script

Feb

2010

How To Create List Builders

Probably the best thing you can do for your online business is to build a mailing list.

It’s always an eye opener for people when I say that the size of your business is a direct reflection of the size of your mailing list. Okay that’s not 100% true as there are other variables which I’ll talk about shortly, but it is a good indicator.

There are many ways to list build, and a favourite of many people is to offer a freebie in return for a name and email address.

The problem with only using this method is you get what are called “tyre kickers” on your lists. Now that’s not a bad thing as over time you can educate your tyre kickers into becoming buyers, but generally speaking if you’re building a list, you want to build a list of buyers rather than tyre kickers.

I’ve found that if you have say 10,000 people on your mailing list that there’s a small core of a few hundred people who tend to take notice of what you say.

(If you’re reading this then you’re probably one of those people, and to you I say Thank You!)

If you think about it, this is one of the variables I mentioned above. It’s entirely possible to run a successful business online with just those few hundred people. It’s not always size that counts! It’s the responsiveness of the people on your mailing list that really makes the difference, and that’s obvious when you stop to think about it.

So ideally you want to build lists of a mix of freebie seekers that you can educate over the long term, and more importantly buyers.

I’ve already mentioned the most common way of building a freebie seekers list – you just give stuff away in return for a name and email address. You might now be thinking to yourself, “Okay so I have to sell stuff in order to build a list of buyers, and that’s harder than it sounds.”

True.

And one of the reasons it’s so hard to build a buyers list is you don’t get enough proven buyers visiting the site where you’re selling your products. Just increasing your search engine traffic isn’t enough, as you could just end up with a pile of freebie seekers at your site who have no intention of buying anything.

So how do you increase the number of proven buyers to your site?

Here it comes. The answer is in four parts.

#1 – You create a low cost product, usually under $17, under $12 is better, and $7 is the magic number.

#2 – You run an affiliate scheme, and let affiliates and joint venture partners send you traffic that consists of people who listen to them. These people are already warm and there’s a better than average chance they’ll buy.

#3 – You pay 100% commission directly to the affiliate and straight into their PayPal account. Affiliates love this and are always eager to promote.

#4 – On your download page you get them to join your mailing list. There’s a simple technique you can use that will turn almost 95% of buyers into subscribers. I’ll tell you about that next time.

What happens is as you pick up buyers they immediately turn into affiliates who are all willing to promote your product. Think – they were impressed enough to buy it and so why wouldn’t they be impressed enough to also promote it and make back the money they spent buying it?

So you end up with a constant stream of buyers and affiliates, all busy buying and then promoting your product, and ultimately building you a list of buyers which is exactly what you want.

You don’t make any money from this product, but you can later sell something else to your list of buyers, or even promote someone elses product, maybe another 100% commission item.

There’s also another option where you even upsell directly during the sales process, and take a cut of that sale rather than the front end one.

There are even more variants on this entire process.

You could put a squeeze page on the front of your site, and get a name and email address in return for a freebie, and then offer the full price item as an upsell, and maybe even do another upsell to something else. The full price item could be 100% commission and the second upsell 50%.

Or you could use a DHTML popover on your regular sales page to capture the name and email address instead.

Using either of those you build a list of freebie seekers and a list of buyers at the same time.

It’s up to you really how you do it, but I’m sure you can see the benefit? Doesn’t all this make perfect sense?

The question you might have now is how you can do it. You need a script that will handle the sales process.

Well first up, both the free and paid for versions of SmartDD will allow you to run a 100% affiliate scheme and also run one time offers at a different percentage commission. Or the Nickel Script will also allow you to run fixed price sales at 100% commission too, but no upsells.

However, probably the simplest method is to use a script that’s specially designed to handle the exact scenarios I’ve mentioned above.

Now the thing is, I thought everyone knew about this script, but I just shouldn’t take things like that for granted as I’ve had several people tell me recently that they’d never heard of it.

What you actually buy is an ebook that describes in detail the advantages of using the above method and exactly how to do it. And what comes with it is the script that will allow you to use this method and pay your affiliates instantly and automatically directly into their PayPal account.

Better still is that there are no databases to set up – the whole thing runs off flat text files just like the Nickel Script does.

But the icing on the cake is the price.

Just $7.

You can get it from here:-

http://www.frankhaywood.com/go/7ds/

-Frank Haywood

Feb

2010

Really GOOD Membership Software

I’ve looked all over the place for a GOOD general purpose membership script, preferably for WordPress. Have I found one?

I’m still looking.

A weakness I’ve noticed in many of the membership scripts is you’re either IN the membership, or you’re OUT of it. It doesn’t seem like there’s been enough thought given over to all the different methods of actually handling members.

Even the the one I’ve found that has considered that you might not actually want members to be just in or out is flawed. The assumption is that it’s a drip fed membership concerned with supplying content as learning rather than as products.

Here’s the specific scenario I’m thinking about where the content is product, as with PLR Code Mine.

Someone joins a membership today. They’re a member for three months and then for whatever reason they drop out. Two months later, they rejoin. What would you expect to have happened in this scenario?

What I expect from a really good membership script is that if someone has been a paid member for 3 months, then they should ALWAYS have access to that content, even during the times they’re not a paid member. So if the content they’ve purchased is updated, they get the benefit of it.

If they then drop out for two months, then as administrator I should be able to specify that they shouldn’t get access to that two months worth of content. They’ve missed the boat.

I may also wish to sell it to them at a much higher price than if they’d been a regular member, to allow them to catch up.

So when they rejoin at month 6, they now have access to months 1-3 and 6, but not to month 4 and 5. They can purchase month 4 and 5 at say three times the regular membership price if they wish to, at which point they then have perpetual access to it, even if they drop out of the membership again.

To me, that would be a perfect membership solution. But I’m damned if I can find anyone that does such a script.

I have found one where a lot of thought has gone into membership as learning, but not where membership involves a product. What happens there is that when the member rejoins at month 6, then they get access to month 4, not month 6. And the workaround suggested by the very helpful developer / owner involved just doesn’t cut it. Grrr…

There’s nothing for it, I’ll have to get my own done. I can see from other sites that I’m a member of that there’s a real need for such a script, as they all have the same issues. I’m either in or out, and once a month has gone by, the back products get removed.

I just find it difficult to believe that no-one has ever sat down and thought about this. Fortunately for me, it’s such a glaring omission it leaves the door wide open for a BETTER membership script than the rest of the stuff on the market, doesn’t it?

Watch this space.

-Frank Haywood

Jan

2010

Brand New PLR Software Site Pre-Launching Today

I’m very excited to be able to tell you that something I’ve been working on for several weeks now is finally coming to fruition.

Last year I decided I wanted to help you get rid of your job and start working for yourself. There are many paths you can take to get there, and I always advise people to work towards multiple streams of income. That way if one fails for whatever reason, you have others you can fall back on.

Over the years I’ve been on this planet, I’ve done all sorts of things to earn a living, and I’ve held down all sorts of jobs from fish-fryer to Data Manager for the projects that introduced the last two Range Rovers to the world. But the VERY BEST thing I ever did was to strike out on my own.

Don’t get me wrong. There have been ups and downs. There have been some months I’ve started where I’ve wondered where the money to pay the mortgage was going to come from. But somehow we always made it through.

And I KNOW that some people reading this are in that position right now through no fault of their own.

The problem is from the moment we’re born it’s always been about the job.

Our entire society literally forces people out of school and into a job, and any square peg that doesn’t want to fit that round hole is frowned upon.

The problem with a job is that when you take one, you’re at the mercy of someone else. You’re putting all your eggs in one basket. Your entire livelihood can be taken from you at any moment, and you don’t have ANY income security.

There’s the difference. Income security as opposed to job security. I don’t believe there’s any such thing as the latter, it’s really all just smoke and mirrors when you think long and hard about it.

If you want income security, then you have to do as I’ve suggested above. You have to ensure you have multiple income streams.

If one breaks, it’s a hiccup, not a disaster.

That’s why I decided to launch this new PLR software membership. It’s so you can add an additional income stream and protect your livelihood.

This is the first prong of my multi-pronged effort to help you make it this year.

I always say your target should be to replace your current income from your job by this time next year, whenever you start. It’s not easy. It takes effort. But the rewards are well worth it…

-You no longer have to do what your boss tells you to, simply because you don’t have one.

-You don’t have to get up at 7.00am just to go to work for 8 hours.

-When you do work, then it’s all for you. You’re not making someone else rich.

-If you feel like some time off for a walk in the park, then you can take it.

-You’re not working for / with people that are clearly stupid in a way that it seems only you can see. Yes, I think we’ve all felt like that at some point haven’t we? Whether it’s true or not.

The list goes on…

Where was I?

Oh yes, multiple income streams. That’s very important.

Here’s your first of 2010.

In three hours time at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST), my new monthly software membership goes live. Membership is available for the first 100 people to make it there in time at less than half the final price, locked in for as long as you remain a member.

The aim of the site is to give you a new, completely white label piece of software that you can rename and call your own, and also show you how and what to do with it to start to replace your current income.

The price is ridulously low for two reasons.

#1 – As a thank you for being a subscriber.
#2 – The site is still being built and you should regard it as a BETA.

On that last one, the site is very definitely a Work In Progress, as there’s plenty of content in the form of tools, articles and videos I want to add to the members area as well as providing you with the software itself.

And… One or two things might not work exactly as they’re supposed to. We’ll resolve those issues as we go.

Your reward for your patience is a much lower price than will be available to other people when the site goes officially live.

As I’ve said previously, the price you join up with will be locked in for as long as you remain a member.

And as the site grows and new groups are introduced with new software products in those groups, you’ll get the opportunity to join those new groups at the same price you lock in today.

Okay that’s it for now.

Watch out for the email with the link for when the site goes live at 6.00pm today.

-Frank Haywood

Jan

2010

PLR Software Of Your Own

I passionately believe that the best online business model is selling software.

That’s because the perceived value of software compared to say an ebook is far higher.

Well, after a few false starts, it looks like the new software PLR membership I’ve created for you is just about ready to rock and roll.

The new site has been created to give you a chance to fast track your business in 2010.

The idea is simple. In order to build a business you need products, and a good way of getting those together is to use private label rights material you can put your name on and call your own.

It cuts down on your creation time and makes it easy to get yourself up and running. You may even already be doing this with PLR ebooks, and that’s okay… But there’s a bit of a downside to ebooks.

You’ve probably seen that everybody and his dog are now selling the same ebooks with their own name on. They’re not even bothering to change the title, which is a basic mistake in itself.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

I know that having your own source of software you can sell is MUCH better.

Software has a far higher perceived value than an ebook, but of course getting hold if it is the problem. And even when you can get hold of it, you always end up buying it “as-is” with no warranty or support. I’ve found that in nearly every case I’ve bought PLR software, I’ve had to scrap it simply because the software was never designed to be released as PLR in the first place.

What that’s meant to me is it’s been extremely difficult to take PLR software and call it my own. It can cost a lot of money to take most PLR software and change even the title of it. I know that because I’ve been there, and I’m sure lots of other people have too.

So in the end most people go with PLR ebooks simply because there isn’t a decent regular source of PLR software that they can easily adapt and call their own.

Until now.

Opening tomorrow at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) is my new PLR software membership site.

This is a joint venture between myself and a group of developers.

Each product we create is specially put together with its final use as PLR kept firmly in mind. This means it’s written from the start with the idea of keeping it easy to edit either by the use of a language file, or if its a WordPress plugin, by editing a bit of text in the plugin.

It’s dead simple, and we show you how in the members area.

The product you get each month comes usually as either an untitled WordPress plugin or PHP script, plus a sales page design and sales copy, plus some basic documentation. All you have to do is think up a product name and edit the bundle to reflect that new name.

Hey presto! One brand new never-before-seen product, and it’s all yours to pretty much do with as you please.

We’ve even decided to make it effectively unrestricted PLR. In fact there are just two very reasonable restrictions as to what you can do with the software you get from us.

#1 – You can’t sell or offer PLR to any of them.
#2 – You can’t offer them as part of a mass product membership, paid or otherwise.

The reason is simple – that’s what WE do.

Okay, I think that’s enough for now. I’ll send you another email tomorrow about the membership site, plus some ideas as to what you can do with your new PLR software, so look out for that.

Then at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) tomorrow, I’ll send you the link where you can join.

Which reminds me…

As one of my subscribers you’re going to get the lowest price available locked in for life, but only if you’re one of the lucky 100 to get in.

What’s more, as I open up new groups within the membership, you’ll have the chance to join those new groups at the locked in price you get tomorrow.

NO-ONE else will get that, and they’ll end up paying double what you will.

It’s just for you IF you get inside in time. I fully expect the site to be oversubscribed.

Okay?

More tomorrow, or you can leave a comment if you want to squeeze a little bit more out of me.

-Frank Haywood

Jul

2008

Support Desk Reminder

I just thought I’d post a little reminder that I have a support desk at:-

http://www.Vendiva.com/support/

which uses TicketDesk Pro my help desk software.

The reason I’ve posted this reminder is because when I checked my email yesterday, I’ve had 3 people who are clearly frustrated because it seems I’m not answering their emails.

In fact, I’ve answered all of them, including all 4 of Catherine’s (if you’re reading this), so don’t think I’m ignoring you. Email gets checked twice a week now, with my goal for it to be once a week, but the support desk gets checked several times a day.

The problem is, as I’ve said before, even though I have both domain keys and SPF records in place to authenticate my email (and I also use AuthSMTP on some accounts), ISPs insist on filtering a lot of what they consider to be business email. From their point of view, they supply internet services to home users and therefore will only allow “home usage” email to be delivered.

If you’re running an internet business, then create a business email account off your main domain, and use that instead. No more ISP filters and you can communicate fully with the world again.

But if you really want to get my attention, then use my support desk. And if you want to ease the load on yourself, get a copy of TicketDesk Pro, it’s extremely easy to use. Before TDP, I was spending 2 hours a day on support by email. Since installing TDP, it takes me no more than 30 minutes to do all my support, and that’s with checking at regular intervals.

The reason it’s all become a lot faster is because I’ve fully loaded it with Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and Standard Responses (SRs).

The FAQs catch most problems, and the SRs catch the bulk of the rest. In practice, many of the SRs are repeats of the FAQs as some people like to be told rather than look it up. That’s okay, it takes me a few seconds to read, select an SR and add it to my reply.

I’ve come to rely on the Standard Responses so much that I’ve created often used URLs in there. So now I can select an SR, add it, then select a URL and add that too. Or I can combine several SRs to create a fuller answer.

If you’re struggling with email yourself, then TicketDesk Pro is definitely the way to go to reduce your workload. It’s easy to use and it has some great benefits.