Resources
Take your websites, marketing, and productivity to new heights with these great resources

I thought it would be helpful to create a resource page that you can always come to for all of your membership site and online marketing needs. I’ll add to it as I learn more, but you’ll notice that in the future I will reference this page quite often. I recommend bookmarking it for your reference and convenience. Enjoy!

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase. Please understand that I have experience with all of these companies, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel you need them or that they will help you achieve your goals.

My Most Recommended

The following 5 resources are all you need to get started building a flexible and attractive membership site that’s also easy for you to manage. I personally use this combination on several of my own sites to sell both one-off eBooks and recurring memberships. It’s as close to the perfect membership site combination I’ve found so far.

SpeedKills.io is a 100% managed-for-you cloud hosting company I started with my business partner specifically to solve our pain points around hosting. We went through most of the big hosts before we realized that none of them really gave us the power, flexibility and customer-centric attention we needed. This was especially true of membership sites, which require a certain kind of configuration to work best. So we decided to solve this problem in the market ourselves!

OptimizePress is the most powerful WordPress theme available for online marketers today. Not only is it great for blogging, but it lets you easily create landing pages, sales pages, members areas and more. I use it on many of my sites, including this one!

Digital Access Pass (or DAP for short) is the best WordPress membership plugin I’ve used. It’s incredibly simple, elegant and easy to administer. You can create unlimited membership levels, integrate with your email marketing program and offer 1-click upsells (and much more).

Drip is the best email marketing and automation tool on the planet. I’ve worked with Aweber, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign and I even had InfusionSoft for a while. None of them are as intuitive, powerful and affordable as Drip. We absolutely love this tool.

WordPress Plugins That Really Don’t Suck

Gravity Forms is something of a miracle plugin. The list of things it can do is nothing short of amazing. In my business, I use it as a calculator in my SexyThumbs thumbnail creation service. I also use it to collect opt-ins (it integrates with Aweber), run quizzes/surveys, and to personalize web pages using GravityForms’ ability to pre-populate fields with data you collected earlier (such as first name, last name, email, country, and any other info you gathered!)

Pretty Link is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to turn long, unsightly URLs into ‘pretty’ links. This plugin is perfect for cleaning up affiliate links.

For example, my Amazon affiliate link for the classic psychology book Influence by Robert Cialdini is:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006124189X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=006124189X&linkCode=as2&tag=vicdor-20

Pretty link turns that into:

http://www.vicdorfman.com/influence

Boom!

WPSharely is a content locker plugin that allows you to “lock” content behind a share box, like so:

Once you get that image out of your head, I bet you can imagine all sorts of creative ways to implement this plugin.

This content locker approach dramatically increases social media likes. And I say that from experience, having I’ve used WPSharely on several websites in different niches. And every time I use it on a post it gets a ton of social media traction.

(Pro Tip: use it to hide something people want to see on a tabloid level. Pictures of sexy girls works, or something gossipy, or a coupon, or an embarrassing confession, etc. Fact is, very few people are above consuming their daily dose of drama…)

I don’t see too many people using this plugin, which means it’s more effective.

MemberFix is my Unlimited WordPress & Membership Site Support Service. This is by far my most successful and popular service. Why? Because I personally interact with every single request! Tried to hire me but I was too busy? Sign up for MemberFix and you’ve got me – Vic Dorfman, Membership Site Expert – at your unlimited disposal for a low monthly retainer (well, not low in absolute terms, but it’s waaay cheaper than if you were to hire me hourly at my rate of $115/hour!)

Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula is one of only TWO paid trainings I actively recommend to my clients and colleagues. Jeff popularized and codified the online product launch, and his system is responsible for untold millions of dollars in sales. I’m sure you’ve seen a launch before and maybe you’ve even done one yourself. Product Launch Formula shows you, step by step, how to properly launch your product. Warning: it’s an expensive product but if you use what you learn, you will without a doubt make your money back many times over.

The Ultimate Belcher Button Wizard – The Belcher button is also known as the most expensive buy button ever created. This button has been test and retested and is proven effective to get people to click. Use it!