One way of ensuring your membership sites are able to load fast is by storing your downloadable content or even streaming video tutorials not in your website, but in the Amazon S3 webservers.
Since the S3 servers are much more robust than a typical shared webhost account, even if your main site gets hundreds of members (all viewing the videos at the same time), Amazon will be able to serve them and your site will continue to run.
Here are the things you need to prepare before you launch your WordPress-powered membership site in tandem with Amazon S3:
- An Amazon S3 Account
- Software that makes it easy to upload content to your S3 account
- WordPress blog
- S3FlowShield WordPress plugin
- WP Wishlist Member plugin
The S3FlowShield plugin makes it easy for you to place download links within your blog posts, which point to the protected content in your S3 Amazon bucket. This system makes it a requirement for your members to actually be on your site when they access their premium content.
The WP Wishlist Member plugin configures your site so that your members have to be logged in before they can access the links displayed by the S3FlowShield plugin. This system also protects you from people who might wish to share their password with others.
In addition, WP Wishlist Member handles online payments (i.e., via Paypal) and automates the granting of access to your paid customers. So once your content is ready and protected, all you need to do is market your site (no, don’t call it a membership site), accept online payments, and have your customers get the content they want.
Remember the saying that if it will take you six hours to cut down a tree, spend four hours sharpening the axe? Well, the same thing applies here. You will need to lay down the foundation if you want to enjoy more or less smooth-sailing recurring passive income.
What exactly will you do during the “first four hours”? Before you even think about WordPress or Amazon S3, you will need to think about your content. And that’s the subject of another blog post…
