SmartDD V3 – A Few Bugs

Well, we knew it was inevitable.  There’s a LOT of code in SmartDD v3 and so we would have been surprised if there wasn’t a single bug when we released it.

We’ve fixed the two reported now, and also spotted a third which has also been fixed.  Answering the support tickets and duplicating the circumstances that have caused the bugs has taken quite a while, and so I had to put the videos and docs back a few days while we sorted everything else out.

You can probably appreciate it’s been *very* time consuming and I think Paul is probably fed up of me by now.  And maybe you are too.

You can grab the hotfix for the FULL version here:-

http://www.smartdd.com/v3_hotfix/smartdd-hotfix-v3-01.zip

Just unzip to your hard drive retaining the folder structure within the zip, then FTP all the files up to your v3 installation, overwriting the existing files.  FileZilla will do a perfect job of it for you.

If you’ve already downloaded but not installed v3, delete it and grab a new copy from the members area.  It’s been updated with all the changes in the hotfix above.

Now that the bugs have been sorted I’ll start to release the videos showing you how to use the new features.

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business

FEAR

Why would anyone NOT want help from me?

I’ve offered on several occasions to take a look at what people are doing in their internet business that isn’t working for them, and on every occasion except for one, I’ve been blanked.

Why is that?

I think it’s FEAR.

I don’t mean fear, although that is part of it, I mean FEAR.

False
Evidence
Appearing
Real

I read about this in Glen Hopkins “Lucrative List Building” quite a while back, and I always bear it in mind just before I do anything.

FEAR used to paralyse me into doing nothing as I was frightened of what people might think or say about me.

But you know what? I’m never going to please everybody, it’s impossible. I realised that as long as I please myself, and “keep it real”, then enough people are going to agree with me to make it worthwhile. And on the upside, those that don’t agree will disappear in time anyway.

(I once sat at a seminar with FEAR stopping me from raising my hand to get my site reviewed by the panel of experts. Someone else got the benefit instead. Madness.)

I’ll just give you three paragraphs from the book, about the draining effects of FEAR. I’m sure Glen won’t mind and after all he’s getting a plug from me and so will make some more sales. 😉

You see, your subconscious mind has a hard time determining whether you’ve actually experienced the failure or just imagined it. Either way, you feel the physiological symptoms of the fear, such as an upset stomach.

Mark Twain explained it best: ‘I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which have actually happened.’

Often we believe our imagined failure will come true, and so we don’t even try to do what we’re afraid of failing at in the first place! That is what makes a failure: a person who is afraid to try because he fears the potential of a negative outcome.

The “POTENTIAL” of a negative outcome.

I choose to believe it’s FEAR that have held people back from accepting my help when I’ve offered it.

Maybe they think I’m going to ridicule them, or make them feel stupid and then tell everyone here on my blog so the whole world can point and laugh – but that’s not the case.

If I choose to offer my help freely, then it comes with no conditions. I’m not by nature a horrible or hard person (unless it’s asked for and required) and I easily empathise with people and often find myself mirroring their behaviour without realising it – I want to be liked, and I guess you do too.

People won’t like me if I’m horrible to them, and I fully sympathise with someone who’s having a hard time in getting things off the ground.

Look.

One of the differences between successful people and failures is the failures give up when they fail.

The successful fail too. But they try again and try again until they succeed. Then everybody says “Ooh! Look how successful she is.”

If you’re going to fail at something, do it early, and do it quickly. Get it over with and learn from the lessons.

Many things you HAVE to do before you can understand them. Learning and theory is great, but it’s only when you put it into practice that it all comes together, and you can then decide which bits of the things you’ve learned are worth keeping.

Let’s face it, most of the theoretical stuff you’ve learned from books or otherwise, you’ve forgotten. But the practical stuff will almost always stay with you for good.

I know people who have spent years learning and never put any of it into practice, and I bet you do too. I’ve done it myself.

Now, if I choose to learn something, I try to put it into practice right away, otherwise what’s the point in learning it?

In closing, if I (or anyone else) offer you some help, or offer to take a look at your sales copy or whatever, DON’T be scared of accepting that help. It may be the one thing that makes a real difference for you.

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business

Annoying Plugins

Have you ever wondered why your blog sometimes takes ages to draw?

I came across a blog the other day that used some strange sounding plugin name, and the plugin for some reason relied on connecting to the publishers site to do something or other.  The publishers site must have been down and so the page was never drawn, it just sat there for ages.

I’ve just noticed the same thing with my own blog after I’d activated the ShareThis plugin the other day.  I wondered why I’d deactivated it, and of course clearly I’d forgotten it causes my blog to hang.

So I’ve turned it off again.

Annoying isn’t it?

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business

I’ve Just Deleted 100 Subscribers

While cleaning up my mailing lists using Awebers interface the other week, I spotted a bug which caused me to delete about 100 real subscribers from my blog notify list.  I’m sorry about that if you’re one of them, and if you haven’t received an email from me in the last week or so, that’s why.

The bug arises after you select to view unsubscribed leads, and then click to view 100 at a time.  You then click the button to mark all in view as deleted, and then save.  All fine up to then.

When the list comes back for the next lot of unsubscribed leads, instead of remembering you were viewing 100, it goes back to the default of 20.  So you click the button to view 100 again, and instead of it showing you 100 unsubscribed leads, it shows you 100 leads of any status.

Erk!

So I didn’t notice that the first time I did it, and deleted 100 email addresses which were a mix of subscribed and unsubscribed, mostly subscribed.

I can’t be the only person who this has happened to, so just be a bit careful if you go through the same clean up exercise.

(BTW, did you know that the average email address on your mail list has a lifespan of 18 months?  People get fed up of all the spam and instead of dealing with it, they just open another email account.)

At this point I would usually promote Aweber and place my affiliate link here but in good conscience I’m afraid I can’t do that any more since they put their prices up.

Every cloud has a silver lining though.

Because Aweber have effectively removed themselves from the mass market, it opens the door for a really good self-hosted autoresponder.

Now Aweber have always said their deliverability rate is the best, and I’ve always agreed with them on that.  But there’s a new kid in town called AuthSMTP.com – I’ve mentioned them a few times on this blog already.

The service that AuthSMTP.com provide is email deliverability by using their SMTP servers.  And they’re cheap.

Like Aweber, they also work with ISPs to ensure email sent from their servers gets through network filters, and the nice thing is you can use their service either with your own email address, or with any script that uses SMTP.

SmartDD, TicketDesk Pro, the Instant Survey Script and the Nickel Script for instance.

Putting two and two together, if you have a really nice autoresponder script which does open rate and click tracking, why do you need an autoresponder service any more?

This is something I’ll be investigating over the next few weeks, and if I find a php based autoresponder script that pushes all my hot buttons, I’ll let you know.  If I don’t, then you can bet I’ll be adding that to my list of products.

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business

SmartDD V3 – Offer Extended until 6pm Saturday

Sorry for not getting back here sooner, as you can imagine it’s been a little busy…

I”ve decided to take the evening off to spend some time with the family, so I’m going to let this “24 hour” offer run until 6pm Saturday.

Hopefully, by mid-day tomorrow we should have upgraded everyone that qualifies, or answered their support ticket.

Lots of the same questions, and maybe even a bug, but we’ll sort that one out after the excitement has died down.

Answers to the same questions then, as a series of points.

#1 – If you purchased after 1st March 2008, we will upgrade you manually. A lot of people have already been done, but there are still plenty to go. If you fall into this category, please don’t raise a support ticket yet, be patient, we’ll get there.

#2 – If you’ve taken one of my special offers to upgrade to v2 since 1st March 2008, then you *will* be upgraded to v3.

#3 – If a few days have passed and you believe you should have been upgraded but you haven’t, THEN raise a support ticket. 🙂 If you fall into one of the two categories above, ie you have v2 and it happened since the 1st March 2008, then there’s no argument, you’ll get v3.

(I never argue with people anyway, I only discuss or back off and don’t get involved. You can never win an argument, ever.)

#4 – If you have either a PRO1 or PAID or EBAY or WSO similar special offer membership and you purchased before 1st March 2008, then the upgrade is $17 and you can find a link to get it by logging on and clicking “Membership Downloads”.

#5 – If you have a FREE membership, then the full price stands which you can find inside the members area by clicking “Membership Downloads”. There is no $17 upgrade for FREE members.

Okay, I think that pretty much covers it and the bulk of the questions I’ve seen so far.

UPDATE:

I’ve had quite a few people ask if there will be a special deal for FREE members to upgrade.  I did this for V2 and it seemed to go down well.  It won’t be quite as straight forward as just paying for the upgrade, I’ll be asking for a *little* more than that, but nothing too difficult.

Watch out for that in the next few days.

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business