Script/Softwares .. Help Needed
 

Hello Everyone!

I was wondering if you could provide me with more information about what scripts and/or software are required to create membership sites?

From what I’ve seen, I believe you normally need two scripts (an affiliate script and a content manager). Does anyone have any suggestions for affiliate scripts other than nats? How about suggestions for content manager scripts besides carma?

I also wasn’t sure if the main page of most membership sites is a script, or if it is usually just a static HTML page. If it is a script, could you please tell me what script it is?

Lastly, could someone be kind enough to explain how you link a membership site and the payment processor together?

Thanks in advance for all of your help and great suggestions!

-WhoreDollars Team

Dude, no offense here but you have no idea what you're doing and you want to open membership sites and attract affiliates to promote them?

Other than NATS there is MPA3, very good software. http://www.mpa3.com/
Instead of Carma you should use Elevatedx. Many people love it! http://www.elevatedx.com/
Main page/tour pages can be static yes, many sites still are. If you want them to change via a script usually the CMS does it. (I believe elevatedx has that option, not sure) And you can build static and change to the script later if you want to of course.
Your payment processor will link that or the NATS or MPA people will do that. Likely you will need to hire a programmer at least to set that up if you need it.

I'm smelling an epic failure coming in the future. |scared|

StrongBox

Thanks for the suggestion.Yea i have no idea about the industry,so i am asking for help on this board.

If you have no idea about the industry, you should not even be thinking about starting a paysite with affiliate program. Sorry, but if you do that, you might as well give everyone on this board $1000, at the very least you'll feel like you accomplished something after you burn through whatever capital you have laid out for this.

Consider using that capital to start at the bottom, like all of us have done. It'll teach you the industry, will get you the contacts, will get you an appreciation of how extremely work intensive and complicated running a paysite with affiliate program really is.

Please listen to what everyone has to say, since we're only trying to prevent you from falling flat on your face and losing most likely a significant investment and getting you all disillusioned.

Thanks you so much.I am felling to rethink about my strategy,by the words you have told.

In all seriousness, you should :) It's nice that you want to start a paysite, but without knowledge of the industry, it'll fail miserably. It's the same as wanting to build a formula 1 car without knowing anything about how they're built. In the end, you might come close to having one, but either it's going to fall apart, blow up spectacularly, or be outperformed by the "real" F1 cars.

Your best course of action is what I already said, take the money you have put aside for this (and I assume you have some budget available), purchase a few domains (2 or 3), get a nice webhost (important), buy some content (also important) and start building freesites and blogs.

Doing that will give you the necessary background in how exactly things work that you will get a much better idea of what's involved in a paysite.

A paysite is not just some pics, some scripts, and a website, it requires a lot of money to get started. First of all you need reliable hosting which means you'll want to go with a dedicated server. A dedicated server requires a sysadmin (and they usually don't work for free), then you will need content. Not just any content, but fresh, exclusive content. A lot of content, actually. You need pics, videos, and you need high quality. Then you need a design. Not just for the paysite, but you will need one (preferrably more than one) tour.

Then you need banners and other advertising material. Hosted galleries. Content for your webmasters. The NATS script that most people use for their affiliate program isn't exactly cheap either.

By this time, you can easily blow right through 10 grand. And you haven't made a single sale yet. Figure your monthly expenses on -at least- $5000. And you still haven't made a single sale yet.

Now in your first month, after all's been said and done, you might see, perhaps, 100 signups (and this is being very optimistic). Now say you charge $30 for a member to sign up, and assuming you do a revshare. This means that out of that $30, at least $15 goes to the affiliate.

From your $15, deduct all the processing needed to get the affiliate's $15 into his bank account. I'll assume you're left with about $12.

Now, $12 times 100 makes $1200. You still haven't made money yet. You still need to cough up an additional $3800 in operational cash just to keep the show on the road.

Maybe after 6 months you'll start to turn a profit -- but it's small, and won't allow you to quit your dayjob just yet. Oh, wait, but you do need to quit your dayjob since you need to be able to do support for your affiliates, more or less 24/7. Unless you hire someone for it, in which case your operational budget just got squeezed some more.

Now, reality: All the guys and girls out there running affiliate programs and paysites? They either started at the bottom, or they can offer something nobody else can -- such as some of the webcam girls or some of the husband/wife pairs that are capable of producing their own content which cuts their needed finances to run things by a considerable amount.

Cliff's Notes: Don't start a paysite, use the money and build freesites, galleries and blogs, start off simple, and perhaps later you're in a better position to judge what's needed to run a paysite and you can make an informed decision at that point.

WOW....Really amazing post.It inspires me a lot to learn before i can do something.Thanks MadCat for this post.