Internet Profits Blog

What software package will work if you want:

- To control access to a membership site (as opposed to offering a downloadable ebook)
- Have an affiliate program
- Offer coupons

Amember
website
Amember will do all of the above with PayPal. It works great.
Downsides: Expensive at $180.
Has coupons by percent or dollar amount, and can limit how many times coupon is used.
Have to manually pay affiliates, and affiliate module has bare functionality and not always easy for affiliates to access.
Amember can work with ClickBank, which would offer a trusted 3rd party payment mechanism affiliates. However, there are the ClickBank fees, price restrictions, mandated return policy (which is incredible abuse for IM products), and the ClickBank TOS prohibit the use of coupons.

DL Guard
website
Very disappointed as cannot get this software to work for membership sites. It’s primary focus seems to be protecting digital downloads.
No affiliate system.
$147 for two website install.

Rapid Action Profits
website
Expensive at $197 and appears to only protect downloads – not membership sites.
Has an affiliate system and coupons.
Extras such as split testing and one-time-offers.

MemberWing
website
$100 WordPress membership plugin. Allows different membership levels and can drip content.
No affiliate system.
No coupons.

Simple Member Pro
website
$197, but license good for unlimited websites.
Has affiliate system.
Has coupons with dollar amounts, not percentage off.
Script not encrypted so you can must custom modifications.
CMS system.
One time offers and dime sales.
Only integrates with PayPal.
Drip content.
Free demo.

Instant Member
website
$147 for 1 site
Affiliate system
Coupons
Works with PayPal and ClickBank
Drip content.

Delavo
Purchased this when it had a different name – expensive, unbelievably complex and difficult to configure. Waste of money. Maybe it’s improved but not worth checking out again.

Easy Member Pro
website
$97 for unlimited sites.
Has affiliate system, but not much else.

Does PHPBay Pro work with the WordPress subdomains plugin so that pages can be created as subdomains and eBay auction listings will properly work on the subdomains?

Yep. Works like a charm.

PhpBay is sold in two versions – a php script for static web pages and as a plugin for WordPress blogs.  You can, however, just buy the php Pro script version and use it with WordPress without also having to buy the plugin.

Here are the easy steps to saving some money:

1. Copy your phpbay subdirectory as you would have for static html pages to the domain where your blog is hosted.

2. Update your .htaccess file as you would anyway for static html pages.

3. Copy the auction.php file to your root directory (not into your phpbay subdirectory).

4. Install the Exec-PHP plugin that allows php to run in WordPress oosts and pages.

5. Use the php code within posts and pages as you would do anyway for static html pages.

That’s it.  Very simple.

For a sample site, here is a page with eBay listings of Walter Cronkite autographs.