Blogging Tips

It’s just short of a month since I told you all about Blog Themes Club, a new website I am launching with Sarah. Therefore I thought I would give you all a quick update

Site Development

All the themes have been developed and the site is ready for launch. However, we are still putting the finishing touches on a few things so we probably won’t launch til next week.

The site has taken a little longer to develop than I would have hoped however it was important to get it right. One thing that has held us up a little was the integration of Wishlist Member, the member plugin which we are using to create our members section. It’s a great script however it isn’t working exactly how we want it (which isn’t anything against the script, we are just trying to set things up in a different way).

One of the reasons it is taking longer is because Wishlist encrypts all member data. Therefore we have not been able to setup things exactly how we want it. However, they are releasing the API soon, they are fixing an error we found and through it all, their support has been top notch. So we are still in a position to launch and once they release the API, Sarah should be able to tweak the site to get it exactly how we want it.

Although we are trying to focus all customisation support in our forum, we are also installing a helpdesk for members. We have changed our minds on which helpdesk script a few times so this has taken up some of our time, but this is something which will be vital for providing great support for customers so it’s very important it works well.

The last thing we are looking into is an affiliate program. We have looked at 2 or 3 different affiliate services like e-junkie and clickbank but we would prefer to integrate an affiliate script ourselves and have full control over everything. I’m not sure if the affiliate program will be completed by launch, which is not exactly ideal. However, we don’t want to delay the launch of the site any longer and we are a little reluctant of introducing an affiliate program and then asking affiliates to transfer to a new system.

Granted this isn’t perfect and we may lose some sales because our affiliate program has been delayed but again, I’d rather get it right from the start instead of setting up some temporary solution.

Blog Themes Club Membership

Although we will let people buy our themes individually, Blog Themes Club will essentially be a members site. We will be offering 3 different options for members : 3 months of unlimited access, 6 months and 12 months.

Members will be allowed to download all of our themes and will get daily support from myself and Sarah in changing their blog design and getting it the way they want it. I don’t want to give away prices at the moment but I can say they are very competitive and we will be dropping prices for members considerably during the first 6 weeks.

Stay tuned because at launch, we will be offering 10 membership accounts to Blog Themes Club readers in a Twitter competition.