SUBSCRIBE and get a FREE personal use copy of SmartDD LITE which you can use to securely deliver your ebooks. Just enter your name and email address into the sign up box on the top right of the home page.
My new Slide Up Ads plugin is now available on pre-order for just $10.
There are 100 copies available at this price. It was going to be 50, but after chatting with a friend I thought they might sell out a little too quickly.
What's this all about?
When I introduced a slide up ads script to this blog, I immediately saw an increase in the number of subscribers. The sign up rate jumped from 1 in 17 visitors to 1 in every 7.
It was actually a 249% increase, and that figure has never changed – I still get 1 in 7 visitors sign up.
I give away a script and a report. The report has my affiliate links in and I make money from it – in fact I made at least $150 last month directly as a result of that report alone, and that was just two sales of a product I'm an affiliate for. I haven't bothered to check for any other money I made from it, but there are continuity items in there too, so I'm earning from those as well.
So not only am I building a mailing list of subscribers, I'm also making money without doing anything other than I would do anyway – it really is passive income.
I'll just repeat what I said in my email yesterday as I think it really hammers home the situation:-
For every 10 new subscribers you've been picking up from visitors to your sites, then suddenly you can push that number up to 25 from the same amount of visitors just by using this plugin.
Considering the industry standard rate that a subscriber to your mailing list can mean up to a dollar a month in income, then you have to ask yourself just what are you losing by not using it?
The plugin is about 10 days from completion and will come with a nice selection of slide up graphics plus the ability to set the slide up delay and the number of times it's displayed.
Today I'm making available 100 copies on pre-order for just $10. When they're gone, I'll pull the plug until I officially release it (probably $27, maybe $37).
PLEASE remember to bookmark your personal download page after purchase, and PLEASE sign up to the mailing list on that page – it's a list for customers of that product only and we use it to let you know when we release upgrades. Your name and email address are pre-filled, all you have to do is click the button, check your email and click the link in there to confirm.
You can be one of the first 100 people to own it (and at only $10) by using the buy link below.
Update: Offer now closed.
-Frank Haywood
Filed under internet business, software, wordpress plugins by on Aug 31st, 2010. Comment. 
I want to talk today about how important it is to have a game plan.
What do I mean? Well having a game plan for one aspect of your business might run something like this:-
#1 – You create a new product.
#2 – You release it with 100% instant commissions using the 7 Dollar Script.
#3 – You send an email out to your subscribers letting them know it's on sale.
#4 – You tell your buyers that you're offering instant 100% commissions directly into their PayPal account and that here are some tools they can use to promote it – banners and the like – with their aff link built in. All they have to do is copy and paste the code.
#5 – You contact a few people who are likely Joint Venture partners and tell them it's 100% commission. Some promote and get all the cash, and you get another pile of buyers join your mailing list.
#6 – You tell these new buyers about your affiliate scheme etc. and they start promoting for you too. Some of these people will be succesful marketers and will have their own mailing lists.
#7 – Go to #1.
Okay? I'll testify that you can run a very successful business that way, that naturally grows over time.
Having a game plan allows you to make and take low-risk decisions. Low risk because you pretty much know what the outcome will be – long term you'll make a profit on your efforts and increase the size of your business.
I believe this is where most people fall over.
Most people try a little bit of this and a little bit of that – which is fine – I like to try different things out too – but they don't concentrate on their core business. The stuff that really works.
And that might be because they've never really found anything that works.
Or not given it enough of a chance to make it work.
I've found that you need to set yourself a few rules that you work with. I call them my #1 Rules, and I have plenty of them for all sorts of different situations.
I've found that as long as you concentrate on the #1 rules, any other lesser rules you might set yourself don't really matter that much or don't have a big enough impact on your business.
(This is a rule in itself, called the 80-20 rule. I do almost everything by the 80-20 rule and I think most successful business owners do too without realising it. I ask myself – "Do I need to do something about this, or just let it go?" – 80 times out of 100 it can just be let go.)
My #1 rule related to having a game plan is:-
"Every project must pay for itself as soon as possible."
So if I take new staff on, I want to see results in 2 weeks that at least pay for their keep for the month. There are no free rides, and nobody in my business is an expense.
You could probably adopt this yourself. Think about it.
You may believe that you can't afford to take anyone on full time. But if what they do for you brings in enough income to pay for their keep, and you end up with new products and a new long term income stream, then it was well worth hiring them wasn't it?
But let's say that you're not ready to make that commitment yet and you want to see how things go.
You still need a unique new product. The emphasis here is new and unique. I'm not saying you can't do what someone else has already done, I'm saying that PLR probably isn't going to cut it if you're looking for JV partners. (There's at least one exception to this and I'll talk about it another time.)
I've had many people approach me to promote products that I've quickly realised were PLR, and I take that as an insult because I'm quite capable of using PLR to create products myself thank you. I don't like being suckered into promoting products that may be quite widespread as it does my reputation no good whatsoever – that's my logic and I'm certain most other marketers feel exactly the same.
PLR is great. But it's of no use when dealing with JV partners unless you've taken the time to make extensive changes to it and it really is your product. (Most people can't be bothered and that's where they get it wrong.)
You need something that you know no-one else has.
And you need to be able to make genuine claims like "I created this myself" or "I paid $xxx to have this created for me."
(Believe me when I say this will make you feel a whole lot better when you come to promoting it.)
Tomorrow is your chance to have a totally unique WordPress theme created for you from scratch and to your specifications by one of my designers. They are all extremely talented, and I want to point out that it does take a (relatively) long time to put together a theme because there's a lot of work involved in doing it.
First there's the design itself (2-3 days), then converting to a WP theme (4-5 days), and finally the coding tweaks such as extra sidebars and additional page templates (2-3 days).
It's a big job. If you were able to do it for someone else, ask yourself how much would be a fair price for you to charge for the service.
If like most people you wanted someone else to do it and could then find the right person with the right level of design and PHP coding skills (it's very hard), then the designer would probably charge you a couple of thousand dollars at least, apply restrictions on what you can do with the finished product, and likely not supply the PSDs for you to edit.
My designers are brilliant graphically and their level of PHP coding ability is high (you've probably already seen their work), but charge a lot less than you might expect.
With a fair bit of legwork (it's not easy finding good people), I have an opportunity to take on a couple more designers, but as I said above, one of my rules is I need to make sure I have work for them and that they pay for their keep.
As long as I can pay their fees and get your job done as well as my own, then I consider myself to have made a profit from it.
From your perspective, as long as you have a game plan and can immediately make your money back on the work, it's well worth doing.
If you don't have a game plan or you don't have a clue on what to do then this isn't for you. Wait until you're truly ready.
Here's two game plans that I know work well from personal experience.
#1 – Get a theme made. Sell it to your mailing list. Immediately make 3 or 4 times your investment followed by ongoing sales through your affiliate scheme.
#2 – Get a theme made for a client. Charge your client 3 or 4 times your investment.
And if you don't have a mailing list or a client, then here's your chance to get a product made for you and get your business off the ground, just like I talked about above:-
#3 – Get a theme made that will appeal to pro-bloggers and the IM niche. Sell it for $10 with 100% commission using the 7 Dollar Script, find a few JV partners to kick start it and build a mailing list of buyers. Promote some other related product to your new list and make your money that way.
And that's how business is done. 
You make an investment, you follow your game plan and you make back your money and then some.
Watch out for more news tomorrow.
If you want to know more right now about having a game plan and how to approach your business, go watch the presentation on 30 Day Projects.
Update: A slight temperature and an overwhelming need to sleep scuppered my plans to launch this week. I'll get back to you with this shortly.
-Frank Haywood
Filed under Product Ideas, WordPress Themes, internet business by on Aug 23rd, 2010. 5 Comments.
A couple of weeks ago, I sent out an email explaining that it would shortly be possible to have your own premium WordPress theme designed and coded from scratch.
That time is nearly here.
Early next week we should be in the position of being able to completely create a WP theme for you.
You'll get everything that I would get from my designers. All the WP code and graphics, the Photoshop PSDs, and the whole thing completely designed to your specifications.
If you want us to, we'll also include the same multiple sidebars you've already seen in the two Multiple Streams Themes I've released myself, with plenty of opportunities for placing ads.
The entire process for designing and conversion to a theme takes about 2-3 weeks.
Once completed, the entire theme is YOURS and YOU totally own the copyright.
You can then sell individual copies of it, or give it away as a freebie in return for backlinks, or use it for blog flipping, or maybe if you have a client of your own who needs a site building, you can get us to do all the design work for you.
On that last one, I've just picked up a local web design and SEO client, and convinced him that a site built around a custom built WordPress theme is the way to go for his steel centreless grinding business. His theme is now built, and when he gets back from vacation on Monday we'll install WordPress, activate the theme and load up his content.
After that we'll do all the on page SEO and then start a backlinking campaign. In a few weeks he'll dominate most of the steel grinding terms in the search engines.
(I'll ask him if I can share the name of his business with you and give you a talk through what we've done.)
Most of the income from that project will be from the SEO. Relatively speaking, the design and conversion to a theme was a small (but VITAL) part of the work involved. And if you're into this, any of these design costs can just be passed directly onto your client.
Now I've only told you about that to give you an example of what you can do with your own theme. You don't have to do that, but it might be something you want to do, or something you're already into.
Like I said, as you'll own the copyright you can do anything you like with YOUR theme.
So if you are into blog flipping, you could have a unique but generic theme built that you can use to tweak into a series of sites you can flip – especially as you have all the PSDs.
Cool huh?
Although I'd just like to make it clear that this offer will be for a theme only, ie the design and coding to make the theme work to WP 3.x standards. We won't be doing huge amounts of coding to make a product that is a theme and then something more on top of that.
So you will get multiple sidebar regions if you want them, and you will get Custom Menu support. But we won't code in an autoresponder or do any special scripting that would otherwise be a separate plugin.
Okay? 
Now for the bad news.
We can only realistically do one of these per month (maybe two) unless I can get more WordPress designers on board. And I won't hire any more designers unless I know I've got work for them.
So when I formally announce this service is open, I'll take one or two customers only and then close while we work on those projects. If you've paid and you're number three or four, then we'll just refund you until we have another open slot.
I can wholeheartedly testify that having your own WordPress theme can put a nice wedge of cash in your pocket as long as you have a game plan.
So if you know exactly how you're going to monetise it, then you'll make a lot more money than it costs you to have it created. If you have even a small fresh mailing list of a few hundred subscribers, a couple of thousand dollars at least is easily achievable just by selling the theme at a low cost.
If you don't have a mailing list, then it might be a little harder to monetise, but not impossible – that's what JV partners are for. You could even use it to build a mailing list in the first place if you don't already have one by offering 100% instant commissions through PayPal. Affiliates LOVE that, and YOU get a mailing list of buyers.
***
I'd like to end by saying that because this is something new and we're still finding our feet, then the first few clients to take up this offer will be getting it at a discount.
When we have a system in place we'll put the price up to something more realistic, but to begin with we'll hold the price low.
Watch out for an email with more info early next week.
-Frank Haywood
Filed under WordPress Themes, internet business by on Aug 20th, 2010. 6 Comments.
Update: The sale is now over and Contextual Widgets is $17 until the PluginGreat site goes live.
***
The Contextual Widgets plugin weekend sale is now live.
And I can hear you saying…
"What is Contextual Widgets? What does it mean? What does it do?"
This new plugin is the third and final of the trio of what I think of as the control plugins for WordPress. All three plugins do things that really should be part of WordPress but aren't, and they move it a step closer to being a CMS. (The Multiple Streams Themes help too with lots of sidebars.)
The first of the three control plugins was "Ads Manager" which allows you to display ads depending on lots of different rules you can set.
The second control plugin was "Widgets In It" which allows you to place any widget into any post or page content, not just in a sidebar.
This final control plugin "Contextual Widgets" allows you to decide which widgets will appear on which parts of your site. It works with ALL standard widgets, not just the ones I've released.
Now I know you might still be wondering a bit at the moment, but I'll try to explain.
You know how a WordPress theme allows you to drag and drop widgets into the sidebars? Well it's usually a case of all or nothing. Once you've dropped them there, all you have is the same widgets in the sidebar on *every* page and post on your site.
There's no way of saying you don't want to see a particular widget on a certain page.
Until now.
With "Contextual Widgets" you can choose exactly in which context each widget will appear.
So you may decide that you only want to place a particular ad in a sidebar on a particular page (or context).
***
Example #1…
You write a blog page that discusses the importance of building a mailing list (the why), but you don't put in any details about the steps they need to do it (the how). Over in your sidebar are your affiliate ads for an ebook on list building and an autoresponder service that only shows on that page, ie in that particular context.
Example #2…
A visitor arrives at your site via a search engine and lands on one of your tag or category archive pages. They see an ad that's nowhere else on your site.
Example #3
A visitor to your home page sees links to some of your best articles in the top of the main sidebar. They click on one of the links and end up on the page they're interested in, with a strongly related ad to the article, while your list of articles has been moved firther down the sidebar.
***
Aha! Get it?
There are plenty of contexts built right in:-
o Home – Your site's blog page if it isn't set to your front page.
o Front Page – Your site's front page which can be different to your blog.
o Post – Individual posts, ie not your home/blog page.
o Attachment – For your attachment pages, e.g. movies, audio and images.
o Author – Author archive pages.
o Category – Category archive pages.
o Date – Date archive pages.
o Tag – Tag pages.
o Search – Search results pages.
o Page not found – Your 404 error pages.
Plus every single page you create gets auto-added to the list of contexts. So every page you write about any topic can be set to show its own unique ads.
I hope by now you can see how powerful this plugin is, and how it gives you an extra level of control over your blog that a standard WordPress installation doesn't.
Right now and until Monday, you can get the Contextual Widgets plugin for just $10. After that it will be set to $17 until I officially launch the PluginGreat.com web site, and then I set the price of this plugin to $27.
If you think this plugin might be even remotely useful (Who am I kidding? It's perfect for any WP installation…), then now is the best time to get it. Especially if you have either of the first two control plugins.
You can get it at the lowest price it will ever be ($10) by clicking the button below:-
Update: The sale is now over and Contextual Widgets is $17 until the PluginGreat site goes live.
-Frank Haywood
Filed under internet business, software, wordpress plugins by on Aug 14th, 2010. 12 Comments.
UPDATE: I sent an email out yesterday evening (13th) with a link to the free plugin, so go check your email. This was a thank you to subscribers only, and I won't be posting the link to it here on the blog.
***
It's FREE plugin time.
It can't have escaped your attention as to how much of my attention I'm investing in WordPress at the moment.
While not perfect for your needs, it does make it easy to set up a site quickly. And of course there are all those free plugins – 99% of which are junk in a business context – to help you do so.
One of the things that's always been an issue for me is email deliverability. i.e. You send an email, but does it ever get there? Who knows? That's why I use a third party mailing service in some instances.
But getting your emails delivered isn't really rocket science, you just need to take a little care. For instance enabling Domain Keys and SPF in cPanel will help in both directions – both sending and receiving email – and takes about 2 minutes to do.
And of course, always making sure that if you're using a script on one of your sites that it uses SMTP to send the email. That really helps as many ISPs and email providers will filter out email as it comes into their network if they can see it hasn't been sent via SMTP when they examine the email headers.
What we've been doing in creating scripts and plugins here is to make sure they all have SMTP support to aid in deliverability, and this seems to work well.
In the case of WordPress we've been building the SMTP functionality into the plugins themselves. Which is great, but…
Well. You know how you sometimes have one of those OMG moments and you get a little revelation? And then you feel like kicking yourself for not having realised it before? I had one of those about a month ago.
I thought…
"Why on earth are we adding SMTP code into every plugin? Why not just write a plugin that intercepts all email sends and make sure it goes via SMTP?"
Of course! That would work. I had a look round at existing plugins and it seems that I've been beaten to it. So I took a look and immediately thought we could do better, and that's exactly what we've done.
We've taken the idea of sending emails via SMTP and gone a step further. We've added the ability to throttle and queue emails.
You see the problem is, many web hosts and ISPs are very aware of the amount of spam being sent and to limit this, they only allow a certain number of emails to be sent per hour or per day from each domain or account. Anything over your quota is discarded.
So while you may think you've just sent 800 emails out with your desktop app or a web application such as WordPress AutoResponder (WPAR), most of them have been discarded even before they've left the network. Oh dear. 
This new FREE plugin addresses that problem.
Once activated, you enter your SMTP settings and your web host quota (e.g. 200/hour), and that's it. From that point on any email sent via WordPress either through a contact form, or a comment update plugin or WPAR will be pushed into a queue, and if available to be sent will do so there and then.
If the queue is greater than your quota, then the new email waits until the next send and then out it goes if there's a slot available.
Cool huh?
We're just doing final test and fix today, and if all is well hopefully it will be out to you tomorrow.
UPDATE: I sent an email out yesterday evening (13th) with a link to the free plugin, so go check your email. This was a thank you to subscribers only, and I won't be posting the link to it here on the blog.
***
While you're reading this, I'd also like to just do a quick mention of another plugin that's almost complete called "Widget Contexts". This is the final of the trio of what I think of as the control plugins.
The first was "Ads Manager" which allows you to display ads depending on lots of different rules you can set.
The second was "Widgets In It" which allows you to place any widget into any post or page, not just in a sidebar.
This final control plugin "Widget Contexts" allows you to decide which widgets will appear on which parts of your site.
When activated it adds to the bottom of every plugin an auto-generated selection of "contexts" and tick boxes to decide where you want the widget to appear.
That might sound a bit complicated but it's very easy to use in practice.
For instance you may decide you only want to show a certain widget on a particular page on your site. All you do is untick every other page within the widget context.
Or you may decide that you want to place different ads on special pages such as your 404, category archives and tag archive pages.
Easy! Just create the ad using either a text widget or Ads Manager, and then only select the special pages you want them to appear on.
There's good reasons for wanting this level of control, and I'll explain why in another post.
***
Right!
While we're waiting for Widget Contexts to be finalised and tested, probably by the end of the week, you can have a play with the free SMTP Throttler, so watch out for that announcement tomorrow.
-Frank Haywood
Filed under internet business, wordpress plugins by on Aug 10th, 2010. 14 Comments.
Top Commenters