Free Membership Site + automated payments + affiliate program

36 replies
Hi guys,
I am developer of MemberWing - free wordpress membership plugin.
After I've included automated payment processing feature via Paypal - the next most frequently asked question was: "is it possible to somehow integrate affiliate program so I could promote my membership site via affiliates?".

This makes perfect sense so I digged a bit into that. Basically for that magic to happen I need to have an existence of service that can do:
recurring subscription payment processing + affiliate tracking + API in one service.
Paypal does all but affiliate tracking.
E-junkie does not do recurring payments support.
Affiliate networks (and least the ones I know of) are missing some part of that required equation as well.

I found one service that seems to have all of these features - click2sell.eu but I know nothing about them. Opinions?

If you know about anyone else that has all the required features - let me know and I'd look into working on that.

Basically if click2sell fees and feedback seems to be reasonable and positive for membership site owners I might look into integrating their system into MemberWing.

If you have suggestions for other services that has these features - I'd be happy to look into them as well.

Gleb
#affiliate #automated #free #free membership site #membership #membership plugin #membership site #payments #program #site #wordpress membership site
  • Profile picture of the author John Taylor
    Hi Gleb,

    Have you considered Clickbank or PayDotCom?

    Apart from PayPal they are probably the most
    popular of payment processors.

    John
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  • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
    Lol I might as well check into PayDotCom. One promo email from Mike Filsaime could melt a dedicated server - which might be a good thing under circumstances

    Gleb
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  • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
    You code your own affiliate tracking to be used inside the system itself. No idea why you would be looking for a service that would do the tracking for you as that would be a huge mistake.

    Maybe I misunderstand your question but the membership site itself must be able to do tracking itself before affiliate sales can be made.

    James
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  • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
    James,
    that would be the great approach and I'd strongly favor it. It just take lots of paid time to make it happen. Much quicker is to integrate existing well known service that does it all anyways.

    Gleb
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    • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
      Originally Posted by MemberWing View Post

      James,
      that would be the great approach and I'd strongly favor it. It just take lots of paid time to make it happen. Much quicker is to integrate existing well known service that does it all anyways.

      Gleb
      Gleb,
      The problem is when you use an outside source for affiliate tracking...

      * What happens when that site has downtime and I send 20 people to buy a product with my affiliate link.. Obviously I would not be paid because the system used an outside source for tracking. Now you got one pissed off affiliate...

      This is just one problem that can be caused due to using an outside source. Taking the cheap route is not always the best route. I am fully aware of what it takes to develop sites, I am a website developer

      Personally I prefer my own custom built from scratch membership site and not use wordpress but that's me.. Since you have chosen to use wordpress as your route then I urge you to think about taking the time and even money it cost to code it properly and use your own tracking system.

      James
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  • Profile picture of the author John Taylor
    Gleb,

    Please hurry.. My most frequently asked question from my
    members is "Does Marketing Confidential have an affiliate
    programme?"

    I would have thought that the most elegant solution would
    be to build the affiliate function into the existing MemberWing
    plugin. That's an upgrade that I would gladly pay for.

    Perhaps something along the lines of Rapid Action Profits
    where it rotates payments between site owner and affiliate?

    John
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  • Profile picture of the author Lee Campbell
    Gleb,

    From the looks of your product it seems pretty great, I agree that RAP would be a great thing to look into. I just have a question, does your program allow permissions for certain groups? Like allowing gold members to see a certain blog but not others. Say Gold can see type A, B, and C while Silver can only see A and B, and Bronze can only see A.

    Thanks,
    Lee
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    • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
      Hi Lee, that is exactly how it works!

      Gleb.
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      • Profile picture of the author jhollar
        Gleb,

        Its a cool plugin...downloaded yesterday after John Taylor mentioned it in a post.

        Is there a way to drip content so new content shows up in the members area at a defined frequency - so, if I pre-load all the content, when a member joins, he can see new content every 30 days instead of everything at the same time....

        Ron
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        • Profile picture of the author John Taylor
          Originally Posted by jhollar View Post

          Gleb,

          Its a cool plugin...downloaded yesterday after John Taylor mentioned it in a post.

          Is there a way to drip content so new content shows up in the members area at a defined frequency - so, if I pre-load all the content, when a member joins, he can see new content every 30 days instead of everything at the same time....

          Ron
          Ron,

          As I explained in my PM, the drip feed of content is managed by Wordpress using the "schedule posts" function.

          When you post a new article you can set the time and date that you want it to be published.

          John
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          • Profile picture of the author jhollar
            John,

            I am not asking about scheduling posts...I am aware that it can be done with Wordpress.

            I am asking about dripping content to members, so they don't get everything at the same time.

            Let's say that I am constantly updating content and have built a massive site with 12 months worth of content. If a member joins today, I would not want him to get access to everything. I would only want to give him access to the 1st month's content, and then 30 days later, he gets access to the next set of content etc etc...

            This is different from scheduling using Wordpress.

            Ron

            Originally Posted by John Taylor View Post

            Ron,

            As I explained in my PM, the drip feed of content is managed by Wordpress using the "schedule posts" function.

            When you post a new article you can set the time and date that you want it to be published.

            John
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          • Profile picture of the author Louis Raven
            Originally Posted by John Taylor View Post

            Ron,

            As I explained in my PM, the drip feed of content is managed by Wordpress using the "schedule posts" function.

            When you post a new article you can set the time and date that you want it to be published.

            John
            I think he meant time released content based from the sign-up (not date).

            So if member a signs up today he only gets week one content. Member b signs up next year and only gets week one content.

            Louis
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  • Profile picture of the author Marian Berghes
    I used Click2Sell and I still use it...it has good support -max 24hrs until they respond to your tickets-, they have low fees...tracking is pretty good also...the thing is that they aren't that known yet.

    Plus a great feature for me, as a merchant, is that I receive every payment directly to my paypal acc when its made...so no waiting for checks or the end of the month anymore.
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  • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
    The fastest way to accomplish all that would be to find existing service or script with API. If we gain enough votes for click2sell - I'd be happy to find time to integrate them into MemberWing.
    Anything more complex or built from scratch would take either infusion of cash to materialize or lots of time.

    Gleb
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    • Profile picture of the author John Taylor
      Originally Posted by MemberWing View Post

      Anything more complex or built from scratch would take either infusion of cash to materialize or lots of time.
      Gleb,

      I've sent you a proposal By PM.

      John
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  • Profile picture of the author dhudiburg
    Have you looked into iDevAffiliate? Seems like that is the 'integrated' platform of choice among a lot of coders.

    Also, as mentioned above, I'd look into RAP.
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  • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
    iDevAffiliate is probably most well know aff management software - I'll look into it.
    Also i am not aware what is RAP.

    Gleb
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  • Profile picture of the author Andy Fletcher
    Hi Gleb,

    I'm building my own affiliate system for Easy Backlinker at the moment. If you're already accepting payments via PayPal then by far the quickest way to get this up and running would be to use PayDotCom.

    Since they are already using PayPal/IPN etc you're not going to have to do much more than produce a new type of sign up button for your site and provide a little bit of help on how to get started using PDC (since the product will need to be created on PDC as well).

    Depending what sort of timescale you're working on I'll have my affiliate system up within a couple of weeks and will happily send the code your way for repurposing into your plugin.

    It will definitely have 2-tier affiliate tracking but beyond that I'm not sure yet.

    Cheers,

    Andy
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  • Profile picture of the author Josh Anderson
    If you know about anyone else that has all the required features - let me know and I'd look into working on that.
    Nanacast does it all. So does www.Premiumcast.com and www.mixiv.com

    Affiliate program management, one of the most accurate referral tracking systems in the industry, recurring and all other billing type strategies, paypal, authorize.net, 2checkout processors supported... and a few dozen other features many which no other system sports like the ability to automatically subscribe to aweber or getresponse, even the option to automatically remove from aweber or getresponse email list management systems upon cancellation.

    We have a wordpress membership plugin for it as well.

    We also supply an api that anyone who is developing their own wordpress plugins can use to snap our automation system into it.

    While our plugin is free... the backend automation and business management system is not... but it definitely rocks for those who use it.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Taylor
    Just a quick heads up..

    I'll be working with Gleb to create an affiliate
    module that will integrate with MemberWing.

    According to my developer, it will be available
    by early to mid January.

    John
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    • Profile picture of the author utproducts
      [DELETED]
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      • Profile picture of the author John Taylor
        Originally Posted by qkz283 View Post

        Hey John, is this going to be up for sale? Thanks.
        Is the Warrior Forum the best marketing forum in the world?

        LOL

        John
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      • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
        Hey John, is this going to be up for sale?
        Does a Scot drink in a skirt?


        Paul
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        .
        Stop by Paul's Pub - my little hangout on Facebook.

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  • Profile picture of the author Andy Fletcher
    Nice one John. Thanks for doing this.

    You too Gleb.
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  • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
    Hi Andy, thanks for heads up re: PayDotCom.
    They apparently do support everything I need, plus well know in industry, plus have rather democratic fee structure compare to other solutions.

    I'll be closely looking into integrating them into MemberWing.

    Gleb
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  • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
    Update re: membership site + affiliate feature:
    1. Tested with PayDotCom - all works!
    2. Issue: if user cancels subscription - PayDotCom won't notify anyone, although site owner *will* get email about cancellation. So little problem is that users who cancelled subscriptions need to be removed from list of "premium" users manually by the site owner. I contacted PDC about this.
    3. The good thing is that fully automatic subscription initiation + multilevel membership site capabilities + affiliate tracking support via PayDotCom will get into the next MemberWing.
      I'd say next week.
    4. John Taylor is working to help create hosted version of affiliate tracking script - so more good stuff is coming...
    Get on a list at memberwing.com/download - if you want to be updated and get the latest/greatest version ASAP.

    Gleb
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    • Profile picture of the author Andy Fletcher
      Originally Posted by MemberWing View Post

      Update re: membership site + affiliate feature:
      1. Tested with PayDotCom - all works!
      2. Issue: if user cancels subscription - PayDotCom won't notify anyone, although site owner *will* get email about cancellation. So little problem is that users who cancelled subscriptions need to be removed from list of "premium" users manually by the site owner. I contacted PDC about this.
      3. The good thing is that fully automatic subscription initiation + multilevel membership site capabilities + affiliate tracking support via PayDotCom will get into the next MemberWing.
        I'd say next week.
      4. John Taylor is working to help create hosted version of affiliate tracking script - so more good stuff is coming...
      Get on a list at memberwing.com/download - if you want to be updated and get the latest/greatest version ASAP.

      Gleb
      Sounds fantastic. Good work Gleb!
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    • Profile picture of the author Louis Raven
      Originally Posted by MemberWing View Post

      Update re: membership site + affiliate feature:
      1. Tested with PayDotCom - all works!
      2. Issue: if user cancels subscription - PayDotCom won't notify anyone, although site owner *will* get email about cancellation. So little problem is that users who cancelled subscriptions need to be removed from list of "premium" users manually by the site owner. I contacted PDC about this.
      3. The good thing is that fully automatic subscription initiation + multilevel membership site capabilities + affiliate tracking support via PayDotCom will get into the next MemberWing.
        I'd say next week.
      4. John Taylor is working to help create hosted version of affiliate tracking script - so more good stuff is coming...
      Get on a list at memberwing.com/download - if you want to be updated and get the latest/greatest version ASAP.

      Gleb
      I'm assuming/hoping it's going to free right?

      Anyhow, I tried having a similar script designed for my affiliates and I've listed the problems I faced that may help you.

      1. Paypal likes to keep their subscription feature exclusive to them and that's the reason why E-Junkie can't offer a solution. But I see how you got around this as your WP platform does the actual distribution of product/content.

      2. You will be notified by email but if selling a high priced subscription and someone cancels a few hours before the next renewal or just blatantly doesn't pay, they will more than likely still have access to an extra months product by the time you've canceled them on your side .

      3. Time released content based from when they sign up. As you know it's a pain when someone signs up and gets 4 months content for the price of one.

      Above is some of the issues I've faced and if you overcome them you've got a great little product on your hands

      Louis
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  • Profile picture of the author zerofill
    Well...not just the problems James mentioned about 3rd party affiliate tracking solutions...but also...why would anyone want to use a 3rd party tracking solution when it is technically capable of tracking what keywords sent a user to your site, demographics, etc...Actually a whole list of valuable info.

    I mean 3rd party solutions leave you with having to put a lot of trust that the owner of the service isn't going to use the data to target specific niches as well. Not that they will...but I never want anyone to have that kind of info about my sites. That is basically the same reason Google Nemesis was crucified.
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  • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
    ...and one more service:

    I've managed to add support for e-junkie. No recurring subscriptions there (e-junkie doesn't support reccuring) , but you will be able to sell "lifetime membership" or whatever you'd like name them, as long as it would require *single payment* to join your membership site. But you'll get all the required affiliate tracking and promotions tools that comes with e-junkie.

    And of course it automatically adds support for Google checkout, 2checkout, Clickbank, Trialpay and Authorize.net via e-junkie's facilities (check your admin interface).

    Same idea will work with Payal, same idea will work with PayDotCom.

    So webmasters will have a choice in promoting their membership programs to affiliates either via PayDotCom or via e-junkie. Or both if wanted to.

    LOTS of coding a testing I had this weekend....

    Gleb
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  • Profile picture of the author Ric Raftis
    Looks like a really great component. Lots of interest from the Twitter community when I posted your link.

    Cheers,
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  • Profile picture of the author WebCoach
    I just purchased your "premium" edition.
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  • Profile picture of the author Josh Anderson
    asically for that magic to happen I need to have an existence of service that can do:
    recurring subscription payment processing + affiliate tracking + API in one service
    .
    Nanacast offers all that and a heck of a lot more and an API so that projects like yours can use it.

    We provide both inbound and outbound API. Our system handles recurring payments via authorize.net enabled merchant accounts, paypal, and 2co. Our system has a robust affiliate program management system and rock solid cookie and ip combo tracking among many other features.

    We encourage independent Wordpress plugin developers who are creating plugins for wordpress to use our api to integrate our system which does all you just requested with their own plugin.

    If you have any questions about our api or plugging in our automation system to your membership plugin just post to our support desk and we'll be happy to provide any additional info you may need and possibly a complimentary account for development purposes.

    Seriously though... if that is really what you need we have it and we created the api for developers like you to take advantage of it.
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  • Profile picture of the author MemberWing
    Hi Daryl thank you!

    I'll send you email soon about my new plugin that allows gradual content delivery (most often asked for feature).

    Gleb
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  • Profile picture of the author Desmond Ong
    I have tried memberwing plugin and i must say it is pretty good.

    Although i prefer amember plugin, the good thing about memberwing is that it has a free version.

    This saves me tons of money
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