Got it all set up (you can view it
here) and just wanted to pop back in and make a few notes in case anyone else stumbles across this post with the same question.
The set up was a little weird for my use case, but just set up a new topic for each option/payment level (kinda wish there was a "duplicate post" option, but since I'm the only one using it like this, it'll never happen.) Copy the topic ID from the URL of each topic and paste them into the box as shown (on the Paid Content tab.) I wasn't 100% sure if it wanted a comma- or space-delineated list when I first set it up. I went with spaces the first time because I thought that commas might break it if it wasn't expecting them, but that definitely broke some stuff. I put a comma after each ID and that worked like a charm.
Another note is that there's soft limit of 9 topic IDs. I set my "campaign" up with the expectation of using 10 and wasn't able to use the last one. I didn't grab a screenshot, but adding a 10th ID
technically worked, though caused it to squish all the purchase options together and made it completely unreadable. The purchase buttons were still there, but you couldn't tell what you were purchasing. I removed everything and started adding the IDs back in one by one and found adding 9 worked just fine, but adding the 10th is what broke it.
I ended up just creating a list with all the payment levels with links in the form of
Which creates a link that looks like
$1
And is a direct link to purchasing via the $1 topic (just set "topic_id=" in the URL to the topic ID for the post you want to link to.)
It's not as pretty that way, but it gets the job done.
The one thing I couldn't do, which I was really hoping I could, was to set the main topic which conglomerates all of the other topics (the one I linked to above) to $0, but that definitely broke things. I'm not surprised and was totally expecting it, but still. I mean, why would sales software expect you to
sell something for $0?
In my case, setting up a $0 post had a number of purposes. First of all, it conglomerated all of the different payment levels. Second of all, it forces people to specifically choose $0 over another amount (rather than just skipping through all of the payment stuff altogether and going straight for the free stuff.) Third, it would hide the free content until people ACTIVELY engaged with the post (so I would know that people actually want what I'm making instead of just grabbing it because it's free.) And fourth, notify me when people are accessing the free content so that I have an idea of how many people are using it (and how many are using it for free instead of paying for it.)
I ended up having to set the conglomeration post to $0.01 instead of $0, which doesn't make for a great presentation. And I had to bury the free content at the bottom of the post to get people to read through it, which in my mind gives off a "you said it was free, but you're trying to keep us from getting the free thing" vibe, rather than having it front and center like I'd intended. I'm not sure if there's any way that the software could be modified to just bypass paypal and reveal the premium content when people make a "$0 purchase", or if there's any real demand for that, but it's an option I'd certainly love to have.
I am happy that, after staying up until 3am juggling a bunch of practically identical posts, that I have my first paying customer. I'm not sure WHICH post they purchased it through (the individual post for that payment level, or the conglomeration post), but everything appears to be working correctly.
Thanks Paul, and everyone that's worked to make this a possibility.
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