How to sell coupoun code in magento? - magento

Question

How to sell a coupon code in magento.
The coupon code that can be gift to a friend, so that he can buy products with that code?

Answer 1

Log in to Magento Admin.
Click on Promotions –> Shopping Cart Price Rule.
On Right side click on Add new rule.
Fill in the fields be sure to give the rule a Name and Description and decide whether or not you are choosing ALL Customer groups or not.
In the General Information page in the coupon menu, select the Specific Coupon option.
Enter a code in the coupon code field (can be letters or numbers).
In the Uses Per Coupon field, specify the number of times a customer can use this coupon code if you would like to provide a limit. If not, leave blank.
In the Uses Per Customer field, specify the number of times a customer can use this promotion if you would like to provide a limit. If not, leave blank.
In the From/To Date menu, select a time frame for your coupon if you would like to provide one. If not, leave blank.

Answer 2

IDEA:
create coupon rule with auto generated coupons
create specific controller which will generate coupon and display it to customer
create downloadable product with link to our controller
NOTE
THIS IS MY FIRST INITIAL IDEA AND I'M NOT SURE IF IT IS PROPER SOLUTION.
I've never dealt with downloadable products before.
FIRST STEP CREATE COUPONS
When adding new rule to Shopping Cart Price Rules fill all required fields, remember to select appropriate customer groups (include NOT LOGGED IN if coupon should be available for guest customers).
Then, in Coupon select Specific Coupon, and select Use Auto Generation in checkbox below. Uses per Coupon set to 1. You can also set time limit if you want to.
Then save.
After saving new tab will appear on the left: Manage Coupon Codes.
There you can generate many coupon codes by setting qty (amount of coupons to generate), code length, code format (letters and digits, letters, only digits), code prefix and/or suffix, and if to include dash every x characters.
Remember code length applies only to generated part without dashes, prefix or suffix.
You don't need to generate anything yet, I'm just explaining some properties which I will refer to later on.
SECOND STEP PREPARE MODULE
Create path app/code/local/Example/Coupon, and two directories there etc and controllers.
In etc create config.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<modules>
<Example_Coupon>
<version>0.1</version>
</Example_Coupon>
</modules>
<global>
</global>
<frontend>
<routers>
<example_coupon>
<use>standard</use>
<args>
<module>Example_Coupon</module>
<frontName>mycoupon</frontName>
</args>
</example_coupon>
</routers>
</frontend>
</config>
Then IndexController.php in controllers:
<?php
class Example_Coupon_IndexController extends Mage_Core_Controller_Front_Action {
const RULE_ID = 4;
public function indexAction() {
$rule = Mage::getModel('salesrule/rule')->load(self::RULE_ID);
$generator = Mage::getModel('salesrule/coupon_massgenerator');
$generator->setFormat(Mage_SalesRule_Helper_Coupon::COUPON_FORMAT_ALPHANUMERIC);
$generator->setDash(false);
$generator->setLength(6);
$generator->setPrefix('EX');
$rule->setCouponCodeGenerator($generator);
$rule->setCouponType(Mage_SalesRule_Model_Rule::COUPON_TYPE_AUTO);
$coupon = $rule->acquireCoupon();
$code = $coupon->getCode();
$coupon->setType(Mage_SalesRule_Helper_Coupon::COUPON_TYPE_SPECIFIC_AUTOGENERATED)->save();
die($code);
}
}
Here actual coupon is being generated and saved (upon requesting our custom url). Note that here all properties of code are defined (described above). You should edit this to suit your needs.
You can access this by visiting http://www.yourstore.com/mycoupon/index
Finally you need to enable module in etc/app/modules
create Example_Coupon.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<modules>
<Example_Coupon>
<active>true</active>
<codePool>local</codePool>
</Example_Coupon>
</modules>
</config>
THIRD STEP ADD DOWNLOADABLE PRODUCT
I'm not going to cover all the details here, there is a good tutorial: https://www.hostknox.com/tutorials/magento/downloadable-products
What you finally need to do is to provide previously generated url as an downloadable link: http://www.yourstore.com/mycoupon/index
ISSUES
It works, but:
There is no validation whatsoever if customer have all rights to download this coupon or not. I'm not sure, maybe magento covers this or maybe not. There is an option to disable sharing in magento, so I would expect magento to hide this final url from customer.
You would probably need to expand my example module, because there should be downloadable file at the end - most likely some kind of PDF. Not simply echoing new generated coupon.
This file should be stored somewhere on disk, and served again upon request from same customer and same order.