Sean D’Souza – How To Build A Powerful, Community-Driven Membership Website

Most membership site books tell you how to set up a membership site. They talk endlessly about what software you need, how to use technology and then drive you to buy software (usually via affiliate links).

This book, on the other hand isn’t about technology. It’s about the psychology of membership sites. And the story of 5000bc and how we’ve battled the ups and downs (and there were lots of downs) to get the site to be an incredibly thriving community. It’s a book that is based on two core factors: community and consumption.

So why is community so important and what is consumption?

Community isn’t just having a whole bunch of people who congregate. True community is about “volunteerism”. It’s when a member stops being just a spectator, and actually pitches in. Where they start to help not just themselves, but others as well. And they help you taking a heavy load off your shoulders. But how does this all happen?

And what is this consumption stuff all about?

Consumption is not just about reading, listening or watching your content/information in your membership site. But actually wading in and implementing. But how do you make a member consume? How do you get them not to feel tremendous overload with the content that’s in your membership site?

Because when you think about it, attraction and conversion is relatively easy. If you do enough hoopla, give massive discounts, pile up unending goodies, you can indeed get members to buy. But that doesn’t mean that they’ll stay along for the ride. They simply enter, look around several times and then they’re gone.

Then you have to start all over again, doing the discount trick and finding new members.

But that’s hardly the biggest problem. The bigger problem is that you don’t build a community. You have this constantly changing group of people that makes your membership site look like a bus station.

As you’d expect, there’s a better way: The route that involves community and consumption. And as you’d also expect, there’s even more. So let’s take a peek inside the book.