Diving into the world of online marketing can be daunting without proper guidance, a few good mentors and a clear goal in mind. The volume of so-called online marketing guru’s who’s only purpose seems to be to sell you online marketing how-tos is staggering and makes it difficult to separate those from whom you can really learn something and get value for your money, from those who only get your money leaving you with little to gain in return, other than another hard and expensive lesson. However, this past week I had the privilege of being one of 30 people who were able to attend the WishList Member Live 2009 Conference in Las Vegas and I can tell you It was worth every penny and then some. The networking was excellent, the lessons meaningful and applicable to your business and it shortened the learning curve for me to start profiting from my efforts significantly. In short I found my mentors, got the guidance I was looking for and established a clear path to achieving my objectives…. hard to put a price on that.

To begin with if you have not heard for WishList member, it is a premium plugin for WordPress which allows you to create a membership website. If you are interested in creating a membership site, paid or free, you should definitely check out this plugin, the $97 might be more than you are used to paying for WordPress plugins but it is worth every bit of it and then some. Given the possibilities it enables for revenue generation, I’d say it’s a steal.

Stu McLaren, Tracy Childers and quite frankly, everyone in the conference, could not have been more generous with their knowledge and experience and they get my thanks and gratitude for everything they shared over the two days we were there.

I would advise anyone looking to build a membership site to lookat WishList Member (you can read the VSEllis.com review of the plugin I wrote well before the conference) or go straight to WishList to check it out. I would also suggest that if you are looking to build your business online, seek out knowledgable, experienced and successful mentors and peers any way you can. Doing so will expedite your growth online exponentially.

If you have an interest in starting a membership based website and don’t know where to begin the options can be daunting. I’ve been tasked with this a couple of times researched the options pretty thoroughly. All of the following options have one dependency, WordPress is the platform. Beyond that I was looking for flexibility, extensibility, a robust feature set and overall ease of use. While there are more options than what I’ve listed here, these were the WordPress membership plugins which kept coming to my attention and would likely come to yours while doing a search. If you know of more and have experience with them let us know in the comments.

#1. WishList Member: While a little pricey A total steal at $97 and definitely the best of breed among the reviewed plugins and if you are running a serious membership site it’s well worth the price. Additional features included strong member management, highly flexible membership levels, an import tool with template and broadcast e-mail/newsletter features. If you want all the bells and whistles fully integrated into your WordPress install this is the plugin for you. SPLURGE!

#2. WP-Member: Ssecond at $44.99 (converted from Euros circa 2009) this plugin has a great feature set, good member management and protection for digital downloads which can be valuable if you are trying to protect downloads like whitepapers, WordPress themes or other downloadable content. Excellent buy at that price. If you don’t need/want the email integration and import tool or if digital downloads are a big thing for your site this is a good choice. GOOD BUY

#3. Memberwing: Very good plugin but a little less robust and usage is less intuitive than those mentioned above. Comes with a free version but you have to pay if you want the payment integration. If all you are doing is protecting content but not charging for it this could work well for you. The $79.95 price to get Paypal and membership automation seems steep compared to some of the plugins above particularly when those are pretty essential features for most membership sites. Honorable mention.

#4. WP Membersite: A decent plugin but a little light on features for $47 price tag.

#5. Synergy Software Group WP Membership: A sold basic plugin but I found it to be lacking in overall features, flexibility was acceptable but not exceptional. The prices is decent at $29.97.

#6. Suma: A good basic plugin with good support for multiple payment types but a little less robust and extremely hard to justify the $199 price tag given the other options.