DISCUSSION - 2 tier membership system (paid members!).

[TigerLily]

Hi all- wow, I haven't been over here in a couple of weeks or I would have answered your questions sooner! Sorry about that- the membership stuff is going great on my site, and keeping me incredibly busy!

How are you keeping track of who paid?

That was the biggest pain to figure out! I haven't found a tool that is really great for doing everything I need to do, so for now I'm improvising. My system is far from perfect- much more automation is needed, and I'll definitely be tweaking it for a long time to come!

Here's how I have it set up:

-Group permissions- Vbulletin's existing permissions make managing the groups easy enough, but it's still a lot of work initially to filter out who's staying and who's leaving. I chalk that up to growing pains. Once you've got everyone sorted out, it's much easier to maintain from then on- it's that initially sorting out that's the bugger!

-Paid Members go into a "Members" group that I move people over to when they have paid (and that's when I enter in their info from Excel too.) I gave members until a certain date to get payments in (gave them plenty of time- 6 weeks until the changes, and another 6 weeks to view but not post after changes).

-Nonpaying Members- they're all registered category, which will have viewing privileges for another 6 weeks, then they will be moved to an "inactive" category. If they want to pay, I can moved them to the Members group. If they don't, their account is deleted after it's been inactive to 12 months.

-Free Trials- attracting new people is just as important as keeping old members, so I'm giving people a month of free viewing (not posting) so that they can see what our community is like. After their month is over, they are invited to join. If they decide to leave, their accounts are moved to inactive (I want their info on file so they can't sign up again and again.)

-Member Payment information- I created hidden custom profilefields in the vbulletin database. They are easy to manage and I'm working on ways to pull information from them so that users can view their own payment info and verify everything is correct. (I'd also like to send members a receipt through the mass email function by using variables, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to call them the correct way for email functions.)

-Coordinating Payment Info- I found that Excel spreadsheets were a good solution for me. Excel seemed to be the easiest, and cleanest way to view everything I needed to see at a glance, and it's compatible with so many other programs. I have several of spreadsheets in a workbook full of my masterlists (which is backed up regularly!) I have lists in that workbook for payments coming in through paypal and through my PO Box (I had to do checks for my community- my content and users aren't into credit cards, LOL).

-Accounting: I use MS Money because it works well with my online banking and paypal as well as other online services. Quickbooks is a major pain and for me it was a waste of time. It's not compatible with much and you have to pay through the nose if you want any additional "features".

-To keep everything up to date, I have to regularly check a few programs to make sure all of the data is correct. I sometimes wind up checking quite a few things- PayPal, my email inbox, my PM inbox, MS Money. But everything goes into Excel- that's where I coordinate all of the info, and THEN put it into vbulletin.

- I DID try programs to handle the business end of things, such as Quickbooks, but it was a nightmare! That thing doesn't import or export to anything and really isn't set up for online business needs, especially online communities that sell memberships! I ditched that idea very quickly! For the accounting stuff, I use MS Money Home and Business- that does everything I need it do, and interfaces with tax stuff, etc.

How long they paid?

I offered my members a couple of choices. They could have a yearly membership, 6 months or 3 months. Since I have to bill more often for 6 months and 3 months, I charged a little more per year that way- it's an inconvenience to me to offer those, but having some choices has definitely come in handy.

I also offered discounts for members who wanted to send their payments in together or buy 1 for themselves and give one to someone else. The result surprised me- my members were buying 1 for themself and then giving the other to another member who needed it or their spouse (very surprising, since my site is mainly women, but it's fun to have the husbands online with us too- we now have quite a few!)

So that you can change thier membership if they do not renew?

I am using the search function in the admin panel to find people who need to renew by a certain date. One of the custom fields I added was a renewal field so I can pinpoint who has a 3 month subscription and send them an email reminding them to renew. If they don't renew after being notified, I move them to the inactive group until they renew or their account is deleted after 1 year of no activity.

I hope this is helpful! Let me see what other questions there were. This is a learning experience for me too!
TigerLily