This post is less marketing and more comments to save you time and hassle if you are considering launching a membership site.

When I launched the Virtual Buzz Assistant Network, I knew I would use a WordPress Blog for the marketing front end.  WordPress is too powerful as a marketing tool, and I do not know of anything that compares to it.

However, to manage my community I wanted really good membership management software.  I wanted to keep the cost low because I did not know how the community would grow.  So I started playing with open-source solutions for membership sites/learning sites.

#1 Moodle – I liked Moodle, but I was putting in a lot of hours to customize it.  Also, there were a lot of features but I was not sure what features would ultimately matter to the members.

#2 Ning – To simplify things, I set up a version two of the network on Ning.  While setup was easy, it was hard to customize elements and was not easy to lay out training materials.  It was far more of a community-only kind of portale.

#3 DontNetNuke – Initially I really liked DotNetNuke because it was easy to set up, had powerful features and could be customized.  I bought a nice template and relaunched the membership site in DotNetNuke, only to find that the next version of the browsers was doing funny things with the layout and most people were not using many of the features in there anyway.

#4 Litmus – I experiemented with Litmus, but decided against it because of the higher cost of ownership and the lack of community features, such as a message board.  (Athough they are adding that feature)

#5 WordPress - I found myself coming full circle to appreciate just how powerful wordpress is for hosting a community site.  I added a message board plugin and a membership management plugin and now have a site that I am much more happy with.  It is steam-lines and easy to update.  It has fewer features, but I found from those past experiences that those features do not get used anyway.

Now that I have a great template and understanding of how to use WordPress for a members site, I am thrilled with the possibilities.  If you are thinking about launching a membership site, I hope this summary helps you avoid the many months of research and experimenting I needed to go through so that I could finally realize the obvious.

To make the whole thing easy, use WP-Wishlist.

Today is election day.  Over the past six months I have had a similar conversation with several potential new clients – none of which I decided to work with.

It is interesting how people see that Barack Obama has raised money online and they think they can easily do the same with a website.

They see the numbers in a news story and decide they are going to raise money online too.  Usually, it is something like this:  I will raise $10,000,000 and only keep 40% for myself and give the rest to a charity.  I have $500 to spend on setting up a website, but only if I know that it is going to produce big results.

If Elections demonstrate one thing, it is that it is incredibly difficult to create massive, sustained buzz.  Especially in a competitive environment where the buzz is being created against an opponent.

What do you need to create buzz if you want it on a grand scale?  Just look at the elections – it is all there.

1. Great Product – Your product has to be great.  It has to be better than others on the market and people have to want it more.
2. Advocates – You cannot create big buzz by yourself.  You need to have an army of advocates willing to go door to door for free for you.
3. Partners – People that quit their day jobs to join your cause and make less money.
4. Endorsements – Big name, respected people that are willing to put their reputation behind you 100%.
5. Commitment – Are you ready to commit to creating buzz every day despite being down in the polls?  Are you able to look people in the eye and ask for money when it looks like your product has no chance of winning?
6. PR – Constantly seeking PR.
7. Hard work – Does anyone work harder than a presidential candidate months before an election?  It seems absolutely insane how much they work.

See what I mean?  Barack Obama did not set up a $500 website and make a bunch of money.  This stuff is hard – and there are probably less painful ways to make some money on the Internet if that is your goal.