For more information check out both Tims’ Introduction to HackNorth and Doms’ HackNorth Welcome

Space is limited to 250 developers (register on the mailing list to hear when tickets are released) you will have to be over 18 to take part, for full HackNorth rules of the event.

What is a Pay Per Post Pack?

Put simply PPP Packs allow you to group a collection of posts and then charge for access to all of the posts in one transaction. They are different to subscriptions because a pack contains a finite number of posts, packs can be purchased more then once, so a user can have access to multiple packs but only one subscription.

How does it work?

Much like our current pay per post system, stage one, select posts to be in a pack, and make them “purchasable” so toggle the hide ppp and tick purchasable option but don’t set a price. You can also associate a membership role if you want.

The in Access Control Settings -> Pay Per Post Packs

Create a new pack give it a name, description and a price.

click the posts button will allow you to associate purchasable posts with the pack, select the posts you want.

once saved you can generate a button, the easiest way is via a short code in a post (this generates a payment button) the short code is [ym_ppp_pack#1] where 1 is the pack number. You can change the way this button looks via Settings -> Messages.

That’s it

When will you get to play

Your Members 1.5.0beta will be with Developers within a few minutes of me finnishing this post! so the best way to get hold of YM 1.5.0beta is to purchase a developer license (don’t forget if your a single license holder or a Your Minder owner we will refund the difference)

But they are all going to make a terrible mistake, you see we think Yaro is great but misguided you see when he wrote his amazing his course he hadn’t used Your Members Developer License edition…

But fear not because I have the perfect way to get the best of both worlds (jump straight to the offer) but first what is this course all about? If you have never heard of Yaro Starak why don’t you try his free report on membership sites or the video below?

Our Offer

Clearly if you are going to spend money on this course you want the best software for the job, so if you buy The Membership Site Masterplan through one of our links we will give you Your Members Developer License for free, that’s Your Members Wordpress Membership plugin, Your Responder – Wordpress Autoresponder Software, Your Minder Multi user Security Software, Your Members Firesale, Your Members First Click Free, Million dollar Membership Audio Course and any of our future products!

To claim this awesome offer:

1. Click this link to make your purchase
2. After Purchase jot down your purchase ID
3. Email sales@venture-skills.co.uk with purchase ID

Wait that wasn’t really a good enough offer!

I agree it wasn’t so we will be throwing in for the first 10 purchases through our link £200 (yes that’s sterling not dollars) in development time to make Your Members work exactly as they want, if you want some crazy feature we will add it, or maybe you want a whole other plugin programmed let us know.

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How is a payment plan different from a subscription?

I’m sure there is some legal definition of a payment plan but in this context, I’m talking about a fixed price which is then split into equal payments over a given period. For example a payment plan might look something like this: Total value of £200 with 4 payments of £50 normally a payment plan is for a good or service or something that comes to an end.

Payment Plan – Legal Note

IAMNAL – But there is a huge flaw with using Paypal as a means to create a cheap payment plan for a physical good. The user has the right to cancel a Paypal subscription at any time nothing you can do about it, once cancelled it would be up to you to chase them for outstanding money. Also be aware in the UK you do need a consumer credit license to offer credit now I do not know if the fact the user can cancel the payment means you would be exempt but I suspect it would be hard to stand up in court. Use this idea cautiously.

Creating a Payment Plan

Ok so let’s assume we have an item priced at £250 we want to offer a payment plan of £20 month payments. Because we are taking micropayments there is a greater cost involved so it makes sense to charge an additional percentage (administration fee) remember this can’t be paypal fee totals as that would be against Paypals TOS.

The best way to see what’s happening is to look at some code, this function is receiving 3 variables, the original cost, the cost of an installment and the percentage we are going to charge.

function generate_paypal_button($cost,$ins,$per){

  /* add our percentage if you want to display percentage info $per % $perrcentage_cost actual value 
  $total_cost is total with % */
  $percentage_cost = $cost * $per /100;
  $total_cost = $cost + $percentage_cost;

  //determine number of installments ($total_ins)and whats left ($last)
  $total_ins = 1; //this will be going up
  $last = $total_cost; 
  while($last > $ins) 
  { 
  $last -= $ins; 
  $total_ins++; 
  } 
  //Last is the amount outstanding but paypal wont let us add at the end, so we have to add it to the start
  $total = $total_ins - 1;   //deduct an installment for our first one 
  $first = $last + $ins; //our additional installment the normal installment price + $last

  generate_paypal_button_code($first, $total, $ins);

  //debug uncomment for the cool total
  /*  echo 'Cost: $'. $cost .' Total Cost (with '.$per.'%): $'. $total_cost .' with '. $total .' instalments 
  of $'. $ins .' and fist installment of $'.$first; */

}

Notice we are creating a first payment which is a standard installment charge plus all the remaining money that would be owed. Because of the way Paypal works we cannot add the remainder at the end of the installments so we need to do it at the beginning. Since we have combined the first installment we must remember to remove 1 installment from the total that we are going to run for (as it will have happened prior to reaching this total)

The generate_paypal_button_code function is simply creating the button

function generate_paypal_button_code($first, $total_ins, $ins){
  //In the real world this would be coming from a db, and indeed this would probably be a class or something more generic
  $paypal_url = 'https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr';
  $paypal_email = 'joe@example.com';
  $paypal_item_name = 'Test Installment Plan';
  $paypal_notify_url = 'http://www.example.com';
  $paypal_return = 'http://www.example.com';

  echo '
  <form action="'. $paypal_url .'" method="post" name="paypal_form" id="paypal_form"> 
  <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick-subscriptions" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="business" value="'.$paypal_email .'" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="'. $paypal_item_name .'" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="1" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="a1" value="'.$first .'" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="p1" value="1" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="t1" value="M" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="a3" value="'. $ins .'" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="p3" value="1" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="t3" value="M" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="recur_times" value="1">
  <input type="hidden" name="src" value="1" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="sra" value="1" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="srt" value="'. $total_ins .'" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="notify_url" value="'. $paypal_notify_url .'" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="return" value="'. $paypal_return .'" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="callback_script" value="<script></script>" /> 
  <input type="hidden" name="rm" value="2" /> 
  <input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit">
  </form>';
  }

The bits of importance to us are the a1,p1,t1 inputs these generate a “trial” which we are using to generate our first payment of a single installment plus the remaining money.

 <input type="hidden" name="srt" value="'. $total_ins .'" /> 

The SRT input allows us to declare the number of cycles we want to pass through, this is the number of regular payments to be made, when you reach the SRT limit Paypal stops taking the money.

If your stuck for how to handle paypal payments on a site then you might find this tutorial from Olaf useful: Paypal IPN Integration

Uses for Payment Plans

Well the obvious use perhaps is a drip fed membership site (Your Members perhaps), where people have limited but growing access to the site while they are still paying off their membership when they reach the end of their payment plan they gain complete access and any physical product (dvd perhaps) is shipped to them.

How would you use payment plans?

Demo | Download Code (released under CC)

The course is provided DRM free Mp3 format so you can put it on the Ipod or other mp3 compatible device (we are not total Apple fan boys) and listen to the discussion while doing the ironing or going to the office.

How do I grab my Your Members Bonus?

If your an existing dev member, simply login to your site go to your YM page and you will see the download link, you may be prompted for your Email (please remember this is the email you use to activate YM) job done.

If your a single license holder, today is a great day to upgrade right now Your Members Dev license holders have access to: Your Members (unlimited installs), Your Minder, Your CAPTCHA Advert, Your Responder (beta), Your Members Firesale (beta), Million dollar Membership site, priority email support…
Did I miss anything?

If you don’t have a Your Members License now is the perfect time to get one.

A Million pound catch?

Ah I’m afraid so, we will be giving away the Million Dollar Membership bonus for a very limited time only, Until Saturday (21/02/08) to be exact after that it won’t be available to new Dev license holders so now is the time to grab this additional bonus.

Multi Million Dollar Membership site is not a Cambridge New Media Product and is provided under our resale license allowing us to pass this offer on to you. Needless to say we don’t take responsibility for errors and indeed the content of the product.

Do you struggle to get people to look at your ads? Suffer from low clickthrough rates then Your CAPTCHA Advert may well be the way forward!

What does Your CAPTCHA Advert do?

YCA is a traditional image based CAPTCHA but instead of random letters which the user repeats it poses questions set by the admin, questions relate to the image which can be whatever the admin wants. So lets take a simple scenario of promoting Your Members in such a scenario I would upload my advert and then create questions around the advert in effect focusing the attention of the user on the advert.

Is Your CAPTCHA Advert effective?

Yes is the simple answer, though clickthrough rates on the ad itself are low, brand awareness is increased and sales/clicks elsewhere in the site are increased. The psychology behind the technique is simple because the user must complete the action (filling in the captcha) they must focus on the advert but their brain does not perceive the advert as an ad but part of their current task. However the adverts contents are locked and stored and when presented with the advert again while not performing a task the user reaction is one of clicking through.
Of course this is no substitute for having a good ad, a good product and a good sales page but as part of a well designed marketing campaign it can be an effective tool.

Is Your CAPTCHA Advert accessible?

Your CAPTCHA advert is image driven but provides the option for adding alternate text and additional hints to make your adverts as accessible as possible. However we suggest making sure Your CAPTCHA advert complies with local rules regarding disability before purchase it is however if used in combination with alt attributes and hint system suitable for use in the UK, USA and EU countries.

How do I buy Your CAPTCHA Advert

Get Your CAPTCHA Advert for just $24 from Products Page or click…

• Support for Clickbank!
• New Thankyou page system to centralise new user registration (optional)
• Hooks Galore
• Redirect PPP back to the post on payment completition (only for paypal)
• Wordpress 2.7 compatible
• New Tags: no_access, user_has_access, user_type_is
• Change wording on subscriptions

Your Members 1.4.5 is also our most throughly tested build going through 3 betas and 4 yes that’s 4 release candidates to make sure as many bugs as possible have been sorted. In all over 45 bugs were squashed between 1.4.2 and 1.4.5.

Your Member – Addons

With the release of 1.4.5 we have reached the end of the Your Member version 1 roadmap therefore further development of Your Members is aimed at a version 2 release. However this does not mean the version 1 is limited through Your Member addons we will be able to add new features (some of which will for single license be paid supplement) the first of which will be YM Firesale allowing you to specify price of membership based on the number of existing members of a given account type. YM Firesale should be ready to buy (or download straight away to developer license holders) in the next few days.

Other Addons planned include

• First Click Free Implementation
• Post Packs
• Enhanced stats
• Autoresponder helpers

New Payment Gateways

With the launch of 1.4.5 the number of ways you can take money from users has also increased with the default payment gateways now being Paypal and Clickbank. We also have a Worldpay gateway here on newmedias.co.uk which is a free download for anyone wishing to use their services.

Wordpress and Clickbank

Your Members users can now selling individual posts, downloads and subscriptions via Clickbank one of the leading market places for digital products. The Your Members Clickbank gateway securely integrates with Clickbank using their IPN system allowing you to sell products securely.

But before we go we want to say merry Christmas to everyone and to celebrate are giving away a new plugin for free!

Simple Post Protection without Membership Management!

So we think Your Members is a great plugin but we also know people don’t need all the features, so we thought we would create a really simple plugin that worked like Your Members to protect specific parts of content within a post but instead of reliant on membership you simply put a password to gain access. You can thank Michel Fortin

But then we thought this would be a cool addon to Your Members so we added Your Members integration to make password tags work just like Private tags. Just to be clear you don’t need to have Your Members installed to use this plugin but if you do you get even more benefits out of it!

So what are you waiting for go grab a copy of your free plugin and be able to offer protected content via passwords today!

Most blogs are for fun and really don’t make much money, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed. You can use AdSense, and there are other pay-per-click options that you can get involved with. You can also let others advertise things on your blog for a share of the revenue, provide affiliate links to other products or services, and do all kinds of things to get readers to your site.

Once you get readers, you have to give them reasons to keep coming back – which means you need good quality content and you need to update it often. No one wants to read a blog that never gets new updates. They want to find interesting information that changes often. Blogging can be work, but it’s a nice way to make some extra money and it’s also a great way to make friends out there on the Internet.

What they are finding out though, is that just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come. It takes a lot of work and a huge amount of luck to hit on a niche topic that will be a hit and start generating traffic, and therefore money, and even when you do get lucky, it takes a long time.

Bloggers are finding the solution to this problem by joining and writing for blog networks. There are networks popping up everyone and the benefits of using these networks to your advantage can be huge. You jump in as a writer and don’t have to worry about any of the technical aspects of the blog and because it is a whole network of different blogs. You have automatic cross promoting and traffic.

Most of these blogs also offer forums of some kind for the writers to communicate with each other and the network, providing an water cooler type experience for bloggers that work from home.