Membership Setup Question

[Kelly Olsen]

Hello,

I'm having trouble setting up my memberships correctly.

I have a monthly Listing package that is working fine, I simply charge $X/month for each ad, with a discount on renewal.

For example, I'd like to allow an advertiser to choose from 3 membership options as follows:

$20/20 ads/month
$30/50 ads/month
$40/100 ads/month

Most advertisers will be long term customers, a good example would be a car dealer. Lets say I would like to be able to offer them a 30 day Membership, with an email renewal (or better yet automated renewal (V4?)), similar to the Listing Package renewal, but it looks like that isn't possible in V3.1. I want to clarify that I need to give 30 days access to the site. For example, if someone placed an ad on day 28, the ad would only run for 2 days until it was deleted, unless the membership was renewed.

Can something be done with coupons or coupon codes to make 30 day memberships renewable? Could I sell 12 coupons for 100% off a "$20/20 ads/month" membership, or a different one for a "$30/50 ads/month" membership, etc.?

Or, is my best option to set up a 365 day Membership and keep track & run the credit card outside the 68C system? If this is the case, is it possible to go directly into the database and change the renewal date, rather than have to renew each of possibly hundreds (or thousands) of ads individually each year? Maybe a simple "search and replace" query, in the DB would be a simple solution for this issue.

Which brings up another question, should I be setting this up any certain way now, to facilitate an easy upgrade to V4?

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Thanks!

Kelly Olsen

[Lhotch]

I dont really follow the question/s but it looks like your basic understanding of the membrship system is not correct.

As stated in the other thread, how long an ad runs for has nothing to do with the length of a membership, the duration of an ad is solely the responsibility of the ad package used when the ad was placed whether "paid for" with a membership or not.

A membership simply gives you a window of opportunity with which to place ads for a given price (ie the membership price).

Example, John buys a 30 day membership that allows him to place 20 ads and the membership last for 30 days. When you create the membership in admin, you speify what ad packages that you have created can be "purchased" with the membership. If you have an ad package defined that runs for 60 days and a user places an ad using a membership and its the 1st day of someones 30 day membership, the ad runs for 60 days fom the day its placed. If its placed on the last day of someones membership it still runs for 60 days regardless of how much longer it is until their membership expires.

In V3 you cant renew memberships as far as I know but when a user logs into the site and starts the place an ad process. If their membership has expired they wont have an option to use a membership to place an ad but they can opt to buy a new one.