The price comparison service I launched just before Christmas has been steadily getting better.

It’s worth mentioning that the Link Share API seemed to be broken and was returning intermittent data, but they’ve now fixed it. I bet their merchants were none too pleased with that happening just before Christmas…

As an example of how very useful the price comparison service is, since Amazon ran out of Jumperoos (my example product), I’ve still been making money through the site.

This is because people have been able to pursue and purchase their Jumperoos from different sites which is just what I wanted. When Amazon get some more stock back in, I’ll benefit from their very nice 7.5% commission, but for now I can live with 2% to 5% commission from other online stores without any effort as the prices are updated automatically each day.

Great stuff! 🙂

We’ve now also added a few more affiliate networks to the price comparison service and are planning on adding even more. The current networks we have in the system are Affiliate Window, Amazon UK, Amazon US, Commission Junction, Tradedoubler, and of course Link Share mentioned above.

The next network we have targetted for inclusion at users request is the Pepperjam Network – we’re just waiting approval ourselves before looking at their API.

Even better than this though is that Paul and I have been discussing in more detail the topic of adding a site builder as part of the service.

This means you’ll be able to start a project, select from a range of pre-done site templates, upload your graphics and add some text, enter your FTP details, click a button and your site will be published directly to your domain.

We’re also going to include some “boiler plate” text that you can use to pad out a site so it doesn’t hurt your brain too much by having to write everything from scratch. And also have a “notepad” area where you can copy and paste all your notes while creating a site.

That means you’ll be able to do the bulk of your site creation within the site builder to begin with, and our plan is you’ll be able to eventually do everything including graphics.

We know that the graphics part of it might be a bit difficult to envision, but we think that with a bit of forethought and some clever programming, we can allow you to resize images and add text in a range of fonts and position it, and then apply some simple styling to it such as drop shadow and glow etc. by using GD and ImageMagick.

A bit of a tall order we know, but that’s our final aim.

What we thought was the best route was to go for it ASAP and then build it up from there. Paul tells me we have a lot of the code already written, and he thinks he can have a prototype up and running in a couple of days…

Wow!

As soon as we’ve had a play with it ourselves and we can see it’s working okay, we’ll release it to everyone that’s currently enjoying the price comparison service.

Anyone joining at a later date will be charged for it as a separate service, price TBA.

Everyone that was smart enough to pick up on the price comparison service will get it included at the current low rate.

I say current because there are still some places left for this first phase. Once all 80 slots are taken then the price goes up, but for now at least all prices are 50% off.

If you’ve been umming and ahhing about taking up the service, well my advice is grab it now before it goes up and you end up also having to pay for the site builder too.

Yes, I’m still including access to the site builder when we release it.

Go take a look at the details at the link below, it’s a one dollar one month trial.

http://www.vendiva.com/subscribe-price-comparisons.php

-Frank Haywood

Well I hope you had a good break, kicked back, took it easy and haven’t put too many pounds on during the holiday. If you took one.

I weighed myself a couple of days ago, and while according to the scales I haven’t put any weight on, I definitely feel a little plumper – ha-ha. It will all tighten up in the Spring when I’m out and about more and I get more exercise.

I always celebrate Christmas by taking a couple of weeks off and spending some time with the family, but all good things come to an end and the kids went back to school yesterday with some very glum faces to be seen and a few tears too.

If it wasn’t mandatory to send the kids into school we probably wouldn’t do it. We’ve had some serious conversations about home schooling in our house.

It’s a bit of a crash after the build up to Christmas and it can be a glum time of year if you let it be.

Maybe you feel similar to me, and maybe that started a few days ago for you if you started work earlier than I have.

Okay hands up, I don’t take the entire 2 weeks off over Christmas, I just pick and choose what I do. I can’t help it, I’ve sort of become a bit of a workaholic completely unintentionally.

Yes I have the odd off day and sometimes it’s more than a single day, but I can’t help thinking about work in quiet moments. If you run your own business from home like I do, you probably know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, I’m now officially back in the saddle and I’ve surveyed what needs to be done ASAP, and also what plans we need to make for the beginning of the year.

The first thing I have to do is something I’ve already started. I’m slowly working my way through all the support tickets that have been raised. There’s a lot, but after a quick scan through, apart from 5 or 6, most of them seem to be fairly straight forward answers.

Next is catch up with the forum which is getting interesting – I know I have at least a couple of PMs there I need to read and answer.

And then, I have to get the written docs for SmartDD out.

With one thing and another I’ve found I’ve had to push them to one side. It’s like a really annoying re-run of what happened when I released v2.

I’ve got to fix that soon or it’s going to drive me nuts.

And while I’m working my way through those tasks, I’ve also set myself another regular task.

At the end of 2008, I discovered IPK and confirmed to my own satisfaction that it was a good way to make some additional money online. More importantly though, using the IPK method means a few hours work for a semi-permanent income.

If you’ve missed any of my last posts and not yet bought IPK, I’ll just repeat that.

You do a couple of hours work and get paid repeatedly for it.

Ahhh… The Dream…

It’s ideal for anyone who wants to work from home but aren’t sure about what to do and where to start. And it’s also ideal for people who already make money online and want to add a new income stream.

I don’t know about you, but I like new income streams.

IPK is so good that my wife has jumped on it too and starting yesterday is now putting up a site a day for four days a week.

We ran through the first site together yesterday, with her doing all the work and asking questions while I talked her through it all. Today, we did the market research for a cluster of sites and took out three new domains. Two of them are “baby” sites and the third is the “mother”.

She built the first page of one of the baby sites in about 15 minutes before having to go out. She’ll finish that site tomorrow in about 90 minutes I reckon.

In about 2 weeks or less, she’ll have the entire skill set to research and build web sites from scratch.

Yep, she’s never done anything like this before and is only going to allocate 2 hours a day, 4 days a week to it. My estimate based on my experience with the Jumperoo site is that each site she builds will earn payback after 3 weeks and anything after that is pure profit.

After reading what several people have said about using .com and .co.uk domains, we’ve decided to use .info domains only as a last resort. Our initial target market is the UK so all our domains will be .co.uk to begin with.

But watch out, eventually we’ll be looking at the US and Canadian markets too. 😉

Only kidding – realistically the truth is we’ll probably never have to look outside the UK.

Looking again today and seeing the HUGE amounts of products that are getting lots of search and few competing web sites, we know the selection process for the UK alone is never ending. There must be hundreds of new products being released every week and it would be extremely difficult to catch all of them.

And I guess that’s the main reason why Craig released this information in the first place. He knows that the market will never become saturated because it’s so damn big.

For me though, there is one worry about IPK.

Reading some of the comments in the forum, I can see that some people aren’t getting the process quite right just yet. I’ve tried to fix that by offering my own advice and critiquing a couple of sites on request.

I’ve come up with my own market research critical success factors to complement Craig’s OPSEO critical success factors. I’ll repeat them here on this blog in a later post.

I (and I guess maybe Craig had too) made the assumption that people would easily understand the market research part of it and would struggle with the OPSEO. But of course the market research part of it is just as important in making a site pay, and if you get that wrong, all the OPSEO in the world isn’t going to help your site make money.

It’s one of those things where the more you do it correctly, then the more you’ll get a feel for it and be able to do it correctly – it’s a bit chicken and egg.

I can see though that some people might get turned off if things don’t pan out immediately. And that’s bad because IPK is one of the very few systems that I know will work well for most people.

It would be tragic for people not to be able to make it all work, and I really want everyone to succeed with IPK, so I’ll be doing my bit to help however I can.

Announcements about that as they happen.

IPK aside, I’ll also be running a couple of WSOs soon, and I’ll announce them here and on my other mailing lists as I launch them.

I also intend to do a few how to videos, and finish off a couple of books that are almost done. One of them is 99% done and it’s just silly for me not to make that final effort and finish it all off. Freebies to blog subscribers I think.

So those are yet more tasks I have to do.

*sigh*

Back to the grind. 😉

I sincerely hope that 2009 will be a good one for you. Take good care of yourself and your family.

-Frank Haywood

The price comparison service for IPK style sites is now live. You can see it in action on my Jumperoo site.

We have it working with Amazon UK, Amazon US, Affiliate Window (UK) and Link Share (US). The Link Share feed is a bit dodgy as we get it from Link share, so we’ll be looking at ways we can improve that.

If you haven’t already signed up to my IPK mailing list, or otherwise haven’t spotted the message from me elsewhere, then you won’t know that I’m letting those people who signed up for notifications first “dibs” at it.

We’ve opened 80 slots, and we think it’s fair to let those people who have shown an active interest get first shot at getting them.

However, in a few hours if there are any slots left, I’ll post a link to the service sign up page here, and after another few hours if there are any remaining spaces left, I’ll send it out to my general mailing lists.

Here’s the deal.

We’ve set it up as a one month one dollar trial and we’ve also set what we think you’ll agree is a very fair price.

Because you’ll be one of the first people to try it out, we’ve also reduced the monthly cost by 50% and when you sign up you’ll get that price for as long as you remain a member.

Anyone signing up outside this special offer will have to pay the full price right from the beginning, so it’s a good idea to get in now while it’s really cheap and save yourself half the cost forever.

I’m VERY confident that once you’ve tried it out and felt the benefit of having price comparisons on your site, you won’t want to give it up.

If you’re serious about your business, and you’re serious about IPK (why wouldn’t you be?) you’ll see the extreme advantages to be gained by what I’m offering.

And to sweeten the deal, Paul and I have been discussing the next phase after we’ve taken on board all the other affiliate networks.

We’ll be offering this as a special bonus to those who sign up in this first phase for the price comparisons.

I don’t want to spoil the fun by telling you what it is here and now, but make sure you’re sitting down when I reveal it. 😉

Watch out for another post with the link to the service later, and if you haven’t been there already why not go visit the forum and say hello?

http://www.Vendiva.com/forum/

-Frank Haywood