How can I do this?

Instead of months, how about issues - 12 issues a year

Say if you numbered each set of pictures (how many per set is up to you)
When someone signs up, they get set 1 given to them, then 2 ...
After one year (from say today), new sign ups start at set 13 (the first of the new year) and the previous 12 sets go into an archive - which you can do whatever with.

Thanks for replying.
Mhm I see what you are meaning but wouldn't I need to make the archive containing the previous issues available to the members? If I have a link saying archive, which I'm thinking of doing, which contains all the previous issues how would I stop new members who haven't paid for them from accessing them? I'd need to make them available for those who were members at the time of issue in case they were offline that month or wiped their harddrive or whatever.

Thanks again for your help. I like the issue thing.
Mike

users would be in a database, with sign up date etc

make the archive password protected - members only

After a year (you'd need that to build up the archive) you could also charge for the archive. depends how mean you are

Say a member signs up on the 10th of Janurary, they can see set 13 until 10th Feburary, (when the next set is released), and Jan's set is archived, if they wish to view the archives you could charge them for it (say $10 for 12 months - special save $2 if paid now ... instead of $12).

If you charged, say per month, and gave the archive to members only, someone could sign up in 2-3 years, pay for one month and view 2-3 years of archives not really needing to pay any more (depends how perverted they are I suppose).
You could just offer one year of archives to every member based on their sign up date.
Say they signed up on 10th Jan 2005, then they would be able to see back to 10th Jan 2004 - which really gives them two years for the price of one. (I should of been a car salesmen lol)
Doing it on months or numbered issues works pretty much the same way.

There are heaps of free sites out there, one spammed me just last night after I replied here, clever spam too. but it was a model site trying to suck you in to joining. It was all free so not sure how they got any money for it (maybe she just really loves showing off).

Hi I like your ideas. Thank you for taking the time help me with my problem! It's much appreaciated!

It got me thinking and I've came up with this but I don't know if it would work or not. I stick all back issues in the archive and each issue is password protected. I add the passwords of those that signed up that month/issue onwards to each one so it looks something like this.
i=issue and m=member & password which joined that particular issue onwards.

i1/m1
i2/m1m2
i3/m1m2m3
i4/m1m2m3m4

and so on. So member 3 that joined in issue 3 can look at issue 3 and 4 but not 1 and 2. Member 1 signed up at the beginning so can access them all. His password would be taken off i13 unless he renews his membership.

Also I could charge, as per your idea, a member for the back issue(s) he didn't see. Thus his password is added to the password list for that particular archive. e.g. i1/m1m2m7

The only thing is, depending on the amount of members, that might be a lot of manual work involved in there. Is there anyway to do all this automatically?

Also it would be annoying for a member to type in his password to get into the member's only area and then again to access back issues. Is there a way to log him into the corrisponding archives/issues automatically once he is already signed in? Something with cookies or something.

Sorry for all these questions but I'm new to this sort of thing. Always used free servers and simple sites in the past and never worked with complicated things such as these. My first paysite you see I mostly want to just make back the money spent on hosting the thing in the first place.

Thanks again
Mike

while your idea of the i2 ... could work, probably isn't the best idea, especially when used in a URL as it can be faked.

Maybe set up a permissions row in your database, so on signup they get a set of numbers.

database table something like:
name
password
datejoined
set_from
set_to
archive

when a member signs up, say on 10th Jan (but before the jan issue released), you would put in:
Joe, password, todaysdate, 12, 24, n

of course you'd do a check to see if the 13th issue (Jan) had been released yet, if it had been released then the numbers would be 13-25
This way everyone gets 12 issues no matter when joined, just some (if signed up the day before a release) could get a extra one. You could fix this by releasing them on the 1st of each month. This way you have the date and issue numbers to check by.
The archive could be a y or n (y = paid so allow, n = not paid - no looksie). If they paid then again you can use the signup date to regulate the time frame (how far back) they are allowed to view.

Ideally if your just trying to earn your costs back banner ads or google adsense might bea better option, especialy in the first year.

To change the topic a little, I've been looking about for a subscription service so I can accept credit cards and deal with passwords automatically and so on. Paypal doesn't look too good but I came across Ccbill. Hey it looked good the rates are acceptable, I can live with that. Then I read something about having to pay over $700 to Visa to be able to accept Visa cards!

Is this right? Do all of these companies charge this to accept Visas?

I don't think I'd be able to make enough to pay that back and even if I did I'd just scrape it. I've had the site up for a year or so now and we really want to have a members only part of it but it looks as though I can't afford it after all.

Mike

Most billing companies charge a fee, sometimes a flat rate, other times it's a percentage of each transaction or a base rate and percentage over so much.

Even if you start off with Paypal and move onto paid options later (if/when you can afford it).

You could always make the first year or two free to build up your member base then add the fee. Of course you will (should) give warning of this intention.

Sorry I realised that after I posted this which is why I started a new thread in the appropriate section. sorry.