Free Subscription Granting

[Mike]

Hello Peter, what if a freelancer signs up for the marketplace and pay for a 1 month subscription in novice or pro. Assuming that this freelancer receive no projects during this cycle, will V3 have a feature to give that freelancer a month free in that same subscription level?

[Peter]

Hello Peter, what if a freelancer signs up for the marketplace and pay for a 1 month subscription in novice or pro. Assuming that this freelancer receive no projects during this cycle, will V3 have a feature to give that freelancer a month free in that same subscription level?
Great question,

Based on the new v3 subscription management system, a 'customer' (not buyer or seller anymore) will be able to subscribe to the plan of choice, ie: Ultra Mega Plan that provides bidding, posting service auctions, portfolio resources, etc. Now I believe the question to be asked would be "Will we offer any customer that doesn't bring business to themselves (or firm) on my marketplace a free month?" -- Usually this question is No, but if you are running a slower based marketplace with not too many auctions available, but many bidders bidding on them (resulting in this scenerio above), you obviously need to consider this, absolutely!

With that in mind, it's very possible. You could easily set the new renewal subscription date' for any member to +1 month (or days, etc). If they originally subscribed to the Ultra Plan for $19.95/mo to place bids and earn revenue, with maybe few days (2) left to the original subscription expiry he paid for, as long as that subscription plan doesn't auto-renew via cron system (changing it from active to inactive then automatically creating that user a new invoice to be paid behind the scenes via automated invoicing system), the admin could set a new renewal date which would extend that subscription for that user to the next date admin sets. This right here will tell the cron automation system to pass this one user because his renew date is not today, but next month (or the extension date you will be willing to give that user).

So in terms of your question above, yes it is very possible to do such a thing, the only thing they will see is a new 'renew date' on their "current" subscription plan from their subscription plan management area, without actually paying for a new month. This would also allow them to still upgrade their subscription plan as desired, so this will not affect anything.

The only problem or issue I could see with this process, is that in order for you to extend a users subscription plan (a paid one), you must catch it before it renews automatically from the cron system. When subscription fees renew, there are a few variables ILance v3 will do:

1. Check who's expiring for today (specifically, who is expiring within this minute). The cron job system hits your marketplace once every minute to ensure auctions, subscriptions, and some other elements of your marketplace update in realtime.

2. For users that have expired subscriptions, find out their account status (default pay methods .. ie: paying by authenticated CC, paying via online account, paying via Paypal/2checkout, etc. The paypal/2checkout simply send users an HTML email with proper urls to make subscription payments from their emails (with paypal links/buttons), where auto-CC will in fact charge that users CC for a renewed subscription plan. If they do not have paypal, 2checkout or CC, the cron will learn if that user has any funds in their online account, if so, will debit the amount to cover their subscription fee for the next renewal (if they haven't already flagged their OWN account for account cancellation) as in this "cancellation process" they will not be billed onward from their existing plan that they requested to cancel. If that user has no funds, no CC, no paypal support, etc, the automated invoice system will simply create that user a Scheduled Transaction (pending) to be paid, and will provide that user 15 days (or your invoice due date period 15 days or so) to make payment.

So, ALL this and much more is actually taken into consideration for subscription renewals, this is why I mention if you are planning to do something like you say above, be sure to do it before that user's subscription is renewed automatically from the cron job tasks that will run to keep your marketplace fully automated and in sync with it's customers.

Let me know how you feel about this.

Peter

[Mike]

Thanks for the response. From what you explain it is quite easy to you and will be up to the provider on my end to request this kind of service before subscription ends..

Thanks