DAP’s affiliate program works the same regardless of which DAP-supported payment processor or shopping cart you’re using.

DAP does not directly make any affiliate payments. Instead, at the beginning of each month (or however often you wish to pay your affiliates), with one click on the Affiliates > Run Reports page, DAP will give you a list of all affiliates to whom payment is due, and the actual amount due to each one of them.

The format of the payment list that DAP provides you with, is already “Paypal Mass-Pay Ready” – which means, you could simply upload the file that DAP gives you, upload it to your Paypal account, and then pay all affiliates in one click (details further below).

Or if you don’t wish to pay by Paypal, and wish to use any other form of offline payment (like sending them a physical “check” in the mail, doing wire-transfers, etc), you’re free to use any external means for paying your affiliates. Once you have paid (by Paypal, or other external means), you just come back to DAP and mark all those affiliates as “Paid” – which is when DAP actually reports to all of those affiliates that a payment has been sent to them. Until the actual payment is made, they only see that they are owed a certain amount.

How To Pay Your Affiliates

1) Go to “Affiliates > Run Reports”
2) Click on “View Due Payments as of mm-dd-yyyy”
3) DAP will bring up a list of affiliates to be paid. Click on “Export affiliates for payment”
4) DAP will create an export of only those affiliates. Only those affiliates can be paid now, as per DAP.
5) You take the exported list that DAP gives you. Pay them however you choose to.
6) Once you’ve actually paid them (or sent them the payment), come back to the same page, pick the previously exported list from “Mark affiliates from ……. as Paid” drop down (your last un-paid export will be shown in the drop-down list).
7) Mark that export as “Paid”.

Making Payments Via Paypal Mass-Pay

1.Copy the export that DAP gives you and save it as text file on your desktop, with a file name like “February 2011 Commissions.txt”

2. Log in to your Paypal account

3. Click on “Send Money”

4. Click on”Make a Mass Payment”

5. Upload previously saved text file on this next screen. You may also enter a custom subject and body for the email that Paypal will send to all those receiving a payment.

6. Follow remaining instructions and hit “Send”.

Once a post or page is added to ANY DAP product, then it becomes protected, and will be available to only those who have authorized access to that Product.

So to completely Un-protect a page or post that you have protected previously, and make it “public” (a.k.a “open”) again, so that any casual visitor to your blog or web site can see it, you just scroll to the right in the “Protected Content” section, and click on the “X” image next to the content that you wish to Un-protect.

Of course, also make sure that you do the same for all products – because if you forget to delete it from even one Product, then it will continue to remain protected.

DAP assigns a status for the User itself (at a global, account level), as well as a User/Product level (specific to the user's access to that product).

So there's the User Status and then the User/Product Status

For eg., the User Status may be "Active", but a specific User/Product status may be "Inactive" – which means user can log in to their account, receive emails, etc, but cannot access any content that is part of this specific product (though they can access all other products they may have, that are "Active").

The bottom-line is this: In order for a user to access his/her account, and all the content in the Products that he/she's purchased, all the statuses have to be Active.

So here are the possible statuses, and what they mean.

User Status

These statuses apply to the User's account itself.

Inactive

If the user's status is inactive, then that means the user's entire account is inactive. User will not be able to even log in to their account. All outgoing broadcast and autoresponder emails will "exclude" them from the list, and they will not receive any emails from the system.

Active

Account is accessible, all emails are being sent.

Unconfirmed

They've just signed up for a product that requires "Double Optin". Which means, unless they "confirm" by clicking on the double-optin link, their account will not become active. Please note that once a user has already confirmed the double-optin link for one product, then their "User" status automatically becomes "Active". So even if they go on to sign up for another double-optin product, then their User status will never again change to "Unconfirmed" (unless specifically set so by the DAP Admin). For all future double-optin products, it is this user's "User/Product" status that will be "Unconfirmed", while the main "User" status remains "Active".

Locked

When an account receives login attempts from more than the number of IP addresses set in the "Setup > Config > Advanced > Max. # of User Logins From Different IP`s" field, then that user's main User status is changed to be "Locked". This is very similar to the "Inactive" status, except named different just so admin can distinguish between "Locked" and other users.

User/Product Status

These statuses specifically apply to a User's access with relation to a specific Product.

Inactive

User cannot access any content that is part of this product. However, User may access other products whose user/product status is "Active".

Active

There are no restrictions for this User to access content that is part of this product (of course, only whatever the user is eligible to see, based on the drip setup).

You already know that DAP has a built-in affiliate program, and everyone who joins your site (or gets a free or paid account) is automatically made into an “Instant Affiliate”.

DAP also lets you create an Affiliate Tool Box for your affiliates, with ready-to-use banners, emails, subjects, signatures and text links – all with their own personalized affiliate link embedded into it already.

So all they have to do is copy, paste, and hit send.

See the sample screen-shots below that show what our own affiliate tool box looks for DAP affiliates who wish to promote DigitalAccessPass.com to others.

Banners

Email Copy

Text Links

How To Create The Affiliate Tool Box

Create as many different pages you want on your blog – like “Banners”, “Email Swipe Copy” or “Text Links”.

Or create just one big page for all of this – like “Affiliate Tool Box”.

Download this text file which has all of the ready-made HTML code that you need to insert into the WordPress pages.

Feel free to modify the text as required, and be careful not to delete any of the special characters that are in there just for the formatting.

Download Sample Affiliate ToolBox Code

Progress Bar Never Stops

You’re seeing the green “Loading… Please Wait” progress bar continuosly running – it never stops and comes back with any data.

If this is a new setup, then it’s possible that your web host does not have a library called “JSON” enabled. Just ask them to enable it for your server. It’s rather simple to do, and we’ve never seen a host that won’t do this for their customers.

If it’s an old setup, and it was working previously, then your host made some changes that caused the library to stop working. So you still need their help in resolving the issue.

Error Message: “There was an error returning data’”.

One possibility is that your database or web site is temporarily down, slow, or plain not responding for some reason. So DAP cannot connect to your database, and comes back with this error.

Or it could also be the “Progress Bar Never Stops” issue from above.

There are many reasons for wanting to do this.

1) You simply don’t wish to let people know that you have an affiliate program – maybe it is so that you don’t want to confuse the mom-and-pop niche that you are in with crazy words like “Affiliate” and “Commission”

2) You deliberately want to disable certain users from using the affiliate link, and not award them any commissions, even though they know what that link is.

3) You are using a 3rd party affiliate service – like ClickBank – and don’t want to use DAP’s built-in affiliate program.

At this time, you cannot really do (2). There is no way to stop DAP from tracking an affiliate’s referrals and not tracking their earnings. Only work-around right now, is to simply not pay them at all, for whatever reason (you better have a very good reason, if not it could be legal trouble for you).

Here’s how you can do (1) – which essentially works for (3) also.

A) If you are using the default dap/index.php as your members’ home page, then all you have to do is to go to…

Setup > Config > Advanced > “Should Affiliate Section be displayed on User `Home` Page? (If using ClickBank, set this to `N`)”

And set it to “N” (for “No”).

That will essentially “hide” the affiliate section from showing up on the default DAP home page.

B) If you are not using the default dap/index.php, and are putting all of the DAP member content (like User Profile, User Links, Affiliate Details) etc right into your WordPress blog, then just skip the Affiliate Details part, and don’t create a custom page for Affiliates within your blog. If you don’t create the page, then they won’t see it, that’s all.

NOTE: If you don’t want anyone to get any commissions, also make sure that you don’t set up any commissions on the “Affiliates > Set Commissions” page.

So basically, in both (A) and (B), you are essentially “hiding” the affiliate program details, and not really disabling it.

In a future version of DAP, we will have the ability to selectively turn off an individual’s ability to use their affiliate link, so DAP will completely ignore all referrals from the affiliate, and won’t track anything from them.

The Question

How does a customer, once they have signed up and become a member, cancel their membership (or get for a refund)?

Cancellations

If it’s Paypal, they could go into their Paypal account, and cancel their subscription themselves.

If it’s ClickBank, they can log in to their CB account, and cancel their subscription themselves.

If it’s any other payment processor or cart – like 1SiteAutomation.com, Authorize.net, Paypal Payments Pro, etc – then they have to ask you (the membership site owner) to cancel.

Refunds

Except with CB, in all other cases, they have to ask you for a refund

Action Steps For DAP Admin

Whether it’s a cancellation or a refund, log in to your Payment Processor (1shoppingcart, Authorize.net, etc), and make sure you perform the cancellation or refund there. DAP does not store any of the payment information of your subscriber. So both cancellations and refunds have to be performed at your Payment Processor.

Now that you’ve cancelled the actual charging of the customer at the payment processor level, you have to also take care of the customer within DAP – only for refunds.

Cancellation Of Ongoing Subscription in DAP

If this is the cancellation of an ongoing subscription, then no action required within the DAP Dashboard as far as the User is concerned. DAP already does “Pay As You Go” processing – which means, their account will automatically expire at the end of the current recurring period (eg., end of current month). The “Access End Date” of the user’s access to the Product will automatically expire if no new payments come in. And then they’ll automatically lose all access to the content that is part of that Product.

However, if this is the cancellation of a “trial”, where if the user comes back and signs up again for another trial a few weeks or months later, then you want the user to start all the way AT THE BEGINNING. So if it’s the cancellation of a “trial” then you must manually remove the user’s access to the product. So for that, follow the process below.

Refunds (and Cancellation of Trial) in DAP

If it’s a refund of just one recurring payment, or the cancellation of a trial, then you can go into the “Users > Manage” screen, search for the user, and do a “Rollback Access for Selected User(s) to the Product by 1 Recurring Cycle“.

If it’s a refund of the entire purchase, then…

• Search for that user by email on the “Orders” page, which will bring up their Order (a.k.a “Transaction”)
• Click on the “Refund” button on that screen. That will create a new negative transaction in the Orders table. Then it also roll-backs any affiliate commissions earned on that sale and make a negative entry in the database for that affiliate. Then it rolls back user access by the number of days entered in one of the “Recurring Cycles” entered on that Product’s page (depending on how far along they were in as a member).
• Now search for that user by email on the “Users > Manage” screen. Make sure that they no longer have access to the Product.

For a big-picture view, also see Cancellations & Refunds

Here’s how you can move an existing DAP installation from one host  – or domain – to another.

• Log in to your web hosting control panel, go to “phpMyAdmin”, select your WordPress database (which is where the DAP tables are also installed, by default)

• Do an “Export” of just the DAP tables. Select the “SQL” option and select “Save as File”. All DAP database tables start with the text “dap_”. Save this file on your desktop – let’s say you call it “dapexport.sql” (it could also be “dapexport.txt” – does not matter what the exact extension is – .txt or .sql).

• Make a back up of the dap-config.php file (located in the “dap” directory on your old site/domain) on your desktop

• At your new site, install WordPress
• Copy the database info from your new blog’s “wp-config.php” to the “dap-config.php” file stored on your desktop.
• Then log in to your web hosting control panel of your new site, go to “phpMyAdmin”, select your WordPress database, go to the “SQL” tab, open the export file from above (dapexport.sql), copy the contents, paste into the SQL tab and hit “Go”. All dap data from your old site is now on your new site.
• Upload all dap files to your new site (don’t do full installation – just upload the files).
• Also upload the LiveLinks files to wp-content/plugins/ .
• Upload the new dap-config.php file from your desktop to the “dap” folder on your new site.
• Log in as WP admin, and activate the LiveLinks plugin. It should give you a warning that DAP is already installed. That’s ok, that’s what we want it to say.
• That’s it. DAP is now moved over from your old site to your new site.
• Log into your DAP Dashboard using your old DAP admin login info, and you’re all set.

DAP uses “Last Cookie” to award commissions.

So if someone clicks on the affiliate link of Jack, and then a few hours (or days) later, clicks on the affiliate link of Jill, and then goes on to purchase your product, then DAP awards the commission to Jill, whose affiliate link was the one clicked most recently.

So, in general, to protect your affiliates, you shouldn’t be promoting your site generally on the web using your own affiliate link (as DAP admin).

That way, you never compete with them for commissions on your own site.

However, using your own affiliate link works great, say, when you’re marketing in specific markets, like say on Adwords. Even though Adwords allows you to set up and track goals, using a special affiliate can help you figure out exactly how much revenue you have earned through this affiliate.

So, for Adwords marketing, you could create a new user called “Adwords Affiliate” and then use this user’s affiliate link as your landing page URL. Of course, you could also customize this affiliate’s link to land on any page of your web site (or any site for that matter) by adding the text “&p=yoursite.com/anypage.html” to the end of your standard affiliate link, like this…

http://YourSite.com/dap/a/?a=1234&p=yoursite.com/googleoffer1.html

NOTE: This content is for advanced users only, who understand the concept of user tables, database, etc. If you don’t understand any of this, then just ignore this – you don’t really need to know this in order to use DAP. This is only an explanation for those who wish to go under the hood of DAP and its integration with WordPress.

As you probably already know, WordPress has its own user database.

DAP has its own User database, and doesn’t use the WordPress database – for many reasons, not limited to the following…

1) Ability to store more user information than what WordPress allows

2) More powerful user search, profile updates, affiliate information, etc.

So, if you want to use any WordPress based plugins – like WordPress Forums or Subscribe2Blog – these forums are looking at WordPress’ native user database.

Now comes the necessity of “syncing” the DAP user data and your WordPress user data.

In the DAP Dashboard, in “Setup > Config > Advanced“, you will see two settings for syncing DAP & WP user data.

(1) Sync DAP User data and WP User data

If you turn this to “Y” (for “Yes”), then every time someone logs into DAP, their DAP user data (just name and email) is automatically “synced” with WordPress user data. If you set this to “N”, then no data will be transferred from DAP to WordPress.

(2) Sync WP data only for PAID users

This one matters only if you have set (1) above to “Y”.

If you want only your “PAID” members to be synced with WordPress, then set this to “Y“.

If you want both “FREE” and “PAID” members synced with WordPress, then set this to “N“.

Here’s how it actually works:

1. For the sync to work, you must first setup and save the above 2 config settings
2. After you save the above two config settings, make sure you log out of DAP and re-log in (if you are/were logged in and testing as a regular user), because only then, the Config settings above will take effect.
3. Your user must log in through a DAP login form (not the WP login form).
4. Make sure the user is redirected to any part of your WordPress blog after log in. This can be done via “Logged In URL” setting in DAP Config.
5. The user can be redirected to any WP page, WP post or even your blog home page – that’s the only time the ‘syncing’ kicks in.
6. When user lands on any page/post of your WP blog, then the DAP LiveLinks plugin (which you have already installed & enabled) kicks of the “sync”, copies the logged in member’s name and email over to the WordPress user table, and also automatically logs him into your WordPress blog.

That’s all there is to it.

Also see: Forum Integration