WP WishList Membership Site Plugin: A Review

Struggling to start and run your own membership site? Made several attempts but for some how you’re not able to start and grow your membership site all because you’re not able to make the technology work for you.

If this is the case my friend..you’re going to love this post.

Over the years I have started and managed many membership sites. Some of them were successful and some of them were colossal failures. Even to this day I struggle with finding the right technologies and platforms that could fit my marketing needs.

Just to give you some idea I have membership sites that run membergate and amember, have a couple of sites that run on wordpress and protected by Amember( Thanks to Ryan Deiss & Dave Moskovitz)

As an information marketer I have advocated the essence of “speed to market”. If you have an idea you need to act on it fast, real fast. Many marketers spend a lot of time thinking and just thinking and in the process they lose out on the market opportunity, myself included sometimes..:)-

Most recently I was introduced to a WordPress plug-in called WP WishList that could convert any wordpress blog into a membership site in minutes.

My initial reaction was, no way I’m going to let a plugin run from the core of my wordpress blog that is not yet proven or has no developer backing.

How many times you have bought a plugin that promises you the earth & heaven and the next thing you heard is, its not supported with your
wordpress version or the theme you are using.

When I I found out that this plugin is developed by Stu McLaren and Stacy Childers, whom I have known for years. I had to give it a shot.

I bought a multi-site license and tested the plugin on several of my sites. Different sites, different membership levels and different purposes altogether.
It was very easy to get started and I even got the 1shoppingcart integration to work.

Last week I attended a live seminar on WishList in Las Vegas during the event I asked several questions on all aspects of the product and get to know the plugin well.

Stu and Tracy assured me that the product is coded to the standards and they are going to ensure that all the future versions will be compliant with wordpress. Apparently they are already working with Corey Miller and Brian Gardner to ensure the plugin will gel well with leading wordpress themes.

(The older version of the plugin used to login the user directly into the membership area upon the purchase, while this worked fine from a usability
perspective, it restricted me to test the conversions using google pixel tracking code. I requested Stu & Tracy for help and in the current version they introduced “after registration” and “after login” pages)

Here are some enhancements I suggested to Stu & Tracy

Support for WordPress MU. (Imagine running a membership site where users can create their own membership sites and you make a small commission) similar to wordpress.com. Make it compatible with Buddypress. Man you are now dominating the social media.

Ad-serving Platform: Create an ad serving program which triggers banners or text that’s based on membership levels. Stu did talk
mention some upsell enchancements to the plugin that they are planning in the upcoming releases.

Additional content delivery How about delivering selective content(audio, video, e-books, special reports selectively to specific members who are on the same membership level(not at a certain time interval, but by choice at a random). Now Wishlist plugin can do sequential content upgrade and content drip is coming in the next release, but selective content delivery to a specific member is something that is widely supported on amember.

(Stu, can you confirm if Wishlist can do this?)

MoveableTypes Support Extend the plug-in to other blogging platforms such as MoveableTypes. How about MTWishList?

Tight integration with all the plug-ins that amember supports today. Such as open source applications like PHPBB forums etc.

Some of the attendees did raise the point that Stu and Tracy are selling this plug-in for a lot less. To some extent they are but I also think, from an overall product strategy stand point and the WordPress community perspective the $297 multi-site license is a good starting price point.

As I conclude this post here is what I recommend you should do.

If you’re a blogger and if you’re thinking of starting your membership site you should start with WishList plug-in. Wp Wishlist is capable of handling many off the membership site needs. This is a plug-in that has been coded by marketers for marketers and in my opinion you can handle all kinds of front-end and backend offer.

Also when you invest in the Multi-User license make sure you use them on your own sites not your client sites or for someone whom you are building a blog. If you need to build something for your customers, ask Stu for a reseller license.

To see a live functioning site that uses Wp Wishlist visit FastBlogTraffic.com/

To get your own copy of WP Wishlist Plugin visit www.membershipsiteplugin.com

Already using Wp WishList? Your comments please..