I hope the past 2 write ups about each membership script was helpful. Lets get in the final round and lets see who is the best membership script.

So lets break it down and see which one will be better or acts better… these are my experiences and I hope it will help you decide which membership script will be better for you. Each one has its powers and each one has its weakness. So one maybe powerful because it is using the power of wordpress while the other will have more plugins and versatility.

Let the battle begin! Wishlist Member vs aMember Pro

Wishlist Member: Positives

• Easy to install, download > upload > activate
• a lot of video tutorials, which makes it easy to move around the interface and use its features
• very clean interface, can be easily navigated
• Easily integrates with aweber, paypal, and clickbank
• Ability to create multiple membership levels
• Really easy member management
• Content protection base on the membership level
• …more great features

Wishlist Member: Negatives

• Took a while to integrate the mailing list options – but the videos helped
• sometimes you forget to check off the membership level when you are trying to protect your content
• the main options are a must to do, I forgot to do it my first time installing
• …not sure how to integrate a forum

aMember: Positives

• Lots of plugins and tools to be used within the system
• built in affiliate program
• ability to mail membership type users (expired, active, etc)
• Simple interface
• Various ways to protect content
• Integrates with multiple payment systems
• system logging. Logs what the script is doing and what users are doing.
• Overall income reports and demographic reports! <- love this
• Main dashboards shows overall stats including income
• Integrate forums, wordpress, and other systems with their arsonal of plugins
• …more great features

aMember: Negatives

• Takes a while to get use to (interface and internal mailing features)
• if you have your own affiliate system it takes a while to recognize the payment scripts to integrate your affiliate system
• templates can be cumbersome to use and may be difficult to re-do yourself
• email notifications can take a while to understand especially if you are doing recurring billing
• Product integration can be confusing, especially if you have different levels of your membership

Overall

Now it may seem that I am favoring Wishlist more because of its versatility and ease of use but once you get to use amember it is very powerful. It does take a while to get use to while Wishlist you can upload it and start using it.

The big difference with Wishlist and aMember is that there is no setup with SQL since your Wordpress installation has already done that for you. aMember you will have to setup the SQL and all that stuff but it is easy.

I use Wishlist as a product download page as well as content. While I am using aMember as a gate to specific folders of my domain. aMember has a very nice and powerful security system. Wishlist uses the power of Wordpress to make their membership script work.

I personally do not favor either or I do use both and I do like both. I hope the above recap was helpful enough for you to chose which one will be better.

Check out aMember and Wishlist Member for yourself and see which one is better.

I have been doing Internet marketing for sometime now and if I would have known about having these two things when I first started out, it probably wouldn’t have cost me all of the mistakes that I have made over the years. I was not worried about creating a brand for myself at the time; I was just worried about making money. If you are just starting out with any sort of online business, I highly recommend that you get these two things in place before you do anything else.

The first item that you need is a personal blog. I cannot explain the true importance of branding yourself through a blog. Many bloggers don’t even realize the influence that they have on their current audiences. This is literally costing them thousands of dollars every day. Once you begin blogging and sharing your story across the Internet, people will begin to relate to your story and start to develop a relationship with you without actually even meeting you in person.

I remember when I went to the Affiliate Summit in August and meet John Chow, it felt like I had known him for years because I had been reading his blog for about a year and it seemed like we had been friends forever. It was kind of weird when I first meet him because it was a lot different actually to meet him then reading one of his blog posts.

This is the type of influence that you can create on your audience just by being yourself, telling your story, and sharing your experiences and topics that you are knowledgeable about. There is no other form of media that can accomplish this besides the Internet, so I recommend that you take full advantage of it before the market becomes to saturated and you find yourself competing for prospects against your friends.

So now that you know that you need to start working on your personal blog, now you need to establish a personal newsletter. Most people hate the idea of not only writing content for their personal blog, but know they have to write content for their newsletter as well. My response to this is, setup an autoresponder, like Aweber, so that you only have to write the material once and the rest will become automated. Within this newsletter that you start, you must and I repeat must, build a relationship with your newsletter subscribers first before you ever try to sell them anything. If you start out trying to sell them different products without building a relationship first, a lot of them will quickly unsubscribe or never buy anything from you.

I have subscribed to a newsletter before and the very first email that I received was a product that the person was trying to sell me. I immediately unsubscribed to this newsletter and told them the reason why I did so. If they had introduced themselves to me in the first email, then I probably wouldn’t have unsubscribed so quickly.

Without a doubt, building your email list is one of the most important things that you should be focusing most of your efforts on. So if you start developing a relationship with your audience while building your email list, you will begin to see the type of influence that you will create and also the viral effect that it will have on your personal brand. I hope everyone learned something new from reading this post and apply the knowledge that they learn from it because like I said before, knowledge is useless without application.

I would like to thank Ian Fernando for letting my write a guest post on his blog.

I was thinking about aMember in the beginning when I wanted to start a small membership site. But I heard there were issues with getting use to it and having things work properly with it. But again it is also one of the most recommended membership scripts out there.

It was not till some of my marketing friends started making membership sites and they were using aMember. I ask them what they thought and they gave me their inputs.

After a good week of asking around I decided to purchase a license and install it and test it. At first it was time consuming trying to get use to the interface and its settings but after that it was fairly easy. Then came the plugins and versatility that I needed for my site…

The installation of aMember was very simple and very straight forward. I didnt have any issues installing it at all. Once in then you get to play around with the interface and settings. I have messed up a couple things in the beginning but I finally got use to the interface and use to what it can do.

At first it was working great and I enjoyed it, but then when certain things came up like how would I integrate it with my affiliate program, how does it handle with aweber, how does it remove canceled users etc. So these things I spent several good days researching Google and the aMember forum.

Good thing about their community and their staff is they are all helpful and I get a response usually within a couple of hours. It did take some several customization with my programmer to get some things working the way I wanted.

One good thing it gives me is the access logs and who have logged in and what pages they went to etc. Which I think is really good to help troubleshoot if any issues arise. The main dashboard is very informative and gives you a lot of information right away.

Another good thing about amember is the fact they have a ton of plugins free and paid. I have bought several plugins to seamlessly integrate a forum, some reporting, and soon I will be purchasing some other plugins to help with the selling of my membership site.

One thing I did not like was the fact that if you add someone for free it calculates it as an income, which I think it shouldn’t. The only way to avoid this I think is to personally create the same product BUT without a price. This way it does not get calculated with the income reports.

…speaking of reports. Amember has a very basic reporting system and I think can be improved. They have very basic reports but one report stick outs, demographics. This can easily show you who your demographics are overall. Helping you who to target online.

I know some users have requested a more versatile reporting and more options than protection. But there are a lot of plugins for amember but sometimes you may have to create your own to get what you want.

.. Check out aMember and let me know what you think. In a couple days a total wrap up will be discussed. Maybe a video?

…I just got off the phone with the VP of Unique Leads, Glenn Pagan. We discuss the after affect of ad tech and as well as their network and how they differentiate themselves from others. We discuss international traffic and how lucrative the market is overseas versus domestic.

All in all it was a great interview… If you do not know Glenn you should I interviewed him a while back about the changes our industry is having. Now with more information and a love for our industry he comes back with more information.

Unique Leads is currently having a contest where they are going to fly out an affiliate to the Affiliate Convention in LA. Now I have been to LA and LA is super nice! I personally havent been to the Affiliate Convention but I did hear a lot of good news about it from its first one in Denver.

You can easily win a trip to the Affiliate Convention, find out more about this contest.

Listen to our call and let us know what you think.

In the beginning I wanted to use strictly Wordpress as my membership script since there is already a login area for it. I figured it was the best bet for my membership site. Then another idea came and wishlist could not do what I need it to do, so I bought another script. Well I think I got a good comparison with both scripts – because I think both scripts accomplish what I needed it to do!

So here is a nice write up of the comparisons of both script, Wishlist Member vs aMember!

I am going to talk about Wishlist Member because it was the first one I bought and I bought 3 licenses. I originally bought it to start my own affiliate tutorials for my current affiliates that are promoting my products. I simply just bought PLR articles and posted them within WordPress so users can access them and start learning some marketing tricks.

I also bought it because I wanted a central location for users to download my digital products. Wishlist is very versatile within Wordpress. If you want to imagine one of the best Wordpress membership platforms then Wishlist is your best bet. The reason I say this because if you have content which you want to provide to your members then this is the plugin that is needed to do just that.

The interface does take a while for you to get into, but once you get a full understanding of where things are then it is pretty easy to move around. One thing I did get confused are the options when I was writing a post they were at the bottom and I would have to chose which content belonged where. First time mistake but again it comes with the interface.

Once you get the interface the easier it is.

One thing I did like are the videos that helped me setup payment options and subscriptions via Paypal. It showed me how to quickly integrate aweber within Wishlist, so I can start collecting email addresses via my membership portal.

They have a lot of video tutorials, they want to make sure you membership site is up and ready to be used.

Wishlist does have it’s own internal email system, but I feel better having all the contacts within aweber, as I have most of my list within aweber already.

I got this system several months ago and they have been doing a great job launching and promoting their system.  I can say it is one of the bigger names now when you think about a wordpress membership system, Wishlist. I even checked out multiple other systems but I didn’t see a strong selling point to it. So I bought and upgraded (they got me on the upsell) to 3 licenses and as of right now I enjoyed the script.

It is a simple plugin that you install and it quickly integrates within Wordpress, the best part is you get free updates which notifies you when you log into your wordpress site and checking out wishlist member.

… in the next couple days I should have a write up for amember and then a full write up for both.

Thanks goes out to…

• Clickbooth
  They had a nice ass booth and took me out to lunch the next day after their exclusive VIP party they had. Thanks to Eric and Brittany for inviting me and taking me out to grab some coffee. Plus some good food.
• Ads4Dough
  Going out with Jason and meeting and getting to know his whole team was great. Especially meeting new people and connections that I would have probably not made before. The night was a definitely a great night, especially the second night out. Damn.
• GMB Direct
  The first night out was great hanging with Ads4Dough and Gene from GMB direct is a must. These guys def know how to do it and do it well. Gene is a great guy from the first time I met him at Ad Tech San Francisco!
• Pinnacle Dream
  First o all thanks to Eva for getting me a pack! …yes that email works. Great meeting up with everyone and also introducing a new Pinnacle member to the trade show environment.
• Tatto Media
  Mike is a great guy, I just wanted to thank him for having a nice private 2 story booth. Bryn, Hustler and I just relaxed at the top after such a long walk around the trade show floor. Great booth!
• Convert2Media
  Now these guys always have the goods. Beer, Ninja Optimization Shirts, and more schwag you want. They always have unique shirts that I do not mind wearing outside my home office. Hell I rocked their shirt the next day! Ninja Optimization FTW!
• Unique Leads
  Thanks to Glenn for having me at his home and having a nice private dinner. It was great meeting up with Shai and others that he invited. It was a nice clean relaxed environment where we just talked and enjoyed a good ass dinner.
• Encore Ads – Phil
  Thanks to Phil for letting us get in the cab. The capacity of the cab was 4 people and Phil had to leave which was beat cause I know Phil would have had a blast that night. Thanks again.
• Dustin Metcalf
  Great kid, I had to crash in his room at 5am in the morning being dumb tired. Showed him how to pimp a few girls and make sure to be more open. Great kid, we will def meetup at ASW

Especially with affiliate marketing you want to find the most volume possible or expand out to gather more volume but with quality leads. So you will have to know what to ask when you speak to certain people about their traffic. I personally have tested a bunch of traffic sources in the past and I still do it today.

But first lets talk about the first night at ad tech…

There was a No bull party held the night before ad tech. It was a way to gather and hangout with a lot of people in the industry and meetup. There was several parties that night but I ended up staying in one place, didn’t feel like cabing all around the city.

The party was ok, I met a couple new people and a couple new networks. Ran into great friends and just chilt. AffBuzz, Justin was there as well as Roland from Team 202.

In the end there were letting in too many dudes and a bunch of us started to hit the ‘clubs’ for more entertainment. I went with the Ads4Dough Team, Dustin, and several of their affiliates. The ride there was funny and entertaining, everyone was cool.

The next day was the actual conference and damn was the place HUGE!

There were a lot of new traffic sources and new people to talk too. I was talking to a mobile advertising network and when I asked how they determine their traffic, they could not answer, before the girl grab her other friend to help answer I just walked away.

This is why you need to know what kind of traffic you want to run. I ran mobile traffic before and wanted to see what other sources are out there. Just this one didn’t understand what I wanted to do. O well.

Another one was a network and this lady looked like she was super drunk she stumbled by their water cooler and literally had to hold herself up with the water cooler. When asking her questions about basic network stuff, she just gave me her card and told me she was a network. Wonder if she heard my question… tsk tsk

The night was even better since I had dinner with Unique Leads and my good friends Glenn. It was held at his private apartment in NY and damn his place is nice as hell. I met up with Shai, Emil from PPC Bully, Itay and several others. It was a good dinner and damn was it a good dinner!

After dinner went up and meetup with the Clickbooth team. Headed over to Pacha and chilt for a bit until Slick Rick’s Performance came on. The party turned out to be pretty interesting. I hanged out with Clickbooth and Pinnacle Dream. I was also tired as hell from trying to battle the clowns on the dance floor.

But they had some good dancers on eh floor. They had breakers, a Michael Jackson replica which she did a damn good job with the performance and at the end Slick Rick. He didn’t do one song either and bounced.

After Pacha we went out again with Ads4Dough and met up with Pinnacle to the ‘other’ bar. Now that was crazy! We were all up again till 5am and I think I saw the sun rising not sure.

The next day was just meeting up with networks and chilling. Walking around some more so my feet can hurt more and I headed home early. I didn’t want to party 3 nights in a row. Hell I am still beat from Ad Tech!

Here is a mashup video…

Again, want to expand your online business, you need to go to Ad Tech. It provides a lot of great new information and new traffic sources.

I also have one more post to do about ad tech and I am done – yea I did a lot of ish this Ad Tech.

The Javits center alone is just huge. There was a couple things that went wrong like no iPhone 3G service, I had to turn 3G off to get my phone working. But there was a lot of new traffic sources there that was worth stopping by and looking. Also it was great to meetup with everyone that is in the affiliate space and of course seeing all the networks I work with and meeting new ones.

But this post is about our booth we had at Ad-Tech. I have teamed up with Ad Hustler and Bryn Media to give you a new company that is all about buying blog ad space. Ad Hustler Bryn and I was trying to generate a lead and most gave us their business cards and felt pity for our booth, I mean it was just pure awesomeness.

We had to explain to multiple users that our equipment was because of shipment failure. I also had to make sure no one was cutting through our booth, talking or texting within our booth. I told people they had to walk around our booth and not walk through our booth. I regulated that ish!

Ad Hustler got the first lead and many users took pictures of our failed attempt to have a booth. It was def fun talking to users and explaining that our booth was missing in shipping and that our business was all about buying blog ad space.

Everyone was asking us about our ‘company’ and we just or Ad Hustler came up with the good idea of buying blog space. So we all just took it and ran with it. I was busy regulating users not walking through our booth. If you weren’t at Ad-Tech then you should have been. A lot of information and a lot of fun.

Next couple days will be a revamp of the trade show.

I arrived in Cali a couple days before Share a Sale Think Tank 09. I decided to hangout in San Diego and enjoy the sun for a couple days. I got a beach house for just the 3 days I was there and it literally was on the beach. It was amazing. The view of the beach and the sound of waves was amazing.

I would wake up and just walk down the boardwalk and have some banging breakfast at the Wave House. The wave house is really cool because its one of those auto wave machines, def wanted to try that out but there was a waiting list on it and didn’t want to wait till later in the day.

I met up with the owners of Ionizer Oasis and chilled with them for the days I was there. We played basketball and I obviously took over – well maybe after 2 games. There was too many sun. I was burning. The thing also was wow, women are beautiful there.

At night I ended up going to Gas Lamp, that is downtown San Diego. We went out and hanged out to the club and started picking up women. It was entertaining. After going to club to club and from bar to bar, I started taking pictures of bums because of their marketing tactics. I mean these guys are doing it heavy on the street.

One had a great eCommerce store, he was selling sock puppets and he made me a new one. I told him he can keep it and I took a pic of him doing his great selling. Gave him 20$ to keep doing his thing!

Another one had a great sign. If you seen those digg images of bums with marketing tactics, well I found the real Bum Marketer and his sign. I didn’t think they were all real so I actually found one and the real Bum Marketer!

Gave this guy a five. Funny part is his legs are working since he was pulling himself on his wheelchair with his legs…

It was a lot of fun in San Diego but a couple things happened that was out of my control. It was great playing ball and chilling with some marketers. Some of their tactics are funny and had crazy results the next day. Which I wouldn’t do myself. Hey ecommerce store plus a bit of affiliate marketing is giving them the life they are living.

But other than that it was entertaining. Then it was the ShareaSale Think Tank. After Think Tank I hanged out in LA.

LA traffic is the worst literally the worst. There is just 1 freeway 405 and never gain will I go to LA because of that but it is a nice place to live in. I hanged out at Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisade, saw the Hollywood signs, Santa Monica, Lil Saigon, I was everywhere.

If you weren’t following me on twitter, then you need to. I took hella pics and basically shared my experience with everyone on twitter.

I met up with my cousins in LA and toured every where. It kinda sucked that I only chilled with them just 2 days but it was enjoyable. The sun was def strong and there literally was no clouds in the sky.

Here is a mashup video:

…plus I got to get ready for Ad-Tech NY!

We walked around down town and saw some performing artists on the street. It was coolin to tour their mini office which was in the middle of down town Santa Monica.

After a quick tour and wine drinking, we went out to have dinner. We had dinner at BOA steak house which was right on the boardwalk and the beach. The food there was amazing, literally amazing! A lot of fancy plate design but the food was enjoyable.

After we ate we all talked about affiliate marketing and what affiliates need and want. Shaunti, Eleah, and Amber are awesome women! We def had fun at dinner. We all talked and just discussed about our industry and what is needed.

Later Amber drove us back to Newport and that was entertaining and Amber is very knowledgeable! Def brought me to a perspective on things about affiliate marketing, especially from the affiliate side, but also giving me the business side view from the network side.

Thanks to Eleah and AKMG for inviting me to dinner and showing me around Santa Monica and ofcourse dinner. Also, Eleah will be waiting for my decks!

Mashup Video here: