The brief
ApproveMe’s primary product was WP E-Signature, a private WordPress
plugin for legally-binding electronic signatures. The Contracts Library —
the work covered here — was a sister site at approveme.com/contracts,
designed to do two things at once: be a real, sellable product on its own
(a curated library of 100+ contract templates across many industries),
and serve as the top of the funnel for the parent plugin. People discover
the library, take their first contract free, get nurtured into the
WP E-Signature ecosystem.
The model worked. The AppSumo partnership drove substantial traffic during campaign windows; the library moved contracts both individually and via heavily-discounted all-access passes; and the funnel-feedback loop between the two products kept compounding over time.
What I built
The architecture is the story. A few pieces stand out:
A first-free paywall, in the theme. Every visitor gets one contract
free; after that, they’re a paying customer or a member. The state
machine lives in the theme — a current_download_pass field on the user
tracks tier (basic / ultimate / lifetime), and a checkout-prep filter
routes the right EDD discount based on tier and traffic source. No
third-party gating plugin; the whole logic is debuggable PHP we own.
A bidirectional cross-site upsell bridge. The piece I’m most proud
of. The main site (approveme.com) and the contracts site
(approveme.com/contracts) run as separate WordPress installs. On
WP E-Signature checkout, an upsell modal offers a Contract Library
lifetime pass; clicking it fires a server-to-server API call from one
site to the other, which creates a zero-dollar EDD payment record on
the contracts side, auto-registers the user, and flips their pass to
lifetime. A welcome email kicks off the library nurture sequence.
Refunds and cancellations on either side trigger the reverse webhook
to revoke access on the other. API-key-authenticated, idempotent, and
resilient to either side being temporarily unreachable.
Post → EDD download auto-sync. Adding a new contract is one
editorial operation: publish a contract post with its ACF fields
filled in, and a post_updated hook creates or updates the matching
EDD download with the right pricing and category tagging. Editorial
team adds a contract; the storefront catalog updates itself.
AppSumo partner routing. AppSumo was a meaningful conversion channel. Their traffic gets detected by coupon code on first hit, sets a 30-day cookie, and routes the visitor through AppSumo-specific banners, offers, and creative inside the membership portal — all cookie-driven, no DB lookups per request. The team could run AppSumo campaigns without code changes.
A custom membership portal. A logged-in profile area built into the theme: purchased contracts, member tier, subscription status, and context-aware upsells (different creative for AppSumo customers vs. organic members). Backed by a mix of EDD All Access for pass management and Active Campaign list membership as a cross-product gating signal.
What’s notable about it now
The funnel-feedback loop between the contracts library and the main WP E-Signature product wasn’t an afterthought — it was the architecture choice that made the whole bet pay off. A visitor who showed up for a free NDA template could be a WP E-Signature customer six months later, and a WP E-Signature customer was already a contract-library member from the moment they bought the plugin. Two products, one customer base, and the plumbing to move people between them at the right moment without anyone having to manually intervene.