Today I’m doing a review of a new WordPress plugin called Member Pal.

First have a look at the very well done walk though that the developer of this plugin made, then I will give you my thoughts on this plugin.

One of the best things I have ever in my internet marketing business is sell my own products. I really cant stress that enough. It really is the number one thing that you can do. Evidence for this is the fact that it took me just about 3 years to go from a totally unknown person, with no list, no contacts, and no real world experience to being a 7 figure marketer and a top 10 affiliate (out of something like 60,000 registered affiliates) on the JVZoo network. My rise to success has largely been do to the fact that I did the #1 thing from the beginning (I sold my own digital product).

Now lets be honest. I had an advantage. I was a software developer, so it was easy for me to make my own digital product. However in recent times vendors have given people many opertuities to overcome the fact that they are not software developers. They often give away ‘white label’ software, or ‘reseller rights’.  Also with freelance sites anyone can hire a software developer to make a software for them. Finally with some simple screen recording software and perhaps a webcam anyone can make a training. In short its now easier than ever for people to create their own digital product, or get one provided for them.

However one thing is still missing. You still need a way to deliver your digital product. Also it needs to be a secure  method of delivery as a simple web page that is not secure will just get shared all over the ‘black hat’ sites resulting in loss of sales and people stealing your product. Most vendors choose a membership to deliver their digital products. Its safe, secure, and you can create it in such a way that only people who have made a confirmed purchase can access the members area.

Now if your a software developer you can create your own membership site by hand (ie type the code) for each of your products. This is the method I use (and frankly even though I can code fast, its still kind of a pain in the ass). If your not a developer than you will need to either hire someone to make a members area for each of your products or you will need a system that lets you create membership sites / areas without needing to code.

This is where MembersPal comes in. Its designed to let anyone ‘lock’ specific pages of your site so that only verified paying customers can get access.

In order to verify that the customer has made a purchase it uses the PayPal IPN. At first I thought to myself “wait this does not even integrate with JVZoo the platform that they are using to sell it” but then I realized that thinking that was silly. Most vendors on JVZoo or on any other network are going to use PayPal. So by integrating with PayPal directly via its IPN it in effect supports almost any affiliate network or platform.

Using the plugin is very easy, the instructions for setting it up are clear and not difficult. Once it is set up it simply a matter of creating a new MemberPal post. You add your content, download links etc to that post and that content will be locked. People wanting to access it will have to ‘log in’ with the PayPal email address that they purchased with. (tip: you can upload a zip file to WordPress via the media up-loader and then put a link to it inside of a post to deliver a software)

While the instructions where easy to follow, the one thing I did not really like was the fact that the tutorials where in the members area for this software. They where not built into the plugin itself. This is something of a pet peeve of mine. I strongly feel that the tutorials should be built into the software. I mentioned this to Dan and he agreed that it made sense. So he changed MemberPro based on this suggestion.

One of the biggest advantages to selling your own product is the fact that its a great way to build your buyers list. You in essence get paid to build your list. The creators of MembersPal understand this important aspect and have designed it with autoresponder integration so your customers can automatically be added to your list.

Initially this integration supported Aweber, GetResponse and SendLane. I asked them to support my MailIt plugin as well and they agreed.

So if your a customer of any of these services, or if you use my MailIt plugin you can automatically build your list by selling your digital product (one one that you have reseller rights to). This is going to be especially important for people selling ‘trip wires’ to build their list.

The last thing I noticed that I did not particularly care for was the inability to create access for people manually. The way it works is that people log into the secure pages with their PayPal email. MemberPal will only accept emails from people that it knows are confirmed buyers of your product because of its PayPal API integration. However what if you want to give someone access for free? You cant.

I mentioned this to Dan and while he agreed that the ability to manually add people is likely to be useful he was also upfront in telling me that it was to late for him to add it to MembersPal at this point. I can understand that as we where speaking less than 48 hours before the launch and making a change to the system would require him to test all over again to make sure no bugs where accidentally introduced. He did say he would ‘try’ to have it done by launch, but he was honest in saying that this might have to be something that is added in the first update.

Overall though I really like MembersPal. Its easy to use, user friendly and fast. I know how important it is to sell your own digital product. I know that a lot of people get white label or reseller rights to different software or they want to make a training to sell, but they have no way of securely delivering them. If your a software developer creating a customer membership site for each of your products is probably going to be ideal. However if your not a software developer MembersPal is a reasonably cost alternative that is easy to use and very ‘non techy’ friendly.

UPDATE: Use coupon code ” 5off ” at checkout to get $5 off the listed price of MemberPal

Bonus: In the interest of having your own product to sell I got Dan and Simon (Dans launch partner) to allow me to give away reseller rights to two of their social software products:

You can buy the unlimited reseller rights package to both of these software’s for $97 right now if you like:

Or you can get them both 100% for free when you pick up MemberPal though my link. I have added the access instructions to these bonuses right inside of JVZoo so you can get them

right away. Click here to get MemberPal and this $97 value reseller bonus package bonus.

 A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.

About the Author

Brett Rutecky

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Brett Rutecky is a full time online marketer, web developer, and entrepreneur. He has developed scores of Facebook apps, dozens of custom web sites and hundreds of scripts.

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