MiniSiteGallery.com

A girl called me the other day asking internet marketing questions. And you know what, I think it’s a good topic to cover in my blog… so here it is…

I hope you really read this and take it to heart when it comes to list building…

Here goes..

The girl, let’s call her, Amanda, told me that she is starting to build her list. Well, good for her. It’s good when you are starting to take action…

And she started telling me that it’s not doing so well. She is only getting a few subscribers… and it’s a number that is really frustrating her.

Okay, you may have heard that it’s not about the size of list but rather the relationship you have with them. But then again, you have to look at the way you build your list.

I asked Amanda how she’s building her list…

Read the rest of this entry »

I decided to do a tutorial on how to create order buttons with Photoshop. I read about order buttons by Ryan Diess where his best order button was 400 pixels wide, orange background with navy blue text and it says “Add To Cart”.

This is what we’ll be doing today.

As for the credit card icons, it’s from Liam McKay of WeFunction.com. You can download your own at http://wefunction.com/2008/07/function-free-icon-set/

I did this in just 10 minutes. The video below was uploaded in HD quality. Do enlarge to full screen for better view.

Click Here To Download PSD Source

[ DOWNLOAD SIMPLE IPN ]

I was running a class for my Netpreneurs Online Classroom and we got to the part where we are suppose to learn how to deliver our downloadble digital products.

I don’t want to make this complicated for my students. I want to make this simple, but at the same time offers some form security from online thefts. So I started thinking of a simple script that should be able to do the following:

• Expiring download link
• Expiring download page
• Minimum setup
• No database required
• Uses Paypal IPN
• Emails the customers with their download info
• Customizable download page, thank you page and email
• Multiple files product package
• Allows Paypal Sandbox testing
• No need to create the Paypal Button form - will generate for you
• Don’t have to understand Paypal IPN - just know that it’s more secure
• Strict verification process - verifying price, Paypal email address and currency

HOW TO USE / INSTALLATION
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been three years or so since I last did an online coaching class on web design for netpreneurs. And that itch is here again.

So I will be doing Web Design for Netpreneurs Online Coaching Class starting July 2nd, 2009. The class will cover:

- HTML
- CSS
- Photoshop
- A little bit of PHP
- and a few more things.

This will be a 6-week program where you will learn via:

- Video Lessons (in high quality HD video)
- Assignments
- Lesson materials
- Lesson discussions
- Weekly webinar
- and of course, you get direct access to me, Kidino.

Here’s How To Become A Student For Free

Because of the actual time that I will be spending into this class, the class will be sold at $397. And I have to limit the number of students to ensure the quality attention that each students will get.

But there is a way for you get in for free…

To better deliver the course, I need to know what the students really want to learn. Therefore, I am taking as much input as I can on this. Those send me a comment at the link below will stand a chance to become a student for free (and save $397).

Click here to go to my survey page and tell me what you want to learn in Web Design for Netpreneurs.

I am building some new sites and generating traffic with SEO. This is kinda my little experiment. My aim is to build a website with $200 budget, outsource all that I can and make it profitable in 90 days. I have two websites up and running right now. I just completed them. Just got started with some SEO.

You know that when it comes to SEO, there’s only three important steps - One, keyword research. Two, website optimization. Three, link building. I am at number three right now. And I discovered 11 different ways to get powerful links coming back to your website — for free.

Article Marketing

I am sure you know this one, right. You write articles and distribute them to article directories. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of article directories on the Internet. You can submit to them all or at least submit to EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com and ArticleBase.com.

Link Directories

Well, there are more link directories out there than there are article directories. Getting your website on these article directories sure is an easy way to build backlinks. Some of these directories have high Pagerank, which will help in search engine spider crawls and indexing. Simple searching for “link directories” will give you a lot of options. You may need to prepare some basic info about your site because you are going to need them a lot when you start to submit your website to these directories.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites allow you to share and recommend your favorite sites with others. Who said that the sites has to be other people’s site? You can bookmark your own sites. You can also expect some viral traffic if your site contains really great content that others would appreciate. And because of that, those really good content you have on your blog, make sure you bookmark specifically those pages, not just the main page website. Some social bookmarking sites are like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, BlinkList, Furl. You can use SocialMarker.com to help you bookmark your website to more social bookmarking sites faster.

Blog Comments

Yep, you can simply go to other people’s blog and leave your comments there. There are many high PR blogs and does not use the nofollow tag. And even if they use nofollow, remember, MSN and Yahoo don’t care about those… You can still rank well and get traffic from Yahoo and MSN even the blog uses nofollow. When I started Googling around, I found some directories that list out blogs and does not use the nofollow tag. That’s a good place to start looking for blogs to comment to. And make sure you make insightful comments and not to just blantantly promote your site.

Submitting Videos

This is simple. Create and upload videos. One video can be submitted to many, many video sites. You know, YouTube, Metacafe, Viddler, etc… And don’t tell me that videos are hard to create. Just use the free photos from SXC.hu, your website screen shot and the free video editing software in your computer - Movie Maker or iMovie. If you have Camtasia, you can use that too. And your video doesn’t have to be long. 1-2 minute is good enough. And the best part, you can link back to your website.

Now, on with some more interesting tactics…

Profile Pages

Not many really know about this. There are many high authority websites that accepts user registrations. And each user will have their own profile page. Another interesting thing is that you can link to your website from your profile page. Just some that I can list out right now… StumbleUpon.com, MyBlogLog.com, Digg.com, YouTube.com… and also VBulletin powered forums.

RSS Directory

Just like Link Directories, there’s also a type of directory where you can submit your RSS feed URL.

Software Directory

This may sound unrelated, but you can always create some kind of software for your site. There’s this thing called PAD file, where it contains info about your software. What you need is a PAD file creator, and then just use a PAD submitter and you are all done. As for the software, you can create application as simple as compiling a 1-page website into an EXE application.

Satellite Blogs

Instead of getting other websites to link to you, why not just build those yourself. One article is all that you need and you can build blogs on Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Webs.com, Weebly.com, and many more…

Social Pages

This is where you create pages on websites like Squidoo and HubPages. The ultimate is where you can get a link from Wikipedia.

Forum Posting

Quite similar to blog comments, but this time you participate in forums. Just like doing blog comments, I recommend that you participate in the conversion and share something of value. And lastly, I recommend that you link only from your signature.

First of all, there’s no magic pill…

It’s not like Morpheus is going to hold out his hands to you and say, “Red pill or the blue pill?”

I am sensing a lot of guys are shouting “blue pill”?

Well, there’s work to be done…

I think a lot of people are frustrated, tired, and quit after spending a lot of money but not seeing the result.

Right, you spent a lot of money…

And right, you spent a lot of time…

But then again, answer yourself this, “Did you really do anything?”

Did you get anything going that you can really call “putting an effort”?

I can guarantee that most of the times, people do one thing half-way, and then skip to another thing.

They read about affiliate marketing and jumped on that. But then they heard about pay-per-click, and jumped on that and left the earlier affiliate marketing hanging… then they discovered writing ebooks and thought, “why don’t I write an ebook myself?”

Guess what’s after that?

Yep… writing is too tough. So they went back to PPC and burn more money. Then they heard about outsourcing, and burn more there…

And on, and on…

I am sure you get the idea.

Hmmm… I have an answer to a problem like this…

Let me cut through the B.S… a straight answer on how to make money online (or anywhere).

Step 1: You need an audience…

Step 2: You need to make them an offer…

Alright about Step 1. There’s two ways of going about it. You can gather your own audience, or you can find others who have gathered an audience.

Gathering your own audience is like building a list, a community website (like niche forum, blogging, etc) or anything that brings people to you, which includes traffic generation skills like SEO, PPC or even Bum marketing.

Another way, is by finding others who already have audience.

This is like advertising on other people’s website, ezine, or maybe finding JV partners, etc… you get the idea here, right.

When you have an audience, whether it’s yours or not, you can present them with relate offers.

About that offer, that too can be your own or others. You can create your own product, you can join affiliate programs that offers related product… or here’s another way…

If you gathered your own audience, like when you are blogging or built a forum, or a very popular website, you can sell advertising space…

There’s so many ways to make money online … but what ever it is, it will generally fall in these two steps.

And yes, even when you are selling a service.

Now, what can YOU do to make money online?

Tough question — but I guess a simple answer I can give right now is this — leverage on your strength.

If you have strong focus, attention to detail, won’t get bored easily, you can try SEO or PPC. Those are tough, even when you outsource because it requires attention to details.

If you have money, try out PPC, banner ads, etc. If you don’t have money, learn SEO and bum marketing. And promote affiliate programs like Clickbank, etc…

If you are good with people, you can pickup JV brokering. I am sure there some good courses out there.

If you have technical skills, you can offer services. Put up a website with 1) your sample of work 2) testimonials 3) a form to request for a quote.

Another thing for technical guys, which includes organized people… you can giveaway tools or resources like software or document templates. This can be web templates, business templates, 3D object templates for 3D software, graphic templates, diagrams, charts, etc…

What do you do with that? Giveaway for free and build either a list or a community. Because with good resources or tools, you can build either…

Then you’d have an audience. You know what to do when you have an audience — present them with offers.

If you have great knowledge and experience, and you can write — write an ebook. If a book is too tough for you, then write a short report and sell them cheap. When you sell them cheap and you offer affiliate program with that (maybe using $7 script), you are also building an audience.

Take a look at yourself and see what it is that you are good at the leverage on that to get yourself started.

When you do that, you won’t be jumping around from opportunity to opportunity. Because you must be at least good the things that you are good at, right?

And doing things that you are good at is a breeze…

Stop leaving projects hanging, unfinished…

I had a looked at myself…

Well, what am I good at?

I am good at web design and programming. That’s why most of my projects are related to both or either one of those two.

- OptinDesign.com
- MiniSiteGallery.com
- DIYMiniSite.com
- WOWPopUp.com

I am going to be honest… I got distracted too. I wanted to pursue other things like PPC, SEO, bum marketing. But why not do things that you are good at first…

If you’ve made enough money leveraging on your strength, maybe then you can set aside a budget for “side projects” and see where that takes you.

But always, leverage on your strength first…

Now, I need to get back to creating an awesome mini-site creation system — using WordPress.

It’s my strength — design and programming…

All the best… go get’em!

A while back (maybe more than a year ago), Dennis Becker released his ebook called 5 Bucks A Day.

It was a great ebook at the time. It’s not a step-by-step guide on how you can make money on the Internet. But it will give you a solid strategy and a new way of thinking…

In his ebook, Dennis mentioned that every week he will work on a new website or project. And every new website that he works on, his goal is to push it to earn him $5/day with it.

Quite an interesting plan…

The general idea is that when you aim for a site that makes only $5 a day, it’s much easier to do. It’s about breaking the big goal into smaller ones…

Dennis proceed by explaining some examples of his projects. He has projects where he uses SEO. He has projects where he uses eBay. He has projects where he pays for traffic… he has other types of projects too…

But mainly, Dennis wants to illustrate a different type of mindset, away from then sucking up to JVs, away from product launches, but something that you build on bit-by-bit, day- by-day…

I think 5 Bucks A Day is a great ebook… To me, it’s still relevent to this day, maybe not only in Internet marketing, but in other things that you do too…

I think I bought for much lesser but it’s selling for $47 today.

Alright, enough about Dennis…

Actually, I want to talk about Joel Peterson.

Joel just released a new product called The Mini-Site Formula.

And with The Mini-Site Formula, Joel has a similar strategy, which is to build sites that he can earn $3/day from each.

It’s quite similar to what Dennis taught back then. Only different in numbers.

And when I look at it again, where Dennis comes short with his 5 Bucks A Day, Joel has it covered.

For example, like I said earlier, 5 Bucks A Day is not a step-by-step guide. Dennis does not show you how to exactly build your websites, how to really promote your websites, and lastly how to exactly monetize your websites.

Sure, Dennis mentioned some examples but the ebook is more of a concept and strategy thing rather than a step-by-step guide.

I am not saying that it’s no good. 5 Bucks A Day is more about making a mind-shift, planning your day-to-day activity, building a systematic approach to your Internet business.

5 Bucks A Day is worth the price. And so is The Mini-Site Formula…

The Mini-Site Formula costs a lot more… it’s not $47. It’s $97. But it’s like a home study course. Once inside, Joel will make you watch a series of videos that will show you step-by-step how to make the plan work.

You will learn about the overall strategy. You will learn about what you need to do. And you will see it being demonstrated to you in a step-by-step manner.

You will also learn the type of websites you need to build, how to build them, etc…

Joel also shares with you the tools and resources that he uses to build, promote and monetize the little mini-sites.

For example, one of his traffic tactics is by using videos. And he’s had success generating converting traffic with videos and he didn’t have to rely of search engine optimization. Joel will show you how to build the videos, examples of his own videos, how to distribute those videos, etc…

Joel will also show you how to make your website update itself. I will tell you straight that he’s using datafeeds and caffeinated content.

I think it’s a great guide. But if you are serious about this, I recommend you get 5 Bucks A Day before you get The Mini-Site Formula. 5 Bucks A Day will help you design the perfect day for your business, having the right mindset… and The Mini-Site Formula will show you how to build profit-pulling websites.

The Mini-Site Formula by Joel Peterson - $97

In case you want to check it out…

5 Bucks A Day by Dennis Becker - $47

Alright, there you go… from here on, you make your own decision…

Why Sell DVD Products…

I like selling DVD products…

Check out one product I did recently - http://www.diymsstore.com/oms

But why sell CD/DVD when you can sell ebooks? Well, isn’t it obvious?

People are responding less and less to digital products. They want to buy real things. And you see the gurus are selling home study courses, print newsletters rather than ebooks now days… it’s about time you do the same.

Plus, physical info-product like this tends to convert better — don’t ask me why. And also you get a lot less refunds. And you can even sell for a much higher price than ebooks. DVDs tend to have higher perceived value.

Imagine that… the cost of producing DVD is not much different with an ebook. And when you can price higher, you have better profit margin. With lesser refunds, you make more money.

So, are you still thinking about selling DVD products??

Here’s how you get started…

How To Automate DVD Sales From Your Website…

And when I am selling DVD products, I automate everything with my DVD products.

Of course you can do things manually by burning each DVD order you get. But it’s a lot better to automate things with a fulfillment service.

I use CD-Fulfillment.com. Tried Kunaki.com but I just don’t get it.

So what I am about to share with you here is how to get your DVD selling site up and running using CD-Fulfillment.com… Now you don’t have to worry about orders because CD-Fulfillment.com will send the DVD direct to your customers on your behalf. That is what fulfillment services do.

Now, what do you need to get started.

To get started, you need your DVD content. Products that I put into DVDs are mostly videos in the form of FLV or SWF. And you can easily make that viewable in a web page. So what I do is create a simple website and put that in the DVD. I design simple navigation so customers can easily consume the product.

What’s great about a website DVD is that it’s compatible with Mac and PC, even Linux.

Alright, when you have your DVD content ready, you need to create your ISO image.

I don’t really know what ISO stands for… but it’s kinda of like a one file to represent the whole DVD content, similar to how a ZIP file compresses many files together. You can create an ISO image using DVD burning software.

A good and free DVD burning software I found is Burn4Free. You can get it at http://www.Burn4Free.com

When using CD-Fulfillment.com, you need to ZIP your ISO.

Alright, now you have your ISO and DVD content. What next?

Next you need your graphics.

You need graphics for your DVD box and your DVD disk. It has to be a high resolution graphic, 300 dpi at least. When you have created that, you need to convert that into JPEG photo file with 100% quality.

When you have all those three, you can start a DVD project at CD-Fulfillment.com. Just upload those three files to a location somewhere online, maybe one of your websites. And in CD-Fulfillment.com, you tell them where those files are and they will start downloading and create your project.

It may take a day but later for people at CD-Fulfillment.com to approve your project, but when they do, you can start to define the settings you want for you DVD project. You can set what envelops you
want to use, whether you want to add in documents with your mailing (maybe an upsell sales letter), etc… But remember this, the more things you put in your package, the heavier it’ll get, and the more you’d have to pay for shipping.

When you have DVD project ready, you can start selling your DVD.

In CD-Fulfillment.com, you have a control panel for each DVD project you start. You can submit orders manually using that control panel. You just need to enter customer’s name and address and CD-Fulfillment.com will send the DVD on your behalf… awesome, right? You may want to order the first copy yourself to make sure everything is in order.

At month end, just pay them for the DVD you sell. Oh yeah, there’s a one-time $2 fee for every new DVD project you start. They don’t expect you pay that unless you sell a DVD.

A DVD, depending on your settings and your customers’ address location, will costs between $5 to $10 per disk. (pssst… you can always pass that back to your customers as shipping and handling)

So you don’t even need a website. You can take in phone orders — but I don’t really recommend. But I just want to show that is how easy it is.

A better way is to integrate your website directly to CD-Fulfillment.com. Every orders will be sent automatically to CD-Fulfillment.com, and they will ship it for you.

I do this with my Paypal IPN handler script.

With my website, I accept payment with Paypal. And I use the Paypal Instant Payment Notification (IPN) to verify payments. And in my Paypal IPN script (I code with PHP), I also send my order
details to CD-Fulfillment.com. Their server will receive the details and they will immediately process that order. So you see, everything is automated — you don’t touch a single DVD.

(You can ask me more about my PHP script later)

But if you are more familiar with Kunaki.com, I think there are a number of scripts available out there. Some that I know are like Disc Buddy, DVD Automator, etc… try Googling for them.

I guess that’s all. If you need help getting started, write some comments and share your experience. If you are experienced, maybe you too can share some tips for the rest of us…

Alex Albert resides in France… an awesome place to be. And he’s been providing really cool mini-site designs for the Internet marketing community. He’s probably better known for his 7 Dollar Templates, which is a set of graphics, Photoshop actions and mini-site templates aimed for the users of 7 Dollar Scripts and Rapid Action Profits.

Recently, I had the opportunity of interviewing him. Well, nothing serious though, but it was fun.

Well, everytime I ask a designer for an interview, I also ask if they can contribute a mini-site template for MiniSiteGallery.com. And Alex has generously provided the Green City Night. It’s quite a nice style with the city background and a night theme. Check it out… Download for free and don’t forget to rate it.

Now, on with the short interview with Alex…

Q: How did you get involved with mini site designing on the Internet?

I got into internet and marketing after I finished high school. There was a workshops about web designs that I attended at school. And when we started the we first lesson I knew that I love it.

Q: Apart from mini-site designing, do you have any other Internet business? How’s is it?

I am a internet marketer… I sell other things like MRR or PLR mini-site templates.

Q: What is your approach to designing mini-sites for direct response for your clients?

To provide all time best value of design in affordable price for anyone.

Q: Can share your strategies to traffic for your business?

SEO and forum

Q: What is your favorite offline activity?

I love cooking

Q: How can people get in touch with you?

via my support desk… http://support.7dollartemplates.com

Q: Any comments about Kidino or MiniSiteGallery.com?

Definitely a good place to visit often for new minisite…

Some quick ones:

Cat or Dog?
Cat

Bikes: Super Bike or Chopper
Chooper

Alex Mandossian or Armand Morin
Armand…

Q: OK last one… in front of the world (the Internet), please reveal one disgusting bad habit.

I hate a scammers… they earn more than I…

I must be one of the first to come up with this list. But my ezine readers are the ones who got them first (from DIYMiniSite.com, OptinDesign.com and MiniSiteGallery.com members). A few of my readers have republised the list at forums, and some went on a journey to look them up and research them.

And recently, I asked my ezine subscribers whether I should repost my ezines in this blog. And most of them said yes. In case you are wondering, I asked them about that because I want to share the best with my ezine subscribers. But at the same time, republishing my ezine content is a good way to create content for my blog. I think I write to my ezine readers more than I write my blog.

OK, so this is the first post from my previous ezine… almost exactly.

Alright, I have been looking at the ways you can build a membership site with WordPress. And I found these five WordPress plugins you can consider. I haven’t really check them out though but I think any of these are worth considering.

It seems that each of them are backed with a really hardworking, passionate people. And I suppose they are supported well. That’s what you need when you are considering a new product that no one has created in the past.

I consider WordPress membership plugins are a new thing. There was one by WPBoard.com (or Gootix.com) last time. But I don’t see it being used anymore. Plus, the website is not even online anymore.

But anyway, you can consider these five… (not in any preferrence order)

wp-Member
http://www.wp-member.com

Your Members
http://www.newmedias.co.uk/wordpress-membership/

MemberWing
http://www.memberwing.com

Member WishList
http://member.wpwishlist.com/

SUMA Plugin
http://www.sumaplugin.com

Normally, when you see any discussion at forums or blogs about WordPress membership solutions, you will some, if not all of these plugin developers fighting for attention. That’s a good thing, right?

Well, I suppose each of them has their own pros and cons (disclaimer: haven’t personally tested them). But from the looks of it, I will tell you this:

wp-Member is very low in price to start with. It supports Paypal, and saying that they are working on Authorize.NET. You can create unlimited subscriptions groups.

Your Member also works with Paypal. And one of a great feature they highlight is being able to call 3rd-party scripts like posting new emails to an autoresponder or maybe for affiliate programs. Their blog has extensive info on further integration and customization. Also has a Download Manager for files.

MemberWing offers a free non-automated version to get you started. But their Premium Editions offers integration to Paypal IPN, PayDotCom and e-Junkie. This also means you can get affiliates to promote your site with PayDotCom and e-Junkie. And with e-Junkie, you can accept 2CheckOut.

WishList Member integrates with Paypal, ClickBank and 1ShoppingCart. And with 1ShoppingCart, you can get your membership site to work with a whole lot more payment options, as long as 1ShoppingCart supports it for recurring.

SUMA plugin works with Website Paypal Pro (only I think). And for that, you will need SSL (or the https). In case you don’t know this yet, Website Paypal Pro is a way for you to accept credit cards using the Paypal infrastructure. This is different from the normal Paypal Button or Paypal Express.

By the way, there’s another one that I found.

WP-Membership
http://www.wp-membership.com

Sadly, it doesn’t have much info to even consider it.

You know what I want to see. I wish there are more examples of membership sites built with these plugins. Maybe they can have a clients showcase or something.

If you have any experience with any of these solutions, please share. Drop some comments.

UPDATE 21 August 2009: I don’t when I first found out about Digital Access Pass. At one time, I think I even said to myself, “I know there’s this new membership software but I forgot what it is” And here’s Ravi Jayagopal leaving us a comment down there. Now, I don’t really know how DAP works, but I don’t think it’s WordPress plugin. However, Ravi claims that DAP integrates well with WordPress. So if you guys are shopping around, go check it out http://digitalaccesspass.com/