What is it that membership sites do to confirm that a customer is a paying customer? I can think of a few things, IP address, cookies, passwords, but how do the pros actually do it. My site has watercolor video lessons. They are free. There is plenty of traffic, even a few donations, (very few). The more the traffic builds, the slower the site becomes. So people are getting frustrated and complaining about "stuck" videos. Maybe people would be willing to pay in order to get full quality bandwidth. For example delivering the videos via Amazon S3. Probably a fair number would pay $25 for a full year membership entitling them to 24 hour access to high speed delivery. I don't want to rebuild the whole site which would happen if I bought a standard membership php package. Maybe just adding a script call to each of the video links would do the job. There is already a shopping cart (Zen Cart) section, so selling a membership would be easy. The problem is, what exactly would I be selling: cookie password? both? or maybe something more sophisticated. Therefore the question: What is it that membership sites do to confirm that a customer is a paying customer? Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks in advance.
You could sell digital delivery of your tutorials via Zen Cart, then set the expiration period for days. Could also put your tutorials on DVD to sell as products themselves. Can't get much faster than DVD/Blueray quality video on a television set. Use what you've got until you can determine if enough people will pay for memberships over time. Best, Justin
Thank you for your answer Justin, but it does not address the question. Can you or anyone advise me as to "What is it that membership sites do to confirm that a customer is a paying customer?"
Well many have shopping carts that do it all automatically , you can find software like amember and mix it with 1automationwiz to get payment and it works fine i have done it , it works but seems like if your doing video you would be perfect fit for Andy Jenkins new product its a mulitmedia marketing platform honestly out of this world in my humble opintion. I would take a look at that
Thank you gotsite. Yet the questions remains unanswerd. Rephrasing it, What does Amember do to confirm that a customer is a paying customer?" The original question was: "What is it that membership sites do to confirm that a customer is a paying customer?"
Larry, Spending a lot of time worrying about what they do isn't getting anything done. As @gotsit points out that most all shopping cart software includes mechanisms to track who paid and who didn't. Plus, if you design your product right it won't matter if it's stolen -- piracy can be promotion. Anyway, use what you've got. After you've made some money, then hire someone to explain to you how it really works if you're still interested. Best, Justin P. s. Short answer, it doesn't matter as long as you get paid and those customers who use what you've got are happy enough to buy again.