Offer Closed
***
Today (Saturday) at 6.00pm GMT I’ll be running a 48 hour special for a great new plugin called the Promo Tools plugin.
I know it’s unusual for me to run a pre-launch sale like this at the weekend, but I won’t be around until Friday afternoon (possibly evening), as I have a scheduled hospital visit.
(The same goes for the affiliate scheme – I’ll have some news for you about that too.)
I then want to release the plugin officially and immediately when the sale is over.
As part of the scheme, I’ll be using the new Promo Tools plugin – it seems to be perfect for our needs.
In case you don’t know what a promo tools page is, it’s usually a page dedicated to supplying an affiliate with a set of promotional tools together with their affiliate link embedded in them.
And that’s exactly what the Promo Tools plugin can help you with.
It will allow you to create pages that you can fill with promo tools you create for your affiliates such as pre-written blog posts, articles, emails, forum signatures and banners.
With this plugin, once you’ve set up the tools, all an affiliate has to do is paste their aff link into the box at the top and every single promo tool on the page gets auto-populated with their affiliate link.
Then they can copy the code for banners etc and paste it directly into their web site.
It makes the whole process a lot easier for affiliates, and the easier you can make it, the more attractive it becomes.
And while I know this is contrary to the 80:20 rule I live by, experience tells me it’s the many little things like this that make the BIG difference.
Many apologies for these changes, I know it will all be worth the wait.
-Frank Haywood
Sounds great Frank. Looking forward to it. Just what I was looking for. You should consider having pages set up with a count down timer for all these pre-sale mini-launches you always have. It would be cool to have the URL so I can put it in my calendar with a reminder to visit the page.
What would be even better is to create a plugin that adds an appointment to Outlook and iCal (Mac users) for launches such as this. This way, when things go live, the person holding the sale or launch will know that people will be alerted by their own calendars…..as well as an email to “go, go, go” when the time comes.
Hi Jason,
Long time no speak.
Well thanks for that. You know what? I actually have the countdown timer in my product idea document, but I haven’t got round to it yet. The calendar thing is very clever though, and I guess that could be extended to a special RSS feed too so as to cover both bases.
When I get it done I’ll send you a copy to test out. 😉
-Frank
Great Frank. Thanks!
That plugin shouldn’t be sold for 10 bucks though. A plugin that does that would be extremely valuable because the reminders would be set up on each persons individual computer and they
would NEVER miss the launch. Their machine would automatically remind them about the “appointment” to visit the launch page. Outlook and iCal pops up a reminder right on the desktop.
Now THAT, sir, would be a winner!
Looking forward to your release today. I’ll try to get in during the $10 price point but no biggie if I miss it and even pay full price later. I need the Promo Tools plugin and will definitely use it. Hoping I can use it with Infusionsoft easily.
Hi Jason,
Wow! You’re absolutely right – I didn’t think of it like that. That *would* be a pretty awesome tool for anyone to have.
I’ll go have a look to see what we can do.
-Frank
Hey Frank (and everyone else).
Have it put the appointment into their Google Calendar and then they can receive a text message on their cell phone to remind them to go to their computer and Buy, Buy, Buy!!!! That’s what I do right now, but I’m having to do it manually (i.e. set up the appointment in Google Calendar, set the reminder to send me a text, etc.) I use the Sync function to sync it with my Outlook, but to get the SMS reminder, I had to go into Google Calendar to set that up as Outlook only allows pop-up reminders.
Frank, do I smell a new project on the horizon?
JDD
Hi James,
Awesome idea. I don’t yet know how it can be done, but if it’s possible to auto set SMS, we’ll go find out how to do it. 😉
-Frank
Frank,
Google calendar handles for the end user how they want to be notified about new events. My wife and I share a calender in our business and personal calenders in google. if we add an event , that event gets added into the others calender. We both get notified on our smart phones when the events make it to the calendar and we both have our settings to notify us by email and by text messaging when an event is about to happen.
You only need would be how to get the events that we set up through a plugin to be formatted in the correct format for our end users to click a button to get the event details posted in their own calendars.
I send events through sms to my contacts and they get sent as a vCalendar attachment. If they click on it it will give them the option to add the event to their calendar through the smart phone.
I am just giving you some heads up on what to research.
Richard
I have to laugh here. All these comments are not even about the plug-in that is being offered, but ideas and improvements for a plug-in that Frank is probably going to develop now. I just find that humorous.
JDD
Hehe. A long time ago I realised that the best way to find out what your customers want is to ask them, and I do from that time to time. You don’t always get totally useful ideas as they can be sometimes quite user-specific requests and not apply to everyone in general.
But actually seeing you guys ask for stuff in public and thereby generating interest in other people who may not be doing the things you’re doing is really interesting, and I’m now curious to see the kind of response I’d get from that. In fact, that last statement is making the cogs turn, and now I’m wondering if there isn’t some way of generating social proof by interest alone.
I’ll have to have a real good think about this and maybe write a short report about it after a bit of experimentation. 😉
Thanks guys.
-Frank
When I taught business development to small business owners and did consulting work with them, we would hold an all day CAB (Client Advisory Board) meeting (the business owner was not allowed in the room, but we recorded it and the attendees knew we were recording it). We would ask them to tell us what the business was doing good, bad, etc. Then, we’d ask what they could do better, services they could offer, products they could carry, etc.
You’d be really surprised what would come out of those CAB’s – and businesses grew and changed because of it.
I totally believe you on that one.
When I worked at Land Rover as a developer, I always used to pull the guys who were “on the ground” to one side after meetings and ask them what they thought would make things better rather than what their bosses were saying. Then I’d quietly agree with them to implement what they wanted as well as what their bosses were asking for. 😉
Everybody won, and 99% of the time even when I got stuff badly wrong (as we always do) I was still looked upon as the good guy and supported by the department staff I was doing the work for if it came to crunch time and the fingers were being pointed.
While the managers were supposed to be asking for what their staff were saying, I *knew* it would always have their bias on it, which is why I always double-checked…
😉
-Frank
I’m with James Dunn on the Google Calendar idea. Or for those of us that mainly use Outlook an appointment card download would be great too.
Now back to the Promo Tool:
Frank you say in the first sentence of the post above: “Today (Saturday) at 6.00pm GMT I’ll be running a 48 hour special for a great new plugin called the Promo Tools plugin.”
^^ That was posted on Friday the 19th. Today is the 20th. So when exactly do I need to mark my calendar to get in on this plugin pre-sale? I think it is 10:am Pacific Time U.S. – I have a local biz site client appointment then and may not be around long enough to get in on the sale.
You said only 50 copies and (I take it) over 48 hours and the price goes up which ever happens first.
I guess I have to hope the 50 last past my scheduled 2 hour meeting with this guy and his PR person.
I’ve bought quite a few of your plugins over the years. Any chance you could set one aside for a regular PluginGreat fans?
I had to ask,
Mike C.
Hi Mike,
Sorry for the confusion. It’s today, now actually as I write this. I edited the post to say “today” in the hopes of avoiding confusion and I think I may have done the opposite.
Oops. Hopefully you’ll be reading this and laughing. 🙄
-Frank
Pdf documents are exempt from the Google duplicate content penalty. How about a plugin that converts autoblogs to .pdf?
Nice idea, but there’s no such thing as the Google duplicate content penalty. You’ve been misinformed. Just forget you ever heard about it. 😉
What Google won’t do is count any content backlinks from content it already has in its index. So if you publish an article in an article directory for re-syndication with a backlink to your site, that will count as one backlink. If other webmasters re-publish your article on their sites, Google will ignore the backlinks.
This is why it’s a good idea to use article spinners and distributors. When I say article spinners, I’m not talking about the junk spam tools that churn out illegible garbage using English words, I mean the tools that will auto create articles from different combinations of words and sentences you’ve created by hand. These will generate unique and perfect English articles indistinguishable from individually written articles.
Each unique item of content generated when published will count as a backlink per article.
-Frank
Got your email saying it’s live but upon visiting this site and refreshing the browser several times, no link can be found to purchase.
Er, whoops! I’m using a new version of my Content Replacement plugin which publishes (and withdraws) content at set times, and I added the content incorrectly so that the buy link appeared and then disappeared almost immediately. 🙄
So I saw a flurry of sales, and then it stopped. Now fixed.
Sorry about that.
-Frank
Hi Frank
it’s 6:12pm as I write this and there are no buy buttons on your post… please help, I would like this at $10 !! Thanks.
Yeah, sorry Davee, see my previous comment.
My bad.
-Frank
Hi Frank – In case there are those yanks (like me) that don’t have a clue about GMT, heree’s a useful link so they will know how long before 6 GMT (or however you write it).
http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/
A suggestion would be to link to this URL when you use GMT to start a sale.
Regards,
Maury
Hi Maury,
Ah! Now then. I made another mistake. *sigh*
Here in the UK we’re not actually on GMT at the moment, we’re an hour in front and we’re running on BST (British Summer Time). So the GMT link isn’t working, hehe.
However, I do use a free service that displays the date and time for my locale, and if you take a look underneath the subscribe box at top right of this page, you’ll see my local time which if you hover over has a link to the page with my time on it. 😉
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=136
-Frank
HAH! Set up the alert to come through my mobile phone and made the purchase through my mobile.
KEWL!
Thanks Frank,
Mike C.
Hi Mike,
I’m impressed. Seriously. I know smart phones have finally reached (or are finally reaching) mass usage and acceptance, but it still makes me raise my eyebrows a little when I learn of them being used in this way.
If ever the tiny keyboard issue can be solved (I don’t know how, 3D light sensitive projection?), that will be it. 😉
I remember years (years I say!) ago reading some sci-fi about someone who had a complete super computer in a medallion that projected both the display and the keyboard into thin air. That really impressed me, but I always thought it would never happen in my lifetime.
I could have been wrong. Who knows? I guess it’s just a matter of time, and I’d definitely accept a half way house of a thin display and keyboard that unrolled. 😉
-Frank
Projection Keyboard…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fdDRGr64TQ
I’m just glad I picked up my copy before the rapture today. Then again, if Frank holds sales like this after the rapture, it will be easier to get in at the intro price. Not as many people will be around to snag it up. Takes a little longer to get to the 50 threshold…LOL
*chuckle* 😉
Thanks again Frank.
I must have been one of the first to d/l the plugin, cause I had NO problems!! GMT aside, I was watching your sidebar, which showed GMT, not BMT.
Looking forward to the “Affiliate Scheme” . . .
Hi Vern,
Thank for that. I’m pretty sure the time is showing BST not GMT. Well it is to me, hehe. Maybe it’s showing different things to different people. 😉
-Frank
Thanks Frank – I’m in. I really don’t need this right now, but I can see how it would be a huge time saver is I ever do. And I’m assuming that we’ll get updates when and if they happen.
Thanks,
Maury