Should I Allow Digital Course Cancellation?

4 replies
Hi everyone.

I've got a digital product/course that I'm planning to re-launch in a couple of weeks.

Finding a delivery system for this product has been difficult as I would like to offer my customers both a full pay and payments option.

After a long search and trying out a few different platforms, I finally signed up for Digital Product Delivery (DPD). It's inexpensive and easy to use. I can offer my products as a one off where they pay in full, or I can offer them as a drip subscription.

I wanted to do both. I should also mention that I wanted a hosted platform that would store my files and deliver them for me. Here are the problems:

First, if I offer the product both ways I have to upload the product twice because the DPD platform has you create "stores." There are two types of stores. There is a regular store where you buy a product, get the download and your done. No more payments and you've got the full, complete product.

The second type of store is a subscription store. Think of a magazine subscription where you pay by the month, you get a new magazine (content) each month and you can cancel at any time.

The problem is I'm not really offering a subscription. It is a single product/course. I just want to allow people to make payments.

I can get around having to upload my product twice by only uploading it to the subscription side, and allowing more than one payment term. The first term would be a yearly, one time payment and I would then cancel them manually once all the content had dripped.

The second term would be three monthly payments, and the system would automatically cancel them at the end of the third month.

But, and here is the second problem, the subscription store has a cancel button. So, whether they pay the one time "yearly" fee or they pay in three payments, they can cancel and they won't receive anymore content.

I'm concerned the cancel button will appear unprofessional to the people paying in full. And for those making payments, I'm concerned they'll cancel after a payment or two and I won't receive full payment.

I do offer a 30 day money back guarantee.

I'm just very unsettled about this and I need some feedback. I have no control over the cancel button.

My only other option using DPD would be to not offer payments, but I've had customers contact me asking me to offer payments because they could not afford to pay up front.

Thanks for your input!
#cancellation #digital
  • Profile picture of the author vedremo
    Banned
    Membership sites!!!

    Most people on the forum use DAP (for the functionality) + OptimizePress (for the looks/marketing). DAP are good for support and will probably be happy to help you get set up.

    Member mouse is worth a mention too.

    Re the cancel button

    - This would take a developer 2 minutes to kill / hide. Can you do custom development? Or are they hosting it?

    Re the whole thing: don't overthink it too much, it'll never be "complete"
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10731086].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author superowid
    Just make 2 price for it!

    Pay cheaper for one go download version, and pay more expensive for subscription version.
    It's fair for everyone. They can choose to pay cheaper without cancellation, or pay higher with cancellation ability. I think it's fair.

    Hope it helps.
    Signature

    Hard time to keep promoting business? Don't worry!
    JUST USE MY GRAPHIC & VIDEO SERVICES
    . . . . . Let me help cutting your ad production cost! . . . . .
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10731195].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
    Here are my current preferences and recommendations on this.

    1. get your own domain
    2. get your own hosting
    3. install wordpress
    4. Get membersonic - it will allow drip or straight content downloads
    5. Decide if you want affiliates - because you can funnel the product through jvzoo for extra exposure and to get some affiliates


    You shouldn't have to upload the product 2x to your site as you should be able to configure within the system the delivery pages for each circumstance.

    If someone wants to cancel that is on a drip, they will have to do that through their paypal and automatically get kicked from your site. It is a subscription.
    Signature

    "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10731480].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Imamarketer2
    Thanks for your replies everyone.

    Vedremo: No, I can't do custom development. I'm not a techie and don't care to be. My current solution is hosted. Right now I pay $10 a month so it's cheap. I started uploading my content to it last night and I must say I'm very impressed. The members area is very clean and beautiful.

    I read a lot about DAP and OP and MemberMouse before choosing DPD.

    I also tried Jigsaw Box (expensive), Ejunkie (can't do recurring billing), and Send Owl (couldn't figure out how to brand it with my site).

    I've spend literally hours looking at various shopping carts. DPD is inexpensive and easy to use.

    Superowid: That's exactly what I did! It was an easy solution. Instead of trying to find a new cart, I just needed to figure out how to offer the customer more value using the cart I have.

    I need to remember to think that way more often! :-)

    Jill: I have a wordpress site already. And with the DPD shopping cart I'm using, if someone cancels they're automatically kicked off the platform as soon as their current month is up.

    Thanks again, everyone. I've literally been looking at shopping cart options over the past year. I've spent hours upon hours going through pages of Google with different search terms to try and find something that would work.

    I'm going to be sticking with DPD. It's inexpensive and simple to use. It meets my needs, though not all my wants. But then, no cart does that for anyone does it?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[10732261].message }}

Trending Topics