Month: September 2010

Sep

2010

Slide Up Ads Plugin Finally Ready

Offer Closed

***

Well…

What can I say? My sincerest apologies to all those nice and patient people who pre-ordered the plugin with a promise of 10 days to delivery. It’s now been about an extra 18 days after that, but it’s finally done and is now in use on this blog, which you may have already noticed…

My only excuse is that while we started with a clear idea of what we wanted from the plugin, it just got out of hand like things do sometimes, and we made it bigger, added some more features, and finally spent several days discussing the merits of rules on visits or views before me finally deciding views was better (for now).

(That debate is NOT over yet, and we’ll probably add visits to the rules when we can. If it makes sense.)

Like I said, the plugin has ended up being much bigger than we intended it to be.

Originally it was going to be a few pre-defined templates with some simple rules on when to display the slide up.

Then the “feature creep” started. The upshot is we’re very late with release, but to all those people who pre-ordered, you’ve got yourself one of the years bargains. I’m very confident that we could sell this plugin as it is now for $47 day in day out, so all those people who grabbed it for $10… Well done. 😉

So what did we add that made it take so long?

LOTS of pre-defined templates – 44 variants in all
An easy to understand method of creating your own templates
A colour picker for an optional plain background slide-up
Autoresponder sign up code parsing and reformatting
Comprehensive rules system that governs when and how often the ad shows
THREE ways of visitors closing the ad, selectable by you
Two different “Content Types” for the ad – autoresponder and link/HTML
Finally, a way to reset the ad when you create a new one

I’m sure that once you’ve installed the plugin that you’ll be impressed by our level of thought about the admin panel. Even so, there’s still a couple of little “niggles” I have with it that we’ll fix in later versions, plus a couple of bigger features I have up my sleeve. 😉

Here’s a screen shot of part of the admin panel:-

And a picture of the drop-down rules:-

The colour picker if you’re using a plain background:-

And the buttons that can be added to the slide up ad:-

Note in that last image that there’s the usual X (which always appears on the ad), an optional minimise button which will allow the visitors to close the ad for a period you decide, and also an optional power button which will close the ad permanently until you use the “Reset Viewers” check box on the admin panel settings page.

So… What comes next?

If you pre-ordered, just go back to your personal download page ( you did bookmark it, right?) and you’ll now be able to download the plugin.

If you didn’t pre-order, then for a couple of days you can still get the Slide Up Ads Plugin for WordPress for $17 before I set the regular price.

Thanks again for your patience, and I’m sorry it took far longer than we thought it would. I hope you think the additional features we added made the wait worth while. We’ll *try* not to do that again. 😉

If you now want to get the plugin at a discount and before I set the regular price, then for a couple of days you can get it for $17 by using the buy button below.

-Frank Haywood

Offer Closed

***

Sep

2010

Big Ed Nickel Sale Now Live

I’m still updating the sales page to add some graphics, but everything else is ready and the Big Ed Nickel Sale is now live.

You can get to the sales page here:-

http://plugingreat.com/bigedns/

-Frank Haywood

Sep

2010

Big Ed – An Introduction

Update: The Big Ed Nickel Sale is now live and you can get to it here:-

http://plugingreat.com/bigedns/

***

Tomorrow, 16th September, I’m going to run a nickel sale for my latest WordPress plugin.

My wife took one look at it and said “Ooh! I WANT that on my blogs!” and I think you will too.

There’s not been a lot of notice for this nickel sale I know, and I’ve been keeping this “under my hat”, but it’s now all done and I’d like to get it out there right away. (And I like to reward those people who pay attention to what I’m doing by giving them the best possible price.)

This new plugin adds additional features to the built in TinyMCE editor that comes with WordPress, and we’ve nicknamed it “Big Ed”. 😉

Apart from expanding the capabilities of the default WordPress editor, we’ve also added a few extra features that we’re very confident you’ll find incredibly useful.

And while it sounds innocent enough, wait until you see what it can do.

By default, the buttons you get with the WordPress editor look like this:-

And you can also then press the “Kitchen Sink” button to get some additional toolbar buttons:-

So that your toolbar would then look like this with the other buttons enabled:-

Now what happens when you install and activate Big Ed?

Well… You get to see this:-

You might have seen something like this before, and there are other plugins that do a similar thing, but we went a step further and added some very special formatting tools.

For instance, now you can add three new styles to your posts in the form of Johnson boxes, graphical bullets, and graphical separators.

First, here’s an example of one of the Johnson box styles you can add. We’ve included a selection in a mix of styles and widths, making 9 altogether. This isn’t a screenshot you’re looking at, this is the plugin in action and the text in this box is selectable – try it.

Next, how about some separators? There are 10 in 3 different widths making 30 altogether. Here are some examples…

First, Green Shade:-

Next, Dashed Blue:-

And now Dotted Red:-

Finally, how about some graphical bullets? There are 6 different bullet styles you can use.

Bullet.
Bullet.
Bullet.

And here’s another example of bullets.

Bullet.
Bullet.
Bullet.

And some more.

Bullet.
Bullet.
Bullet.

In time we’ll add some more styles to the plugin, but I’m sure you can see there’s a very nice selection available already.

Okay, that’s enough detail for now.

Tomorrow (16th September) at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) I’ll be running a nickel sale for this plugin, starting at just $6.97.

Just in case you don’t know what a nickel sale is, it’s a rising price sale where the price increases by a small amount – in this case a nickel. The sooner you buy, the lower the price. If you wait too long before purchasing and decide to buy later you might find that it’s then twice the price it was when you looked at it earlier.

A starting price of $6.97 means the first 20 buyers will get it at under $8.00. The first people to buy get the better deal, and typically the first 100 sales occur in the first hour.

-Frank Haywood

P.S. If you’re not sure of the time zone I’m in and you want to check the time here, you can see the current time in my time zone (GMT) underneath the photo of me in the sidebar.

Sep

2010

Your Custom WP Theme Is Now Available

Until we sell the two available slots, you can now order a unique custom WordPress theme for which you completely own the copyright.

We’ll supply you with all the Photoshop PSDs, plus the completed WP theme, all to your specifications.

The complete process to design and code your theme takes 2-3 weeks in ideal circumstances, but may take a little longer due to the nature of the task. This is why there are only TWO slots available.

I REALLY don’t want you to purchase this on a whim.

I would like it if you have a definite game plan and know exactly what you’re going to do with your theme.

As I’ve said in previous emails, it may be you have a mailing list and you’re going to sell your new theme to your subscribers, or maybe you have a client you want the theme creating for.

(I’ve a few minutes ago received a very nice cheque from a local client who wanted his site re-doing and some SEO work done. We created a WP theme and then used the All-In-One SEO plugin to do all the on page SEO, with an ongoing backlinking campaign to commence tomorrow.)

Or a third alternative is you may intend to give the theme away in return for sign-ups to your mailing list. If you’re going to do this I would actually recommend you use the 7 Dollar Script and sell it with 100% commission to build a mailing list of buyers.

Whatever you’re going to use it for, PLEASE make sure you have a game plan.

Okay?

I’ll just say it again, there are only TWO slots.

The price is $500 per slot. When they sell I’ll remove the buy button.

I’m really sorry if you miss it, but if it’s very popular I’ll do it again in a few weeks time when the current buyers have their new themes.

-Frank Haywood

Sep

2010

A WordPress Theme Designed And Coded

A couple of weeks ago, and just before I came down with a slight fever, I started talking about having your own unique premium WordPress theme created. Here’s the gist of it.

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