In that post I said I'd tell you why I made it.  It's important.

With me, it was my trial through depression and the recovery time that followed that bought me to the place where I realised it was time to strike out on my own.  In my case I thankfully had no choice in having to do my own thing as following my depression I effectively became unemployable.

I can take advice, and I can learn stuff just like I've always done, and even ask for help.  But what I can't do is have anyone tell me what to do.  I can't help that side of it any more, the barriers just go straight up and whoever's doing the telling is wasting their breath.  It's quite different if I want the advice or knowledge.

When I finally moved into the digital products market place (in my case software) I believed for a short while all the nonsense I was told about how easy it was running an online business and how you didn't have to do any work, ha-ha.  I say "nonsense" because it really is.

Running your own business takes work and determination no matter what the business type.

There is no "short cut", no "magic bullet", no "loophole", no "weird solution" or "ancient remedy" that many of the methods sellers would have you believe.  You just need to choose something you're happy with and work at it until you get better at doing whatever you do.

Obvious really isn't it?

If you've been going through this yourself, or trying to get started at it, then you'll have found that to begin with many of your days bring new problems to go with the pile of existing ones and the need to discover ways of solving them.  And you find yourself "working" long, unproductive, pointless days when what you really need to be doing is focussing on the money that will drive your business forward.

More than 60% of people give up at some time in the first 6 months for whatever reason, and I suspect the biggest reasons to be a lack of focus and just plain not knowing what to do.  This results in trying out lots of different things – "thrashing about" – until finally throwing the towel in.

I'll repeat it again in case you weren't paying attention further up the page, you need to choose something you're happy with and work at it. 

Usually and in my experience, whatever that something is, then you'll find there's always going to be a core set of requirements.

From my own perspective, I chose to sell software.  Some days I wish I'd just gone into ebooks as I'd have total control of my own product creation process, but I don't see that as being as much fun as working in software.  I've always liked computers, but that's just me.  Something else might light you up in your case, or you may be similar to me.

Whatever it is, you need to do something you enjoy, or at the very least feel confident and determined about.

And I can help if you let me.

In a few days time I'll be opening what might be my last ever personal coaching programme which will run through January and February 2012.

I say might be last ever because I have a project starting in March that will consume a chunk of my time and may eventually take me in a different direction (still with software).  We'll see, it's very early days yet.

The last coaching I did was four years ago so you can see it's not the kind of thing I do on a regular basis and that's why I think it's a bit special.

I won't be pushing you through a one-size-fits-all sausage machine.  I know that more than a few of the coaching programmes I've seen tend to operate on a "come one, come all" basis, but that's not how I do it.

This will be personal coaching, tailored for you.  The way I think coaching should be done.

There are some provisos that come with it though, and these are only there to make sure you're not signing up for something that isn't appropriate for you.

#1 – The coaching will be in the IM (Internet Marketing) niche.

#2 – The coaching won't attempt to cover things I don't do myself such as CPA and PPC, or network marketing.  I have very little knowledge of those and I'm not really inclined to find out, it's just not my bag.

#3 – The coaching will cover things like product creation, traffic, list building and automation by outsourcing.  The stuff I personally see as vitally impotant to most online businesses.  I'll give you more information on what I will cover with this personal coaching in my next post.

#4 – You're prepared to work hard at it and work under your own initiative with my guidance.  Yes as your coach I'll do some hand holding and pointing you in the right direction, but the sooner you take responsibility for your performance the better.  I can help you achieve that very useful attribute.

#5 – You commit to the ethic of product creation.  To be in the "game", you need your own products to either give away (to list build) or preferably sell, and I can't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to create or have one created for you after 30 days or less.  Once you know what you're doing and you're really cooking with some useful outsourcers, a week or less for product creation is completely do-able.

On that last one, having your own product(s) is vitally important as from that point on you can start list building.  The size of your list bears a direct correlation to the size of your business.  Simple isn't it?

That okay for starters?

More information on personal coaching in my next post.

-Frank Haywood

Update: The PLR membership is now OPEN and is currently $27.00/month until I reach my target number of subscribers. At that point I'll increase it to the regular price of $47.00

You can get to the sales page here:-

http://www.plahh.com/

***

Or put another way, it works out as $13.50 each… 

But that price is only valid until I fill up my remaining slots to make the membership viable for me to continue to run.  (It's been touch and go.)

Each month you'll get PLR to 5 sales page designs, PLUS additional PLR to either a WordPress plugin or theme, or a PHP script or other program, or a special report or video set created by me.

It's a pretty good deal.

Just the five sales pages alone are worth your membership.

Ask anyone.  If you were to pay to have ONE sales page created for yourself, they'd cost you $47-$97 depending on who did them for you, and all you'd get back is the design with uneditable PNG or JPEG files.

With the ones we supply you get Private Label Rights to the entire pack of 5, PLUS all the PhotoShop PSD source files.  In addition we make sure there are no hard-coded text in graphics (wherever possible) and in the few cases there are, we also supply blank JPEGs or PNGs so you can use your favourite graphics editor to add your own text.

Okay?

As for the cost of developing the WordPress plugins and themes, you're talking anything from five hundred to two thousand dollars and upwards – go find out for yourself.  So I think it's fair to say that every month you're getting between $750 to $2000 worth of products you can rebrand and call your own.

At the special relaunch price of $27 it's not just a good deal it's a smoking deal!

***

First I'd like to give you a bit of background about the membership.  I opened it in November last year, and everything went fine until about March when my one and only designer took an office job in Singapore.  He still does some part time work for me.

Then I had to fire one of my plugin developers as he was supposedly working full time for me and (when he slipped up) we found out he was also working "full time" for one of my friends.  (No wonder he was getting slower and slower…)

This left me with a full time plugin developer and a part time designer.

And then to make matters worse, my remaining developer decided to go look for an office job too and also went part time in June.

While this was all going on I just couldn't find the right people to fill the gaps left behind and from April until now I've been struggling to fulfill the promise of 2 monthly PLR products as part of the membership.

It even got to the stage last month where I'd just about decided to close up shop on the membership as I couldn't see how I could continue to deliver products like I had been – I'm certainly not a designer or a plugin developer.

And then out of the blue I picked up two new designers, one of whom can create WordPress themes.  Hurrah!

I then (by accident) found a part timer who is now in training to become my full time PA and Project Manager in March 2012.

But the icing on the cake is I also found a new full time coder, AND just this week my part time developer has increased her weekly hours to almost full time.

Suddenly I have a full set of staff and that makes the membership viable again.  And I also have enough "give" in there to make sure that if someone leaves then the membership won't suffer like it has this year.

***

To kick off the relaunch of the membership with a bang tomorrow, I'm adding in some extras.  So instead of you joining and getting one month's worth of products, I'm including a few more bits and pieces too.

The current product set is for August, but I've left July's active too.  September's will be ready next week.

So when you join tomorrow, you not only get July and August's membership products, you'll also get September's too when I add it in a few days time.

That's THREE months worth of membership in this first month.  (For existing members I'll put something else in so you don't feel left out.)

Forget pretty good, forget smoking, this is a RED HOT deal.

But ONLY when you join tomorrow at just $27 / month.

When I fill the minimum membership slots I need, then the price goes back up.

I'll give you some additional details tomorrow and re-open the membership at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST).

-Frank Haywood.

I have to say I've found it quite useful.  There have been a few good changes since I registered my first account a few years ago, and one of those is that you can view videos at 720p.  The really interesting thing about this is that if you have the bandwidth, 720p actually loads faster than the default 360p.

Pop it up to full screen at 720p, and the quality is so good it's getting very close to the quality I recorded it at.  Great stuff.

And…

You can turn off ads!

How many videos have I watched and thought "Flaming Google putting ads everywhere!"  Now I've found out it's not Google at all, it's the individual user turning them on.

You can even make videos private, although I've not tried that yet.

In all this now means I can do a pile of tutorial videos (optionally for staff only if I make them private I guess) and you can watch them at really high quality without sucking any bandwidth from my server.

I wonder if the whole private video thing also lets us share them automatically to individuals via an API?  That would be really cool wouldn't it?  You wouldn't need a dedicated server or Amazon S3 to store your videos for your members, you could just use YouTube's storage and bandwidth instead.

If it's possible, there's another product idea eh? 

-Frank

***

This Friday I'll be releasing a new plugin called "Delayed Widgets".

What it does is modify ALL of your existing widgets by inserting a timer delay in seconds to the bottom of every one.  When the delay is reached, the widget reveals itself by "unfolding" itself in the sidebar.

"Why?" I hear you ask…

Well, consider this.

I've said this before – one of the biggest problems for a marketer is getting and retaining attention from site visitors.  Anything you can do without being too "in your face" (and driving them away) is going to be a benefit to you.

By careful use of widgets that remain hidden until the right moment, you can improve your chances of a subscription, or a sale, or whatever it is you want your visitors to do on that particular page.

This is because the human eye is drawn to movement.

To perfectly illustrate this, a few moments ago before I sat down to write, I was gazing out of the back of the house when a bird I hadn't seen took off from one of the bushes.

My attention was instantly on it.  It's as if my conscious mind had no choice than to look at it.

If the bird had remained unmoving, I simply wouldn't have noticed it.

As marketers, we can turn this peculiarity of the human eye and brain to our advantage.

For example, if you take a look at the top of this blog, you'll see that my main subscriber sign up box (in the sidebar top right) reveals itself a few seconds after the rest of the page has been drawn.

Me doing this now makes it impossible for any visitor not to notice it. 

Even if they don't act on it, they have surely seen it and it's in their awareness as is the offer.  All done without a pop-up.

Even better is that you can do this with ANY widget you want particular attention focussed on.

So say you're running a promotion as an affiliate and you have a time sensitive ad that you want people to see more than anything.  If you just run it as a "regular" ad on your blog, it doesn't matter how pretty it is, there's a good chance it isn't going to be noticed.

But if the visitors landing page draws itself, and then a few seconds later your ad appears in the sidebar, it WILL be seen.

This new plugin improves your chances of the stuff you WANT to be seen to actually BE seen by modifying all your existing widgets.

This coming Friday (18th Feb) at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST), the Delayed Widgets plugin will go on sale at a starting price of $10.00 for the first 50 sales.

-Frank Haywood

Even if your graphical skills are as pitiful as mine. 

This short video on how to create 3D eCovers for free has been on my list of things to do for a little while now, but I could never find an appropriate time to do it.

It shows you how to use a free 3D ecover creation service which also has a paid upgrade option.

Essentially you get a choice of five different ecovers for free, and if you decide to upgrade for a paltry $9 / month you get access to a whole pile of other 3D eCovers – an additional 36 eCover types making 41 in all.

It's well worth checking out.

But before you watch the video, then I would appreciate it if you clicked this link which – yes – is indeed my affiliate link for the service I'm about to show you in the video.

You don't have to, it would just be nice of you. 

http://www.frankhaywood.com/3d-ecover-service/

-Frank

Yep, rather than just make the two for one deal an introductory offer, I figure I can supply you with two brand new products each and every month from the following:-

• Packs of beautifully designed sales page / squeeze page templates.
• Beautiful business oriented WordPress themes.
• Very useful WordPress plugins.
• Standalone PHP scripts.

And if you're EITHER one of the first 50 people to sign up, OR you sign up within the first 48 hours then you'll be able to get in at an unbeatable $20 per month.

That is just $10 per brand new high quality product with full Private Label Rights, which I believe is unheard of?  Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Now then. I planned to open the doors at 6.00pm GMT tonight, but I can't now do that because I have a hospital appointment to attend.  I could open tomorrow, but I've spent the last few days saying I'd open today, so that's what I'm going to do.

But I'm pushing the time back to 8.30pm GMT (3.30pm EST), possibly 30 minutes after that.

It all depends on what time I get back as to what time I open the door, as we have the mother-in-law coming to tea as well, so it's all gone a bit pear-shaped.

That's life though eh?  You plan and plan to no avail. 

So let's recap.

#1 – New PLR membership opens at 8.30pm GMT (3.30pm EST).
#2 – Two products for the price of one.
#3 – $20 for the first 50 people to join.
#4 – It's a flaming bargain!

Watch for a post on my blog later today, and another email announcing it's officially open.

-Frank Haywood

There are two main differences.

First and foremost, the new membership is 100% owned by me and the products will be created by my employees.

For PLR Code Mine, I was just the "front man" of a 50-50 deal with James Cunnington who is now the sole owner of PLR Code Mine.

James has pretty much been running PLR Code Mine since at least June (or even earlier) this year.  So product delivery, support, response and updates etc have all been down to him.

If you've been happy with product delivery, support, response and updates, then you'll continue to be happy at PLR Code Mine.  So there you go, I think that's fairly clear now, okay?

Secondly, my new PLR membership won't just be about web scripts and software.  I'll be rotating, mixing, and matching packs of sales page templates, WordPress plugins, WordPress themes and I guess the odd standalone PHP script thrown in here and there.

All of these will be created by my employees with none of it outsourced to third parties, which I've discovered isn't such a good idea.  We all live and learn, and this was a great little (and painful) learning point for me. 

So each month as part of the membership I'll be giving you at least one of the following.

• Packs of beautifully designed sales page / squeeze page templates.
• Beautiful WordPress themes – you've seen some of them already as Multiple Streams Themes.
• Very useful WordPress plugins – you've seen the quality of the plugins I release.
• Standalone PHP scripts.

As part of the introductory offer tomorrow, I'll also be including PLR to the Redirection WordPress plugin I included as part of the Multiple Streams Theme 003 last week.

It's a good deal, especially when you see the introductory price.  I'd certainly buy it if it was presented to me, and I've become very choosy recently. 

Finally, support will be done by the same staff that are creating the products, so you'll be getting knowledgeable and definitive answers to your questions.  All of this feedback will go back into the loop to make things better for the future, which you have good reason to look forward to.

-Frank Haywood

The PLR membership opens Friday.

Note that the bulk of the text on these demo images is in fact plain text that you can edit with Notepad, Dreamweaver, Front Page etc – you don't need a graphics program to amend it.  Even though some of the text looks as if it's graphical in nature, that effect has been achieved by the clever use of CSS styling.

Okay, first a general overview of the first sales page design.  The "thumbnail" image has been heavily compressed and is at 75% to save bandwidth, but it should give you good idea of what's going on with the design.

Right Click and choose "View Image" to open it full size.

And now a clip from the top of the page to show the CSS styled drop shadow effect.

No, the text and drop shadow aren't graphical, it's all done via CSS.  Cool huh?

When you join the new PLR membership on Friday, you'll get Private Label Rights to FIVE of these sales page designs, plus as a sweetener, PLR to the Redirection plugin I included with the Multiple Streams Theme 003 last week.

Each month you'll get PLR to either a five-pack sales page bundle, a WordPress plugin, or a WordPress theme.  If I get workable suggestions for other product types, I'll do those too.

I'm sure you can see it's an extremely good deal.

More news tomorrow.

-Frank Haywood

As part of this I cancelled all the subscription payments so that members wouldn't be rebilled to me.

I now have no ties or affiliation with PLRCM, James is the man who will look after you from now on, and if you were a member, he'll contact you soon if you wish to resubscribe.  He tells me that last months product will be with you shortly, and deeply apologises for the delay.

Okay?

Well that's one bit of news, and here's another.

More than a few people have told me they really liked what PLRCM was doing for them as the products weren't the usual run of the mill ebooks or article packs.  The PLRCM membership entitled everyone to a new Private Label Rights PHP script or WordPress plugin (often both) each month, so it hit the right chord for many.

And from a personal point of view, I learned a lot about memberships and what does and what doesn't work.  (Especially about membership scripts.  Some of it painful.)

The core idea is sound.  Supply nice little products to the members for a fraction of the price it would take a member to have them developed individually, and also remove the pain of getting them created in the first place.

As a member, you can then give away (or sell) the products in return for a name and email address and build your mailing list.

In case you were in any doubt about this, a decent mailing list is core to your online business.  Many people say (and I agree) that no mailing list means no business.

This got me thinking about what other Private Label Rights material might be popular with people who were interested in building (or starting to build) a mailing list.

Yes, ebooks and short reports are okay if the material is good, but there's a lot of those given away already by lots of other people.

It works.  It could work better.  And it does work better if it's something a little different.  And if the product changes regularly.

People always want something new.  I know I do.  And I'm people too. 

I figured it would be good if I could come up with a membership that rotated the type of product each month to offer something new.

These are the (first) product ideas I came up with as I already know these are popular.

• Web design / sales page / squeeze page templates.
• WordPress themes.
• WordPress plugins.

I'm sure that with a bit of head scratching and some feedback I can come up with some other product ideas too.

Okay?

So what I've done is I've asked my graphics guru (he creates the Multiple Streams Themes) to come up with a sales / squeeze page five-pack.  And I asked one of my plugin developers to write the Redirection plugin which I included in the recent sale of the latest Multiple Streams Theme.

Two things.  Two products.

#1 – I've seen the first two sales page designs from the five pack, and they're gorgeous.  No exaggeration.  They are beautiful.  The other three are being finalised now.

#2 – Version 1.1 of the Redirection plugin has just completed testing with a couple of extra little features, and it's great.

This coming Friday 22nd October, it's my intention to open up a new PLR membership where I'll be including BOTH of the above products at an incredible knock down price as a sweetener for the introduction of the new site.

If you already have a mailing list and you sell just the first product to it for a giveaway $5, you'll make a killing.  Even one of this five-pack of sales page designs is easily at least a $17 product on its own.

In fact you could give one away as a list building "taster", and upsell to the other four and make money on the deal that way, or in fact any other way you can imagine.

AND you get Private Label Rights to the Redirection plugin too as an introductory bonus.

Sounds good?

More news and screenshots tomorrow. 

-Frank Haywood

The same designer who created the two very successful Multiple Streams Themes for me will create a WordPress theme for you to your specifications.  No-one else in the world will have a theme like yours.

You will own it outright and you can do anything you like with it.  Give it away, sell it, have it designed for a client, whatever you want to do with it.

It's yours and yours alone and we'll have no control at all over what you do with it.  It will be completely copyrighted to you:-

http://www.frankhaywood.com/your-very-own-premium-wordpress-theme/

And I also then spoke about the importance of having a game plan.

If you decide that having your own unique theme created is the thing for you, then you also need to make sure you know exactly what your game plan is and how you expect to make your money back on the expenditure.  I like every project to pay for itself within at least 2 weeks of launch:-

http://www.frankhaywood.com/the-importance-of-having-a-game-plan/

Let me put it like this.  If you sold your new theme directly to your mailing list of say a few hundred people and without any other promotion, then I would expect you to easily make at least a thousand dollars if you sold it at $10 a copy.

If you have a larger mailing list, then you'd make a whole lot more money.

This is only true as long as you know what you're doing.

Now I've taken care to say all this because I don't want you to buy this design service if you're not going to at least double your money on the deal and do it quickly.

You may not care about this, but I do.

The only exceptions I can think of with this is if you're going to give it away to promote a site and build your mailing list in preparation to making money, or it's for some other long term promotional plan you have running, or it's for a site you have that you want to look a little bit special.

I also want to point out that right now at this point in time, I have no idea if there's any demand at all for what I'm offering.

I know people like to buy WordPress themes if they'll help them make money, and I also know that clients like well designed and functional WordPress themes.

But what I don't know is if anyone will want to dig in their pockets and have a custom theme designed and coded for them and then cash in like I have.  This is certainly not for everybody.

Okay?

I've spoken to the designer, and he's told me he can take on TWO jobs.  The graphic design and conversion process to a WordPress theme from beginning to end will take 2-3 weeks depending on the complexity and the number of design changes you ask for.

It will go much faster if you already have an idea of what you want from a theme and can show us a site you already like the look of.

Right…

In a couple of days time, I'll put up a buy link on this blog to purchase a theme creation and the first two buyers get the job done for them and I'll then take the buy link down.

If you want both slots, buy one and then do it again. 

One of two things will happen.  Either both slots go immediately, in which case the link will disappear almost as soon as I put it up, or I've done such a good job of asking you not to buy if you're unsure, that no-one will buy.

I'll say it again, this is NOT for everybody.

-Frank Haywood