renewal question

[garysmith]

I have a free/pay site. Is there a fairly simple solution to allowing someone to place a free ad for a period of time and upon renewal they must pay?

Would I work this in from admin?

• A customer comes to site.
• Places a free standard ad. (ad runs for 30 days with no charge)
• Upon the 25th day of term email is sent explaining ad will expire and that the customer should renew at a certain price
• If the customer does not renew (30 days is up) can they system screen them if they come in later and want to run a second ad for free?

Maybe set the system to recognize the ip address or something similar?

Any help or thoughts would be great.

Gary

[SkGold]

If I understood you correctly half of what you want is already there.

When you set up listing packages in control panel put $0 under the price and $20 under renewal price.

Renewal email is also in control panel under the �Email Templates�

The only what is left is to screen your customers from posting another free ad.

[garysmith]

That is the core reason of the question. How can I screen my customers with the system - not manually. I know I can go in and print a log of the names I have recorded that are customers. Then what? Manually look at each ad as it comes in and check it for a customer that's on the list? That doesn't interest me.

I have already set my standard ad package to $0 for listing then renewal to $5.00. My concern is that the ad will be posted by the same customer over and over by going to the "new ad" section of the site.

Can 68 "recognize" an old customer, then notify that customer during the renewal and not allow that customer to add a new ad without paying "the second time around"?

Gary

[SkGold]

I would not do it easer way, manually or automatically. Many companies are using several computers with the same IP. 50% of ads on my site for example published from business computers during the working hrs. So if you screen one IP there is possibility that you will be screening several of users that never post the free ad on your site.
Just my 2 cents.

[Eric Barnes]

And to add to that Aol uses an ip farm that is constantly changing. So if you block one AOL ip you could possibly block lots of users.

[SkGold]

And to add to that many other ISP has dynamic IPs. We have Shaw Cable in Calgary for example.
So when ISP change IP the user that has been screened will be able to publish free ad again.

Hmm, I guess it is the same that Eric was talking about, just a different way to look on it.