Frank Haywood

Oct

2008

SmartDD V3 Now Released

Hurrah!

SmartDD v3 is released. I hope you feel it was worth the wait.

But before you go racing off to the members area to upgrade, make sure to READ THIS first so you understand the implications.

#1 – If you purchased SmartDD on or since 1st March 2008, then you get the upgrade for free. Hopefully I can upgrade everybody over the next day or so. Please be patient.

#2 – If you purchased SmartDD before 1st March 2008, then for 24 hours it’s just $17.00, let’s say until 11.59pm GMT (6.59pm EST) Friday night.

#3 – After the time in #2, the price goes up to $27 to upgrade.

#4 – I’ve tried the most common possible combinations of purchasing and upgrading, and they work for me. It’s possible that someone will run into a problem. Please raise a support ticket at http://www.Vendiva.com/support/ if you run into any issues. Again, please be patient.

Okay, now I know that one of the burning questions will be “what feature did you add in that delayed release by yet another week?”

Answer – ClickBank!

The four most requested features were free sign ups, one time offers, Kunaki.com, and ClickBank support, and we’ve done all four. A close fifth was memberships and subscription functionality – we’re going to try and get those in before Christmas. It will be a 3.x release, so any V3 members / owners will get those for free.

Finally, and I know I’m going to get panned for this…

Because we added in ClickBank support at the 11th hour, I suspended the docs as things look a little different now. I’ve had to junk a lot of my screen shots, and it means I’ll have to do them all again. Please be patient while I finish off the docs.

YES, I will do them this time!

Over the next 72 hours, I’ll create a decent set of videos running over each of the main new areas of functionality that have been missing up to now, or are new.

So that’s:-

#1 – The web store and the three built in templates.
#2 – Using and creating templates.
#3 – Kunaki.
#4 – Free sign ups with Aweber as the example.
#5 – One time offers.
#6 – ClickBank – easy that one.

In fact, using ClickBank is as simple as adding a new publisher ID, creating an item and then selecting ClickBank on the button code generator screen, and finally copying and pasting the code onto your sales page.

SmartDD does the rest as usual.

You know what? I think you should be able to work out how some of it works just by taking a guess at it. Only the web store and the templates aren’t so obvious, although it’s easy to get to grips with once you’ve been shown how.

Okay, that’s it for now. You have until this time (ish) tomorrow to upgrade to V3 at the reduced price of $17.

http://www.SmartDD.com/

-Frank Haywood

Oct

2008

A New Product Every Week

Just about 12 months ago, I did my “7 Products In 7 Days” exercise – I only managed 3, but I still class it as a success.

I think it’s time to do something similar again on the product creation front.

But instead of pushing myself to do a product a day for 7 days, I think I might set myself a target of a product every 2 weeks or if I can keep up (and why not?) every week.Â The products will include *everything* – that’s the product itself, the sales copy, the autoresponder set up and the sales and delivery software needed to do it all set up.

This is easily attainable and I can see myself getting in front after a month with 3 or 4 products ready.

The way I see it, I can break it down into timed chunks and set myself a timetable for when everything has to be done.Â Product creation time will vary depending on the product, but things like sales copy and software set up should be fairly constant.

Some products will be freebie list builders, and others will be items I charge for.Â Some will be created from scratch, and others will be based on PLR.Â I don’t think you’ll be able to tell the difference when I’ve finished with them.

I have plenty of almost completed products on my hard drive.Â I don’t know about you, but I suffer from getting 80% done and then grinding to a halt.

How about one of the first products being a breakdown of how to create a product, and all the little tasks that need to be done?

I usually do these things off the top of my head as I go, but I think it’s about time I had a system in place so that I don’t have to think too hard about it all.Â You know, step 1 do this, step 2 do that.

And I fancy creating a mind map of it all too – I’ve never done that before, so that should be interesting in itself.

If you don’t know what a mind map is, it’s a method of dumping all the knowledge in your head on a particular subject into a useful usable format.Â You can then use the map to complete a task such as writing a book, or creating sales copy or even creating a process.

I’ve even seen mind maps that are products in their own right.

There’s a free mind mapping tool called Free Mind (plenty of explanation and screen shots) that I think I’ll use to do that job, and I’ll let you know how I get on.

So let’s say starting 1st November, I’ll document each day here on my blog how I’m getting on with my product creation and set up.Â A sort of a day in the life…

I know you’ll find it interesting.Â 😉

The important thing in this is YOU realising that I’m not the only one who can do this kind of thing – you can do it too.Â Maybe watch me first and it will give you an idea of how to go about it yourself.

-Frank Haywood

Oct

2008

SmartDD V3 – looking like October 23rd

Renowned for putting dates back, I’ve done it again.

We’ve decided to go ahead and add this one last feature. I’m positive you’ll say I did the right thing when you see what it is.

Paul said that Monday 20th was a bit of a tall order as we’ll have to do new screen shots to show the new feature, and I conceded he was right and decided that’s what we’ll do. He’ll be finishing the coding tomorrow (Sunday) which will give us time to test and document.

As an aside, I’m almost sorry I went with JVM1 now to manage all my products through a central location as I now feel SmartDD in conjunction with JROX JAM would have achieved the same thing, only better. (Maybe it’s not too late to change my mind, I’ll have to think long and hard about that one though…)

Anyway, partly as a result of moving SmartDD v3, I’ve also decided to put the release date of AdSpurt back until the 6th November to give me and my new JV Manager time to contact some more partners before launch.

If you went for the CB Ad Rotator deal on AdSpurt, don’t worry, you’ll get it in a couple of days or so. How does Tuesday sound? 🙂

-Frank Haywood

Oct

2008

SmartDD V3 – Release Date Back (a bit…)

Okay, the two bugs that I wrote about yesterday have been found and dealt with.Â As I thought, they were fairly minor and Paul fixed them quickly.

While he was having another look at the code, I had a request in (hi Myles) asking if a couple of small changes could be made to accommodate some affiliate tracking code on the thank you and download pages, so I asked him to take a look at that and he’s done that too.

But then we got a bit carried away and he’s added in something else that we really weren’t planning on doing for v3 release.

I don’t want to let on what it is, just in case it doesn’t pan out, but the first test worked perfectly.Â Things went a bit down hill after that though as we discussed the method involved and we realised it wouldn’t work the exact way we wanted it to.

We decided to put the release date back until Monday (which we know is a bad day to do it), and try to get this new feature in.Â I know that some people have been asking for this and that it will blow their stack when they see we’ve put it in, but just in case we can’t do it, I don’t want to discuss it here.

So Monday 20th it is then.

If you have v2, then you’ll get the upgrade to v3 for $17 for just 24 hours, then the upgrade price will go up to $27 after that.

If you bought after 1st March 2008, then you get v3 for free.

Finally, we’ll also be releasing a v3 trial edition for all the free members.Â We’ve upped the number of deliverable products in the free version from 3 to 5, which means that for many people this will be all they need to set up and run all their mini-sites with secure delivery.

Although it’s 5 products, they can be used with unlimited saleable items, which we think is still exceptionally useful for free.

-Frank Haywood

Oct

2008

SmartDD v3 – Houston We Have A Problem

While doing the docs for v3, I’ve come up against a full stop.

#1 – I’ve had a new bug reported by someone who got v3 early (sorry Ray) that’s now being looked at. It’s fairly obscure but annoying, as a customer can’t currently order the same item twice. If they do, the second order just doesn’t register.

#2 – While trying to manually add an order, the saleable items aren’t being pulled back correctly. There’s some corruption getting in there somehow.

My own installation of SmartDD here on this blog works perfectly – both of these are brand new and must be a result of Paul’s recent tweaking. 😉

I’m sure they’re easily fixable and I’m just waiting for Paul to get back to me. But take this is as a warning that SmartDD v3 might *not* be released on Thursday after all.

-Frank Haywood