You need to do lots of 'in advance' preparation if you want to launch your own successful membership site. However, for the most part, launching your very own membership sites isn't as difficult as it seems. If your idea and execution are good there's no reason you can't be successful.
Build Anticipation: If you want the launch of your site to be a success, you need to be able to build anticipation for it. Dropping a hint or two about the upcoming event you are planning can help get your target audience excited about what is coming soon and that will lay the ground work for the launch of your membership site. This creates the hype needed for a successful launch and getting people interested in you before they see your site. It's totally fine if you do not want people to know all of the details about your site but you should at least let them know to expect something on your launch date. Obviously then, it is not a good idea to simply launch your site first without building up the curiosity or anticipation of your target audience first. People like to look for clues and be fed anticipatory hints about a hidden something that they can see for sure on a certain date and time--it helps them look forward to your launch.
Get Your Social Media Accounts in Place: As we all know, social media is growing at a break-neck speed these days, and has become integral for any website. Before you actually launch your site you need to choose the social media platforms that you want to use to reach your audience and make sure that you have accounts on each one of them (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and whatever else you want). This helps you to get your chosen 'account name' while it is still available and before lots of people know about your membership site and it gives you many different ways for members and visitors to reach you. Before you actually carry out the launch of your site make sure that you have all of your social media accounts registered so that you won't have to rush to do it at the last minute.
Make a Content Plan for Your Membership Site: Before you actually launch your membership site you need to have a (preferably detailed) content plan in place. Outline all of the editorial content by focusing first on all of the little things so that the big things can be more clearly seen. You should also be publishing, at least once a month, incredibly high quality content. The initial stages of your website will have many tasks to focus on, which is why getting your content done in advance saves you a lot of time, so that you're not lacking on good content after your launch. If you want to have an easier time making sure your launch runs smoothly, you'll need to have really great content ready to publish and a content plan in place for following.
If you want to launch a site of your very own or if you are trying to launch a site of your own then you need to keep factors like these at the forefront of your mind because they are what will spell your success for you.