Credit Store Introduction

The Credit Store Plugin will allow you to sell “Credits” to your members, and then your members can “Redeem” those credits towards the purchase of any content you’ve made available in your Credit Store. Similar to buying credits at Audible.com or earning credit card reward points.

The Credit Store plugin enables “Content On Demand“. Instead of you dripping content on your members in a pre-determined fashion, they choose the modules they want, and the order in which they want them. You just give them the credits putting the power of choice at their fingertips.

You can configure the plugin to Pay Affiliates by credits (for leads and sale) which they can then use to pay for their own purchases and subscriptions on your site.

You can also allow your users to earn ‘Social-Media-LIKE‘ credits OR ‘Comment‘ credits.

Credits are like currency, your users can use the earned credits to buy your entire product or buy individual content (pay-per-post-using-credits).

For ex, say you signup for an audible.com membership plan where you are awarded one audible.com credit a month. Most of the books on Audible can be “bought” for one credit, so you can usually get at least one book a month with your membership or you can accumulate credits for a few months and then go to the store to buy whatever products you want in exchange for credits. You can setup a similar storefront and rewards-program for your members instantly using our credit store plugin.s

Say you offer silver, gold, platinum monthly memberships. You can charge more for your gold membership than silver but offer more free credits as bonus. Similarly you can charge more for your platinum membership than gold but offer a lot more free credits as bonus. These users can then use the earned credits to browse your store and get content of their choice. So you can quickly setup a rewards program where you reward users based on the membership plan and your users will get automatic access to the rewards program when they enroll so they can start earning points and redeeming them at your store right away.

Members receive credits that can be used as currency on your site and applied to any purchase of products that you have made available in your store.

With the credit store plugin, setting up a storefront page (where your users can buy the product of their choice using credits) is a breeze. You can literally setup a storefront page in less than 5 minutes.

To summarize, the Credit Store plugin will allow you to create an Instant Credit Storefront Page where:

1) You (Site Owner) can display the products that can be redeemed for credits and

2) Your users can come to this page to Redeem their Earned Credits/Points.

Please read this document before you use this plugin.

Note: The prerequisite for using this plugin is you must be on DAP 4.4.x. It is not supported by older versions of DAP. If you are not on dap 4.4.x, then please make sure to first upgrade to the very latest version of dap 4.4.x and then follow the steps below to install the credit store plugin.

WARNING: If you are a self-service-store user and already have a lot of self-service-store users, then DO NOT upgrade to dap 4.4.x as it is NOT backward compatible with OLD SSS. We have completely revamped the old SSS plugin and now it’s called CreditStore (CS). We had to update the underlying dap scripts and dap tables/fields for the NEW CS plugin and it was NOT possible to make the scripts / tables work with both OLD SSS and NEW CS. If you can simply upgrade to 4.4.x and use the NEW CS plugin and manually give your existing SSS users access to new CS plugin, then it will work fine. There is NO automatic way to move old SSS users to new CS model.

Sell credits to your users

If you have a one-time (free or paid) or a subscription product, and you want to allow your users to earn credits when they buy the product or when a recurring payment comes in, then all you need to do is define / designate the product as Master in DAP products/levels- >Credit Store Front Settings page and ‘Assign Credits’ to that product (initial credits and recurring credits) in that page.

Here’s what you can do with the product defined as master (that allows users to buy credits).

The master product can be a regular full-fledged dap product that you sell. You can drip content (if reqd) under the master like any normal dap product. The only thing with product that you have set as master is in addition to doing everything a regular dap product does, this master product will allow your users to earn credits. If a user gets access to this product (via free signup or via purchase), they will get the credits assigned to this product. So you can use credits during a special promo and tell your users that if they signup or buy the product, they will earn credits in addition to the content that they are buying and they can use the credits in the store towards available child products. Or you can simply setup a master as a way for your users to purchase credits. It can be a dummy product setup just to allow your users to purchase credits. You can setup the payment button for master like you would for any dap product. DAP will know to automatically award credits to the user when the purchase is complete. You will find the assigned credits to user in the dap users->manage page under ‘Credits’ column.
Users that purchase the product designated as master, will earn credits assigned to that product and in addition, will also get access to any dripped content under the master.
Master product can be a one-time or a recurring/subscription product.
User-Level-Credits. The credits the users earn will be accumulated in the user’s account and they can use the accumulated credits towards ANY redeemable child products in the credit store.
Option to assign recurring credits : The users will earn recurring credits (if configured under DAP products/levels- >Credit Store Front Settings page) upon each subscription payment.

Provide different ways to your users to EARN credits

Users can earn credits in several different ways:

Signup to FREE product and earn credits (provided you have setup the product as master and assigned credits to it in DAP products/levels- >Credit Store Front Settings page).
Purchase one-time dap product and earn credits as bonus. Users that purchase the product designated as master, will earn credits assigned to that product and in addition, will also get access to any dripped content under the master.
Purchase a membership / subscription product and earn credits every month (or every recurring cycle) if the product has recurring credits assigned to it.
Affiliate Lead Credits: Affiliates can earn credits for referrals that lead to signup (provided you have setup credits for the product in the DAP admin -> Affiliate -> Commissions page)
Affiliate Sale Credits: Affiliates can earn credits for referrals that lead to sale.
Comment Credits : Users can comment on a credit enabled page and if comment is approved (or if set to auto-approve), the user will earn assigned credits. This is NOT part of the core Credit Store Plugin. You will need our SocialCredits plugin to enable Social Media credits.
Social Media Credits : Users can LIKE a page/post to a Social Media Source (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, G+) and earn assigned credits. DAP Admin can assign different number of credits for each Social Media Source. For ex- Facebook like can be assigned 10 credits, Twitter can be assigned 5 credits etc. This is NOT part of the core Credit Store Plugin. You will need our SocialCredits plugin to enable Social Media credits.

Setup Products redeemable in the store

Redeemable products need to be defined as ‘Child’ in the Credit Store configuration (DAP products/levels- >Credit Store Front Settings page)
All redeemable products will automatically appear in the store (depending on Credit Store settings in DAP products/levels- >Credit Store Front Settings page).
Resell products: By default, if a user has already purchased a product, it will automatically disappear from that user’s view of the credit store. If you want the users to be able to redeem the same product for credits again, then set resell product setting to Y in the DAP admin -> Credit Store page. If you allow ‘content-level-credits‘ for your child product in the Credit Store Front Settings page in dap admin , then you cannot set ‘resell’ to “Y”. The resell to “Y” can only be used if you only allow users to redeem entire product and do not allow users to redeem individual content setup under that product’s “content responder” section.
Pay-Per-Post using credits: Accomplish this via content-level credits. User will have the option to either redeem their earned credit to get access to the entire product (in this case they will get access to all content available under that product) OR they can redeem access to individual pieces of content (page / post / video / resource) under that product. Content-level credits can be enabled in dap admin -> products/levels -> credit store front page. Users can pay for the post / page / resource of interest using credits (instead of $).

Setup Product Category

Define a category for the ‘Redeemable products‘ in the Credit Store. The category is ONLY used for display purpose in the store. If you do not define a category, and do NOT assign the products that you want to be associated to that category in the DAP products/levels- >Credit Store Front Settings page, then NO products will show up in the Credit Store Front end. So make sure to setup a product category (DAP admin -> Products / levels -> Add/Edit Credit Store Category page) and then go to DAP products/levels- >Credit Store Front Settings page and associate the child products to that category. For example – you could have an internet marketing category and associate your facebook secrets, twitter secrets products to that category.
You can display single category per credit store page OR you can display all the categories (and redeemable products belonging to it) on the same Credit Store page. You can create a category-level credit store page where only products belonging to a certain category shows up on that page. OR you can create a generic credit store page where products belonging to ANY category shows up.

Credit Store Page Layout – Front End

You can use a ONE product per row layout OR you can use MULTIPLE Products per row layout for your credit store front-end page.

If you have ‘content-level-credits’ enabled (pay-per-post) for any of your child product, then you can ONLY use ONE product per row layout because MULTIPLE Products per row layout will only allow for simple product boxes per row, it wont allow the complex layout that products that allow content-level-credits require.

Create Credit Store Page – Front End

After you install the plugin, you can go to the WP Admin -> Pages -> Add New – > Visual Tab -> You will find a new Editor Button called ‘CS’. You can click on that button and you will find ALL the credit store front end page setup options. Its self-explanatory. Once you have completed the setup of the page, you can publish that page and it will become the page where logged-in users can come to redeem their earned credits.

Click here for details on the various Credit Store Editor button option.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 20 comments

Gwen - December 16, 2012

Do you have a video tutorial?

I have 10 module product currently that drips out weekly, and after experimenting I discovered that I can’t have a product be both a Master Product with Drip Content uder the current member offering and also be available as Self Service to new customers that wanted the module they want, when they want it. It would only allow me to do one or the other.

My Drip Content Days disappeared when I turned the Product into a Child (non Master) for testing, and this option was replaced by a Credits Column in the Content Protection area for the 10 protected pages.

So if I want my 10 Modules to be available also in the Credit Store, I would have to create 10 Separate Child Products right?

Also how do we create a Buy Credits Product whereby the Buyer has control over the volume? Ie: Credit Product is 10 credits. And when the person purchases and wants to buy 200 credits is there a quantity of 20 they can fill in? Or do they have to buy it 20x?

I’ve spent the better part of 2 days trying to figure out how to set up and maximize the Credit Store, and am pretty sure that could be significantly cut down with some demonstration of use and strategies in a video.

I have a few other issues with Products not showing the link and image in the Credit Store, but will put in tickets for these to get some feedback.

Looking forward to getting this to work as I see so many possibilities.

Awesome potential.

Gwen

Veena Prashanth - December 16, 2012

A creditstore child product can ONLY participate in the credit store. It cannot participate in normal admin-controlled dripping as they are 2 completely opposite things.

We tried to make the same product participate in both CS as well as regular dripping, but it simply got too complicated for implementation and it would make troubleshooting very difficult.

>>So if I want my 10 Modules to be available also in the Credit Store, I would have to create 10 Separate Child Products right? < < No, you don't need to create 10 separate child products. You can create 1 child product and set the 'allow users to redeem individual content' to "Y" in the dap products/levels -> creditstore admin page, set up the content that you want to make available under the product in the content responder section, assign credits to each content (to allow pay-per-post) in the contentresponder section, create a product category and assign this child to the category, and now when you create a credit storefront page in WP (by clicking on the CS editor in WP admin -> add new page), pick the category for display and now when you visit the store, you will see the option to redeem the entire child product or redeem individual content within the child.

We don’t have video documentation yet, but we hope to have it ready in 2-3 weeks.

>>Also how do we create a Buy Credits Product whereby the Buyer has control over the volume? Ie: Credit Product is 10 credits. And when the person purchases and wants to buy 200 credits is there a quantity of 20 they can fill in? Or do they have to buy it 20x? < < Great question. They can't add quantity but instead of using the 'buy button' directly on the CS page, you put in the link to your creditstore sales page in the CS editor. So the button on the credit store page can say 'buy more credits' but when a user clicks on it, it will lead them to your creditstore sales page. On the sales page, you can sell 10, 50, 200, credits separately and users can pick the option they want and when they complete purchase, you can return / redirect them back to store. For ex, you can use something like this in the 'button code' section in CS editor : < a href="http://YOURSITE.com/purchaseMoreCredits">

>>I have a few other issues with Products not showing the link and image in the Credit Store, but will put in tickets for these to get some feedback.<< Will try to publish a better step-by-step setup document shortly. Thanks, Veena

Greg - December 17, 2012

I have a question about the credit store product categories.

The way my site is set up each product has its own sales page. I want users to be able to redeem the products off each individual page.

The only way I can see this being possible is to give each product its own category, which I’m happy to do.

It may mean a very very large category list over time. Is there any reason i shouldn’t do it this way?

Veena Prashanth - December 17, 2012

Hi Greg,

Currently you cannot generate a ‘redeem button’ for a product and publish it wherever you want… but it’s a great feature that we will try to add to CS asap.

Yes, for now, create a category for each product, and create a Credit Storefront page per category / product and put a hyperlink to the product specific storefront page on each individual page.

Thanks,
Veena

Veena Prashanth - December 18, 2012

New Credit Store Setup Document :
http://www.digitalaccesspass.com/doc/credit-store-setup/

Greg - April 9, 2013

A few plugins were mentioned with the release of credit store. Plugins that helped people earn credits for various actions. Have these been released?

Thanks
Greg

Santosh Ramachandran - April 28, 2013

Hello Veena,

It isn’t clear as how to create buttons to buy credits.

i.e. If I want to create 3 buy buttons to put on the page:

One for $5 which will provide 10 credits to the buyer.
One for $10 which will provide 30 credits to the buyer.
One for $20 which will provide 50 credits to the buyer.

How do i create these buttons, I am unable to find a place where I can generate these buy button (probably I dont know where to look).

Thanks, Best Regards,
Santosh

Another question is, when a prospect visits the site for the first time, when he is directed to the credits page a message is shown to the user:

“Sorry, you must be logged-in to access the credit store. Please click here to login and access the store”

Now the user needs to buy credits, I guess the membership will be created when he buys the credits,

how do we take care of this situation?

Veena Prashanth - April 29, 2013

Hi Greg,
>>A few plugins were mentioned with the release of credit store. Plugins that helped people earn credits for various actions. Have these been released? << Yes, the DAP Social Credits plugin (you can allow users to earn credits via a social media LIKE (twitter, FB, GPlus, LinkedIn) OR via commenting... is now available. If you want to purchase the plugin, please contact us via the contact form on our site or open a support ticket - http://www.digitalaccesspass.com/support.

Hi Santosh,

>>How do i create these buttons, I am unable to find a place where I can generate these buy button (probably I dont know where to look). << You need to define the products that allow users to earn 10, 30, 50 credits as 'master' product in the store setup page and then generate regular buy button for it using say paypal or whatever payment source you use on your site.

>>“Sorry, you must be logged-in to access the credit store. Please click here to login and access the store. ”Now the user needs to buy credits, I guess the membership will be created when he buys the credits, << Yes if the user is not a member yet, then the membership will automatically be created when they make any purchase (including a purchase just to earn credits). We are working on a few updates to the creditstore plugin so even if the users are not logged-in, they can see the store, all the products available for credits, and also see the 'buy credits' option.. they just can't redeem anything until they login.

Santosh - April 30, 2013

This is a great product, I have a minor glitch.

I have created the necessary master products (dummy products just to sell the credits) and created the pay buttons.

For the credits to be awarded to the user when he purchases a master product, i have entered the credits to be awarded in the field “# of Credits assigned to this product”, in the Credit Store Front settings for the product.

Is this the right place to set the credits to be awarded?

As after doing the same, I tested the transaction with paypal sandbox, however the credits did not get accrued to the user.

Please suggest what may be wrong.

Veena Prashanth - May 5, 2013

Hi Santosh,
>>For the credits to be awarded to the user when he purchases a master product, i have entered the credits to be awarded in the field “# of Credits assigned to this product”, in the Credit Store Front settings for the product.

Is this the right place to set the credits to be awarded? < < Yes, that's the right place to set credits. >>As after doing the same, I tested the transaction with paypal sandbox, however the credits did not get accrued to the user. << Please open a support ticket (http://www.digitalaccesspass.com/support) and we will take a look.

Jonas - October 10, 2013

Hi Veena,

At the moment we will be having large companies that are buying courses in our DAP system. Delivery of logins is a pretty big deal as we like to avoid any hassle possible.

Before we’ve used coupons with good results, except that you can’t choose your own password upon registration. (You should really add this as we’re seeing A LOT of invalid_password tries because people don’t remember their password).
We’re looking to move to a credit based system (or combination) in the future as we’re revamping the system. What you have above seems pretty close to PERFECT for our solution.

What I’m wondering though is, can we provide coupons (we refer to them as licenses) to our customers to register, and that they will get a certain amount of credits for that coupon?

That would really seal the deal for us as it looks like this plugin is everything we want.

Thank you so much for all your hard work,
Jonas

Wow, I think I’m getting more stupid with age..
So I’d just assign a coupon to a master product that gives X amount of credits, right? Such an easy solution…

Veena Prashanth - October 11, 2013

Hi Jonas,

>> So I’d just assign a coupon to a master product that gives X amount of credits, right? Such an easy solution… << Yes, you can create a master product (with credits attached). Then generate a coupon-enabled signup form for that master product. If a user enters a valid coupon and signs up via that form, they will earn credits. Thanks, Veena

Mark Mottershead - May 31, 2014

Hi Veena – Read all the documentation but still not sure if I can do exactly what I want so would l like to check.

I currently have a monthly membership content with dripped content and new content. I’d like to add the option for non-members to pay for individual pieces of the new content but without asking existing monthly members to go through the hoop of having to redeem credits to get access to their content.

Is that possible? If so, how?

Thanks.

Veena Prashanth - June 5, 2014

Hi Mark,

>>I currently have a monthly membership content with dripped content and new content. I’d like to add the option for non-members to pay for individual pieces of the new content but without asking existing monthly members to go through the hoop of having to redeem credits to get access to their content. Is that possible? If so, how? << You will have to create 2 separate products to manage this. One 'drip-feed' product and the other product for the credit store. The credit store product should allow the content to be 'redeemed individually'. The existing users will continue to receive the dripped content as it's part of the drip-feed product. Thanks, Veena

Mark - June 5, 2014

Thanks Veena – So, would I have to make 2 copies of each post, 1 for the drip-feed membership product and 1 for the credit store product?

I would want to have the credit store posts to appear on the live site but with a buy button to credit store.

Is that possible too?

Thanks, Mark

You can have 1 post participate in both drip feed as well as credit store.

You just need to create 2 products.

In the credit store product, when you add the post, set the number of credits.
In the regular product, when you add/protect the post, set the drip.

>> I would want to have the credit store posts to appear on the live site but with a buy button to credit store. << You can have a buynow button that will allow users to purchase the credit store product for cash (instead of credits) from the credit storefront page. As long as you are ok with users getting instant access to all the content thats part of credit store product, it will work. You cannot use dripping for credit store product. If they buy credit store product for cash, they will get instant access to content under it. Thanks, Veena