21 Reasons To Invest In A Membership Site With The X Theme

If you've been thinking about launching a membership site for yourself or clients, you're in for a treat. Jered Slusher has put together X MemberPro, a free course on how to launch premium membership sites with the X Theme (and how awesome is it that it is built on the X Theme itself)! This is step-by-step guided training, going from zero to membership site in as little as seven hours, and completing it all on a shoestring budget. By the end of the course, you will have your membership site ready to launch and collect payments. Today, Jered's sharing his experience with developing successful membership sites and 21 reasons to invest in a membership site with X. If you're ready to start developing membership sites, head over to X MemberPro and sign up for free to get started.

I'm going to go out on a limb and make a bold prediction: the future of the internet is membership sites.

If you think about it, the internet is already dominated by membership sites: Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, YouTube, and the list goes on and on.

We don't typically think of these juggernauts as “membership sites,” but each and every one of these top sites has an option to sign up as a member to participate and take advantage of premium features.

And, these top sites provide a platform for members to interact with each other based on what the members are interested in. It's a great incentive to keep people coming back for more.

While these sites are key players with a broad scope and massive success, you have a distinct advantage over all of these sites.

You have the ability to create premium WordPress based membership sites, and build a community focused around a common interest.

In the process, you can help a lot of people and make a lot of money.

The best part is that you can have a beautiful membership site up and running today for practically pennies.

Using the simple yet powerful features of the X Theme, a few WordPress plugins, and a love for helping people, you are set for success.

Here are 21 reasons you should invest in a membership site with the X Theme:

1. People Want Results

If you're an expert, or you know an expert, there are people out there that are looking for results in any given topic. They want to become better cooks, gardeners, marketers, web designers, and the list goes on and on.

If you have the ability to get someone closer to their goal by sharing advice on how to do it, or providing resources that will solve their problems, you have your idea for a potentially profitable membership site.

2. People Want Accountability

One of the biggest advantages of membership sites is that people feel more accountable to achieve a result or follow through if they join. They want to be held accountable, because they know if left to their own devices they won't be getting anywhere.

By becoming a part of a group that is dedicated to what they're seeking, they are moving from interested to committed. The result is more motivated members that will be much more likely to achieve their desired goal.

3. People Want Community

People want to share and get feedback from others. It's in our social nature. But, they don't want to share and get feedback with just anyone. They need people that understand where they're coming from.

When you gather a group of people with like interests, you've created more than just a membership site. You've created a network. And, that network will be there to support each other. The best part is, if you treat your members like gold, they will own the community and make new members feel welcome and included.

4. A Membership Site Builds Loyalty

When done right, you will build a massive following of loyal members that know, like and trust you. Loyalty has many benefits, and will allow you to grow your membership site by word of mouth.

5. You Position Yourself In Your Market

As you grow your membership site, you're positioning yourself as the go-to expert in the field, and you're positioning your site as the go-to community for your given topic. People will begin to associate you with success in your given field, and you will be positioned to reach more people.

6. It's Easy to Collect Payment

Using a free membership plugin like Paid Members Pro, or a paid plugin like MemberPress, you can integrate with PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.net to start collecting one-time or recurring payments immediately.

A lot of people think this is difficult to set-up or integrate, but it can be done from start to finish in less than 30 minutes.

7. Recurring Billing and Predictable Income

When you charge a monthly or annual fee, you can begin to amass a level of predictable income that will be coming in on a regular basis.

The good news is that with a constant stream of recurring income, you'll be able to forecast your business growth and more intelligently invest your time, money, and energy.

8. You Don't Have to Trade Your Time for Money

When you're running a membership site, you don't have to worry about trading your time for money. As you amass a large database of content, and your community begins growing, your membership site will work for you as you sleep.

This will give you the freedom to focus on growing your membership site, or work on developing future projects.

9. You Can Sell Premium Products to Your Members

Once your members are hooked, there will be a percentage that want more.

They want to take their results or experience to the next level. That could be purchasing software, advanced courses, group or one-on-one coaching, or anything else that will get them closer to their desired result.

The key is that if you're helping them to grow, and providing an active community of like-minded members, then they are highly targeted leads that will be more likely to buy extra products and services.

10. Low Startup Cost

You don't need expensive hosting, plugins, or designs to get started. For the cost of the X Theme, domain and hosting, and an SSL certificate, you can have a fully developed membership site ready to accept members.

There's this myth that membership sites cost thousands of dollars to get started. Well, if that's the route you want to go, go ahead. But, if you want to get started and have a site built on a solid foundation, it doesn't have to cost any more than $70 total to fully develop your site.

11. You Don't Need a Big Team

A lot of people think: If I have a membership site, I'm going to have to put together a team to get started. It's almost ridiculous to see how many people get taken advantage of by smooth-talking design firms, graphic designers, and third-party payment processing resellers. It's all unnecessary.

All you need is you, a computer, and an internet connection. X Theme's customization features are more than enough to get you started.

12. No Complicated Setup

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to get started. The technical setup is easy.

Get Hosting, Domain and SSL. Install WordPress. Install and configure X Theme. Install and configure a few basic plugins. Install and configure your membership plugin. And, that's it.

It may seem like woo-woo stuff, but really it's super basic—and I'll teach you step-by-step how to do all of it in X MemberPro.

13. Easily Build Your Sales Page with the Cornerstone page builder

With the Cornerstone plugin and X, you can easily build beautiful sales pages in a matter of minutes to present your membership site offer.

And, really, it's just super-fun to be creative and play around with the Cornerstone editor for awhile. It doesn't even feel like work.

14. Quickly Add Critical Pages

With Cornerstone, you don't need to spend days trying to put together the critical pages of your site. You can add your Home, About, Contact, and other essential pages with ease.

A lot of people will spend weeks, even months, trying to perfect the design and layout of the pages of their site. Meanwhile, other people are dominating in the market because they are keeping things quick and easy.

15. Design Your Member's Area with Cornerstone's Block Grid Element


The Cornerstone block grid element is perfect for visually displaying the different areas of your membership site at a glance. You simply drag and drop the block grid element, add a picture and a link, and you're done.

The result is a beautiful and functional member's area dashboard that works across all browsers, tablets, and mobile devices.

16. Use Accordions to Break-Down Your Content

One of the biggest advantages to building your membership site with X Theme is the ability to break down your content into easy-to-digest bite-sized chunks.

Members want to get what they want quickly. One of the biggest mistakes with membership sites is uploading 60 minute tutorials and providing a 100 page PDF guide with it.

You are much better off uploading 12 videos at 5 minutes length, and breaking your content into smaller pieces. It helps people to learn and apply your content more effectively.

When they want to revisit a concept, they don't have to fast forward or sift through content. All they have to do is find the accordion with what they're looking for. And, bingo. Instant gratification.

17. Host Your Own Webinars Right From Your Site

Webinars keep your members engaged, and give them access to you in a live environment.

Host your webinars with Google Hangouts, and embed the code right into your WordPress membership site. When you're done, move the link to an accordion archive on the same page.

18. Build a Community with bbPress, Facebook, or Slack

X Theme integrates with bbPress and allows you to create beautiful forums for your membership site community. If you're looking for a quicker, simpler option, just create a private Facebook group for your membership site.

Or, if you really want to up the interaction and give your group a truly interactive experience, check out Slack.

19. Keep in Contact by Integrating With an AutoResponder

Integrate your membership site with popular mail clients like MailChimp and Aweber to follow-up with your members on a regular basis.

When you add new content to the site, send updates to members to let them know. This will keep them coming back regularly to interact with the community and engage with your content.

20. Start With Little Content and Grow

You don't need to have a full encyclopedia to launch your membership site. My advice is to start small with a core group of useful content (a combination of articles, videos, audios, PDF's, images, and/or software). You can build your membership site by adding more content as you grow.

Plus, you can get feedback from your members to figure out what resources they're looking for so that you can focus on creating the content that they want to consume.

21. Free Training on How to Launch Your Membership Site with X Theme

Perhaps the biggest reason of all to invest in a membership site with X theme is that I'm going to teach you how to do it at X MemberPro for free.

I've put together step-by-step guided training, going from zero to membership site in as little as seven hours, and completing it all on a shoestring budget.

For the past 10 years, I've developed membership sites with WordPress, and I've been a product launch consultant, helping small businesses build and promote their online courses and communities.

I've designed this course for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and website developers to build and launch their own membership sites.

By the end of this course, you will have your membership site setup to collect payment, and ready to launch.

In this course, we'll cover how to tackle the tech, set up your pages, design a member's area, add your member's content, create a sales and signup process, put on the finishing touches, and press the launch button.

All the while, I'll be giving you clear templates and guided instruction.

There aren't any pre-requisites that you need to join, but you will need a domain and hosting, an SSL certificate, and a copy of the X Theme for WordPress. Don't have any of these? No problem. We'll cover how to set that up in the course.

Feel free to check out X MemberPro, and when you're ready, join now for free to get started.

I look forward to helping you launch your membership site.

To your success,
Jered