Clickbank PitchPlus Workaround?

Guys,

On March 29, 2012 (one year ago), Christian said this:

“By the way, PitchPlus will be supported by s2Member soon, so remain subscribed to get updates and it should be there when it happens. :)”

http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/clickbank-button/

On January 23, THIS year, Jason said:

“Are you referring to ClickBank’s Pitch-Plus feature? If so, s2Member® does NOT support this yet. We’re hoping to support this feature very soon however.”

http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/resetting-downloads-after-upgrade-payment/

Honestly, this is getting frustrating. I’ve read every discussion about PitchPlus on the Internet. I’ve not found a workaround and you’ve been saying you’re integrating it “very soon” for a full year.

Nobody who knows what they’re doing sells on Clickbank without an upsell. You’re leaving lots of money on the table if you do.

Can someone there please figure out a workaround or give us a REAL timeframe for when it will be fixed. In that way, we can make a business decision whether to stay with S2Member or not. Until this issue, I’ve been one of your biggest fans but this is becoming a real show stopper.

I don’t understand the integration/INS sequence or I could try to do it myself.

For example, can I not simply:

1. Manually insert the HTML button code for product 1
2. Specify a return URL to my product 2 pitch page instead of the normal return URL
3. Manually insert the HTML button code for product 2 with the S2member return URL

I don’t know enough about it to know if this would work. Would CB send two INS notifications and if so, would that screw up S2Member? And if they passed on the upsell, would we even get an INS at all?

Can I pass some custom data to differentiate customers who bought the upsell and assign a custom capability or different member level?

This has to be possible somehow.

Thanks

Thank you for your inquiry.

We are sorry for the delay.

Can someone there please figure out a workaround or give us a REAL timeframe for when it will be fixed. In that way, we can make a business decision whether to stay with S2Member or not. Until this issue, I’ve been one of your biggest fans but this is becoming a real show stopper.

First I’d like to say that this not a feature of s2Member that is “broken”, but something that s2Member simply does not support as of yet. ClickBank’s Pitch-Plus feature is an extra component to ClickBank’s checkout that is absolutely not required for s2Member to function correctly, and s2Member does not advertise compatibility with ClickBank Pitch-Plus, and if you’ll see the s2Member® Pro features page, in the section regarding ClickBank, we explicitly note that ClickBank Pitch-Plus Upsells are not yet available.

We currently do not have any timeframe available for when ClickBank Pitch-Plus integration will be available.

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That being said, s2Member’s lack of being integrated with ClickBank Pitch-Plus does not prevent site owners from upselling customers in other ways. One way that is commonly overlooked by site owners is s2Member’s One-Time Offers, which can be set up in your Dashboard with many ways to customize the times when a User will see these One-Time Offers.

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› One-Time Offers (Upon Login)

To give an example of how you might use One-Time Offers to upsell a User would be to offer a package the first time they log in for a discounted price. A user could choose to upgrade right after checking out for the package they had originally signed up for, or buy the package at regular price later, using one of s2Member’s Billing Modifications Buttons (or Pro Forms).

In the case of ClickBank, you will need to have Customers cancel their current subscription, and create a new one for them to upgrade to a new level/package. This is a limitation with both ClickBank and Google Checkout, and is not something that s2Member can control. For more information, see Jason’s Post here:

http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/problem-with-downgraded-clickbank-membership/#post-23355

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I don’t know enough about it to know if this would work. Would CB send two INS notifications and if so, would that screw up S2Member? And if they passed on the upsell, would we even get an INS at all?

Can I pass some custom data to differentiate customers who bought the upsell and assign a custom capability or different member level?

I am unaware of any way currently that this is possible. I will contact Jason (Lead Developer) to see if he is aware of any workarounds for possibly working with ClickBank Pitch-Plus.

First, I understand there’s nothing “broken” so I was wrong to use the word “fix”. Just as your 2 employees were wrong to say it would be in “soon” when there is no timeline for it.

Second, I understand you don’t see this as a high priority item.

The thought of using the OTOs did occur to me though there are a few issues with that:

1. It’s against Clickbank’s terms of service. The customer must immediately be given access to his product after purchase. This could be worked around by popping the OTO on the second visit but obviously this would kill conversions because they’ll be out of the heat of “buying mode.”

2. I’m not sure the affiliate will get credit for the sale. I suppose that depends on cookie expiration and if it’s sufficient, they should get credit, right?

3. The difference in conversions on a “Pitch Plus” sale, where they’ve already given CC information and just have to click one button, versus entering it all over again, will be significant.

What I’d like, from a developer, is a pointer in the write direction so I can make the mods myself. Even though I’ve got 25 years writing C, C++ and PHP, I don’t find your code easy to follow.

Answers to these questions would help:

1. Where is the code that handles the Clickbank INS?
I suppose it is in this class? c_ws_plugin__s2member_pro_clickbank_return

2. Where is the code that handles the Clickbank button generation?
clickbank-ops.inc.php?

3. What are the side-effects of adding an intermediate thank you page (really another sales page) such as:

User Clicks Buy Button -> Pays at CB -> Returns to New SalesPage -> Option A: Clicks Upsell Buy Button -> Back to CB -> Returns to “normal” return ULR or Option B: Rejects upsell -> Redirected to “normal” return URL

Just a side-note about OTO’s

These are not real oto’s!

I mean, they are displayed at whatever point is setup in the config file.
They are also displayed to whatever membership level and access control is setup.

But: A user can easily save the page e.g. into his bookmarks or just remember the page’s slug.

A real oto would be displayed once, then if the same page URL is entered again (or even page is refreshed) it would not reveal the oto page.

Not a stopper, just to prevent some users from thinking s2m oto’s as the one time offers they are used to.

To us this is not a problem, because oto`s are displayed at certain membership levels only (oto page is s2m protected) If anyone from that group bookmarked the oto page and uses the oto offer at a later point (rather than immediately after oto is showed) then we are perfectly fine with that.

Every other possible user group can not see the oto page at all.

Hope this info was helpful.

For what it’s worth, since there is no help forthcoming here, I came up with a solution which works for me. If you bill monthly, it won’t work well for you, but here it is.

Create a sales page
Create a Pitchplus upsell page
Create a thank you page.
Add your own Clickbank buttons to each page. This will allow you to add the variables to indicate the flow as well as your own CB skins, which S2 Member doesn’t handle either.

All of these will be outside of S2Member’s protection.

On your thank you page, add your own Clickbank INS handler. There are examples on CB.

When someone lands on the thank you page, you’ll have CBs post variables which will tell you what they bought and who they are.

Use the S2Member Pro API Remote Operations to add a new user, set their level based on what they bought and give them a username and password. Then add a link to the login page.

Done.

Keep in mind, this will not handle any other notifications from CB and if you’re doing recurring billing, you’ll have to manually remove users as they drop out. S2member won’t handle that for you, though you could write your INS script to delete users also as they refund or drop out.

I have notified Jason about this. He’s looking into this, but has not been able to post a reply yet.

s2Member now supports ClickBank PitchPlus. See: s2Member® Unified Changelog » v130510

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From the Changelog:

(s2Member Pro) ClickBank PitchPlus Upsell Flows (Issue #227) Adding support for ClickBank PitchPlus Upsell Flows via new Shortcode Attributes: cbfid=””, cbur=””, cbf=”auto”. s2Member Pro now officially supports ClickBank PitchPlus Upsell Flows. We support PitchPlus Basic and PitchPlus Advanced too. For further details, please see: Dashboard -› ClickBank Buttons -› Shortcode Attributes (Explained).