Sponsorships + memberships

Hi

A client of mine is looking to set up the following membership structure for their Website. I am wondering if S2 Member (either Free or Pro) can help.

They want 3 types of content on their website.
1. Free unregistered content. Any casual visitor can view without registering.
2. Free registered content. If you register for a free account you get additional content when you are logged in.
3. Paid bonus content. You can pay for a yearly membership to unlock exclusive content.

I *think* that’s all pretty easy for S2 so far.

In addition to managing the above, client wants to:
4. Make sure paid users can pay with credit card, without requiring them to sign up for PayPal. Is that possible?

5. Offer Sponsorships. So basically anybody can buy a sponsorship and have their company listed on my client’s website. The catch is that anyone whose company has paid for a Sponsorship should get a discounted price whenever any one of their users signs up for paid bonus content. (e.g. Joe off the street would have to pay $500 for paid membership. Acme Co is a sponsor, so Jill, who works at Acme, can buy the paid membership for a discounted price of $250.) Can that kind of thing be automated via S2 Member? I’m sort of guessing not because how would S2 Member verify that Jill works at Acme? Even if it can’t be fully automated, maybe you can describe a decent way to manage the process and that will be good enough for my client.

Thanks

Hi Pierre,

Please see my replies below:

They want 3 types of content on their website.
1. Free unregistered content. Any casual visitor can view without registering.
2. Free registered content. If you register for a free account you get additional content when you are logged in.
3. Paid bonus content. You can pay for a yearly membership to unlock exclusive content.

Yes, s2Member fully supports all three of these.

In addition to managing the above, client wants to:
4. Make sure paid users can pay with credit card, without requiring them to sign up for PayPal. Is that possible?

Yes, this is possible with s2Member Pro and PayPal Website Payments Pro (see PayPal Service Introductions). With s2Member Pro and PayPal Pro, you can accept credit cards directly on your site without requiring a redirect to PayPal’s website.

5. Offer Sponsorships. So basically anybody can buy a sponsorship and have their company listed on my client’s website. The catch is that anyone whose company has paid for a Sponsorship should get a discounted price whenever any one of their users signs up for paid bonus content. (e.g. Joe off the street would have to pay $500 for paid membership. Acme Co is a sponsor, so Jill, who works at Acme, can buy the paid membership for a discounted price of $250.) Can that kind of thing be automated via S2 Member? I’m sort of guessing not because how would S2 Member verify that Jill works at Acme? Even if it can’t be fully automated, maybe you can describe a decent way to manage the process and that will be good enough for my client.

Sponsorships themselves are not directly supported, but in the scenario you describe it sounds like you could use the s2Member Pro-Coupon codes feature (available with s2Member Pro). You could create a coupon for each company and then give that coupon to the sponsoring company to give to their employees. Only employees would have the coupons. When they plug that coupon into the Pro-Form during checkout, it would apply the discount you configured for the coupon.

Let us know if you have any other questions.