Blog Villains

If you’ve been wanting to build a membership web site so that you can offer your content or digital products to customers and require them to register and pay a one-time or recurring monthly fee to access the content or downloads, then Wordpress is one of the best and easiest ways to do it.

If you’re not familiar with Wordpress, then you can check it out at at www.wordpress.org.

Here is what they say about Wordpress in the opening paragraph:

“WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.”

I have found Wordpress to be invaluable to me in my internet business. It is free, easy to install and use, and extremely versatile.

There are hundreds of free themes that you can install to make your web site look exactly as you want it to.

There are also many premium Wordpress themes that can be purchased at very reasonable prices, and these premium themes can be had for just about any specialty niche or web web site type that you can think of.

Examples of premium themes can be viewed at iTheme Premium Wordpress Themes.

There are also hundreds of plugins available for Wordpress, and these plugins can configure Wordpress to do just about any job you can think of. Many plugins can be had for free, and some specialized plugins require that you buy them, most times at very reasonable prices considering the job they can do for you.

The first step in building a Wordpress based membership web site is to install Wordpress. It is very easy to install Wordpress from your hosting account using Fantastico. You can also download and install Wordpress from the www.wordpress.org web site, and they furnish explicit instructions on how to do it.

Next, after making all of the basic settings in Wordpress, you will need a plugin to handle the membership chores for you. I have used a plugin called Your Member and also a plugin called Digital Access Pass to build my membership web sites. These are both plugins that you would need to buy, and you can read about the features of both by visiting the above web sites.

Both of these plugins include explicit instructions on installing them and setting them up on your web site, and that is beyond the scope of this article.After you buy either plugin, it is a simple matter of downloading a zip file, unzipping it, and uploading it to your hosting server. Then you follow their instruction and tutorials on set up and usage. YourMember also has an active forum that is a good place to ask questions and get answers on any problems you may be having.

After you get everything set up and working, you begin adding content to your web site, and you can make the content available to anyone who visits your web site, or you can show only part of the content and require them to sign up and pay a one-time or recurring monthly fee to see the rest of the content. You can also require them to pay for access to your download files, either a one-time fee, or a recurring monthly fee.

Both plugins handle payments through Paypal, and after you get that set up, it is pretty much an automated process.

The plugins handle registrations, payments, keeps up with recurring payments and members status for you, and it’s all done automatically.

You just keep adding more content to your web site, keep registering more members, and watch your business grow.

I also have a detailed video tutorial on building a membership web site using Wordpress and a free plugin, and you can see details on that at my TutorDaddy Video Tutorial web site at www.TutorDaddy.com.

Best Of Luck,

Lewis Poteet
www.TutorDaddy.com
www.TutorDaddyTraining.com

Summary of Wordpress Premium Themes

There seems to be a growing demand for higher quality themes for WordPress. Whether to choose a Premium theme or a Free theme is sometimes a difficult choice. Some free themes are really top notch so depending on what your needs are there may be no need for you to purchase a Premium theme. But, there are more and more high quality (and some unfortunately low quality) premium themes as well.

There are usually three types of Premium themes available - single site, multiple site and developer license, although some sites just have either single site or developer licenses. In most cases you would normally go for the multiple license unless you are certain you will only use the theme for one site. If you are a developer, obviously you would want to choose the developer’s license.

One thing that has changed recently is Revolution going Open Source, so you can now download some of their Premium themes for free. But, you have to pay for support. This is probably a smart move as more people will try their themes out and realise they then need support. Hopefully this move will get rid of some of those people trying to make a quick buck by selling cheap and nasty generic Premium themes.

My current favourite theme is the one I use on this site, which is WP-VYBE. It has a lot of flexibility in the admin menu, great support and a great design.

Below is a description of some of the best Premium Themes that I have found. I’m constantly adding to this list so hopefully will be putting a few more up here soon.

1) WP-VYBE
No. of themes: 12
Pricing: $99 (single), $199 (multiple), $299 (developer). But there are cheaper themes from $49 up.
Type of themes: Magazine
Customization services: Possible through other developers.

Notes:Theme settings page in your Wordpress control pane, 2-column or 3-column layouts, 10 different color options, Gravatar integration, Optional banner ad integration, Optional built-in post thumbnails, Optional logo/header image integration via control panel, Built-in drop-down navigation for sub-categories and sub-pages, widgetized sidebars and alot more….

2) ARTHEMIA
No. of themes: 1 (but customization through admin panel is possible)
Pricing: $70 (1 site), $140 (5-site), $240 (developer’s pack)
Type of themes: online magazine, corporate, personal blog
Customization service: Nothing mentioned

Notes: Flexible theme admin panel, category colour assignment, auto-thumbnail old posts, banner and adsense management, show or hide headline spoilers, adsense friendly.

3) PRESS 75
No. of themes: 3
Pricing: $75 (single), $150 (mulit-site), $250 (developer’s license)
Type of theme: Video/TV themed
Customization service: None listed

Notes: Ability to post using videos from several sources including Blip, TV, Flickr, MetaCafe, MySpace, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo and YouTube. You can separate the blog from the video and there is an embed code allowing others to embed videos on their site.

4) WOO THEMES
No. of themes: 10
Pricing: $70 (single) , $150 (multiple) for each theme
Type of themes: Business, CMS, Magazine/News, Personal blog, Portfolio
Customization services: none advertised.

Notes: Theme options backend, custom write panels (to make the addition of custom fields easier), same base backend for all themes.

5) ZIDALGO
No. of themes: 2
Pricing: $75 (singl), $249 (developer’s license)
Type of themes: News/Magazine
Customization services: None advertised

Notes: Google adsense, Widget, plugin ready, custom category search, author pages, 100% Valid XHTML/CSS, cross-browser tested.

6) MIMBO PRO
No. of themes: 1
Pricing: $99 (single), $199 (developer’s license)
Type of theme: Magazine
Customization services: none advertised

Notes: Built in contact form, automatic cropping and resizing of images, printer friendly rendering, custom templates for search results, date archives, sitemap, contact, author archives and category archives

7) GABFIRE
No. of themes: 2
Pricing: $59 (single), $159 (multi), $259 (developer)
Type of theme: Magazine, News, Wordpress showcase Customization services: Yes. Fill in your budget, colours to be used, example sites and message.

Notes: Built in FlickR support, video spot, Ajax tabs, custom 404 error page, Gravatar support, drop down menu

Lots of people are beginning to realize that getting into online businesses and online marketing is an excellent way to earn money online to supplement their “real world” income or for many internet marketers it has become their principal source of income.

Why is that so? Many individuals will tell you that internet marketing provides them a loads of benefits! Below are some of the reasons:

First, you can reach just about anybody in the world who has Internet access if you market your products online. That means a wider market for you, which can translate to larger profits.

Second, setting up an online business requires only a fraction of the cost required to set up an actual business establishment, which means a lot of savings for the business owner.

Thirdly, another aspect that has attracted a lot of people towards online marketing is the fact that one doesn’t have to have his own products to get started. In online marketing, one can start making a lot of money just by selling, or even by just trying to sell, other people’s products. And getting started with this kind of marketing strategy is actually quite easy. All that one needs to do is to set up an agreement with an online retailer or merchant, and after everything is settled, one can immediately start making money by selling the merchant’s or the retailer’s products.

Incidentally, this is called affiliate marketing and it is a great way for people to make money online. It is a relationship between an online merchant or retailer, who has products to sell, and his affiliates, who want promote the merchant’s product on their website.

The process of signing up with for affiliate marketing is quite fast and simple. You can opt to sign up as an affiliate with online merchants that has affiliate programs or alternatively join some of the affiliate networks which you can be an affiliate by selling its member’s products. While many of these affiliate networks are free some do charge a monthly or yearly membership fee.

Some affiliate programs or network will require you to submit your website’s address and description as a verification that your website is active and relevant to their products. Others do not require this verification process and you are free to choose the affiliate program you want to market.

Affiliates are normally given special html codes, banners or text advertisements to place on their website linking to the merchant’s website. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis if the affiliates send traffic or sales to the merchant’s website.

How do you making money online with affiliate marketing? It depends on the type of affiliate marketing program you’ve signed up for. Most affiliate marketing programs compensate their affiliates in different ways:

1.Pay-Per-Click (PPC) - the affiliate is paid whenever he directs traffic to the merchant’s site
2.Pay-Per-Sale (PPS) - the affiliate only gets paid when his referral converts into an actual sale. In typical PPS affiliate programs, the affiliate would usually get a commission for each conversion.
3.Pay-Per-Lead (PPL) - affiliates are paid a fixed fee whenever his referral converts into a lead for the merchant.
4.Two-Tier Programs - the affiliate is also allowed to recommend other affiliates to the merchant. In such affiliate programs, the affiliate would not only be paid for the traffic or sales that he would direct to the merchant’s site but also for the traffic or sales directed by the affiliates who signed up with the program through his recommendation.
5.Residual Affiliate Programs – these are affiliate programs where the affiliate gets paid a number of times for as long as the merchant keeps the customer the affiliate has referred to his site. One form of residual program gets the affiliate paid a commission every time the referred customer purchases something on the merchant’s site. Another form of residual affiliate program gets the affiliate paid a percentage every month for as long as the company keeps the referred customer.

The most popular way of make money on the internet is with affiliate marketing. As to how much money one can get from affiliate marketing actually depends on the affiliate’s determination as well as his internet marketing and SEO skills.