The Basics

There is no such thing as a “Free Product” or a “Paid Product”. A DAP “Product” by itself has no classification (like “Free” or “Paid”).

But the “Content” that is part of this Product, can be either “Free” or “Paid”.

So while you can’t really set up a “Free Product”, but you can create a Product, add content to it, and then say that the content is available for “Free” (meaning, available only to “Registered” members who have registered for “Free”).

Now, let’s see the different ways in which you can use DAP.

Case 1: How to use DAP as an Email List

1. Create and save a Product (a DAP “Product” is same as “Membership Level” same as “Email List”)
2. Just add the Autoresponder email sequence to this product.
3. No need to add any content, because you’re not dripping content, but dripping just emails.
4. Click on the “Direct Signup HTML” link and copy the HTML
5. Publish the HTML on any page of your site, just like you would publish a signup form from Aweber or GetResponse.
6. The form collects “First Name” and “Email” from your visitor
7. Anyone who signs up through this form is given access to that Product, and added as a “Free” user
8. You can continue to drip autoresponder emails on them, and also send them email broadcasts.

Case 2: Free Sign-up. Then Promote Paid One-off Products

1. There are no time limits or trials here. User signs up for free. You continue to promote your products to them.
2. You will need to create 2 products here – 1 Free and 1 Paid
3. Create your paid Product – “Paid Product 1″ as a Non-Subscription product (Is Recurring = No)
4. Set up the content protection, dripping (if any) and emails.
5. Create a new free Product  – “Free Product” – (which contains just free content and autoresponder emails)
6. Use Direct-Signup to signup users for “Free Product”.
7. “Joe Customer” signs up for free through this form, and becomes a free member.
8. Keep dripping free content and emails on them. In the emails, you can promote the sales page(s) for your Paid Product(s).
9. When Joe Customer eventually buys “Paid Product 1″, then now Joe automatically get access to “Paid Product 1″.
10. When you search for Joe Customer’s email on the Users > Manage screen, you will see that Joe now has access to 2 products: “Free Product” and “Paid Product 1″

Case 3: Free Trial with Forced Continuity Forever

1. You offer a 30-day free trial. After trial, subscription payments every 30 days, forever, until they cancel their subscription.
2. Set up a Product in DAP as…
   Is Recurring: Yes
   Recurring Cycle 1: 30
   Recurring Cycle 2: 30
   Recurring Cycle 3: 30
3. You can’t really do a “free” trial. You must charge at least 1 penny ($0.01) [because otherwise, Paypal (for instance) doesn't send the right information in the IPN. And credit card processors won't even validate the credit card if you try to charge $0.00, so when it's time for the subscription to be charged after a month, you will see a lot of declines and rejected cards].
4. Set up your buy button (in Paypal, ClickBank, 1ShoppingCart, etc) to match the above subscription set up in DAP (from Step #2 above): A $0.01 trial for 30 days, then recurring payments of $X every 30 days, forever (never ends).
5. Make sure you use the same Product Name in both DAP and in your buy button.
6. Publish the button on your sales page. When someone clicks on the button and signs up (you’ve already set up the payment processor integration during setup), DAP will automatically give them access to this product for 30 days (Recurring cycle 1).
7. After 30 days, if subscription payment comes in as scheduled, then the user’s “Access End Date” is extended by another 30 days. So they will get access to all the dripped content from Day #31 to Day #60.
8. If user cancels before the trial is over (or their subscription payment fails for some reason), then their “Access End Date” stays the same, which means it automatically expires.

Case 4: Paid Monthly Recurring Product with No Free Trial

1. Create a Product in DAP as…
   Is Recurring: Yes
   Recurring Cycle 1: 30
   Recurring Cycle 2: 30
   Recurring Cycle 3: 30
2. Set up your buy button (in Paypal, ClickBank, 1ShoppingCart, etc) to match the above subscription set up in DAP (from Step #1 above): Instant payment of $X + Recurring payments of $Y every 30 days, with an forever (never ends).
3. Make sure you use the same Product Name in both DAP and in your buy button.
4. Publish the button on your sales page. When someone clicks on the button and signs up (you’ve already set up the payment processor integration during setup), DAP will automatically give them access to this product for 30 days (Recurring cycle 1).
5. After 30 days, if subscription payment comes in as scheduled, then the user’s “Access End Date” is extended by another 30 days. So they will get access to all the dripped content from Day #31 to Day #60.
6. If user cancels before the trial is over (or their subscription payment fails for some reason), then their “Access End Date” stays the same, which means it automatically expires.

Case 5: All Free Content, Available only to “Registered” Members, Dripped Content

1. You wish to make all of your content available for free, but users must “Register” first (i.e., sign-up using their email id) so that you can continue to send them emails and drip content so that they don’t get it all on day #1 and then un-subscribe from your list.
2. Create a Product, say, called “Marketing Tips”.
3. Set “Is Recurring” to “N”.
4. Add content to this product (blog posts, files, etc). Set up the drip for this content (day #1, day #7, etc)
5. Set up email autoresponders, if any, and add to this product.
6. Click on “Direct-Signup HTML” on the Product page, copy signup-form HTML, publish on any page of your web site.
7. “Joe Member” signs up for free through this form, and becomes a free member.
8. DAP will keep dripping free content and emails on members.

Case 6: All Free Content, Available only to “Registered” Members,All available Day 1

1. Almost everything is the same as Case 5 above.
2. Except when you set up the dripping, set all of your content to be available on Day #1.
3. So when user signs up through your squeeze page, they have access to all of the content right away.

Case 7: Packaging Same Content In Different Ways

So you would like the ability for a reader to buy access to a single blog post, or purchase a “Day Pass” to view all posts, or purchase a “Month Pass” or even a “Annual Pass”.

Here’s how you would do it:

1) Create a separate product for each scenario. So you end up with 4 Products:

i) “Single Post“: Has just one blog post as part of it

ii) “One-Day Pass“: Contains all blog posts, dripping for all set to start on Day #1, and also end on Day #1 itself

iii) “One-Month Pass“: Contains all blog posts, dripping for all set to start on Day #1, and end on Day #30

iv) “Annual Pass“: Contains all blog posts, dripping for all set to start on Day #1, and end on Day #365

Create 4 buy-buttons and publish them all on your sales page. Whichever product your reader purchases access to, DAP will automatically give them access to all of the content within that product, and drip it on them just the way you have set it up.

Case 8: Selling An Ebook/Report/Zip/Doc

So you would like the ability for a visitor to buy your ebook/PDF/report

Here’s how you would do it:

1) Create a separate product for your ebook – call it “Super-Duper-Report” .

2) Create a single WP page/post that has some copy about the ebook, and then directly links to the ebook from the page/post itself.

3) Protect both WP page/post as well as the direct link to your ebook on your server (like http://YourSite.com/wp-content/uploads/super-duper.pdf) as part of the product from Step 1.

4) Set the “Logged-In URL” for the Product to be the WP page that talks about and links to the ebook.

5) Create buy-button for DAP Product, and publish it on your sales page.

Case 9: Upgrading From Lower-level to Higher-level

So you would like the ability for a member to upgrade from one membership level to another (lower level to higher level – eg., Silver to Gold).

Please note that if a member is already subscribed via, say, Paypal, and their subscription is already stored as say 9.99 a month, then there’s no way to automatically upgrade them to another level that requires a payment of $19.99. There’s no way to modify the stored monthly amount in Paypal from 9.99 to 19.9 – Paypal won’t allow you to modify stored subscriptions.

So your only option is to get them to sign up newly for the higher-level, and then cancel their subscription to the lower level. Or if you’re using say a payment gateway like Authorize.net, then you can log in to your merchant back-office, and modify the subscription to start charging 19.99 going forward. That’s one of the greatest flexibilities offered by having your own merchant account.

Case 10: Selling New Product To Existing Members

So you would like the ability for an existing member/buyer to buy a new product from you (one-time or subscription).

This is exactly the same as when you set up the first product. No difference. Somewhere near the buy button, just let them know to use their existing member email during the purchase, if they’re a current member, that’s all.

As long as they use the same email id from their existing DAP account, then DAP will simply add the access to the new product to their existing account once they’ve purchased it.

Case 11: “Magazine Subscription” Model

You want to deliver content as if it were a monthly magazine. Only those who were in for that month, should be able to access that month’s content, and keep access to that content going forward.

You want to set up content to drip for a month.

So, for example…

a) For the month of April, you want only those who joined in April to get access to April’s content and onwards (if they stayed on, of course).

b) Those who joined any time in May should only get access to May content and onwards (but nothing before May).

So here’s what you do…

1) Make sure you set “Setup > Config > Advanced > Give access to previously paid for content” to “Y”.
2) Then, for each piece of content, you would set You also set up actual access start and end dates (note: “dates”, not “days”).

Then, for a post, you would set up…

Start Date: 04-01-2011
End: 04-31-2011

That way, anyone who joins in the month of April, will get access to April content now and onwards.
But anyone who joins on or after 05-01-2011, won’t get access to April content, but they’ll get access to May content now and onwards.

Creating a new site (WP) where I would like the ability for a reader to
buy access to
a single blog post,
or purchase a "Day Pass" to view all posts,
or purchase a "Month Pass" or even a "Annual Pass".