As I covered in my post yesterday on how to make a membership site, WishList is the best software for converting your blog into a working and fully automated membership site. It’s the only software many webmasters trust to house their membership sites because of the features, reliability, and support which it offers. Let’s cover the major points in this WishList review.
WishList Review
Membership Levels
A lot of membership sites include different payment tiers/levels of access. This improves conversions and will earn you more money because some people will only want access to certain content on your membership site, so they’re not going to want to pay for unused features. It’s up to you to figure out how to group your content accordingly, but you’ll be pleased to know that WishList provides webmasters with as many membership levels as they need and the ability to charge and grant access to the corresponding level automatically.
Additionally you can create free, trial, or paid membership levels so that you have complete control over how you want to sell your content or give it away.
When it comes to access, you can get laser targeted with choosing which pages, posts, or even categories and comments different level of members can view and access.
Content Delivery
The ability to graduate your members between levels is extremely handy. So if you want to give people a free trial then bump them up to a pay tier, Wishlist will automatically do this for you and deliver your content to them accordingly while handling payment.
Subscription Length Control
Another very cool feature is the ability to control and limit the amount of time which a member has access to your site. You can automatically have someone’s membership site expire after a specific period of days for every member without having to fuss with it yourself.
Member Management
You have easy and quick access to your membership base, as well. You can view your members, their status on your membership site, and you can edit, pause, delete, or move their membership status.
Hidden Content!
Partial content control/display is very clutch. For example, you can restrict/hide all but the first paragraph of a specific post in order to get members to upgrade to the next level. Conversely, you can set a sneak peak of the content which the lower members can see so that they can be encouraged to upgrade their membership.
RSS Feeds
You can grant RSS feed access for your members only content to specific members so that only certain members can gain access to specific RSS feeds (depending on their membership level).
Custom “Access Denied” Pages
When someone tries to access content which they don’t have the membership clearance for, you can choose and design exactly what that page will look like so that you can use that copy to encourage them to sign up to yield the best conversion rate.
Login Redirection
Choose which page your members see after they login. Redirect different members based on their membership levels, so you can again encourage lower tiered members to upgrade every time they sign in.
WordPress Compatible
Wishlist comes as a plugin which works perfectly with WordPress. It comes as a zip which you can install right within your plugins section.
Optimize Press Compatible
Finally, I REALLY like WishList because it integrates flawlessly with Optimize Press. You can design your membership content pages with push button ease via Optimize Press then you can set access levels and membership levels via WishList and let it go and handle sign ups all automatically for you. It’s the best combo for blogging plus membership sites.
Price
While the price is $97 to download WishList, fortunately it’s a one time fee which is a welcome alternative to software which charges recurring monthly fees for its use. That’s a one time license, mind you; if you anticipate using it on multiple sites you may one to go for the unlimited license at $297.