Starting Your Own Membership Site with EverWeb Membership Sites!

If you have ever wanted to start your own membership site, or subscription service, EverWeb has the solution for you with its new Membership Sites feature that debuted in EverWeb 4.0 for Mac and Windows.

Why Start With a Membership Site?
There are a number of good reasons why starting your own membership site or subscription service can be of benefit to you and your business.

1. You can offer exclusive content, services or products that cannot be found anywhere
2. You can build a community around your business offerings
3. You can gauge support for products and services that you are considering to introduce in the future.
4. You can monetize your website through your membership or subscription site.

EverWeb Membership Sites Features
Before starting a membership or subscription site, it’s worth checking out the features that are included to ensure that you everything that you need. In addition you would be using EverWeb 4.0, or higher, for macOS or Windows.

Here’s a summary of the feature highlights included in EverWeb Membership Sites…

• No technical set up required to configure either the membership sites backend or frontend features
• Easy integration in EverWeb with seven specially designed membership sites widgets
• Three Membership Sites plans available, Free, Plus and Deluxe
• Free Membership level*
• Trial Memberships available*
• Mass Emailing*
• Easy set up of membership levels
• Coupons and Discounts Codes
• Customizable email responses
• Easy membership management features
• Password Protection
• Complete Membership Activity Logs, Membership Search and Reporting
• All major credit and debit cards, Apple Pay and more accepted

* Available with EverWeb Membership Plus and Membership Deluxe plans only

For a full list of features, click on the EverWeb Membership Sites features list.

Preparing To Start Your Membership Site
Before you start to create your membership site, you probably should plan a little in advance…

• Make sure you are using EverWeb 4.0 or higher for macOS or Windows
• Decide what levels of membership you want
• Decide what you are going to offer at each membership level
• What Special Offers or Introductory Offers will you offer (this is optional, but good to plan in advance e.g. Black Friday offers etc.)
• Plan ahead to grow your offering in future to some, or all, membership levels
• Marketing your membership site e.g. through your blog, social media etc.

Once you have outlined your strategy for your membership site, you can start to set it up!

Getting Started with your Membership Site
When starting your EverWeb Membership Site, there are three main components that you will need to complete. We recommend that you complete these in the following order:

1. EverWeb Membership Sites Backend configuration. This is where you set up all of the administrative tasks such as your membership site’s basic setup, membership setup, payments, membership levels, coupons etc.
2. EverWeb Membership Site Frontend configuration. This is where you create your membership site’s web pages, using seven specially designed widgets, These widgets link to the backend features of your membership site so that you can create pages such as membership sign up, membership login, change password page etc.
3. Setting Password Protection for Membership Levels in your Membership Site. Once you have created your basic membership site pages, you will want to password protect the pages you have created in EverWeb that are relevant to the membership levels that you have created. For example, you may have set up Bronze, Silver and Gold membership levels. For each of these levels you would then create a corresponding content page in EverWeb. You would then password protect these pages so that members are granted the correct access for each content page.

Setting Up EverWeb Membership Sites Backend Features
Setting up the backend features of EverWeb membership Sites is done in your EverWeb Client Area. When you first download EverWeb, you should create an EverWeb account using the EverWeb-> Preferences… menu option on a Mac (which will become EverWeb-> Settings… as from EverWeb 4.2), or the Edit-> Options menu under Windows. If you have not created an EverWeb account already, click on the ‘Create Account’ link to do so.

Once you have created your EverWeb account, you can log in to your EverWeb Client Area at anytime, wither using the ‘Manage Account’ button from the Preferences (Mac) / Options (Windows) dialog box, or at the following URL

https://billing.ragesw.com/clientarea.php

Your EverWeb Client Area is where the Membership Sites backend features can be accessed. Once you have logged into your EverWeb Client Area, using your EverWeb account details, scroll down the page until you see the Membership Sites section on the left hand side of the page. Click on the ‘Manage All’ option. The next screen that appears will be the Membership Sites Setup page. The column on the left hand side of the page displays a list of different options that you can work through to set up your membership site.

We recommend that you go down the list of options in the order that you see them, so start with the Setup option which is where you currently are already, then proceed with the Membership Levels option and so on until you have completed list. The setup for each section is straightforward, but EverWeb has produced videos on each option which we recommend you watch to give you a good overview of each option and how they interact with each other.

The easiest way to access these videos is through the EverWeb Video Tutorials page, then scroll down to the section ‘Monetising Your Website with Membership Sites.’ If you have any questions about setting any backend feature up, please let us know in the Comments Section below. We’re happy to help.

Once you have completed your setting up your membership site’s backend features, you will be ready to setup the front end of your membership site in EverWeb itself, which we will explore in our next blog post on EverWeb Membership Sites!

if you have any questions or comments please let us know below!