Time for another update! It’s a bit lengthy, but there’s a lot to be excited about.

(If you want to read the journey so far, check the links at the bottom of this post)

Bad News Is Good News?

First, some bad news about Digital Access Pass. If you didn’t get yours yet, the free trial of DAP is no longer available; and the price has gone up for the single site license.

However this is really good news in disguise.

Without the free trial, Ravi, Veena and the DAP team can continue to offer the top-quality support they’re known for without being caught in the swamp of “tire kickers”. You’ve likely heard me say that you should be spending more time with your customers than your prospects. With the free trial, too much time was being spent with members who gave it a go for a few days, submitted a bunch of tickets, got the free installation, and then quit.

But word is spreading fast that DAP truly is the #1 membership system with WordPress. If they continued offering so much support for free, then support for their paying clients would suffer.

Now you may look at the price increase of the single site license and hesitate. But there’s 2 things wrong with this picture.

First, this software really should be a lot more anyway.

Second, the unlimited site license has actually remained the same; and that’s the level most people should get if they plan on putting together more than 1 membership site anyway (I have DAP on 4 sites now, with more on the way).

And a third, bonus reason is you’ll earn more as an affiliate when you recommend DAP to others (which I’m positive you’ll want to do).

Plus, there is still a 30 day guarantee in place if you find it’s not really for you.

Okay, enough about that, let’s get into other updates of how I’m using DAP.

Independence From WordPress Makes Theme Changes A Breeze

The primary site where I’m using DAP is at IM Success Library. There haven’t been too many changes related to DAP, except that DAP allowed me to start selling tickets to this summer’s reunion from a completely separate website. (Due to the oil spill in the Gulf, this event is going to be canceled, though).

You’ll notice that IMSL looks different because I changed the theme over to Socrates. What’s cool about this is since DAP actually runs completely separately from WordPress, switching themes had no risk whatsoever of messing up the membership site.

DAP Sneak Peek Feature On Display At IMFAQ.com

Next, I just launched a new site called IMFAQ.com (internet marketing frequently asked questions) using WordPress and DIgital Access Pass. Setting up the site technically took me about an hour, and we’ve been adding in the content (75+ questions and answers) as a special Friday project that wraps up tomorrow. Creating and then adding content to your site really will be the biggest hassle.

Using the <!–more–> tag from Wordpress, and DAP’s sneak peek feature, I’m able to protect most of the answers within a free membership level at DAP. But I get enough of the question and answer to get search engines to track the site.

So this is giving me the ability to build my list with a quality free offer (the full answers to the questions), get search engine traffic from long tail keyword phrases (the questions and the first part of the reply), and enough value for visitors to see that they should be joining the site.

Generating More Revenue With The OTO

A new feature I’m using with DAP at IMFAQ.com is the OTO (one time offer). Most of my business over the last 4 years has relied on the one time offer that’s the cornerstone of the Butterfly Marketing software that runs most of my sites. Used wrongly, you piss off your potential customers. Used in a way that ensures people get what they asked for, but can now enjoy a really great deal that will actually help them, and OTOs can be a real win-win.

Here’s how I’m using the OTO at IMFAQ…

After people join the site as a silver member, I’m able to offer them an upgrade to the Gold level. This can be done simply with the redirect of the signup form, or the confirmation link in the Aweber email I’m sending them.

But DAP now allows you to hide a special offer page that will show up just the one time (when they return from signing up or from a purchase). You can do this with as many offers as you wish to, because the code doesn’t reveal the actual location of the page.

I won’t reveal my secret offer here, but I do expect it to add significantly to the revenue of the site, while giving a huge discount on a popular product that will really help my customers.

Coming Soon In 3.8 – Product Chaining

Another update about DAP I’m very excited about is within the next week or so, 3.8 is coming out. With the new version, I’ll be able to do something called “product chaining”. This is where people will either gain or lose access to a product based on their most recent purchase.

For example, no longer would I have to worry if someone continues to get the messages to upgrade their account, because their free level would be removed when they upgraded. I don’t know about you, but it’s often annoying when I keep getting emails to upgrade when in fact, I already have. (This is sometimes due to user error by the way – it’s usually tracked by email account, not actual gremlins in your computer that keep track of what you purchased).

For more updates on what’s coming in DAP 3.8, check out the Digital Access Pass blog.

Any Niche Can Use DAP

I’ve been having a hard time thinking of a type of niche that couldn’t benefit from using DAP. It may be tough to think of how to create an ongoing membership site with recurring payments for everything, but since DAP handles 1-time payments too (like for ebooks or a live event), it’s pretty universal.

For example, my brother is using DAP over at RestaurantManagersSecrets.com as he continues to serve the disgruntled and bonus-starved marketplace of owners and managers of independent and franchised/corporate restaurants. He’s using DAP to protect premium articles and audio programs, while leaving much of the posts on the blog open for search engines and raw list building. After spending a fortune on a Joomla site that’s virtually impossible for him to manage himself, he continues to tell me how happy he is to have been shown WordPress at the NAMS event, and to have had my DiscoverDAP training to put it all together. (We’ll both be at NAMS 4 in August, by the way).

Double Account Issue Still An Issue

Everything isn’t peaches with DAP, of course. No system is perfect.

The biggest issue that I’ve seen on my sites is when people sign up for free with one email account, and then buy one of my products, they can sometimes get two accounts created. This happens if the payment address (in my case, their Paypal email) is different than the one they initially signed up with.

Some people don’t check their Paypal email as often as their other account. This is bizarre to me, because I always want to see my Paypal emails…

But anyway, as long as you let people know in your members area that this could happen, the issue is pretty minor. And you can always add access to the free accounts manually if someone insists on using the original account.

The reality is, no system handles this issue 100%. And since DAP continues to use the same email (payment address) for each purchased upgrade, and since that comes from the payment processor, DAP is eliminating a bigger issue I’ve often seen on other sites: namely, people buy a product, come back to register after they purchased and for some reason it doesn’t work.

They may never click the “return to merchant button”, they may not fill out the registration form, or they may spell their email address wrong.

DAP creates the account automagically, eliminating one of the top issues we’ve seen at my helpdesk over the last 4 years.

One last point about this I’d have to add: most people who sell a product and have people register after their purchase risk having their download pages stolen. This is because those pages are often not truly protected. So someone could signup for a product they haven’t paid for. DAP protects against this as well as any other system I’ve seen.

Conclusion – DAP Rocks On Til The Break Of Dawn

All in all, I continue to be very impressed with DAP.

And now that I finished teaching Discover DAP, I’m getting thank you emails and tweets from people appreciating my recommendations of the software, and the A-Z marketing education that I included in that course.

What do you think about DAP? Have other questions or points to share – post them below.

And if you’re ready to get your membership site up and running (or fix a broken one with inferior software), get Digital Access Pass.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. When I decided to do Discover Digital Access Pass as a course, I didn’t think it would turn into one of my most popular internet marketing courses. But that’s what has happened. It truly gives you a complete picture of profiting with your own membership site. I probably should have called it DiscoverMembershipSites instead :)  See what people are raving about at DiscoverDAP.com.

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Some people are in love with Wishlist Member for WordPress – a competitive membership script that I have not tested myself yet (but hope to soon).

The reason I chose DAP in the first place are documented in my first comparitive review.

Let me now share a few additional thoughts now that I’ve been using DAP for a few weeks on a live site.

Simple Or Complex – DAP Works As Advertised

First, the IM Success Library is much more complex than most people will need for a membership site. I have 16 courses available, each with 2-16 modules. Plus, I’m including my various coaching programs and options.

DAP is handling it all quite easily.

Smooth Integration With Paypal

Since it integrates smoothly with Paypal, all I have to do is set up a payment button in Paypal, and set up a matching product in DAP, and I’m good to go.

One of the things that I’m loving about this particular feature (Paypal integration) is how I can actually put a buy button on any website I want, or even a link in an email, and when someone buys that product, 1 of 2 things happens:

1) if they already have an account with me, they get their upgrade automatically

2) if they do not have an account with me yet, it’s automatically created from the purchase – no separate registration is needed.

Affiliates Choose Their Preferred Landing Page

Affiliate tracking is also integrated within DAP (unlike Wishlist which relies on you using Clickbank or another 3rd party system). My affiliates are loving the way they can use their affiliate link to promote to any page on my site – including a specific module, blog post, or page.

Protect Content Outside Or Inside WordPress

But perhaps the most under-stated but most helpful feature of DAP to me right now is the ability to protect and deliver my content OUTSIDE of WordPress, too.

This means that you can have PDFs, videos, audios, and even HTML pages you may be using for iframes protected with DAP: members can only access those files and pages if they have the right membership level.

Updating the script was a breeze, too. Ravi just released version 3.3, and it was a “drag and drop” process to update my script. I logged in again to my site, clicked a big button to complete the upgrade, and it was done.

The newest feature that was added that I love is the ability to see all pages and posts of your WordPress site in the dashboard of a product – making it a lot easier to protect content.

Recommended Improvements

There are a few areas that I’d like to see improved, but these are minor. But the cool thing about DAP is the creator of the script is accessible and continues to take member suggestions and include them in frequent updates.

1. As a site owner, I would like to be able to change the default landing page for the affiliate links
2. The links to available content that a member can access are URLs by default, and hard to read. This can be edited by the admin, but I’d like to see the default be the title of the post or page if it’s in WordPress.
3. These same links are also not in any particular order; except I think it may be in order of content availability. For me though, I do not have time-released content. So these links seem a bit random.
4. Deleting or editing the content available in a product is done on a 1-at-a-time basis. Since I have over 150 pages available to some members, this is a bit time consuming. It would be cool to be able to change the availability windows, “free” or “paid” status, etc., to multiple pieces of content at the same time.
5. Tighter integration with Aweber. The built in autoresponder is good, but I’d like to have the signup process result in an Aweber subscription as well.
6. Integration of the affiliate link code by itself so I can include that link anywhere on the site I want for members; this would also allow for the kind of dynamic affiliate tools page that affiliates are after. This is my biggest request, and Ravi tells me that it’s coming in an upcoming release.

So overall, I’m quite impressed with the infrastructure DAP is giving me for my IM Success Library. And I know it would be great for a much simpler site as well.

If you’re thinking of creating a membership site, and you want the design flexibilities of WordPress (themes, blog integration, etc.), then give Digitial Access Pass a go.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. If you’re not sure what you’d create a membership site about, I highly recommend you take this course from Paul Evans. I arranged for a $20 discount for you from that special page.

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