Month: September 2014

How To Backup ALL Your Web Sites

Update: The sale for the Backup Tutorials Course is now live at just $9.97.

Buy now

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How would you like to know how to backup all your web sites automatically every day, using ALL FREE or very low cost tools and services?

Yes, you read that right, there will be no more need for expensive site backup services.

Probably one of the worst things you can discover as an online business owner is that one of your web sites is down. Either it’s been corrupted by a hard drive failure on your web server, or it’s been hacked and defaced.

If you don’t have backups then it’s a total disaster.

How would you like to know for sure that your web sites are being backed up, and that you have daily backups of all of them being delivered directly to your desktop? Or optionally to a remote FTP server at another location? And optionally to your Amazon S3 account?

Automatically.

Sounds good?

I’ll show you how.

When you consider that most people pay a small fortune every month for their non-guaranteed automated backups, what you’re going to learn will give you both peace of mind and save your pocket too.

Yep, many people are either paying their hosting company almost double for additional storage and backups, or they’re paying third parties for a site backup service. (Did you know that most hosts don’t do backups for you?)

And the nasty thing is, neither of the above options *guarantees* the safety of your backups. I’ve read many horror stories of people asking their host to restore a backup that they’ve paid to be taken, and being told it was corrupt and to use their own backups instead.

It happened to me nearly 10 years ago. Luckily I did have a usable backup, but I still then had to apply the additional changes I’d made since I’d taken it. No real harm done, but several hours of my life gone.

Of course it can be a lot worse.

So. On Saturday I’m releasing a short course as a series of videos and an ebook which will teach you how to backup your sites automatically and then FTP them to your desired FTP server, INCLUDING your desktop computer. And optionally to an Amazon S3 account too.

The course will show you how to achieve this using ALL FREE software and PHP scripts.

Once you’ve got past the hurdles of your initial system set up, then setting up automated backups will take you around 10-15 minutes per site. And once it’s done you can mostly forget about it. (You might want to check up on it every few days until you’re confident.)

I believe that it’s something that everyone needs to know, and I’ve done all the hard work to puzzle it out. Now all you need to do is follow the course through and apply it to your own web sites.

I’ll show you how to set everything up to do your backups safely and securely and all it will cost is your time.

And you’ll know *exactly* where your backups are.

For 24 hours starting today (25th September) at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST), I’m accepting PRE-ORDERS for this course at just $9.97. The price at release will cost substantially more than this, so now’s your chance to get it at the lowest price it will ever be available.

 

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business

Dynamic Contest Creator Plugin

Update: The sale for the Dynamic Contest Creator plugin is live at just $17.00.

It will eventually rise to $27, so now is probably the best time to get it.

Buy now

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Demo contest here. Please note this ISN’T a real competition.  😉

Here’s a list of features.

o Optional list building via autoresponder service integration.
o Optional gathering of name and email addresses via plugin.
o Set date/time for contest start, end, and award announcements.
o Set the number of winners.
o Optionally restrict to WP subscribers only.
o One entry per user, IP address controlled.
o Unique referring link for each user to promote.
o Full customisation of all text fields including error messages.
o Optionally upload your logo and product images.
o Built in product image slider.
o Add your own question and answers.
o Four different template layouts.
o Six colour themes.
o Thirty-seven great looking fonts built in.
o Optionally set your own background image.
o Contestant sharing via optional social network integration:

– FaceBook
– Twitter
– Google+
– LinkedIn
– Tumblr
– Pinterest
– StumbleUpon
– Digg

o Contestant sharing by email and referral link.
o Winner selection via button click.
o Email send to winners.
o Fully loaded statistics section.

Phew!

It’s a HUGE plugin that helps you list build by running competitions where the winners are those who refer the most other entrants to you. I would also recommend that you give every entrant at least something so that everybody wins.

We all like to win stuff, right?

In other words you’re adding a touch of excitement to what would normally be a giveaway list building exercise that normally isn’t there.

You’ve probably seen this kind of thing done on TV where a gameshow will advertise a competition in the ad break. The questions are so easy that hardly anyone ever gets them wrong, and often they’re multiple choice to make it even easier.

As for the competitions themselves, they’re impossible not to get the question right. 😉

With the Dynamic Contest Creator plugin, if the entrant selects the wrong answer, they’re told right away so they can have another go.

When they finally get the right answer, they’re asked for their name and email address, and I would also suggest that you tell them to start sharing the competition with their friends via the social networks and through email. They get a unique referring link to enable them to do this.

So there’s two key aspects to this plugin, but it’s up to you if you use them both.

#1 – Optional – Give everyone a prize. We all like to win stuff.
#2 – Give the people with the most referrals something extra.

Once you have their name and email address, then you can send them emails to get them to promote the competition, and even enhance it by adding in unadvertised prizes to build the excitement.

And of course, you can send your new list promotional offers for which you are an affiliate.

Everybody wins, and that’s the kind of thing I like, and I hope you do too.

I’ll get some tutorial videos up on Monday and cover each section in turn. Don’t worry though, it’s very much self-explanatory and a few minutes experimentation and you’ll know your way around it.

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business, list building, social marketing, software, wordpress plugins

Viral Graphics Generator Plugin

Update: The sale for the Viral Graphics Generator plugin is live at just $17.00.

Buy now

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Now before you get too turned off with a mention of the word “viral” in the plugin name, just bear with me.  😉

A few weeks ago I came across something that I think is a brilliant idea. People are using this method to drive traffic to their web sites, and it’s really simple to do.

Anyone can do this, even me.

#1 – Create a simple graphic with some text on it that’s useful, controversial or humorous. Preferably all three for the best results.
#2 – Brand the graphic with the domain you want people to visit, or the product you’re promoting, for example an ebook. Again, it’s just text.
#3 – Seed the graphic by uploading it to your Pinterest account with a link back to your site or web page.
#4 – Sit back while people find it, laugh or go “ooh!” and repin it for you.
#5 – Repeat every day or so.

Get it?

There’s a TON of material on the internet where you can get your ideas.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you have a client who owns a furniture store and web site. Almost certainly there will be plenty of images you can use and then add some text to.

A quick search turned up the following puns.

“Couldn’t Chair Less”
“Carpet-al Punishment”
“Table The Motion”
“Cushion The Blow”
“Sofa So Good”
“Chair-ish The Opportunity”
“It’s A Deep-Seated Problem”

You get the idea I’m sure.  😉

With the Viral Graphics Generator plugin, you can add or edit an existing image, add some of the text above right in WordPress and then pin it on Pinterest. It’s drop-dead easy to do.

You can do this with virtually any topic and it doesn’t have to be a short snippet of text either, you can insert extended notes across multiple lines.

Just to hammer home the point, I saw this done with an ebook and the author had come up with a set of useful rules to complement his book. This image had been repinned almost a million times and I’m sure this generated a LOT of traffic to his ebook.

As I’m going to be releasing some niche ebooks between now and the new year (and some fiction too), doing something like this will help to market them a lot, but as I said you can do this with almost any niche.

The three golden guidelines to make this work are Useful, Controversial, or Humorous, and preferably all three. People WILL repin them and it’s then just a matter of time before they start appearing on FaceBook too.

Like this idea of “hands-off” marketing? I do!  🙂

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business, traffic, wordpress plugins