perfect if you have a lot of
content).

If you have an interest in WordPress and/or
creating a membership site, you’ll enjoy
listening to this.

Enjoy!

Chris

P.S. You can also access “Part 1″ of this
interview from the same page. Here is the
link again:

Are you going to join? Will it be worth the investment? Is it just a scam? What will you get for your money?

I’ll be up front with you. I’ve joined Teaching Sells and have been a member for the better part of the last year and I’ll tell you exactly what you can expect.

1. A Ton of Content: a dozen courses (more with the bonuses) each with about seven or eight lessons and each lesson with some combination of HTML, PDF, Audio, Video, and Interactive Content
2. Active User Forum worth it’s weight….er, worth visiting every day
3. Homework – Yes – you will have to work
4. Lessons on things you might not have considered – like Storytelling (it’s important)
5. Interviews with some great minds on some critical topics
6. You’ll learn at least seven different business models for selling your content (or someone else’s content) for decent profits
7. Step-by-step Technical guidance for integrating Membership Site software and Content Management Systems
8. Help! Yes – you can trun to the Teaching Sells forum for solutions to real problems and you will get help. Phew!
9. Tips from people who know stuff that you don’t know. I learned somethings in Teaching Sells that I can’t believe I didn’t know…HUGE totally business-shaping things!
10. You’ll get access to a library of license free resale content. Okay I admit – this has zero value for me since I create my own content. But looking through that library of downloadable products almost made me reconsider. Tons of stuff.

Like I said, Teaching Sells is about to relaunch. If you’re looking for the thing that is going to take you from just “thinking about” an online business to actually doing it….Teaching Sells is a solid solution for anyone with some ideas and a willingness to put in some effort.

Teaching Sells WILL Sell Out

Nothing will convince you more of the potential for your own online business than seeing Teaching Sells take in over a quarter million dollars in a few hours. The last time the doors opened they hit maximum capacity within a few hours. Proof they know what they’re Teaching. Teaching DOES Sell.

Get in the game Teaching Sells is about to relaunch.

I currently run two membership sites. One using aMember + Joomla + phpBB and one using WordPress and the Wishlist Member plugin.

Both sites are new and right now is a good time for me to share about using them because I’ve been in Membership Software Land for the last six months straight. Everything is fresh in my mind.

In this article I’m going to share specifically about the Wishlist Member plugin. (I’ll follow up with a post about what I’ve learned about using aMember).

My Confession

I bought Wishlist Member and fell in love with it right away.

Of all the WordPress Membership site plugins I came across (about five of them) it stood out in terms of:

Cost / Affordability

• It was only $297.00 for unlimited license (they also offer a single license for $97.00).

Professionalism of Pre-purchase Support

• They actually responded quickly and professionally to several pre-purchase questions I had sent them via email.

Available Information

• Wishlist makes their set of Tutorial videos (30 of them) freely available for you to watch before you buy. This was a perfect way to check out nearly every aspect of the plugin ahead of time.

Feature Set

• None of the above would mean anything if it wasn’t a first-rate premium plugin. It is.

Wordpress Membership Site with Forum

Quickie: use Wishlist Members if you are only using Wordpress for your content. If you want a forum to be included, you can run the free and quite impressive SimplePress Forum plugin in a WP page and it too will be protected.

This is an excellent solution that gives you incredible control over how you protect your WP content and it’s about as easy to set up as you could get.

• You can have incremental content delivery
• You can offer multiple membership levels – easily.
• You get first-rate support from the development and sales team at Wishlist
• It’s Easy to use
• You’ll save a ton because it affordable

If I could run all of my sites (other CMS) with this plug in, I would.

What are the downsides?

The downside of Wishlist Member is that you cannot protect anything outside of Wordpress. Not that you’d expect that from a WordPress plugin. But you may need that for your membership site regardless.

For example, say you are streaming video at your site and somebody decides to look at your HTML code and find the URL of the video files. With Wishlist Members, you cannot protect that content because the video file is not part of WordPress – it’s just being called by Wordpress.

So – that’s a weakness of Wishlist Member.

If you need to protect folders of content on the server as well as your WordPress blog you would use this software.

Bottom line: If you want to get a paid-access, membership site going on Wordpress – buy Wishlist Member and install it and start using it. It’s only $97.00 and if you’re in this as a business, it’s nothing compared to the money you’ll make when people are paying for your content.

In other words – it is a no brainer, no effort, easy decision.

Go for it.

Check out the Wishlist Members Tutorials
Go Straight to the Wishlist Members Shopping Cart

UPDATE

After my quick review was posted, Stu from Wishlist Member pointed out some very cool information that I did not know about! Here it is…

We saw your review and we’re certainly glad to hear that you like WishList Member

One thing to note…

You can actually protect files insider your membership by using a couple other WordPress plugins in combination with WishList.

They can be found here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/download-monitor/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/drain-hole/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/secure-files/

The one we most recommend is Download Monitor but they are all very similar (it just depends on what version of WordPress you have).

Hopefully that helps.

Take care.

Stu

Could this course really teach me something considering the scope of topics that they intended to cover?

I was Skeptical

I admit. There’s large part of me that basically grouped the Teaching Sells program in with every other Internet Marketing “guru” (man I’m tired of that word) and scam out there.

I’m old-school enough to know that business – “real business” – takes work. Usually hard work.

I worried that Teaching Sells was going to turn out to be just this flakey, get-rich-quick with no effort nonsense.

Point 1: The Real Deal. Teaching Sells is anything BUT a get-rich quick scheme. In fact, considering what I just told you about my knowing that business takes hard work, I was kind of humbled by Teaching Sells.

After the first week they were asking me questions related to my target audience and competition that I didn’t have (but should’ve had) answers for. It was like a good swift kick in the rear. I needed it.

So rest assured. Teaching Sells is not one of those lazy-man / lazy-woman’s approach to getting rich. It’s a well thought-out, viable approach to business that may have you working harder than you expected.

Will the Instructors Respond to My Questions?

Teaching Sells’ original e-book put forth the idea that the course would provide you with an opportunity to ask questions in the forum and that Instructors would answer them.

Hmmm… Do the math?  How many hours are there in a day? How many students?  Could they really make good on such a promise?

Point 2: Not One Unanswered Question. I’m one of those people who asks questions. I just like to learn.  Allot.

In the forum, I have asked dozens of questions.  Many of them asked to Brian Clark or Tony Clarke directly.  Not one of them has gone unanswered.  Yes. It’s impressive.

In the last week alone I’ve been dealing with some integration issues and have been grateful for Tony Clark’s willingness to patiently respond to my many technical questions. Not even questions that are related to a specific TS lesson. But about his personal approach to various aspects of designing and integrating the TS website!

Is the Forum really “that” important?

At the start, Teaching Sells were promoting the fact that they had this user forum.

In my ignorance, I though to myself – what good is asking questions of a bunch of other people who are learning the same thing as I am. And they’re probably all Internet Marketing gurus anyway. Right?

Okay – I was wrong.

Point 3: The Forums Are Amazing.In many ways I think of Teaching Sells forums as the business partner that you wished you had but don’t.  Someone to keep you on task. To bounce ideas off. People who know about many of the obstacles and curves in the Membership Site roadmap that maybe you’ve never considered.

Remember that there’s about 1000 members who have been through the program and a substantial number of them are doing today what you want to be doing six months or a year from now. (Or if you’re like me – what you wanted to be doing a year ago!).

Here’s a quick but cool story.

A few weeks ago I was in Chapters reading a book about some technical CMS stuff.  The book looked good, it was $50. bucks. I held off but noted the name of the author in case I wanted to come back and get it.

I went home and posted a question in the TS forum instead. Maybe I’d find someone who knew something about what I was asking, as technical as it was.

Guess what? The next day I got a forum reply. But what blew me away was that the guy who replied to me WAS the Author of the book I was looking at in Chapters.

How cool is that!

That moment really proved something about the value of the Teaching Sells community to me.

What about you?

Maybe you’re considering enrolling in Teaching Sells? Maybe, like I was, you’re worried about the value. Believe me – I can relate. Seriously. I have a family to support, I’m in the start-up phase of a business and I’m not quick to spend money – period.  Let alone on an internet course.

So although I cannot say so with absolute certainty ( I don’t know you or exactly what your needs are ) I can assure you of one thing:

You will probably get WAY more out of Teaching Sells than what you pay for.

If you are considering building a membership website to sell your content – an area of expertise, some teaching, or a re-purposing of some existing content – you could not possibly find a more well-rounded consultant or community of knowledgeable peers to learn from.

Bottom Line

If you want to build a membership site and if you’re willing to work – Teaching Sells WILL get you there.

That could happen due to more money, or being free from the constraints of geography, or by having more free time.

Membership Plan

Teaching Sells offers a lifetime membership for a one time fee. In the February 2009 launch of the program, the cost for joining was a single payment of $997.00 or six monthly payments of $197.00.

As the number of members increases and as more and more content is added the price of membership is also expected to increase.

Course Modules

Teaching Sells guides members through 11 Course Modules with Bonus Modules being added for early subscribers. Or in the case of the February 2009 Launch, when Four Bonus courses were given to all members for free.

How Long is the Course?

The Module Lesson in the Teaching Sells program are released over a four month time period.

Refund Policy

The February 2009 Teaching Sells membership terms allowed a no-nonsense, hassle free, 100% refund within 30 days of signing up. Read the Post Canceling Your Teaching Sells Membership.

Limited Enrollment

Enrollment in Teaching Sells is Limited. Each new Launch of the program (once or twice a year) allows a number of new members as determined by Teaching Sells. The February 2009 enrollment added approximately 500 people to the program.

Signing Up for Teaching Sells

If you are interested in becoming a member of Teaching Sells, here’s a general idea of how it works:

1. Sign up at the Teaching Sells Website
2. Teaching Sells will add you to their mailing list and whenever they release the reports and resources for the next launch, you’ll be included
3. As the next launch / enrollment date approaches, you will get the information you need about the enrollment price and date
4. On enrollment day, get up early and prepared to start building a profitable membership site!

The hard work and experience that goes into the content you create has real value. Did you know that it is possible to profit from it online?

One of the most viable solutions for you to make money online is to build a paid membership site.

Having your own paid membership site is a perfect way for you to present your high quality, premium content to an audience of eager learners who are willing to pay you to gain the benefits of the knowledge that they learn from you.

An membership site (also called an Interactive Learning Environment, ILE for short) that effectively transfers your knowledge and understanding about a topic to your members could generate a substantial profit for you. It may even become your primary source of income and reward you with the lifestyle benefits that come from being the successful owner of a profitable business.

Who Can Build a Paid Access Membership Site?

If you can help other people learn how to achieve a specific goal you can successfully operate a profitable membership site.

Here’s just a few examples of some of the paid membership sites that exists today.

Software Training
• Real Estate Sales Training
• Language Training
• Fitness and Health
• Financial Management
• Expert Blogging
• Crafts and Hobbies
• Photography
• Cooking

The Early Birds

You know the cliche The Early Bird Get’s The Worm. Cliches become cliches because of the fact that their true. This cliche is no exception. The birds that get out and about first in the morning get a feast of worms while the latecomers are left hunting and pecking for leftover morsels.

Right now is the time to be an early bird with your Membership Site.

There are thousands of highly profitable membership sites operating online today. Yet the world of online training and membership sites is still considered new and largely untapped. Even niche markets that have existing membership sites will demand others to create competition and provide a different learning experience, unique positioning, and a greater selection of quality content.

Building a Paid Membership Site is a dream come true for anyone with an early bird’s instinct and the foresight to get in the game now and seize the abundant opportunities before it’s too late and there’s nothing left.

Are You Ready to Build Your Profitable Membership Site?

To succeed at building a profitable membership site, there’s at least three prerequisites.

• Be passionate about it. You’ll never last if you’re not.
• Approach this as you would an offline business endeavor
• Prepare to work. It can takes weeks to months before you can launch a profitable membership site.

Also important is that you realize that building a paid membership site does not fall into the ‘get-rich-overnight and do-no-work’ category of online “business”. You should approach this with the same determination and expectation of work that you would have if you were setting up a brick-and-mortar business. If you can do that, you will benefit allot from Teaching Sells and will be far more likely to end up with a profitable online business.

Learning Everything You Need Quickly in One Place

You’ve decided that building a membership site is what you want to do. You’re passionate about it. You’re a hard worker and you take your business seriously.

What next?

Building your site means knowing how to do certain things. For example:

• Finding a Proven and Profitable Market
• Curriculum Development
• Content Creation
• Online Business and Marketing
• Uniquely Positioning your Site for Success
• Launch Strategies (for when your site is ready)
• Building a Paid Access Membership using industry approved tools

When you first look at that list you might think it’s impossible. There’s so many diverse yet related areas of expertise. How can any one person afford the time it takes to learn all of that?

It’s Easier Than You Think

Years ago small handful of people who are well-known in the world of blogging, online marketing and business were way ahead of the membership site curve. Think of them as the Owls that hunt at night before the most hardcore and earliest birds are even awake.

They built successful membership sites using open source tools and affordable commercial software. They encountered problems and created solutions to them. They developed tips and techniques. They tested and proved methods for everything that goes into building a profitable membership site.

Today, a few of these membership site visionaries have turned all of their tested, proven, and tweaked methods for building profitable sites into online course programs in the form of membership sites.

Start Right Here

There’s a number of sites out there now claiming to provide you with the keys to building a successful membership site.

There’s also an increasing number of software tools and products intended to help you build, market, and secure your paid access site.

This site exists to help you:

1. Find a reliable online program for learning a method of developing a membership site
2. Discover the best tools and resources for assisting in your membership site and business.
3. Increase your knowledge of the language, ideas and technologies used in building membership sites

Special Bonus Teaching Sells Insights

Gain first hand insights from my personal experience with what has become the most popular Membership Site course program, Teaching Sells.

I joined Teaching Sells earlier this year and am (as of today) about half way through. As you consider Teaching Sells for yourself, take the time to read through my blog posts and you’ll get helpful inside information that you won’t find anywhere else.

One that exceeds the expectations of your audience and turns them into loyal customers for years to come. Don’t you?

The lessons in the Seven Profitable Business Models module will help you use profitable strategies that match customer’s needs and that also take into account the way you want to do business.

Business Strategies

In each of the seven strategies Brian helps you answer several important questions, including:

• Is it the right fit for your target audience?
• What are your Content Sources?
• Does it provide Additional Revenue Streams?
• What kind of Pricing does it allow?
• What are the downsides?

He also provides case studies and examples of how you can put the different strategies into practice.

The Right Fit

Your site is going to be unique and your market has unique people with unique needs.

For example: If your audience has a specific one-time learning goal then amount of time and expense it takes you to develop the content could be a fixed, one-time deal.

• How would that strategy affect your profits?
• Will people leave your site once they’ve taken the course?
• Will you offer them another related course?

Or, how about this.

Your membership audience wants an ongoing stream of high quality content.

• Would you create a lifetime membership site?
• A newsletter?
• How will you provide the ongoing content?
• How will you price out the membership?

You Need Strategies!

Take into account the different learning needs of your target market, the resources and ability of developing the content, making profits and fulfilling your personal goals and life dreams and you’ll instantly see the value the value of learning the strategies presented in Teaching Sells course module Seven Profitable Business Models.

Combining Strategies

In my opinion, no one can tell you what your business model should be. Unless you’re a franchisee, there’s no such thing as a reliable cookie-cutter business model. Successful business takes time and hard work. Shortcuts usually produce short-lived results.

There’s no single strategy that you’re going to learn in Teaching Sells that is “the” strategy for your business. Some of them might not work for what you have in mind. Some of them most definitely will. The best part is that that you’ll be able to combine the strategies that work best for you in creating a profitable site.

Likes and Dislikes

In the case of this series of lessons, I liked learning about the strategies that I would not use as much as learning about the ones I’m using.

Seven Profitable Business Models gave me an a well rounded, practical and impressive set of strategies. It also gave me a glimpse, I think, into the mind of Brian Clark and some of the techniques he’s used to build profitable online business.

One minor criticism.

I would have like to have Brian support some of the business strategies with examples from his own business endeavors. The case studies are very impressive sites. But without access to the people who made the case study sites, there was no way to dig deeper and really learn more about these strategies by asking questions.

This could have been an entire course

Overall, this was a really critical course with a wealth of internet business and marketing strategies to have in front of you when you’re developing your own business plan.

Frankly. This module probably could have been an entire course on it’s own. Seriously. With some of the nuggets of internet business wisdom I picked up I felt like the entire Teaching Sells course could have ended here and it would have been a great deal.

There’s twelve more courses to go!

What’s Your Business Plan?

If you don’t already have a business plan before going into Teaching Sells, you’ll find this module will give you some very practical business strategies that you could start using right away or as the basis for developing your own business plan.

If you already have a business plan in mind, this module will get the wheels turning and provide you with some good food for thought on how your business plan might be improved.

When a public user clicks on the “Register to Read More…” link on your Joomla+aMember site and they are redirected to a Joomla Login page.

That login page’s ‘Forgot your password’ link redirects in a confusing way when it should redirect them to aMember instead.

Here is the php code for fixing this.

Thanks to David Moskowitz at Membership Academy for the heart of the code and to Derek Barber for tweaking it:

The file you want to edit is: amember.php in joomla/plugins/system

This is the code BEFORE the location where you’ll insert the new code :

if (strstr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],'/logout') || (@$option == 'com_user' && @$task == 'logout'))
// if (strstr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],'/logout') || @$task == 'logout')
{
if (!$return)
$return = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
$return = preg_replace('/[\n\r]/', ' ', $return);
$url = "$amemberRoot/logout.php";
header("Location: $url");
exit();
}

This is the actual new code you want to insert:

if (strstr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],'/component/user') || @$option == 'com_user')
{
if (@in_array(@$task, array('requestreset', 'remindusername')) || strstr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],'/reset') || strstr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],'/remind') || @in_array(@$view, array('reset','remind')) || @$task == 'lostPassword')
{
header("Location: $amemberRoot/login.php?amember_redirect_url=".$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
exit();
}

This is the code that follows your newly inserted code:

if (@in_array(@$task, array('register','register_save','activate,login')))
{
header("Location: $amemberRoot/signup.php");
exit();
}

if (@in_array(@$view, array('register','register_save','activate,login')))
{
header("Location: $amemberRoot/signup.php");
exit();
}
}

The Result

Assuming you’re aMember+Joomla integration is set up correctly.

When a user clicks on the “Register to Read More..” link to view your registered (protected) Joomla content the Login page will appear.

In the Login page, if they user clicks on the “Lost Your Password” link, they will be redirected to your aMember members page – not to some weird nonsense page.

If you are setting up aMember’s advanced settings and are using a server with PHP5 and are not getting your Cron Jobs done, this might also work for you…

/web/cgi-bin/php5 “/$HOME/html/(sitename)/amember/cron.php”

Let me explain a little.

Where it say $HOME, that’s where you put the full path of your hosting server.
For example, it might be something like “/home/content/somethingelse/html…”

So, do not put the word HOME with a dollar sign before it.

You should have a full path listed in your aMember admin, by the way.

Once you have the full path (up to and including your /amember/ directory), you ‘ll basically add one thing before it:

/web/cgi-bin/php5

and end it with:

/cron.php”

IMPORTANT: I put this up here in case you’ve tried other solutions and they are not working.
Some hosting providers require that you include the 5 after PHP, some don’t.

I searched and tried all kinds of variations on this Cron Command before I finally got this one to work.

It’s very important that this is set up correctly in your aMember site.

Add this post to your notes.

ITS

I’ve been looking at forum solutions for my membership site forum. There’s a few solid options out there and they all seem like they’d do a decent job. phpBB, vBulletin, punBB are a few of the one’s I’ve checked out and considered.

But here’s the catch: my membership site is using WordPress as a CMS and my membership software is designed to control access to Wordpress – not other software. What to do…

Controlling Access to a Forum

If you’re running a membership site, you know that you should have a forum of some sort. Perhaps you also know that you should be controlling access to your forums, too.

Why? Because if anyone can come and log-in, post comments, or simply read content that your paying members are contributing it devalues the site.

One solution is to buy aMember and protect both WordPress and your forum software using that software. But, what if you (like me) you’re already happy with your Wordpress Member Management software?

Spending $189.00 on aMember. Plus the time it takes to integrate aMember into your site. Well – there has to be a better way.

Simple Press Forum

Tonight I found a forum plug-in here http://simplepressforum.com/ and I have to tell you – it’s better than any other forum software I’ve used and it works in WordPress as a plug-in on a page.

The fact that it runs on a page is what is brilliant. Why?

Because my Wordpress Member Management software allows me to control access to pages. As a result, I am easily able to control access to the forum.

As Easy as Installing a WP Plug-In

Getting setuo with Simple Press was a breeze. All you have to do is upload the plug-in to your WP plug-ins folder and activate it.

Of course, being that it is a forum, it’s a little more work to tweak and use. But that’s only because it’s ridiculously powerful and awesome.

One excellent benefit of the fact that Simple Press is a WP plug-in is the fact that it shares your WP database. No need to backup and maintain multiple databases.

Go Check It Out

If you need a forum and you run WordPress – go and get it http://simplepressforum.com/.

Did I mention it’s free/donation? Believe me – products like this fill you with so much joy that you’ll not only be willing to pay for it (although you do not have to, it’s really free)….but you’ll want to tip as well!

Enjoy!

http://simplepressforum.com/