christmas

Dec

2010

Christmas Sales Pages Update

In our never-ending quest to do great stuff that blows your socks off and puts a grin on your face, we’ve updated the WordPress bit of the Christmas Sales Page Templates.

There were two big problems with the original version.

Problem #1 – The elements on the templates were fixed in place.
Problem #2 – The order button had text on it as part of the button graphics.

We’ve now fixed both of those.

Solution #1 – We’ve created short code tags to represent most of the elements on the page.

This means you can now write your sales copy in the main editor, and position the elements wherever you want them within the copy by adding a tag where you want it to appear. 🙂

The short code tags you can use are:-

[product] – Inserts a johnson box with the contents of the Product Options fields.

[testimonial-1] – Inserts a johnson box with the contents of Comments Options 1.

[testimonial-2] – Inserts a johnson box with the contents of Comments Options 2.

[testimonial-3] – Inserts a johnson box with the contents of Comments Options 3.

[certificate] – Inserts a certificate graphic with the contents of the Certificate Options fields.

[purchase] – Inserts the order button with the contents of the Purchase Options fields.

[ps] – Inserts the PS detail with the contents of the P.S. Options fields.

[footer-links] – Inserts the footer links or text with the contents of the Footer field.

[br] – Inserts a single line break and is incredibly useful as the WordPress editor (TinyMCE) will strip out extra breaks in visual mode editing.

That last one was a spark of brilliance from the plugin developer and I’ve asked if we can have it included in the next version of Big Ed too.

You’ll notice that the exception/exclusion with the above tags is the Header Option.

It has to be at the top and will break the appearance of the page if we tried to make it movable.

This means you can now do things like create your page sales copy so it looks something like this:-

———————
[br][br][product]

Yes! That’s right! You can… blah, blah, blah.

[testimonial-1]

This enables you to… blah, blah, blah.

[certificate]

[testimonial-2]

So why delay? Order now!

[purchase]

Closing text… blah, blah, blah.

[ps]

[testimonial-3]

[purchase]

[footer-links]
———————

Note that the [purchase] tag has been used twice so that you can put the order button in its regular place and also at the bottom for those people who go straight down to look for the price.

Cool huh?

Solution #2 – Alexandra L wrote to us to say that as a French speaker she wanted a method of changing the text on the order button or for us to supply the blank graphics.

D’oh!

Fixed. So now you can do that too.

We’ve added a new Purchase Option called “Purchase Button Text”. Any text you enter into that field will appear like magic on the order button. No graphical editing required.

😉

The text itself appears to be embedded into the button and part of the button graphic (done with CSS I think), so again it’s another bit of brilliance from the designer and developer.

…

The result of these two changes means great looking sales page designs which anyone can use on any of their WordPress blogs without really needing to know anything about HTML.

Just upload, activate and add sales copy.

The only thing we can’t make easier for you is the sales copy. It’s a skill you *need* to learn for yourself. Practice makes perfect.

…

The plugin isn’t perfect yet and there are a few inconsistencies such as the short code tags not matching the option description, but we’ll fix that with the next release. I wanted to get it out to you ASAP while it’s still leading up to Christmas. 😉

Just go back to your personal download page (you DID bookmark it, right?) and grab the zip.

What you’ll find when you upload and activate it is that the page looks EMPTY when you first select a template and publish.

Don’t forget (like I did) that you need to add all the short code tags in your page editor before they show. Ahem. 😉

…

Finally, Multiple Streams Themes 4 and the squeeze page templates that went on sale on Friday now have just a few copies left at the $12.50 price point, so they’re still quite cheap if you don’t already have them.

Probably the next release of the Page Template Plugin will incorporate both squeeze and sales page functionality and you’ll be able to choose between the two with templates being optional extras.

Have fun…

-Frank Haywood

Nov

2008

Are You Getting Ready For The Christmas Sales Rush?

I am. And I’m getting a little bit excited as I intend to earn a few commission payments from people who are buying their Christmas gifts online.

I’ve just purchased something that looks like it holds great promise, and I’ve already taken my first steps with it. The principle is both obvious, simple, and utterly brilliant.

Ideally I’d like to be able to test it all out before I told you about it, but really it’s just too late in the day to do so.

But never fear. I’ve spent some time looking over it all (just skimming so far), and I realise that no matter when this is implemented, if you follow the process, then it will work. I have no doubt about that.

The reason I have no doubt is because I did have doubts, and so I spent about 3 hours today looking at a few of the example sites, and examining their rankings and incoming links.

What I’ve found has made me very excited. These sites are ranking on page 1 of Google with just a few incoming links purely because they have ZERO competition.

The reason they have no competition is because it looks like this market has been almost completely overlooked.

And because it’s largely untapped (oh joy) is why I’m getting really worked up about the potential to earn some FAT commission cheques earned in the run up to Christmas.

So tomorrow I’m putting aside 4 hours to put together my first site based on the methods I’ve been learning about. This will include market research, domain registration, page optimisation, the lot. I may not bother with PPC initially until I know the site is converting using just free traffic.

I know that my next site should take me about an hour or so less, and that eventually I reckon I can get it down to under 2 hours.

You can bet that once I have the one up, it’s already pencilled into my plan to add two per day going all the way up to Christmas. If I can teach my 11 year old how to put them up, then I’ll have him doing them too, and also my wife.

In fact why stop at Christmas?

I can see that the methodology behind this is a true money earner all the year round. I believe without a shadow of a doubt that this will work, but I want to get the first site or two up before I give you any more detail about it.

If you’re not excited yourself, if you can’t feel my enthusiasm for this already, then you must be as jaded as I am.

Because… I was very wary after purchase, thinking I was buying yet another piece of junk. (We’ve all done it, right?)

This is far, far from it and I honestly wish I’d come up with this myself. I have a few experiments running at the moment, but this is better than anything I’ve come up with! Having said that, I know I can use a few of these methods in my own exercises too.

Cracking stuff.

Give me a day or two, and I’ll let you know how I’m getting on.

-Frank Haywood