Welcome to Mavenseed!

Your platform for selling digital content and growing an audience for your business. Whether you're migrating from another platform or building your new business with Mavenseed from the ground up, we're here to help and glad to have you.

What can I do with Mavenseed?

Mavenseed is here to help you sell your digital content, build an audience, and to share your skills through teaching. Whether you have content created already, or are looking to sell digital content online, Mavenseed can help you to:

How much does it cost?

If you're not selling digital content yet, Mavenseed is currently free to use for your personal website or landing page.

If you're selling something a transaction fee is collected for each purchase, or recurring membership payment. Mavenseed's fee is 8% for free accounts, and 4.5% for Plus accounts. Keep in mind the fee's negotiated with your merchant (Stripe) account are separate from ours.

Ready to grow your business on Mavenseed?

Learn more about Mavenseed's origins and the team behind it

There are no setup fees for connecting your Stripe account. The only fees are the normal transaction and processing fees that Stripe charges for payments, which are an industry standard of 2.9% + $0.30. That rate can typically be negotiated with Stripe once your account has sufficient transaction history.

Stripe Connect

Each site is connected to its own Stripe account. This is useful in cases where you may run multiple sites, and prefer each to have its own Stripe account for accounting purposes. All charges and subscriptions are created within your Stripe account.

To connect your account:

1. From within the main application, head to your account/sites

2. Locate the site, then click on "Gateways" using the action dropdown

3. Click on "Connect with Stripe"

After connecting your Stripe account you will be able to process credit card transactions.

To disconnect your account:

1. Go to your sites Settings menu

2. Click on Gateways

3. Click on "Disconnect Stripe"

What is Stripe?

Stripe is a simple and powerful way to accept payments online. Stripe has no setup fees, no monthly fees, and no hidden costs. Millions of businesses—ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies—rely on Stripe’s software tools to accept payments securely and expand globally.

How does Stripe work with Mavenseed?

Is Stripe secure? Will I be PCI-compliant?

Yes! Stripe meets and exceeds the most stringent industry standards for security. Stripe is also audited by a PCI-certified auditor, and is certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1. (This is the highest level of certification available.)

What payment types are supported?

• U.S. businesses can accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB, Discover, Diners Club, and China UnionPay.

• Australian, Canadian, European, Hong Kong, and Singaporean businesses can accept Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.

• Japanese businesses can accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB, Discover, and Diners Club.

You can also accept gift and prepaid cards of the above types. You can use Stripe to charge cards of these types from customers anywhere in the world.

Stripe also supports Apple Pay, Google Pay, 3D Secure, SOFORT, iDEAL, Giropay, Bancontact, SEPA direct debit, and China’s Alipay.

What is Stripe’s pricing?

The following examples show basic pricing for U.S. users only:

Credit card processing

• 2.9% + 30 cents (USD) per transaction

• $15 (USD) for disputes

ACH payments

• 0.80% per transaction, with a $5 (USD) cap

When do I get paid?

Once you’ve made your first charges with Stripe, your first payout will be initiated, and should post within seven days. Thereafter, all US-based merchants will receive payouts on a rolling two-day schedule.

How can I issue a refund?

What is a dispute? How do I handle them?

What will my customers see on their credit card statement?

When to contact Stripe versus when to contact Mavenseed

Contact Mavenseed about these types of questions:

Order-related:

• How much tax is charged on my Mavenseed products?

• Can I accept additional payment methods through my Mavenseed store?

Customer-related:

• How do I get in touch with my customer?

Country and currency support:

• What countries are supported?

• What currencies are supported?

• What international payment methods are supported?

Contact Stripe about these types of questions:

Transaction-related:

• Questions regarding a specific charge, refund, payout, or dispute

• Account-related issues, including account lockouts

• Using the Stripe Dashboard’s functionality and settings

How to contact Stripe

Contact our support team through your Stripe Dashboard. Stripe can respond quickest if you use the following guidelines when contacting us.

Log into Stripe first

Include formatted IDs

To help us solve your issue as quickly as possible, we recommend formatting your inquiry with pertinent IDs, such as:

• Customer Name: Johnny Example

• Any other relevant Stripe IDs:

  • Charges begin ch_*** or py_***

  • Transfers begin tr_***, etc.

If your inquiry is regarding a specific card, please include as much information about the card as possible, such as the expiration date, last 4 digits of the card number, and the card brand. However, please never share or send a full card number or CVC.

Add a hosted email address

After submitting your inquiry via the form, Stripe will send a confirmation email that they’ve received your message. So that Mavenseed and Stripe can work together to solve your issue, we’d recommend responding to the confirmation email, to add your support@mavenseed.com address into the email thread.

General Stripe support links

To add a custom domain to your site, first find the the site in your sites list, then select "Domains" from the dropdown list.

Next, specify the apex domain that you wish to add. An apex domain is a top level domain like yoursite.com, or myawesomeshades.com. Mavenseed doesn't support custom subdomains like docs.mysite.com. That would be like, inception.

After you specify the domain to add, and after saving, you should see some instructions for what DNS records to add. If you don't see the instructions, try refreshing the page again.

Here's an example of what you'll see after adding your custom domain.

Preparing your data to import

We'll add in the subscription plan ID within the .csv to attach customers to a subscription plans, and create order records for the customers being imported. You can find the Subscription Plan ID by visiting Subscriptions > Plans in your admin.

1. Download the template above 👆

Once your data is ready, be sure to save this as a .csv on your computer.

Uploading to Mavenseed

1. Click on the Sites Tab,

2. On the site you're looking to import data into, click the three dot menu item and choose Data Imports,

3. Click on the "New Data Import" green button in the top-right corner,

4. Select your import type: Subscriptions

5. Click the "Select CSV File" and choose your saved .csv file from above with your customer information.

6. Click "Begin Import"

This will take you to the Data Import log. The status of your most recent upload will show Pending. To clear this typically you may have to refresh the page to see that your .csv was properly imported.

To confirm, head over to your Customers menu to search review your customer list.

The Final Step

During the import process Mavenseed does not notify your members. Instead we've kept this control in your hands to craft that custom experience.

The one thing your newly imported members will have to do is reset/update their password to claim their account. They may do so by visiting the forgot password link on your Mavenseed site.

⭐️e.g. yourdomain.mavenseed.com/customers/password/new

Next steps

Preparing your data to import

You'll need to know your customer's email, first and last name to use the data importer. .

1. Download the template above 👆

2. Fill in your customers first name, last name and their email.

3. Next you'll want to fill in what product(s) you'd like attached to these customers. To do so you'll need to grab the slug, or the last part of the product URL and paste that into either the course or download column.

I would grab the last bit of the URL to paste into my .csv underneath the column courses. In this example, it would be the "how-to-drone-with-a-drone"

Once your data is ready, be sure to save this as a .csv on your computer.

Uploading to Mavenseed

1. Click on the Sites Tab,

2. On the site you're looking to import data into, click the three dot menu item and choose Data Imports,

3. Click on the "New Data Import" green button in the top-right corner,

4. Leave the import type blank

5. Click the "Select CSV File" and choose your saved .csv file from above with your customer information.

6. Click "Begin Import"

This will take you to the Data Import log. The status of your most recent upload will show Pending. To clear this typically you may have to refresh the page to see that your .csv was properly imported.

To confirm, head over to your Customers menu to search review your customer list.

The Final Step

During the import process Mavenseed does not notify your members. Instead we've kept this control in your hands to craft that custom experience.

The one thing your newly imported members will have to do is reset/update their password to claim their account. They may do so by visiting the forgot password link on your Mavenseed site.

⭐️e.g. yourdomain.mavenseed.com/customers/password/new

As a Maven of Mavenseed you may choose to create multiple sites, all managed conveniently from a single login.

• View: Will take you to the public logged in view of your site

• Gateways: Connect Stripe Merchant account to your site to begin processing revenue

• Site Admin: Takes you to the Admin section of your site where you can build content, adjust site settings and visuals.

• Edit Site: Update your sites name and subdomain

• Archive: Archiving your site will remove it from public access.

How to delete your site from Mavenseed

1. Click Edit on the site you'd like to delete from Mavenseed,

2. On the right-hand side there is a Delete Site button, with a reminder you could also archive your site instead,

3. When ready, click the Delete Site button to begin the dismantling process.

4. We'll display the first prompt to ensure this is what you'd like to do.

5. Finally we'll display a 2nd confirmation where you must type in the name of the site to delete it from Mavenseed. This cannot be reversed, we'll not have a backup of your site or customers if you go past this point.

6. Your site will be queued for removal. Still keeping in mind at this point we cannot intervene. It's just a big job that we have to spin up to make it happen. 😎 Depending on the size of your site, it could 10 minutes or more to fully remove the data from MS.

Videos can be imported and attached to individual lessons. The video must be hosted on Wistia, but it doesn't have to be hosted by Mavenseed. As with other types of imports, this starts with a CSV file with the following column data:

Importing customers to your Mavenseed site is relatively simple, with a couple guidelines to follow.

While you're able to import customers without orders in your CSV upload, Customer information is required to import orders and subscription plans.

Depending on if you're looking to just import customers, customers with orders or customers with subscriptions we have the guides below to do so

• Importing Customers with Subscriptions.

Steps to import Customer Data

Preparing your data to import

Similar to importing customers with no orders, we'll add in the product slugs within the .csv to attach those products, and create order records for the customers being imported.

1. Download the template above 👆

2. Fill in your customers first name, last name and their email.

3. Next you'll want to fill in what product(s) you'd like attached to these customers. To do so you'll need to grab the slug, or the last part of the product URL and paste that into either the course or download column.

I would grab the last bit of the URL to paste into my .csv underneath the column courses. In this example, it would be the "how-to-drone-with-a-drone"

Once your data is ready, be sure to save this as a .csv on your computer.

Uploading to Mavenseed

1. Click on the Sites Tab,

2. On the site you're looking to import data into, click the three dot menu item and choose Data Imports,

3. Click on the "New Data Import" green button in the top-right corner,

4. Select your import type: Orders,

5. Click the "Select CSV File" and choose your saved .csv file from above with your customer information.

6. Click "Begin Import"

This will take you to the Data Import log. The status of your most recent upload will show Pending. To clear this typically you may have to refresh the page to see that your .csv was properly imported.

To confirm, head over to your Customers menu to search review your customer list.

The Final Step

During the import process Mavenseed does not notify your members. Instead we've kept this control in your hands to craft that custom experience.

The one thing your newly imported members will have to do is reset/update their password to claim their account. They may do so by visiting the forgot password link on your Mavenseed site.

⭐️e.g. yourdomain.mavenseed.com/customers/password/new

You may access your Mavenseed account settings at any time through your Avatar dropdown menu on the upper-right hand side of the site.

Your Mavenseed site has (3) policies that are automatically created when you create your site. They won't be publicly visible until you complete them, and move the status to "published".

These policies are displayed to customers when registering, subscribing, or placing a digital order, and can be viewed individually on their respective pages. They serve as the underlying foundation for your site providing support for GDPR.

From a 10K foot view, they work like this:

When a user consents to your terms of service, privacy policy, and/or email-marketing policy, we record that as a record into the database along with the customers IP address, the copy of the policy at the time it was created, and the actual checkbox from the form.

Having all of this data provides you with full compliancy against the GDPR.

Customers can control these consents within the Privacy Center in their customer account.

Email Marketing Policy

https://yoursite.mavenseed.com/policies/email-marketing

This policy determines whether or not the user should be added to your Mailchimp list and eligible to receive marketing emails. When the user un-checks the box, they are removed from your list.

Privacy Policy

https://yoursite.mavenseed.com/policies/privacy-policy

This policy typically has information like what you're doing with the customers information.

Terms of Service

https://yoursite.mavenseed.com/policies/terms-of-service

This policy should contain what customers can or can't do on your site.

When a customer views the policy that they consented to, we display that record to the customer along with when they gave that consent.

How to edit policies

Policies are specific to each site you have here on Mavenseed, and can be unique. To edit and publish policies:

1. While logged in, using the avatar drop-down in the upper right corner and choose account,

2. Click on the Sites tab,

3. On the site you'd like to edit, choose the three circle drop-down menu and click Policies.

Eventually all of your data will be able to exported, but there's a lot of it! So we've been adding different types slowly but surely.

Currently you can export Customers, Orders, and Subscriptions.

1. Click on the Sites Tab,

2. On the site you're looking to export the data for, click the three dot menu item and choose Data Exports,

3. Click on the "New Data Export" green button in the top-right corner,

4. Choose type of data that you want to export

5. Optionally, choose a date range.

6. Click "Begin Export"

Importing a course can be done in three different parts.

1. Import Courses

2. Import Chapters

3. Import Lessons

Import Courses

Let's start with importing the basics of a course Start with a CSV file that contains the following column names.

1. Click on the Sites Tab,

2. On the site you're looking to import data into, click the three dot menu item and choose Data Imports,

3. Click on the "New Data Import" green button in the top-right corner,

4. Choose "Courses" as the import type

5. Click the "Select CSV File" and choose your saved .csv file from above with your customer information.

6. Click "Begin Import"

Import Chapters

Next, we'll need to import the chapters for the courses. Here's what your CSV file should look like before importing.

1. Click on the Sites Tab,

2. On the site you're looking to import data into, click the three dot menu item and choose Data Imports,

3. Click on the "New Data Import" green button in the top-right corner,

4. Choose "Chapters" as the import type

5. Click the "Select CSV File" and choose your saved .csv file from above with your customer information.

6. Click "Begin Import"

Import Lessons

Finally, we'll need to import the lessons that are part of the chapters, inside of the course. This one is a little more in depth due to the nature of a lesson.

Sometimes it takes a team! If you'd like to invite authors or additional staff, you can invite them via their email through the Users account tab.

Access to your site is determined by something called a role. When you invite someone to your site, you can give them a role of either staff, or author.

The invited member will receive an email with your logo, and button to claim their invitation. An e.g. email is used below for our CG Cookie project.

Clicking the Claim Invitation button will bring the invitee to a Create an Account page. Once their account is created they will be added to your site, and listed as a user on the invite page.

An Unclaimed status will be show if the invited user has not claimed their invite. Clicking the link icon will also enable you to copy/paste the invite link directly in a chat communication or email with the invitee.

Any previously imported courses can have images applied with an import. A single CSV file containing the original id of the content, along with the image url is all it takes.

From the Subscription tab of your Mavenseed account you may upgrade to a paid plan or modify an existing subscription.

The pricing options are free or Plus.

Free

$0/mo + 8% transaction fee

• 1 site

• Unlimited courses

• Unlimited downloads

• Unlimited posts

• Unlimted Users

• Memberships

• Landing Pages

• Custom Domains

• Product Bundles

• Sales Tax Support

• Progress tracking

• Reports

• 3rd party integrations

• 8% transaction fee

Pro $39/month or $790/year

This plan includes all of the free plan features. It will increase the download limit to 500mb, and the video limit to 300. It also reduces the transaction feels from 8% to 4.5%.

Cancelling

You can cancel your subscription at any time within your account under the subscription tab. When you cancel your subscription, your subscription will still remain active until the end of your payment period.

During this time you can reactivate your subscription with a single click, should you decide to stay (which you should!).

If the end of your payment period approaches and your subscription is still canceled, we will delete it. If you wish to resubscribe after this, you will need to create a new subscription.

Resubscribing

If you have canceled your account and are beyond the end of your payment period, you will likely no longer have a subscription that exists. To resubscribe, log in and visit the Subscription tab, then select a plan to resubscribe.

Sometimes it's necessary to add an author to a post, but without actually giving them full access to the admin portions of your site accessible by the site owner, and staff members.

To help with this, you can invite a user and give them a role of Author. After adding them to your site, you can add them as an author to a post. Once added they will be able to access this under /authors/posts.

2. After they accept the invite, create or edit a post, and add them as an author.

3. They should see the post under authors/posts, and will have access to edit the title, excerpt, and image for the post.

Your dashboard is unique to you as someone managing a site, and holds widgets that display different types of information.

Adding Widgets

Add a widget by clicking the "Add Widget" button. A panel will open up and allows you to select between a few different types of widgets with different information.

Each widget can have a unique title and date range. We currently provide a few pre-set date rangers, although this may change in the future to allow custom date ranges.

• This Week - The current week beginning on Monday

• This Month - The current month

• Last Month - The last month

• This Year - The current year

Email Subscribers

Revenue

The Revenue widget is an at a glance view of your recent revenue.

Subscriptions

This widget shows both pending and active subscriptions created within the selected date range.

Recent Activity

This is a powerful widget allowing you to drill down and display any type of activity on your site. You can select different types of events to display in the widget, and you can have as many Activity widgets on your dashboard as you want.

With this widget you can select an Author, and any customer submitted records for any content that the author is added on, will display. For example, if you select Exercise Submissions with a specific author, then it will only display submissions to exercises if that user is marked as an author on that specific course.

Clicking on a single event will bring you to the Event view ande will mark that Event read. This will only mark it read for you as a user.

Clicking on All Events will bring up your Latest Activity feed.

Additional Settings

Your dashboard widgets can be moved around by simply dragging them around the dashboard. Additionally, you can adjust the layout between two or three columns.

How to create a new Blog Post

Click on Content then Posts in the left-hand side Menu, and then the green New Post on the right side of the page.

• Title: What is the title of your Blog post? Keep in mind what people may search to find this topic. Make it relevant and compelling. Avoid click-bait activities!

• Excerpt: This is your elevator pitch. Keep it brief. This text is displayed next to the image thumbnail on your site.

Click Continue to create your post, and begin adding in additional information.

• Status: Draft, Published or Scheduled. As the logged in admin on the account you can preview a draft,

• Post Content: Craft efficient, compelling text in the body of the post.

• Select Authors: The author dropdown list will list out all of the invited collaborators to the site. This will publicly display who was the author of the content on the course's page.

• Post Image: This is your attention grabbing feature image in the right hand side,

Edit Published At Date

You can now adjust the published date on a blog post. Posts are also now filtered by published at date which you may adjust.

Quotes, or testimonials sprinkled throughout your Mavenseed site can help establish trust and reputation with your potential customers.

To create a new quote head over to Content > Posts > Quotes while logged in to your Mavenseed admin account.

Click on the New Quote button

Within each quote, you'll have the ability to add the quote itself, the person's name, and their avatar or image to represent them.

The right-hand side will serve as a preview of what the quote will look like on your site.

🌟 For the best results, upload an image that is of a Square Ratio. 1:1

Once complete, click Create Quote.

How to display the quote on your Mavenseed site

After you've created a few quotes, let's head over to the Page Builder and drop in the quotes leaf.

Plugin subscriptions are complete separate from your main subscription to Mavenseed, and are offered through the Maven Market on select plugins. Each of Premium plugins will have their own price, and are charged as separate subscriptions based on the number of sites that you would like to activate the plugin on.

You can have multiple plugin subscriptions each with their own recurring payment date. These can be managed from the "Addons" tab within your account.

For each plugin subscription, you can update the plan or cancel it completely. Your plugin subscription will remain active through the end of the plugin subscription billing period.

Pages are "static" meaning they don't change as the content of your site does. Pages are typically used as Team Pages, Contact Us, About you, and Landing Pages.

To Create a Page

1. Logged in as a Maven, view your Site Admin

2. Click on Content then Pages on the left-hand side, and then click the New Page green button on the right-hand side,

• Title: Enter in a captivating title to your page. This will also be used for your page's URL. You can change this by modifying the slug directly below.

• Excerpt: Text Snippet used when the page is shared/linked to from social.

• Page Image (right side): The image used when the page is shared/linked to from social. Note this is not used on the actual page itself.

• Page Options:

  • Set as home page: You can set this page as your site's home page. Typically good if you're looking for a little more control over what your landing page looks like.

  • Membership Required: If you'd like to have your page only viewable by those with a valid subscription to your site.

Change Page Header Layout

Scrolling down will reveal page layout settings specific to the page you're editing. These are great adjustments for landing pages or home page layouts.

Hide page title: Choose whether or not to display the title on the page

Setting up your first course

Courses are like the fruit on your tree. Self contained symptoms of hard work and growth of your tree here at Mavenseed. 😎

Courses contain Chapters, Chapters contain Lessons, Exercises, and Quizzes. A Chapter is required to add a Lesson, Exercise or Quiz to a course.

Creating a course is a powerful feature of Mavenseed. You have a lot of flexibility on how you choose to set up your course; from the content it contains, if you're selling it as a single product, bundling it or including it within your subscription.

To get started, head over to your site and click on Content and then Courses on the left hand menu, and then New Course

• Title: Enter in your descriptive title

• Description: If you're just getting started, it's okay to not get your final description at this point. Enter a quick blurb and click the Create & Continue.

Congrats your course is now created. It's now time to fill it with Content, adjust the details of your course, and how you'd like Mavenseed to present your course on the site.

Are you curious how your videos are performing?

How to view your Course Video Stats

1. Login with your Mavenseed account and head over to your Site Admin,

2. Clicking on Content then Courses in the left hand menu will display all of your created Courses,

3. Click on the drop-down menu on the course you'd like to review statistics on and choose Stats.

This will bring up an array of data regarding the performance of the video content on your course.

This includes:

• Video Views

• Load Count

• Play Count

• Play Rate

• Hours Watched

Updating stats

To update the stats, click the sync button at the bottom of the list.

Once you have your course created, you may begin adding content to your course. Each piece of content lives within a Chapter, or grouping.

Editing a Chapter within a Course

The first chapter of any new course has been automatically created for you. Though you'll likely want to rename this when you're building your content on Mavenseed.

1. Click the three dot menu icon in the upper right hand corner of the content block.

2. Click Edit Chapter. This will bring in a side panel allowing you to edit the name and description of the chapter.

3. After updating your Chapter, or grouping of content. Click Update Chapter.

Sorting Content Within a Chapter

Once you've created your chapter, you're able to rearrange the order of the content within a chapter. To do so, Left Click and Drag on the three dot grip menu to the left of the lesson title to the spot you'd prefer.

Adding lessons to your course.

Depending on the type of course you're building, you are able to add multiple types of lessons to the chapters within your course.

4. Notes for Customers

Adding a Text Lesson to your Course

1. Click the three-dot menu icon in the upper right hand corner of the content block. Choose Add Lesson from the drop-down menu. This will slide out the Create Lesson panel on the right hand side of your browser.

• Lesson Title: Be descriptive and compelling

• Content, or Description of the Lesson: Here is where you can go into detail about what you're covering in this lesson. Keep in mind Search Engines and what keywords may be searched to find this lesson.

• Media: Here you are able to keep this as a text lesson. We'll cover how to upload or embed a video below.

• Enable Free access: If you'd like to give a snippet away for free to give your audience a taste of what you will be covering. Users will not have to pay or login to view this piece of content if this is checked.

• Sign in Required: Check this if you'd like to have visitors to be signed into your site to access it.

Uploading a video to stream on your course

1. Click the three dot menu icon in the upper right hand corner of the content block. Choose Add Lesson from the drop-down menu. This will slide out the Create Lesson panel on the right hand side of your browser.

2. Similar to adding a text message add a Title and Description to the Video Lesson.

3. Choose Video as the media type. This will reveal the video uploader. Drag and drop your video file, or click Upload Video to browse to the location of the video on your computer.

4. After the video has begun encoding, click the Update Lesson button.

Creating a video lesson with an embedded video from Youtube or Vimeo

• Click the three-dot menu icon in the upper right hand corner of the content block. Choose Add Lesson from the drop-down menu. This will slide out the Create Lesson panel on the right hand side of your browser.

• Similar to adding a text message add a Title and Description to the Video Lesson.

• Choose Embed as the media type. This will reveal the video URL field. Paste in your video URL into this field,

• Click Create & Add Lesson to finish.

Creating notes on a video lesson

Customers have the option to create, edit, and delete notes on uploaded videos. This is private and only viewable to the individual customer.

Currently, only uploaded videos have the option to save a time stamp on a location in the video, along with a clickable link to play from that point in the video that was stamped.

Customers of your site are able to submit a submission to exercises they have access to. While they may only submit one submission per exercise, they have the ability to edit the submission up until it is graded.

How Customers Submit Exercise Submissions to your Exercise.

Once logged in and with access, viewing the exercise will display a exercise submission button (Folder with + on it).

Adding A Submission

Clicking the exercise submission button (folder with + on it) will bring you to the page to submit your exercise submission.

Depending on the Exercise type, students will be able to submit the required information to you.

• Title: The name of the Exercise submission,

• Description: An overview of what you're submitting,

• Submission Image: Actual image of the Exercise

When ready click the Add Submission button.

Students Access to their submissions

Students are able to view their collection of Exercise submissions by visiting their Account > Exercise Submissions tab.

Clicking View will take them to the Submission.

By default all of your products may be purchased individually.

Enabling Free Access to your course.

If you choose to Enable free access, you'll be given an additional option to require the viewer to be logged in to access it.

On the product, if the Sign in Required is checked, they will be presented with a button to create a free account.

When choosing to sell a product

you have a few options to consider: price, single purchase or bundled, and whether or not to include in the MavenFeed.

1. Price: Choose the price you'd like to sell this piece of content individually. If you're not sure what to price it out as, email us at support@mavenseed.com and we'll do our best to assist.

2. Product Type:

   1. Single Purchase: Meaning you're selling this product as an individual product

   2. Bundle Purchase: You can create bundles of digital content. Choosing Bundle will reveal the bundle menu where you can attach other products created within your site.

Content Accessible only with a Subscription?

Check this box if you're not interested in selling your product individually through your Mavenseed site. Instead of an Add to Cart, logged out, not subscribed members will see a Subscribe button.

For members which are subscribed, they will see a View button when logged in and active.

Add product to a subscription plan

After you've decided to sell the product, added a price and saved it. You'll have the ability to also assign the product to an existing subscription plan directly from the sell tab on the product.

Show in the Mavenfeed?

An incredible powerful tool available to you is to create Exercises to have your customers test their knowledge learned from your content. Exercises are a great way to promote community engagement.

To add an Exercise to your Course

1. Click the three dot menu icon in the upper right hand corner of the content block. Choose Add Exercise from the drop-down menu. This will slide out the Create Exercise panel on the right hand side of your browser.

• Exercise Title: Be descriptive and compelling

• Content, or Description of the Exercise: Here is where you can go into detail about what you'd like to see your customers accomplish.

There are five different types of Exercises that you can create. These determine what type of submission the customer will submit.

Image

Examples of this would be if you're running a photography class and would like your students to submit their homework as an image to the site. Or if you're running a 3D Modeling class and would like to have your students submit their still frame renders.

When submitting to an exercise, the customer will be able to upload an image (5MB limit) with the submission.

File

This allows customers to submit files with their submission. The uploader supports multiple, large files at a single time.

Text

Text Submissions enable you to have students submit things such as code, or narrative for a writing class.

Video

In this type of Exercise, customers will be able to supply a link to any public video on YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia.

Sketchfab

With Sketchfab based exercise submissions, customers can submit a link to any public Sketchfab model.

To review and Grade Exercises

As your students submit their exercise submissions, those will show up in your Activity tab. Additionally, if you are listed as an author on the course, then you will be send an in-app notification when a student submits their assignment.

The customer will receive a notification of their grade, and at this point a private comment system will be opened between the submission, and the customer (any author can respond in the comments).

Adding a Quiz to a Chapter

1. Click the three dot menu icon in the upper right hand corner of the content block. Choose Add Quiz from the drop-down menu. This will slide out the Create Quiz panel on the right hand side of your browser.

• Quiz Title: Be descriptive and compelling

• Content, or Description of the Quiz: Description of the quiz you're asking your students to take.

• Click the Add Question button to add in your first question to your quiz.

Click Add Answer to begin adding the multiple choices you'd like to present your students with. Be sure to check the Correct Answer.

Once you've added all of your questions, click Create & Add Quiz

Adjusting your Course Details directly affects how your course is viewed publicly on your site. Take a moment to write efficiently and compelling text to communicate what value your customers will gain if they were to Subscribe or Purchase this piece of digital content from you.

• Title: This is the Title of your Course displayed on the site.

• Excerpt: Think of this as your elevator pitch. A brief paragraph summarizing what your course is all about. The excerpt is typically displayed alongside the course thumbnail

• Author: Select the author you'd like displayed and attached to this piece of content.

• Feature Image: This is your feature image that best represents the Course.

When creating a Course it will begin in Draft, meaning it's not publicly visible on the site. Under settings you have the ability to schedule the release date and time of the course in the future, enable questions and control if you'd prefer paid or free access to the course.

• Publish Late: Choose a specific date in the future to have a course published,

• Enable Questions for this course: If checked customers will be able to ask questions on this particular course that will populate within your community forum.

Sometimes it's better to leave a trail of breadcrumbs or notes to help your brain out in the future. If there is something you'd like to leave for your future self, or for a collaborator leave a note!

The community topics are populated by questions asked on your enabled content across your site, and from topics created directly on the community.

For community topics created by questions on content. There will be a link on the question connecting where the topic was created.

Organizing

Community topics can be categorized into both categories, and sub categories. These will be displayed on the topic itself, and link to a filtered view of topics with that specific category or sub category.

These filters are displayed on the index page of the community forum as well.

Subscribing to Topics

It's helpful to understand how and when you or the customer will be notified of new activity.

For Topics

If you create topic in the community forum, then you are automatically subscribed to the thread to receive further notifications when new replies are left.

If the customer creates the topic, then they will be automatically subscribed to the thread only if they have that setting enabled within their Preferences under /dashboard/preferences.

For Replies

When you or the customer replies to a topic, then the thread will become "unviewed" to everyone who has viewed it. When we say "unviewed" that is to say, the question is no longer grayed out on the front page of the community forum.

The thread will also display the number of new replies since you last viewed the thread.

You and customers both can un-subscribe to topics.

Both you and customers will receive notifications of new activity within the app, respective of your Notification Settings.

Pinning Topics

Questions can be pinned, which will stick to the top of the community forum when viewing the index. Pinned questions are denoted by an accent triangle which uses the primary color of your sites design.

Site admins and staff can pin any questions by visiting the question, and using the dropdown toggle to pin or un-pin.

Restricting Access

You can set up your community forum such that it can only be access by a paying subscriber. This setting can be found under admin/settings, at the very bottom of the screen.

Once you toggle this box, only those with a subscription will be allowed to access individual forum posts. They will still be able to view the index listing at the forum main page, but will be shown a prompt to upgrade to a paying subscription, which will link to your sites /subscribe page.

You also have the option of restricting to a specific plan. Meaning, only those with the selected plan have access to the community forum. This can be setup by editing any subscription plan, and selecting "Community Forums" from the list of Supported Features.

Depending on the type of course you're offering. Having the ability to attach files to it will be important. E.g. Including student starter sheets, or work files to get started.

To add new files

Drag and drop the files onto the site, or click the browse link to locate them on your local computer.

You'll see a file uploader displayed. Once the file is successfully uploaded it will appear in your course files list.

How they are displayed

As someone who manages the site, course files won't be visible to you, but they are visible to the customer when viewing a course, or lesson within the course.

When the "Course Files" button is clicked, it slides open to reveal the list of files.

When they are displayed

First and foremost, access to the files hinge on the course. If the course is free, then the files are free to download.

If the course is not free, and it's a digital purchase only, we check their record of purchases. If it's a subscription only thing, we check to see if the subscription plan that's attached to their subscription, has file downloads enabled. If it's a team we check the team access.

In all cases above, the customer won't be able to download the file unless they have a subscription (or if the course is free).

They will see the files, but when they attempt to download it, the following prompt will be shown:

When discoursing with customers in the community forum, sometimes a reply or a response isn't actually needed. In this case you can buzz a customer reply.

Only site admins and staff can buzz a customer question or response. This adds a layer of value because it's a separate and direct response from the site crew!

• Buzzes are displayed at the bottom of both questions and replies

• A site admin or staff can only buzz once

• Limited to 16 characters in length

• Cannot be edited, just deleted

You can buzz by clicking the happy face + icon.

And buzzing is simple! Just click, type, and press enter. The buzz will instantly be displayed.

To remove a buzz, simply click and delete.

It's easier to collaborate when you know who to talk if you have a question about an edit, or to be aware of the edit in the first place!

While viewing a course click on the Revisions tab to see when the course was last updated.

• Title: Describe your download, don't worry you can change this at any time.

• Modify the Slug: If you click the here link, this will allow you to edit the slug, or URL of the download. Note you must enter a title first.

• Description: Quick description of the download, which you may also change at any time. (Note with the new Page Builder this is likely to become the Excerpt used for SEO)

• Add Author: Here you can assign an author to this piece of content, this will display their name and avatar publicly on the download.

• Feature Image: This is your feature image that best represents the Course.

Setting up your first Download

Think of downloads as the thing your customer purchases from your store and then takes it home. A download could be a PDF ebook, script, application, or .zip of nearly anything.

From your site.mavenseed.com/admin page, click Content then Downloads menu item on the left hand side. If the Menu is not displayed due to a smaller screen size, click the three bar menu item to expand it.

Click on the New Download green button on the upper right corner to get started.

• Title: Describe your download, don't worry you can change this at any time.

• Modify the Slug: If you click the here link, this will allow you to edit the slug, or URL of the download. Note you must enter a title first.

• Description: Quick description of the download, which you may also change at any time. (Note with the new Page Builder this is likely to become the Excerpt used for SEO)

Click the Create & Continue to move onto more details of your download.

Next steps, to adjust the details, price, and selling options of your download. The max size for Downloads is 10 MB. The types of files that are accepted are: jpg, jpeg, png, gif, pdf, csv, zip, and srt.

To add a new file to your Download simply navigate to the Files tab and then Drag & Drop the file from your local storage or click browse to select the file.

Once the file has been uploaded it'll appear alongside any other attached files in a list.

Removing a file is as simple as clicking the trash icon on the right side.

By default all of your products can be purchased individually. Additionally you may create a subscription offering. Enabling customers to subscribe to your site at a recurring period to retain access to your content.

Creating a Free Download

To offer your download available for free, check the "Enable free access" check box. Note to remove free access click the red "Delete attached Product" button to return your download to it's default state.

1. Price: Choose the price you'd like to sell this piece of content individually. If you're not sure what to price it out as, email us at support@mavenseed.com and we'll do our best to assist.

2. Product Type:

   1. Single Purchase: Meaning you're selling this product as an individual product

   2. Bundle Purchase: You can create bundles of digital content. Choosing Bundle will reveal the bundle menu where you can attach other products created within your site.

Content Accessible only with a Subscription?

Check this box if you're not interested in selling your product individually through your Mavenseed site. Instead of an Add to Cart, logged out, not subscribed members will see a Subscribe button.

For members which are subscribed, they will see a View button when logged in and active.

Add product to a subscription plan

After you've decided to sell the product, added a price and saved it. You'll have the ability to also assign the product to an existing subscription plan directly from the sell tab on the product.

We designed the Live Stream feature of Mavenseed to be your perfect Youtube Companion tool. Letting YouTube do what they do best, with Mavenseed filling in the gaps to grow your business.

Creating a New Live Stream

Login to your Mavenseed Site Admin, click on Content then Live Streams and then the New Live Stream button in the upper right hand corner.

1. Title: Descriptive title of your live stream,

2. Short description: text to be displayed underneath the thumbnail of your live stream,

3. Starts and Ends: This is displayed to your customers, does not actually start/stop your stream.

4. Click Schedule & Continue.

5. You'll be brought to the live stream page to fill in more details.

Understanding Live Stream Statuses

• Draft: By default all new Live Streams on Mavenseed are set to draft. Draft posts are not visible to the public allowing you time to edit your stream before Scheduling,

• Scheduled: This status will publish the Live Stream to your Mavenseed site. Enabling it to show up publicly and be searched. In this status members will be able to RSVP for the Live Stream.

• Live: This turns off the ability to RSVP, and displays a link to your YouTube Watch URL for your members to click on and visit. Note this does not email or notify your members, instead keeping that within your control with your MailChimp account.

• Archived: When the Live Stream is complete, grab the recorded version and upload it via the Media tab so members whom may have missed the stream may view it.

• Title: This is the Title of your Course displayed on the site.

• Slug: This is editable just below your title. It's the URL of your live stream.

• Excerpt: Think of this as your elevator pitch. A brief paragraph summarizing what your course is all about. The excerpt is typically displayed alongside the course thumbnail

• Start and Stop Time: While this does not affect the actual status of a live stream, it is there for informational purposes only to your members.

• Live Stream Image: This is your feature image that best represents what you'll be covering in your Live Stream

Offering paid or free access to your YouTube Live streams via Mavenseed is a great way to leverage your existing audiences while building a community around your brand.

On the Selling Options page you may choose to Enable Free Access to your Live Stream or adjust your selling options: price, single purchase or bundled, and whether or not to include in the MavenFeed.

2. Product Type:

   1. Single Purchase: Meaning you're selling this product as an individual product

   2. Bundle Purchase: You can create bundles of digital content. Choosing Bundle will reveal the bundle menu where you can attach other products created within your site.

Content Accessible only with a Subscription?

Check this box if you're not interested in selling your product individually through your Mavenseed site. Instead of an Add to Cart, logged out, not subscribed members will see a Subscribe button.

For members which are subscribed, they will see a View button when logged in and active.

Add product to a subscription plan

After you've decided to sell the product, added a price and saved it. You'll have the ability to also assign the product to an existing subscription plan directly from the sell tab on the product.

Show in the Mavenfeed?

With Mavenseed Live Streams, clearly see who has RSVP'd for your Live Event. With the ability to email them before and after the stream taking place with your MailChimp account.

The RSVP tab will display a list of members whom have said they'd like to be notified about your Live Stream. Members who purchase through the cart and subscribe form the Live Stream page will be auto RSVP'd.

When Mailchimp is integrated

Members who RSVP will receive two tags and automatically get added to your Mailchimp connected audience. This enables you to quickly segment this cohort within Mailchimp.

The two tags are:

1. stream-rsvp

2. stream-First10CharactersOfStreamSlug

Within the Media tab, you're able to update your Youtube Stream URL and upload your recorded live stream once it has ended.

How is Archived Media Displayed?

With the stream status in Archived, this will update your Live Stream Content page to display a video. This video can be uploaded here via the Media tab and displayed to those who could not make the live version of your stream.

As the amount of content you have on your site increases, you may find yourself needing to organize it. Categories are a great way to do so.

To create a new category for your site

1. While logged into your Maven account, click the Content then Categories link in the left-hand menu,

2. This will display a list of active categories on your site. To create a new one click the New Category button in the top right corner.

3. Enter in the title of your custom category, then click Create Category

To create a new sub-category to your site

1. While logged into your Maven account, click the Content then Sub Categories link in the left-hand menu,

2. This will display a list of active sub-categories on your site. To create a new one click the New Sub Category button in the top right corner.

3. Enter in the title of your custom Sub category,

4. In the drop-down below choose the Category you'd like your new Sub Category to be under,

5. Click Create Sub Category

To add content to a custom category

1. While editing the Course, or Download on your Maven site, navigate over to the Details tab of that content,

2. Within the details section, you'll see a Categories field available to type in your created global category. Note as you click in the field, available categories will appear.

Filtering content by a custom category

Each category creates a unique URL which can be linked to within posts, lessons and your site's main navigation.

To grab the link from your created category, While viewing your list of categories, click on the link within the title column.

This will open up a new tab within your browser filtering all content with that category assigned to it.

Category Groups

When your site grows large enough you might start to accumulate a large number of different categories. Since all content utilizes the same categories, you may not actually want some to be displayed. For example, when creating a Course, wouldn't it be handy to only display the categories you've deemed relevant to creating courses?

This is the sole function behind Category Groups; to control which categories are displayed when creating content.

You can assign a category to any category group when creating or editing the category.

If you've created a new category and assigned it to the Posts group, then only the categories that you assign to that group will be shown in the dropdown menu when creating a Post. This affects both content creators of the site, and customers alike.

To begin creating tags

1. Login with your Mavenseed account, and head over to the Site Admin,

2. Click on the Content and then Tags left-hand menu item and then the Green New Tag button in the upper right hand side.

3. Here you're able to create one tag a time that can be used across your Mavenseed site.

The search can be accessed by visiting your Mavenseed domain http://yourdomain.mavenseed.com/search

Where can you find templates?

On any piece of content the page builder is active on, you'll be able to utilized templates. Templates can be found by clicking on the three dot menu next to the page builder icon.

You have four options with Templates:

Save Template: After building your page, you can save the template stored in your account for safe keeping. Then, using the Apply Template feature, you can select any of those saved templates to apply to any page.

Export Template: Once you've built up your page using the page builder, you're able to export this layout into a template file, downloading it to your local computer.

Apply Template: Use this option to apply any saved or pre-made templates to the current page. When selecting this option, a modal will appear that displays two tabs; My Templates and Library.

My Templates will display any templates that you have saved. Library will display our offering of pre-made templates, designed to get you up and running faster than building a page with the page builder.

Each template is customizable!

Import Template: Import a template from a template file. After exporting out your template file, visit your new piece of content you've created on the site.

1. View the page to see the green buttons on the top right. Clicking the three dot menu, choose import template.

2. Keeping in mind this will completely replace existing content on the page you're importing your template to.

3. Click import.

Lastly you're able to Reset your template. In the case, if you've add a lot of content to your page via the page builder, and would like to reset it completely to start over, reset is your friend.

Be cautious as this does delete/remove the leafs and content you've added.

The Page Builder allows you to quickly build custom landing pages for your courses, downloads, pages, and live streams. To access the Page Builder on any of the supported pieces of content, click on the Build your Page button in the upper right corner when editing in admin.

This will take you to the Page Builder view of the content you're building on Mavenseed, with the admin bar displayed at the top of the page.

To open the page builder, click the green icon in the top-right portion of the screen.

Once the page builder opens, you can add any number of page leafs by dragging them from the panel, to your page.

• Button: Add a simple button to your page,

• Content Grid: Automatically pull in a collection grid of your content; live streams, courses, downloads & posts.

• Divider: Adds a clean line divider to help separate content,

• Embed: Paste in an iframe embed code from Itch.io or Sketchfab.

• Hero: A hero style widget with a title, subtitle and call to action.

• Images: Add a single or multiple images to your course description,

• Media & Text: Quickly add an image, or video with accompanying text to the left or right of it.

  • You can also use this leaf to create an Add-to-Cart experience. Choose your product from the leaf's drop-down, while making sure the URL is blank. Mavenseed will add the product to your customers cart when clicked.

• Modal: Adds a button to your page that will fire a modal overlay,

• Newsletter: Add a email field for visitors to sign up for your email newsletter. Mailchimp integration is required for this leaf to work.

• People: Display a list of people you've set up within your site's content section, great for team pages.

• Quotes: Display a list of testimonials on your page that you've set up within your site's content section,

• Text: A simple text editing widget,

• Video: Supports YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, Dailymotion and VK,

The media tab within your site admin is where you can upload, organize, and edit images or videos within your site.

In most cases you will upload images using the editor within posts, pages, and other content. But it's possible to upload images here that you can group into albums, which can be displayed as a leaf within the page builder.

Uploading Media

Simply drag and drop images into the main screen to upload them. They will immediately start processing and will be available for organizing or editing. Clicking on the image will allow you to edit the title and/or caption.

Creating Galleries

Within the Albums tab, you can create galleries made of images. Click the Add Gallery button, then give it a title and description. After creating the gallery you will be presented with a screen that will allow you to choose images from your gallery to populate the album with.

You can also drag and drop images onto this screen and they will be preselected once they are done processing.

Displaying Galleries

Use the page builder to display a gallery on your website. The images will be displayed in a lightbox when clicked.

1. Create a new page, then click the "Edit Landing Page" button

2. Click this button to open the page builder leaf panel.

3. Locate the Gallery page leaf in the panel, then drag it onto the screen.

4. Within the settings, choose the album that you just created. You also have a few additional options like how many columns to show, and how big the spacing should be in between the images.

Bundles are any combination of Courses, Downloads, and Live Streams.

How to create a bundle

First decide which type of bundle you'd like to create. In our case we're going to create a download bundle. Start by heading over to downloads in your site admin, and clicking the green New Download button on the top right.

2) On the Edit screen you're welcome to fill in additional information; images, categories and authors,

3)Click on the Sell Tab, Scrolling down to paid access and choose Bundle underneath Product type. This of this product you're creating as the wrapper or basket you're going to add your other products to.

4) Click the + Add Products button to choose which other products you'd like to include within your bundle.

5) Click Create Product.

When you're ready mark your bundle as public. 👍

Any customer that purchases the bundle will immediately have access to all products included. ed products would be if purchased separately.

Any updates to the product will also be made available to the customer.

You may sell Downloads, Courses, or Livestreams as a single purchase by choosing the Single Purchase option from the Sell tab of your product edit view.

Memberships enable you to exchange any amount of content for a regular payment from your customers. This is an effective way to offer a multitude of content for a lower initial cost, since the cost of access can be spread over time.

We have a complete section dedicated to the creation of subscription plans;

The Customers page of your admin view gives you quick access to all of your customers that've purchased content from you.

View a Customer

To view a single customer click View in the customer list, which will take you to a details screen for that specific customer.

From this detail screen you can see their personal details, recent orders, any subscriptions they may have, and access to their associated Stripe profile. You can also view any activity from the customer such as downloads or course completions.

New Customer

From time to time you may need to manually create a customer. To do this click New Customer at the top left. On the next screen enter their personal details and a password for the customer.

The customer may now login with the provided details.

Edit a Customer

To modify a customer click the three dots next to View to bring up the Actions dropdown and then choose Edit:

From here you may modify the customers name, email, or change their password.

Unlock a Customer

If a Customer exceeds more than 5 failed login attempts, their account will be locked. Admins have the ability to unlock an account. Click on the customer that needs to be unlocked, and then on the three dots next to edit.

Delete a Customer

You may remove a customer from the Actions dropdown in the index view by clicking Destroy or by pressing the Delete Customer button on the single customer view. Clicking either of these will present with you a confirmation prompt, preventing accidental deletions.

How much does it cost to sell something on Mavenseed?

If you're selling something on Mavenseed, a transaction fee is collected for each purchase, or recurring membership payment. Mavenseed's fee is 8% for free accounts, and 4.5% for Plus accounts. Keep in mind the fee's negotiated with your merchant (Stripe) account are separate from ours.

If you're not selling digital content yet, Mavenseed is currently free to use for your personal website or landing page.

Can I sell my content without a Stripe account?

At launch we are supporting credit card payments through your Connected Stripe account. This enables customers to purchase with any major credit card from most anywhere in the world.

If you don't yet have a Stripe account then you may create one during our signup and on-boarding flow.

If you don't have a Stripe account and are not able to get one then you will not be able to use Mavenseed at this time.

Does Mavenseed enable me to collect and remit Sales Tax?

Can I make free products?

You sure can! To make a product available at no cost to the customer simply toggle the Enable free access on your products Setting tab.

What about discounts and promotional coupons?

We recognize the power of timed discounted and special promotions for driving new traffic and sales to your Mavenseed store but we do not yet have support for these features.,

Depending on your business model you may be interested understanding how your customers are progressing through your course content.

To access a customers progress report log into your Mavenseed Site Admin and click on the Customers menu link on the left-hand side.

1. Click on the view menu to the far right under Actions. This will take you to the customer view.

2. Click on the Progress tab to see a list of courses the member has engaged with. At a quick glance you'll be able to see what course is being consumed, total progress and the ability to dive into further details by clicking View.

When an item is marked as complete it will display a Completed and a green check-mark next to the title. To return to the full list re-click the Progress Tab.

Here you can view a list of payments from your customers. Future functionality is being built for this section.

Strong Customer Authentication is an additional layer of security that was introduced in Europe in 2019. This currently only affects businesses based in Europe, and while this does not affect US based businesses, this could change in the future.

This is the biggest rewrite of our payments infrastructure to date. To accommodate the new requirements, a number of key changes were made to the workflows for purchasing a digital product, and for subscribing to your site.

TLDR;

What does this look like?

When a customer attempts to purchase an item from your site, that customers bank may require additional authentication in order to process the payment. This could look similar to the below which we borrowed from Stripes documentation (Stripe is the main payment processor, we'll get into Braintree later).

Order Changes

We've kept the original page url's in tact so as to not cause too much of a disruption for your customers. In the old workflow for purchasing a product:

1. Customer adds item to cart

2. They are redirected to the cart page to review the cart

3. Upon clicking "continue" they are redirected to the checkout page to create an account and pay for the product(s).

4. Upon successful payment, they are redirected to the success page which shows their receipt, and the links to their products(s).

The new approach is very similar, with a few key changes.

1. Customer adds item to cart

2. They are redirected to the cart page to review cart

At this point, where the customer would be able to review the cart previously, they are now prompted to create an account while retaining the original cart functionality.

3. Upon clicking "continue" they are redirected to the checkout page.

Previously the customer would create their account and payment at once, but since the account was created in step one, all the customer has to do now is provide payment.

Behind the scenes, on the last step, we created a pending order for the customer. The order is pending because the customer has not paid for the order yet. For US based businesses, the customer provides their card number, the payment is processed, and they are redirected to the success page (we'll get to that).

IF the customers bank requires additional authentication, then they will be shown a message similar to the one at the beginning of these docs. After confirming payment, they are redirected to the success page.

At this point, since the payments are recorded behind the scenes when we're notified by the payment processor, the customer may see this message:

In most cases, once they click "View Order History" the payment will likely have already arrived and the customer will have access to their product(s).

If the customer pays using PayPal, the payment is immediately recorded, so there will be no "Payment Processing" screen shown.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Subscription Changes

Subscriptions are treated in much the same way as the updates to orders, and like orders, we've kept the original page urls' in tact so as to reduce disruption to your business. Like the new order checkout flow, customers are prompted to first create an account before proceeding to pay for the subscription. But when it comes to paying for the subscription, there are a couple of key differences, as you'll discover below.

In the old workflow for subscribing:

1. Customer views the subscribe page and choose a plan

2. They are redirected to the payment page where they are shown a single form for creating an account and paying for the subscription

3. Upon successful payment, they are redirected to the welcome page

The new approach is very similar, with a few key changes.

1. Customer views the subscribe page and choose a plan

2. They are redirected and prompted to first create an account.

After clicking "continue to payment" they are prompted for payment. This new page sits at /subscribe/checkout.

For subscriptions there's no wait for processing because subscriptions typically start immediately. For US based businesses nothing really changes here.

For EU based businesses selling to EU based customers, if the customers bank requires additional authentication, then they are redirected to a payment page and are prompted to provide additional verification.

At this point the subscription will remain in an incomplete status while waiting for payment verification. This is the only time that a subscription will have a status of "incomplete".

If the customer exits out of this screen and returns to the site later they are shown the following banner so long as they are logged in:

Clicking "Yes please!" will take them to the payment verification screen, at which point the popup for confirming the transaction from their bank will automatically appear.

When the customer confirms the payment, the payment is recorded in the background so they may briefly see the above banner again before refreshing the page. If that's the case then they are shown a message that the payment has been completed successfully.

In most cases the payment verifications arrive instantaneously.

What does it mean to have a "pending" subscription?

This means that a customer created an account for a subscription, but didn't proceed and bailed out of the process before making a payment.

What does it mean to have an "incomplete" subscription?

This means that a customers recurring subscription payment requires additional authentication from customers bank.

Update Stripe SCA Settings

At any time a recurring subscription payment could require additional authentication with SCA. If the customer happens to log in they will be prompted to verify with our in app process. However, we strongly advise setting up the email reminder in your Stripe account to remind customers and use Stripes hosted paged to guide your customer through verifying. Mavenseed will always sync with this process.

You can set this up under https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/billing/automatic by toggling "Send a Stripe-hosted link for cardholders to authenticate when required."

Other Key Updates

When viewing your list of orders in admin, an order may show as pending if the payment hasn't arrived yet.

Similarly, when viewing your list of subscriptions within admin, you might see subscriptions that are incomplete or pending (see above).

FAQ

What happens if a payment isn't recorded?

One important think to take away from this is that due to the requirements of SCA, payments aren't actually recorded at the exact time of payment (Stripe only). Because any payment can require SCA, and because the customer needs to be notified, the payment can arrive a few minutes after the order was placed.

We're notified by the payment processor when the payment succeeds, and we immediately record the payment for the order. This happens behind the scenes, so there may be a brief moment where your customer does not have access to the product.

However in most cases the payment arrives instantaneously.

What happens if the customer doesn't pay for the order or subscription and abandons it?

We put a cookie in your customers browser that keeps a reference to the pending order or subscription. If the customer returns to your site, they are shown a banner that asks them if they want to continue with the order or subscription, or not.

If they decide to not continue with the order or subscription, then the pending order or pending subscription is removed. If the customer opts in to proceeding to payment, they are redirected to the payment screen.

If the customer is logged out, they are shown the same notice so long as they have not cleared their cookies.

In the future we will implement ways to notify your customers of their abandoned carts and subscriptions.

In your site admin you may occasionally see orders that don't have an associated payment, although this should rarely happen. If this is the case then you will see a notice when viewing the order that the payment is pending.

The Orders page of your admin view gives you quick access to all of the orders your customers have purchased from you.

View an Order

To view a single order click View in the order list, which will take you to a details screen for that specific order.

From this detail screen you can see the specific details, such as transaction information, what the customer purchased, the associated customer or guest email, and access to the Receipt.

Edit an Order

To modify a Order click the three dots next to View to bring up the Actions dropdown and then choose Edit:

From here you may modify the associated customer or change the guest email on the order.

Delete an Order

You may remove an order from the Actions dropdown in the index view by clicking Destroy or by pressing the Delete Order button on the single order view. Clicking either of these will present with you a confirmation prompt, preventing accidental deletions.

Refunding Orders

Orders can be refunded by viewing the order in admin, and clicking the blue "refund" button at the top right.

Once presented with the form you can choose the amount to refund, add any notes, and additionally revoke access for any of the items within the order.

Once an order item access is revoked the customer will no longer have access to this product, and a label will appear as such after you've processed the refund.

How to create a manual order for a customer

Start by visiting your Mavenseed site admin, click on Orders and then click the green Create Manual Order button in the upper right hand corner.

This will bring up the New Order form. Before proceeding make sure you know which customer, product and price the transaction is for.

1. Add Customer: Here you can search for the customer you'd like to process the manual order for.

2. Add Items:

   1. The Item Title: This can be exactly the name of the product or something that best describes the product,

   2. item Amount: If you're giving it away, it's okay to leave blank. If not put in the amount of the product you've sold it for,

   3. Product: Choose the product you're delivering to your customer,

3. You may add multiple items per order,

4. Add Payment:

   1. Sub Total and Total are to be filled out manually for greater customization of your transaction and your customers records.

5. Choose whether you're simply logging the transaction, or if you'd like to send a Customer Receipt via email.

   1. If you send an email receipt, this will automatically send to your customer from your email address set up in your site settings.

Viewing Your active subscribers

Clicking on Content then Subscriptions on the left-hand side admin menu will bring you to your Subscriptions home page. Here customers whom are subscribed to your plans will be displayed.

Viewing your Subscription Plans

Subscription plans enable you to offer a variety of offerings to your community. With Subscription plans you can include all of your content or just some of it to just some of your plans.

Clicking on Subscriptions on the left-hand side admin menu will bring you to your Subscriptions home page. Click on the Plans tab to see a list of your created subscription plans.

Clicking View on the subscription plan will take you to a list of all of the subscribers to the subscription plan.

Mavenseed integrates with two different eCommerce vendors; Stripe, and PayPal (via Braintree currently). Each vendor is very different in how they support subscriptions, but we've worked to bridge the gaps where we can, with regards to varying feature sets.

The Process

Select Plan

Your customer visits yoursite.mavenseed.com/subscribe and is presented with any that you have created, and who's status is set to active.

Create Account

When your customer selects a plan, the page is reloaded, but this time with a form to create an account.

After your customer submits the form, a couple of different things happen:

A customer is created in your site, and on Stripe. Why?

• Stripe is the default payment provider

• PayPal is an optional PRO plugin

• At this point in the process we don't know how the customer will pay

• a subscription is created with a status of pending

A subscription is created in your site with a status of Pending.

The subscription is only created on your site, not on Stripe. The actual subscription creation on Stripe (or PayPal) happens with the following screen (prompting for payment).

Pay for Subscription

After creating an account, the customer is presented with the payment screen. From here they can select PayPal (if you have purchased this PRO plugin), and/or supply a coupon code for the subscription.

If your customer doesn't complete this step, then the subscription will show with a status of pending within your site.

Click the drop-down menu on the right hand side of the subscription row you'd like to edit.

While you're restricted on some things you may edit on an active Subscription plan, you're able to adjust the following;

• Plan Name: This is the public facing plan name you're offering to your site,

• Supported Gateways: How would you like to support your customers paying for your subscription.

• Amount: Cost of the subscription per billing period,

• Recurring Setup: Determine how often the customer should be charged for the plan.

• Stripe Plan ID: This is the unique identifier for the matching resource in Stripe. It's automatically filled in after the plan was created. Proceed with caution. For plans to properly renew, this needs to match within Stripe.

• Braintree Plan ID: This is the unique identifier for the matching plan in Braintree. Due to limitations with Braintree, this unique identifier must be filled in manually.

Support features of this plan:

Here you can give access to certain features of your site. For example, you could have a "Basic" plan, and "Pro" plan, where the "Pro" plan gives access to file downloads, video downloads, exercise submissions, and live streams.‌

File Downloads - These are files that you upload to a course, often times containing original source code.‌

Video Downloads - In the video player, customer can download the HD version of the video via the share button. You can limit who has access to this.‌

Exercise Submissions - These are a type of a lesson that you can add to a course, where a user has to upload their submission to the exercise for it to be graded.‌

Live Streams - Limit who has access to live stream, for example, make live streams only available to users on a "Pro" plan.‌

The supported features are not hidden for those who cannot access them, but rather they are shown, and offer a call to action for the customer to upgrade. This is what's shown when attempting to add a submission to an exercise that the customers plan doesn't give them access to.

Adjusting which products are included.

By default a subscription plan will not include any products or content. Using the drop-down menu choose which products you'd like to be included within this specific plan.

If you wish for all of your content to be able to be accessed by the subscription, toggle the corresponding option. This overrides the Supported Products option above by granting access to all of your content with the specific subscription.

Team Support (Optional)

Here you can turn this plan into a "team" plan by specifying the number of invites that each subscriber can add to their team. Added team members will share the membership.

How to delete a subscription Plan

If you have active subscribers on a plan, it's not recommended you remove this subscription plan. Instead, update the name to something you recognize it is no longer active on the site.

From the Subscriptions Admin Menu, click on the Plans tab to see the list of created plans. Choose the drop-down menu to the right of the plan you'd like to delete.

• Choose Destroy, this will give one last final prompt to confirm this is something you'd like to do.

• Note, things which are destroyed are not recoverable.

Offering Subscriptions on your site is a great way to grow recurring revenue, while delivering consistent value to your supporters.

To get started, we'll first need to set up a plan(s) to allow your customers to choose from.

Plan Setup

Click on the Subscriptions link within your Site's Admin. This will list all of your subscribers to your Maven site.

• Click on the next tab over Plans to view your existing plans.

• Click the New Subscription Plan button in the top-right corner,

• Plan Name: This is the public facing plan name you're offering to your site,

• Description: The text description of what a subscriber would get by subscribing to this plan. This space has a styling editor for general formatting of your text.

• Supported Gateways: How would you like to support your customers paying for your subscription.

• Amount: Cost of the subscription per billing period,

• Plan active: (Displayed after initial creation) When checked the plan will be offered to people on your site. When not checked, active members of that plan will remain on it, but it will not accept any new signups.

Recurring Setup

• Interval: This is the frequency your customer will be billed. Here you can set up Daily, Monthly or Yearly plans,

• Interval Count: Is how often you want to bill them based on the above frequency. E.g. If you choose monthly, but you want to bill them every three months your Interval Count would be 3.

Trial Period Days

Enter in the number of days you'd like for your free trial. Keep this at zero to not offer a free trial on the plan.

Add Features

Here you can give access to certain features of your site. For example, you could have a "Basic" plan, and "Pro" plan, where the "Pro" plan gives access to file downloads, video downloads, exercise submissions, and live streams.

File Downloads - These are files that you upload to a course, often times containing original source code.

Video Downloads - In the video player, customer can download the HD version of the video via the share button. You can limit who has access to this.

Exercise Submissions - These are a type of a lesson that you can add to a course, where a user has to upload their submission to the exercise for it to be graded.

Live Streams - Limit who has access to live stream, for example, make live streams only available to users on a "Pro" plan.

The supported features are not hidden for those who cannot access them, but rather they are shown, and offer a call to action for the customer to upgrade. This is what's shown when attempting to add a submission to an exercise that the customers plan doesn't give them access to.

Add Supported Products

This is where you add which products you'd like to be included within your subscription.

Once you add a product, a subscription CTA will be automatically added to that product encouraging members to subscribe to gain access to that piece of content.

Team Support

Adding Game Badges to subscriptions.

Plan active?

Checking this box will display this plan as a choice on your subscribe and upgrade sections throughout your site. If you'd like your plan to not be displayed as a choice, uncheck this box.

Note, if you don't have Plan Active checked. Any active subscribers will still retain access and renew properly. The plan itself will simply not be an option to choose from during upgrade or signup.

You're done, click Create Plan.

Offering team plans through your Mavenseed site

If you're offering subscriptions to your customers, you may be interested in enabling a group, school, and or team to join your site in an economical way. With Mavenseed, you're able to create custom team plans which give you direct control over pricing and the # of members within that team subscription.

First we'll need to define our team subscription plan

While logged into your Mavenseed admin account click on > ecommerce > Subscriptions > Subscription Plans > Create a new Subscription PlanThe default for this is empty. This means that the subscription plan will not provide support for Teams to the customer.

Only after updating this field with a number, will it activate the Team tab for the customer. If you put 10 as the value, then the customer will be able to invite 10 other people to share their subscription.

What your Team Subscriber owner sees.

When a team subscriber joins, the next step for them would be to create the actual team by visiting their Account > Team and filling in the Team Title + Description.

Once you've updated your team's information, the "Add Team Member" menu will appear below. Here is where the team lead may invite users to their account via email.

Once invited the team admin has the ability to copy the invite link and revoke the invite.

When a team member joins, they will share the access permissions from the team subscription plan subscribed to by the team owners. To see if they're part of a team, they would visit account > Subscription

In most cases your customers will cancel & manage their subscription through their account. In the scenario you're asked or need to edit & or cancel a customers subscription, this can be done through your Site Admin > Subscriptions

To cancel a customers subscription:

In the scenario you need to cancel a customers subscription, this can be done in a couple ways; through the Mavenseed web interface, or directly from Stripe.

Cancelling a members subscription through Mavenseed.

To reach the members subscription, click on eCommerce and then Subscriptions in your Site Admin menu. Under the ALL SUBSCRIPTIONS tab, search for the member. Once you see them click View.

In the upper right hand corner, click the three vertical dot menu to bring up the Cancel option. Clicking the Cancel menu will confirm your request one more time before processing. This will cancel the customers subscription to cancel at period end on Mavenseed and Stripe.

Deleting a Subscription

If you need to completely remove all records of the subscription being attached to your customer. This is when you'd Delete Subscription. Keep in mind this does not update Stripe, and it's recommended that you also remove the Subscription from the Customers Stripe account.

As a customer to Mavenseed (Maven) and or your customers themselves are able to change or cancel their subscription.

Let's go over how to change a subscription on Mavenseed.

Changing Subscriptions as a Maven

While logged into your Mavenseed admin account, choose Account from the drop-down menu underneath your Avatar dropdown. From there click on the Subscription tab.

On the right hand side you'll see an info block containing information regarding your subscription on Mavenseed. To change your subscription to a new plan, click the green (change) link.

Displayed by default will be the current plan you're subscribed to. To explore other plans click the Swap link to the right. This will bring up a window of available subscription options. Click on the desired new subscription.

This will update and display what the new pro-rated charge amount will be.

Let's say we have six products.

Subscription A (Basic) will have access to three of these products with Subscription B (Pro) to have access to all six of these products with a different price point.

Edit each of your subscriptions, scrolling down to the bottom of the form to add products or take them away from the subscription plan.

Other possible scenarios:

• Creating two subscriptions with the same product access, but with different billing periods; Yearly & Monthly

The tags are:

• free - this tag is added to anybody that creates a free account & checks the "Notify me of..."

• subscriber - this tag is applied to anybody that has ever been on a paid plan. (Or is this any plan?)

• subscriber-withplannamefirst10characters - this tag is applied when they subscribe to that specific plan,

• status-active - Member is actively paying for a subscription, and hasn't cancelled.

• status-canceled - Member has sent the cancellation event to the application, but still may have access until their account expires.

  • Note, if a member cancels the status tag will be updated within MailChimp.

By default the page at /subscribe will show your active subscription plans. From here your customers can choose the plan they want to sign up for, then proceed to subscribe.

You can override this default view by creating a page with a page slug of "subscribe". The page title can be whatever you wish, so long as the page slug is "subscribe".

1. Create a new page, and title it "Subscribe."

2. After creation, you can change the title, but leave the slug as "subscribe".

3. Click the "Build your Page" button.

4. Add the Subscription Plans page leaf

5. Configure plans to display

6. Eat a cookie!

Mavenseed will detect that you have a custom subscribe page, and will instead show the contents of your new page.

From here you can use the page builder to build the page.

To show subscription plans, use the Subscription Plans page leaf, and configure the subscription plans that you'd like to have displayed.

After a customer subscribes to any of your plans, they are redirected to a welcome page that shows a success message, and a link to view their subscription details.

This page can be replaced with a custom page, giving you the freedom to design with the page builder tool.

To create a custom welcome page:

1. Click on Content, then Pages

2. Add a new page with a title of Welcome Customer

That's it! You can change the title of the page, and so long as the slug (the part in the URL) of the page is "welcome-customer" then we'll display your custom page instead of the generic one.

Coupons are a great way to promote your content. Coupons can be set up to be used on orders, subscriptions and or both!

Creating a new Coupon

Coupons are available on all paid plans. To begin setting up your first coupon login to your account and head over to your site admin. Click coupons on the left-hand menu. Click the green New Coupon button to get started.

2) Choose the amount OR percentage you'd like to take off. You will have to choose one or the other though.

Mavenseed supports 100% off coupons for both orders and subscription. This happens in one of two ways:

• for percentage based coupons, a value of 100 is set into the Percent Off field

• for flat rate coupons, the Amount Off becomes lower than the product being purchased (only applicable to orders).

In the latter example, if you have a product for $50, but the customer has a $100 off coupon, then the checkout will be converted to a free checkout.

3) Enter your Coupon Code. By default we'll auto generate a coupon code for you. You're welcome to edit to something else. Keeping in mind coupon codes are case sensitive.

4 Additional Subscription Coupon Information (Optional) and only applies if you've set the coupon to support subscriptions.

5) Redemption Settings (Optional) Use these options to choose a date that the coupon must be used before, or a limit on how many times it can be used.

With Regional Pricing, you can setup a coupon to be restricted to use by a certain country. When the customer is checking out, we'll display a message to the customer, with the coupon code and a prompt to use it, if needed.

To help with calculating what type of discount you should assign to the coupon, follow this link.

Only users who are visiting from the supported countries will be able to claim the coupon.

7) Supported Products (optional)

Here you can specify what products are able to be claimed with the coupon. If you leave this field blank, the coupon will work with all products. If you add a product here, then only that product will be able to claim the coupon, and the coupon will not work with other products.

After you click Create Coupon, the coupon will be ready to use. If you'd like to make changes visit Coupons within site-admin, and choose edit to the right of the coupon.

Keeping track of coupon usage.

To view analytics of your coupon; number of times used, and if it was used more on subscriptions or orders click the View button under the Actions column while viewing the list of coupons.

Editing your Coupon

Create a gift card product and sell it to your customers!

When a customer purchases a gift card, the gift card recipient will be sent a one-time use coupon code. Getting this setup is super simple.

Create Gift Card

Gift Cards can be created under the eCommerce tab.

After creating the gift card, you can also add an image, which is shown on the product, and when the gift card product is shared on social media.

Sell Gift Card

After you create a gift card, it can be viewed on your site just like other pieces of content.

All Gift Cards - /gift-cards

Single Gift Card - /gift-cards/gift-card-name

At the checkout screen the customer will be prompted to enter the recipient name, email address, and an optional message.

When the customer purchases a gift card, a one-time use coupon will be generated and mailed to the recipient email. These can be viewed in the Coupons section, and are distinguished with a Gift Card label for easy reference.

We don't recommend deleting these auto generated coupons.

There's two different ways that you can provide a free subscription to your customers. The key difference between them is how customers access your content.

Option 1

We can consider the lack of a subscription record, a "free" subscription. For example, you can direct customers to register a free account. Your customer won't have a subscription, but they will have an account and will be able to view the content that you've set as free.

Option 2

This method is great if you want your users to sign up and have an actual subscription, complete with access, but you don't want them to have to pay.

1. Create a subscription coupon with 100 as the Percent Off.

2. Your customer will claim the coupon during checkout

The customer will have a subscription record with the expiration date set 100 years into the future.

Create Gift Subscription

To start, create a Gift Card like you normally would under the eCommerce tab.

To make this gift card a gift subscription, select the Subscription Plan that you would like to associate with this gift subscription. For example, if you would like to sell a gift card for a 30 day subscription, select any of your monthly plans. If you want to sell a yearly gift subscription, then select any of your yearly subscription plan offerings.

For the price, fill the amount that you'd like to sell the gift card for. In most cases you would just fill out the cost of the subscription plan, but there are some cases where you might want to charge more (or less). This is the price that the purchaser will pay for the gift card.

Once you've created the gift card you will see it together with the other gift cards on your site at yoursite.com/gift-cards.

Claiming Gift Subscriptions

Recipients of gift card subscription are sent an email immediately after a gift card purchase is made. The email is sent to the recipient email address that the purchaser filled out when purchasing the gift subscription.

Upon clicking the link they are brought to a page on your site that allows them to claim the gift subscription.

Depending on a variety of factors will determine what happens next. Mavenseed supports gift subscriptions for:

• new customers

• existing customers without a subscription

• existing customers with a subscription

• existing customers with a manually created, or recently claimed gift subscription

New Customers

If the recipient isn't a customer on your site, then they will see the following screen:

The subscription will be created with the plan that you attached to the gift card. The payment method of the subscription will be set as "gift" and the expiration will be set according to the plan interval. For example, if the plan was for "monthly" then the expiration will be set 30 days from the date the gift was claimed. If yearly, it will be set to 1 year from the date the gift was claimed.

Customers without a subscription

If the recipient already has an account on your site, but does not have a subscription, the app will recognize them with a personal greeting. This is the screen that they will see.

Clicking log in will take them to the log in screen, and upon successful login will redirect them back to the Claim Gift page, with a button for them to claim the gift subscription.

The subscription will be created with the plan that you attached to the gift card. The payment method of the subscription will be set as "gift" and the expiration will be set according to the plan interval. For example, if the plan was for "monthly" then the expiration will be set 30 days from the date the gift was claimed. If yearly, it will be set to 1 year from the date the gift was claimed.

Customers with a subscription

If the customer has an existing subscription, the system will respond in one of three different ways depending on the payment method.

Customers will be able to see this credit for themselves on their account page:

Gift or Manual - For customers that have an existing gift subscription, or if their subscription was created manually, then the date of the expiration is set depending on the interval of the attached plan. For example, if the Gift Subscription is still active, and a monthly subscription is gifted, then 30 days will be added to the end of the current expiration.

PayPal

For customers paying with PayPal, unfortunately we're limited by what we can due to limitations from PayPal. In this case, the customer is prompted to contact you via the default email set in your sites settings.

From here you have at least one option, by canceling their subscription in Braintree and creating a new one with the new expiration date.

Resending Gift Subscriptions

The person who purchased the gift subscription will be able to tell whether or not the subscription was claimed. They can also resend the email to the recipient, or they can copy the link provided if they want to send the link to them manually.

On May 25, 2018 the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) became effective and enforceable. This set of regulations grants rights to citizens within the European Union and is meant to strengthen and unify data protection. Mavenseed is fully committed to helping you achieve compliance, and as a platform we will apply these high privacy standards to everyone, even non-EU citizens. Here is what it means to you.

What's GDPR?

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) gives EU citizens full rights over their data and how it's used. Failure to comply can result in steep fines. Under the GDPR, your rights include:

• Right to be informed - Companies must be transparent in how they are using personal data and must inform users of this.

• Right of access - Users will have the right to know what personal data is held about them and how it is processed.

• Right of rectification - Where reasonably possible, users will be entitled to have personal data rectified/edited if they feel that it is inaccurate or incomplete.

• Right to erasure - This is also sometimes referred to as 'the right to be forgotten', Here, users have the right to have their personal data permanently deleted upon their request and they do not have to provide a reason for the request.

• Right to restrict processing - Users have the right to block processing of their personal data.

• Right to data portability - Where reasonably possible, users have the right to retain and reuse their personal data for their own purpose.

• Right to object - In certain circumstances, users are entitled to object to their personal data being used. This includes, if personal data is used for the purpose of direct marketing, scientific and historical research, or for the performance of a task in the public interest.

• Rights to object automation - Users have the right to not be subject to a decision based solely on profiling or automated processing.

What's Mavenseed doing for GDPR?

Policies & Consents

Privacy Center

Maveenseed users, and customers of Mavenseed sites, have access to an all new privacy center with tools to export data, and delete your account.