Frank Haywood – Page 22 – Product Creation, Traffic, List Building, Automation = Internet Business

Jul

2012

Mascot Mojo Pre-order

Offer Closed – Mascot Mojo Launches January 3rd 2013

***

This is a VERY time limited deal and you’ll need to do something about it right away if it lights you up, so please pay attention. If you’ve been on my list any length of time then you probably know you need to jump in and get it now.

A couple of weeks ago I told you about the Mascot Creator Toolkit and I had a great response – lots of emails saying thank you. It was something that really appealed to me – that you could go in and edit some graphics and end up with something fairly original – there are lots of combinations of mascots you can create.

It’s a very good solution for you to be able to create mascots for your website or for clients.

But I gradually realised that its limitations were that it was only a single male model and that you really needed PhotoShop to get the best out of it.

If you know anything about me, then it’s that I can make good ideas better. While I live my life by the 80:20 rule, I also know that attention to detail when it counts is something that’s just as important.

And while Prian’s toolkit is very good, I believed that I could do something better.

And I have.

It’s still a work in progress, but I’d like to show you what we have so far and what my intentions are, and also give you details of a killer deal I’m offering you over the next 2 days.

I think you may end up telling everyone it’s the best deal you ever bought into.

I’m doing this early bird deal because:-

#1 – I *like* to give you the best deals ahead of anyone else – I like to look after my subscribers, you’re important to me.

#2 – I want to show my new illustrator the kind of response we can expect to get when we open the doors on launch day. She’s a lovely person and is very excited at the prospect of being paid for doing exactly the kind of illustrations she loves to do.

So here’s a few details of how it will work.

The mascots will be generated onsite – no need for PhotoShop.
The site will be membership based.
On the opening day there will be a minimum of one male and one female model plus costumes and accessories.
Planned costumes are dentist, construction worker, general tradesman, chauffeur, chef, beautician and so on, with any suggestions gladly accepted.
There will be new models, styles or accessories added every few days as they’re created.
Planned models will be people, animals, and “humanised” objects such as trees, vehicles and buildings with faces.
The price to the public will start at $10 per month for 20 generated mascots or a 1-day pass at $5 for 3.
The site will officially open on the 21st August but may be available before then as an “alpha” for you to try out.

The price I’m offering to you over this next 48 hours is $27 for 6 months access or $47 for 12 months with no limits on the number of mascots generated, and with your membership period starting on the 21st August. After your initial membership is up, you’ll automatically go onto a special $5/month “access all areas” rate so you’ll continue to be able to generate as many mascots as you like as long as you continue to be a member.

This is a huge saving if you buy in immediately.

Why am I pushing for payment up front, right now?

The answer is #2 above. I want to show my new illustrator how good a response we’re going to get and I want to prove to her that she has a full time position doing this.

By offering you a killer deal for acting quickly, I have that proof.

Starting tomorrow (Sunday) at 2.00pm GMT (9.00am EST) and for 2 days afterwards (closing on Tuesday lunchtime) you can pick up this one-off deal – there won’t be a better one than this.

-Frank Haywood

Jul

2012

Mascot Creator Toolkit Review

I just love this, it’s great.

IF you haven’t yet got it, then I think you might want to take a look.

http://www.frankhaywood.com/mascot-creator-toolkit/

I’ve been playing with it (the toolkit) for a couple of hours, and while I was changing the hair and the suit colour and the shoes etc, it of course attracted the attention of my family.

“Ooh! That’s good! Can I have a go?” – “No gerroff…”

But of course I had to let them have a play because it really is very cool and it’s got my brain gears working. More on that another time.

So what do you get?

The main PSD with 200+ layers. If you’re using PhotoShop you just turn layers on and off – it’s a piece of cake.
Transparent PNG files if you don’t have Photoshop. That way you can use Paint.net or The GIMP or whatever else you prefer.
A cheat sheet for managing the layers.
A tutorial document on using it without PhotoShop.

It’s a tremendously useful tool to own and if you have clients you can get your purchase price back with one use of it for them – they WILL be impressed!

Here’s the link to the toolkit.

http://www.frankhaywood.com/mascot-creator-toolkit/

-Frank Haywood

Jun

2012

Five Pack US Themed Sales Templates

Offer Closed

***

By popular request, today and for 48 hours I’m releasing (just in time) five very cool sales pages for the Page Template Plugin. The templates include the plugin and it all comes bundled together.

The sales page templates are all US themed and are ideal for use to run Independence Day special offers, but of course they’re fine for any other time of year too.

You can see 60% screenshots of the templates here:-

one two three four five

The price is just $10 for all five ($2 each!) and is good for 48 hours from the sale start, then they all get a price of $7 apiece. That’s a saving of twenty-five dollars.

So you get:-

o The brilliant Page Template Plugin
o Five US themed sales page templates

Please don’t miss this one, once the site and affiliate scheme is live then there will be plenty of affiliates sending in traffic and this deal will be gone forever.

At just $2 each today, I don’t believe there’s any good reason not to get them while you can.

The sale goes live at 7.00pm GMT (2.00pm EST) and is good for 48 hours from then and after that it’s all over.

I mean it. 😉

This is just one of the ways of me saying thank you for being a subscriber. I know there are plenty of marketers out there who would be charging a LOT more than I’ve ever asked from any of my subscribers.

I know these templates are very popular and that’s why I’ve put together this sale – I’ve had lots of people ask me where are the themed sales pages you promised, and this sale is my response.

You’re welcome.

In case you don’t know what the Page Template Plugin is then you can check out what it can do to your WordPress sites on the link above.

-Frank Haywood

Jun

2012

Click-Me Alert Bar

Offer Closed

***

Update: You can watch the overview video above (okay I got carried away and it’s a full feature-rich tutorial) and also see a working demo of the Alert Bar in action on the link below.

http://broadexample.com/

On Wednesday at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) I’m releasing a very cool (and sneaky) new plugin called the “Click-Me Alert Bar.”

I outright stole this idea from a WSO, but I think I’ve made mine a lot better. You be the judge. 😉

In the other plugin, you had to upgrade to the “pro” version just to get the features that mine has right out of the box. Mine is a third of the price in this sale.

So what does it do?

You know those little “alert” bars that appear at the top of your browser when a pop-up is blocked or you’re missing an addon to play certain media? Well this plugin does that but you get full control of the alert bar on your blog so that you can deliver your own message.

We’ve been a little bit clever with it and added in WordPress Conditional Tags (we *like* those) so that you have total control over which alerts show where.

Features?

o Create multiple alerts and have different ones show on different pages and posts including special pages like home, 404, tag, category pages etc.

o Multiple alerts on the same page (one at a time only), either rotated or picked randomly.

o Split test statistics for clicks so you can see which alert performs best.

o Set the delay time before the alert shows.

o Rich Text HTML editor for the clickable URL text.

o Rich Text HTML editor for the message.

o Select one of the built in icons or use your own.

o Colour picker for the alert bar, so you don’t have to use plain yellow.

o Set the alert bar to your preferred height.

We’ve been testing all day and as is typical with me I’ve just asked for some usability changes but they should be done by tomorrow.

Now there’s going to be a little change with tomorrow’s sale if you’ve been a customer for any length of time. I’m going to be running it through an affiliate scheme. OMG! I know… 😉

So you’ll be able to snag it yourself and then get your money back by promoting it. (That’s something I typically do for products I buy and like and it works for me.)

Set yourself a reminder and tomorrow at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) the sale goes live. At any rate I’ll drop you a line a few hours before, and then again when it starts.

More details tomorrow.

-Frank Haywood

Jun

2012

Why You SHOULDN’T Upgrade To WordPress 3.4

Well it had to happen sooner or later. The WP dev team have released an update that’s broken jquery plugins everywhere and the uproar has just started.

So we’ve seen WP 3.4 released and had first reports of the Slide Out Tabs plugin breaking. We’ve fixed it – go back to your download page to get the new 1.0.2 version and you should be fine.

The fix for this looks like it just needs these lines of code modified to suit and added to your plugin if you’re a developer or brave enough to hack at these things yourself.

add_action(‘wp_head’, ‘pgst_loads_scripts’);
add_action(‘admin_head’, ‘pgst_loads_scripts’);

function pgst_loads_scripts(){
wp_enqueue_script(‘jquery’);
…
…
}

Our next steps are to check any and all of our plugins that use jquery. We would have normally done that as part and parcel of a new WP release but my regular dev is part way through a home move and it didn’t get done in his absence.

The problem has occurred it seems because the jquery library now doesn’t get called first like it always has done. Who knows why the WP dev team have done this and the likelihood is it will get changed back in 3.4.1 and my guess is that will happen quite soon.

In the meantime it looks like there could be a fairly easy fix and that just means tweaking all our plugins to add the new code that forces the jquery library to be called first. This might cause problems with other plugins so we could need to be quite careful about how we apply it.

The learning point of this story is…

Don’t be an early adopter. Let other people test any new code out first and let them feel the pain. Just because WP is “nagging” you to update to the latest version doesn’t mean you should.

By the same token, don’t let any software you use auto-update itself. Always go into the options or preferences of ANY software (including your browsers) and turn off auto-update. In 99.99% of cases it won’t make a dang difference to you day to day, but it will almost certainly save you from some pain at one point or another. Let other people report the bugs and when it looks like all is clear, you go do the update yourself.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to have unscheduled losses caused by bugs in new software.

Finally, that’s one of the key reasons I like the free PortableApps so much. You can keep a backup of all your working apps just by copying the files to a backup location. If the new update breaks or you don’t like it, you can easily go back to the old version by just copying the files back. Dead easy.

And if you ever have to re-install your OS, then all your portable stuff can be up and running almost immediately.

-Frank Haywood