Month: June 2009

Jun

2009

WordPress Pages As SALES Pages

Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now is to be able to create a WordPress page that looks completely different to the rest of the blog.

So the page when clicked on from the home page of the site looks like a regular sales page.

It’s been in my product ideas document for nearly 2 years now, and for one reason or another I’ve not done anything about it.

I decided that enough was enough and I’d started looking for a decent WordPress developer as I thought it might need a plugin developed and/or a special page template created.

I’m sure there are lots of other people out there that have wanted this too. I mean really sure.

My thought was that all we really need was something that threw away all the WordPress stuff on the page itself so that we could just paste in HTML from a sales page design we already had. Maybe a product we have master resale rights to, or some edited PLR sales page, that kind of thing.

I still wanted all the SEO goodness of WordPress for the rest of the site, but the sales page itself had to be standalone. The other proviso was that it didn’t use CSS or any complicated PHP.

It had to be plain and simple good old table based HTML or nothing at all.

Having decided to do it, I started my research. I bought a couple of existing products to see what approach the product developers had taken, and I was gobsmacked at how complicated it all was.

It seems I could only buy a whole THEME with that kind of functionality in it, and in one case it was all or nothing, ie the whole site had to look like the sales page itself, which isn’t what we want at all is it?

And then a thought occurred to me.

As we all should know by now, developers aren’t marketers. They don’t know what it is that we want exactly unless we pin them down and tell them, and even then it doesn’t always go in.

The people who were putting together these methods of displaying WordPress pages with a unique look were going about it from a developers point of view. They were making it more complicated than it actually is.

I thought to myself that there must be an easier way of doing it, so I started looking at the WordPress documentation. Here’s a heads up on that. It’s written by developers for developers. 🙁

So after spending a couple of hours going round in circles yesterday, I suddenly found the exact piece of information that I was looking for.

A quick test and…

You know what? It’s so easy to do I could have just screamed when I realised.

What the flaming heck are these other product owners on exactly? Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

And you know what else?

I’m now going to create a low-cost how-to video list-building product out of this as it’s so easy to do and so understandable that anyone with a bit of basic HTML and FTP knowledge can do it.

Perfect.

I’ll make it freely available to anyone that’s signed up to the free tuition so it won’t cost a penny.

For everybody else, let’s say $7. 😉

Watch this space.

-Frank Haywood

Jun

2009

Which Hosting Platform Do You Use?

And by this I mean which control panel?

Experience tells me that most small businesses use a Linux or Unix platform of some kind (collectively called *nix), but I know that many people also use a Windows server because they have some app they want to run that needs Windows.

So if you’re on a *nix platform, which hosting control panel do you use?

My personal choice is cPanel.

#1 – It’s probably the most feature full hosting panel there is.
#2 – It’s the easiest to use.
#3 – If you’re not happy with your host, it’s a piece of cake to move to another cPanel host.

But even though the cPanel software is cheap at only about $100 per year per server (to the web host, not you), some hosts insist on writing their own server software. Maybe if you have at least 500 servers at $100 giving a total of $50,000 / year, then it’s tempting to spend the money having your own platform written, or at least find a cheaper one.

But I strongly believe that this policy damages their business. There are tens of thousands of people in the know who wouldn’t touch a non-cPanel server purely because of the reasons above. Especially people who need a dedicated server.

The problem I think for many users of these hosts is that they don’t know any better.

Think about this one for a moment. When you first looked for a web host for your very first web site, you didn’t have a clue what to do did you? No, nor me.

So you first have to do some research. For many people this consists of nothing more than going into their favourite forum and saying “anybody know a good web host?” – and this is where the problem lies.

People who have an opinion without a rounded experience are usually the most vocal.

The people who know that a cPanel host is the way to go may just about be bothered to say “any cPanel host” which doesn’t help the guy or gal looking for the information.

But the “newbie” users will jump forward and say “I use 1and1”, or “I use Yahoo”, or “I use GoDaddy”. For the majority, that’s all they’ve ever used, and they’re not offering good advice either, all they’re doing is saying what they use.

In marketing this is called “social proof”, and so the poor new guy goes and buys the appropriate hosting depending on what’s been said. Usually, social proof is a good short cut to the right answer, but quite often (1 in 5) it’s not the best method on which to base a decision.

So then the new guy uses the host and thinks that’s what web hosting should be like, and that it’s supposed to be really difficult.

With a cPanel host it’s much much easier to do most things, and often there are things you can only do on the cPanel hosting platform because of #1 above.

And of course once you’re using a host that has their own control panel, they make it very difficult for you to move. Many of them will even offer a free domain for 12 months, knowing that it will be even more difficult to get rid of them once you have both your domain name and your web hosting with them.

In fact, I made the same mistakes when I set up my very first web sites, and I’m pretty much stuck with domain hosting by a company who charge $25 just to look at allowing you to transfer your domain away from them.

I’m not kidding.

(UK2.net will take online sign ups and take your credit card details without a problem. They charge TWICE the domain registration fee per year that NameCheap.com do and their admin panel is dire.

If you want to transfer to another domain host, they require you to send a FAX to their billing and accounts, and also a cheque (check) for £12.99 (approx $25) to them in the post. They only guarantee to look at your transfer, not to actually do it. If it’s disapproved, then you have to start all over again.

You can’t find the pages on their site that explain this, you have to contact them first before they’ll give you the link to the page. That’s what I found out when I tried to move a while back.)

I think that’s sharp practice don’t you?

And I wonder how many other companies do this?

Anyway, we all live and learn.

Hosts that YOU would have to pay ME money (about $1,000 per month per domain is worth the pain) to use are:-

UK2, 1and1, FastHosts, Yahoo, GoDaddy, Dreamhost, and any Helm based host.

(I believe, but don’t know for sure, that UK2, 1and1 and FastHosts are run by the same parent company. I think this may be the case because I used NetStat to look at the connection when I’ve used live support and found I was connected to a 1and1 domain. Maybe they were just buying support services from 1and1, but I think not.)

If you want to know where I now register all my domains, it’s with NameCheap, and my recommended web site hosting is Hostgator, purely because they fully load their servers with just about everything you need to get any script to work.

-Frank Haywood

Jun

2009

I Teach You For Free Part 2

Just a little update to let you know what I’ve been doing since I contacted you last.

I’ve been busy.

I’ve been brain dumping out all the bits that go into a product launch, with a very useful tool called Free Mind. The map is looking a little crowded and messy at the moment and I’ve really only scratched the surface, so we’ll see how that goes.

My curiousity has been rising about what the people that won’t be doing the Product Launch stuff want to learn about instead. My thoughts are that if I’m going to spend some time putting things together for you, I need to know what to target first.

If you don’t get on the free product launch tuition, then I want you to get something else instead. In fact even if you do become a part of the product launch group, there’s nothing to stop you from looking at the other stuff too, it will all be good.

So I have to ask a few questions first.

What I’m going to do is give you TWO sign up forms. I don’t want to keep bothering people who don’t want to learn for free with emails about learning stuff, it just doesn’t make sense.

You can sign up to either or both. To begin with I’ll probably send out the same emails to both lists, but after a while they’ll branch off in different directions.

I’ll be asking you simple questions like “what’s the number one thing you want to learn about?” – stuff like that. Your answers will help me shape the learning material and also help me to decide in which order I should do things.

If you sign up to the product launch list I’ll also immediately ask you for some information about yourself, what you’ve done, what you’re doing, what you know, and why you think you’re a good candidate.

I know some people have already given me some detail about themselves in their blog comments and I have to say that what I’ve seen looks very promising, thank you.

So.

I hope you can see I’ve been putting a lot of thought into all this, as I want the final creation to be something that anyone can go through without it costing them anything, and come out at the other end clued up.

Which brings me on to…

A couple of people have asked me what I’m getting out of this financially, ie why should I do this?

I’ll be dead straight with you.

If I get this right, and you appreciate what I’ve done, then you’ll tell other people about it. They’ll come sign up to do the courses, and in the process will see the paid for tools I’ve created. I’ll make more sales than I’m doing now, your karma will be good, and everything will be right in the world. 😉

Publicity.

It’s as simple as that.

Well almost.

After you’ve gone through the learning material as part of the first wave, I’m going to put in place an “invitation only” process.

What that means is that only someone you invite using your personal link will be able to join.

This will help keep the whole learning process clean, as you’re only going to invite someone who you know will work their way through all the learning and won’t disappear part way through.

I don’t think you’d want to waste your single invitation on someone who isn’t going to stick it out.

Okay?

Right, here are the two sign up forms below. You can sign up to either or both.

I’ll remove them in a few days time to stop anyone else from joining, and then we’ll see where we go from there.

[SIGN UP – PRODUCT LAUNCH]

Time’s up! If you signed up there’s a chance of you being in, and if you didn’t, it’s too late this time round.

[SIGN UP – FREE COURSE]

Time’s up! If you signed up you’re in, and if you didn’t, you’ll have to wait until it all goes public.

-Frank Haywood