The newest API is called the Payments Reporting API and it’s available immediately.

What it does is let you access daily transactional data which is a great improvement over the old way of receiving the data via e-mail not the best way of getting important information.

This is why Facebook says this way is better for these reasons:

• Reliability. The payments reporting API is more reliable and has built-in checks to make sure you receive all the data.
• Security. The payments reporting API can be downloaded securely via https using an OAuth-secured HTTP interface.
• Flexibility. Our new report is formatted as a structured csv file, instead of the former flat tsv file. With this format, your integration of the data will continue to work regardless of what fields we may add in the future. Additionally, the API simplifies your work flow. Multiple people in your company can download the report, instead of only one person receiving the data via email.

Understand, you should start using it as soon as possible because Facebook will shut off the e-mailing of the data in early November so the sooner you start switching over to using the API.

You can access, or direct your programmer to, the API documentation by going to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/credits/developer_reports_api/

Facebook Payments Reporting API is Here! is a post from: From The Desk of David

What’s surprising to a lot of people is that Microsoft is helping lead this design change but if you’ve been doing software development for as long as I have you know that nobody supports development and developers like Microsoft does.

Here’s a quick look at the new design principles…

Microsoft has defined these general design principles:

1. Take Pride in Craftsmanship: don’t ignore or give short shrift to the small things that are seen often and engineer the user experience to be complete and polished
2. Do More with Less: let people be immersed in what they love and they will explore the rest of your application and create a clean, purposeful user experience by leaving only the most relevant elements on screen.
3. Be Fast and Fluid: let people interact directly with content and respond to actions quickly and bring life to the experience, create a sense of continuity and tell a story through meaningful use of motion.
4. Be Authentically Digital: take full advantage of the digital medium. Remove physical boundaries to create experiences that are more efficient and effortless than reality. Design with bold, vibrant and crisp colors and images that go beyond the limits of real world material.
5. Create an Ecosystem that Works with Other Apps, Devices, and Systems: leverage the ecosystem and work together with other apps, devices and the system to complete scenarios for people. Fit into the UI model to reduce redundancy and take advantage of what people already know to provide a sense of familiarity, control, and confidence.

There are a number of aspects that make up those principles, here are some of the key ones…

Be Responsive

This means software should be intuitive and each step should be clear in what the user needs to do.

Of course, this shouldn’t be a “new” aspect in designing and building software. After all, why would software ever be designed differently but the usability and user experience fields wouldn’t be so big if they hadn’t been

Microsoft is now pushing this in a big way, as is Apple.

Note: this isn’t the same thing as what’s called “responsive design” which is building software that changes and adapts to fit different screen/browser sizes; this is also driven by making sites look good on mobile devices or tablets without having to create a separate mobile site but it also impacts the size of the browser window on any display. This is an aspect of new design but a separate one from Being Responsive.

Use a Consistent User Interface

Again, this shouldn’t be a new aspect but so much software doesn’t do this and while Apple’s Macintosh to a great extent and Microsoft’s Windows to a wider extent pushed this along there were still “design experts” who kept deciding they knew better so consistency for the user of the software was sacrificed to their detriment.

To help force this for a better user experience Apple and Microsoft (and to a lesser extent Google) will reject applications in their App Stores if their UI guidelines aren’t followed.

Designed for Touch

Software should be applications that use touch screens to make it easy for user to use the software.

Of course, while software applications should make good use of touch screens they can, and frequently should, also provide other interaction methods (like keyboard and mouse but it could also be voice, etc.)

Reduce Redundancy

What does that mean? Well, one of the things that has been popular in software is providing multiple ways of doing specific tasks.

This isn’t as necessary, and can be confusing, in a touch based mobile application; plus, the smaller screen sizes with no keyboard or mouse make it problematic to have redundant ways.

This is also starting to show up in desktop applications, particularly ones that are touch enabled and is one aspect of the new design principles.

Not sure I agree with this but, of course, since providing lots of options can’t easily or intuitively be done in many devices nowadays maybe this is one of those things that I change my beliefs as the world changes.

Play Nice with Others

Duh!

Software applications should be able to interact, exchange data, not conflict with, and support standard methods to provide a better user experience while giving control to the users to mix and match applications that are best for their needs.

Be and Feel Connected

Being connected creates a more seamless and complete experience to the users of the software.

Whereas feeling connected is software that doesn’t just provide a passive experience but provides an active experience.

For example, Facebook feels connected because it’s always updating it’s screen with activity related to you — it’s a more active experience, sometimes too active

You’ll be seeing the 5 design principles and the 6 aspects (plus others I didn’t mention) more and more in software as we make another transition into the next generation of software.

Click here if you want to read more on Microsoft’s principles and software traits.

Winning Software App Design Principles is a post from: From The Desk of David

My Favorite New Free Fonts

As part of what I do — particularly product creation, Web site design, usability work, content creation and copywriting — I am always on the look for new designs, good ideas and new fonts.

Since I am during “Copy Cosmetics” week on my blogs (see the first post “Copy Cosmetics, the Secret to Improved Conversions“) I thought it would be a great time to let you know my favorites of the new free fonts I’ve found this year (so far!)

They are a combination of newly created fonts and some that have been around for a few years that I don’t remember ever seeing before.

Plus there is one font that I “rediscovered” and forgot how much I like.

So, without further talk, here’s and alphabetic list of my “so far” list and, yes, these are all free for personal and commercial use…

Standard or Classic Fonts

Alegreya was chosen as one of 53 “Fonts of the Decade” at the ATypI Letter2 competition in September 2011.

While Alegreya, another serif font (what’s wrong with me was originally intended for literature it conveys a rhythm that makes reading a long Web page easier (although I still think sans serif fonts are better for Web pages sometimes a serif font has it’s place and this would be a good choice)

This is a thin serif font but the serifs are both bolder and subtler depending upon the individual character itself which gives the font an interesting look.

Great Vibes is a beautiful flowing (connected) script font with looping ascenders and descenders as well nice uppercase letters, something that some script fonts have problems with.

It’s great for fancy formal things like weddings invitations, graduation announcements, etc.

This (sans serif) font is a bold, thick, geometric font (notice the circular circles and sharp triangles).

Similar to Futura, Intro has sharper edges and rounder curves; even when bold.

Intro comes in both a regular font (shown to the right) and one with an embedded line in the center of each character which you can view here.

Jura is a elegant serif typeface of narrow proportions with distinguishing details.

This is a rounded, wedge shaped serif font and it give off a more contemporary feel than many serif fonts (which is one reason I like this one so much even though I am partial to sans serif fonts); one great thing about this found it still is readable at small sizes.

It includes four fonts — Regular; Italic; Bold & Bold-Italic — and each variant includes 241 characters.

This is my favorite rediscovered font.

I don’t know why I stopped using it or even forgot about it but when I saw it I remember how much I like it.

I think part of that is because it a sans serif font with a design that has a sort of flare at the ends which gives it a hint of a serif about to bloom.

This is particularly apparent on characters with long straight lines like a P, T, L, etc.

A clean hand-drawn font that’s more a printed Scribbles-type font than a script font.

A classy “loopy and swoopy” script font, it would look right at home on the U.S. Declaration of Independence!

This could also be used where a more formal font with a “flourish” is desired.

An interesting light/thin font that is more suitable to designs than blocks of text (particularly since it’s missing some characters).

So if you’re planning to use it then header graphics, logos, stationary, etc. are more appropriate.

Interesting, Playful and Fun Fonts

This is a handmade graffiti style font that is available in black & white as well as colored versions; well it’s not really a font like you normally think of as fonts, you’ll see what I mean.

It’s quite well done and very colorful but useful in only circumstances.

It only comes in very large (2,500 by 2,500) individual characters (letters, numbers and a few punctuation marks) that you would need to manually put together to form words, similar to how people set type when they actually set type.

You can just install this like a normal font and start typing on your keywords!

An excellent children’s writing style “hand printed” font with all the main characters and some fun dingbats as well.

Great anytime you want to simulate an earlier elementary school children writing.

This is a font that is meant to look like the Peterbilt (trucks) logo.

A good font to use in niches like trucking, auto parts, etc.

This is a font that simulates the look of a “stamp”, the jumbled version has the characters with different baselines and angled at slightly different angles from the normal vertical up and down.

And those are my favorite new fonts (so far

What do you think? Tell me what your favorite fonts are in the comments below.

My Favorite (Free) New Fonts is a post from: From The Desk of David

This may sound boring and unimportant but it’s part of a big, 6-year plan that should radically reshape the Internet. The who is not as important to the average person and the what.

You see, these are not just like the same old 27 domain extensions like we’ve had in the past, for example, the .com, .net, .info, .mobi, etc.

These domain extensions will be able to be anything and evertyhing.

The way it worked in the past is that, with advice and public comment, ICANN decided what the domain extensions would be but now, with the new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) program people can apply (and pay for) any extension they want; although it still has to be approved by ICANN.

When the system is in place and the gTLD approved — it’s expected to be no sooner than the end of 2012 — expect to see companies branding things in a very different manner than they do now.

Just Think of the Possibilities!

Will Google get .YouTube and .Search?

You bet they will because they’ve already revealed that they’ve applied for gTLDs that included .Google, .YouTube, .docs, and .lol.

Will Coca-Cola get .Coke or will Pepsi snatch it up?

Will Staples get .Paper?

How about Olive Garden getting .Pasta or Vera Wang getting .Wedding (and .WeddingDress)?

Will Great Britian get .England, .Scotland and .Wales (and will there be a battle for .Ireland)?

Will I get .Husnian or .David?

Not likely because I think the going price is in the 6-figure range per domain extension and I can’t remember if that’s a one-time fee or a recurring one.

The possibilities are endless and the limitations on having keyword rich domain names or vanity domain names may be a thing of the past (at least for a short while).

Are you salivating yet?

Wouldn’t you want Make.Money or Drive.Chevy or RunIn.Nike or Play.XBox or … let your imagination go wild?

Will It Matter?

Then again, recent domain name extensions haven’t really be wildly successful, some more than others, but .com has continued to rule but as over 100,000,000 .com domain names have been grabbed up it is feeling its age; and really did you even know there was a .museum extension already available.

Warren Adelman, CEO of Go Daddy which sells half the domain names in the world, said this about the current .com world “We’ve been living in a .com world since the dawn of the Internet. Whenever you’re doing something other than .com, it’s kind of swimming upstream.”

Note that Go Daddy has applied for some gTLDs including .home, .casa, and .GoDaddy.

This is similar to the toll free numbers of the past. Eventually pretty much all the 800 numbers were taken and the telephone companies started using others area codes like 877 and 866.

It took a while because an 800 number was consider to be a lot better than the others but eventually that passed and I don’t know if anybody even thinks about it anymore; depending upon your age you may not even know this was an issue at one point not long ago.

Some people really believe in the future of gTLD, for example, Frank Schilling, a long time domain name investor who’s made many tens of millions of dollars off the 320,000 domain names he’s purchased over the years, is investing $60 million dollars of his own money to get over 50 new names including .home and .lol.

He says, “This is absolutely the future. We’re at this point where the dot-com name space — the entire name space — is exhausted.”

And Vint Cerf, truly one of the fathers of the Internet, currently vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google and former chairman of the board of ICANN said this on his blog “Despite the great opportunities the Web has enabled for people around the world, there is still a lingering question about the diversity of the domain space.”

Dan Schlinder, a co-founder of Donuts.co says “We’ve made more than $100 million in bets” as they go after over 300 gTLDs.

Let the War Begin

During the initial round of application about 1,900 gTLDs (called strings) have been applied for.

Of course, just because someone applies for a gTLD doesn’t mean they will get it — you can bet that Pepsi will NOT get the .Coke gTLD!

It’s pretty likely that trademarks holders will have no problem so Google doesn’t need to worry about .Google (sorry Microsoft) or .YouTube but for the others expect some big battles as companies with deep pockets stake out cyberspace claims; it’s an online gold rush.

Imagine the battle for who will get .free or .game or .money or .music or .car or …

The way this will work is that ICANN will ask people who’ve applied for the same gTLD to try to work out a deal. If they can then ICANN will auction  of the gTLDs to the higher bidder.

Then the Hard Part Starts

Not just anyone can sell domain names, you have to be an approved ICANN registrar and with hundreds and eventually thousands of new gTLDs becoming available the current registrars won’t be able to handle them (and they probably won’t be interested in them until they prove themselves.)

You may have noticed that the latest hot domain extension is .co but that success didn’t just happen easily overnight.

First there was the many months of work (and lots of money) getting Columbia to agree, then the millions of dollars in advertising but that wasn’t enough.

Until an agreement with Go Daddy (and 2 Super Bowl commercials later) did the company controlling .co start to turn a profit.

How this all plays out I don’t know but my guess is that, like so many other things throughout history like the toll-free numbers of the recent past, we’ll see that eventually a much greater range of domain extensions used as part of an overall branding and .com won’t be as important.

Chime In

What do you think? Will .com reign as king or fade into distant memory? What domain name would you want to have? Tell me below in the comments.

Is This the Biggest Internet Change Ever or Another Waste of Time? is a post from: From The Desk of David

Facebook FBML Icon

Facebook has announced that they’ve gotten rid of their old FBML pages so if you have any of those pages on Facebook then you’re in for a big surprise next time you go look at your page.

Of course, like with the Facebook Timelines and so many other things, the scammers and less than ethical people have already started to scare people so they can sell them new products that usually don’t really help.

While I understand and support selling products that actually help people, I really hate this rush to grab cash from the scare tactics.

So here’s the truth…

Here’s what Facebook said about the change:

“FBML has been deprecated. Starting June 1, 2012 FBML apps will no longer work as all FBML endpoints will be removed. If you are building a new application on Facebook.com, please implement your application using HTML, JavaScript and CSS. You can use our JavaScript SDK and Social Plugins to embedded many of the same social features available in FBML.“

What that means is that all Facebook pages that were created using the old FBML (Facebook Markup Language) plain won’t work, anyone who goes to the page with just see a blank page.

In fact, the FBML fan pages actually disappeared on June 6, 2012 and you can reactivate and you should do that immediately but you will need to get them removed or fixed before July 6, 2012 or they will be blank forever.

Do you have FBML pages?

You may not even know if you have FBML pages but there’s an easy way to check because you’ll see the page tab look like this.

If you see the little icon in the bottom left corner then you have FBML pages and you need to get them changed.

How do you change your FBML pages?

The answer is that it depends, although the bottom line is they need to be converted into standard Facebook pages or iFrame pages.

For those who are interested here is more detail.

What is FBML?

FBML is Facebook’s original or legacy framework for letting people show non-Facebook content inside of Facebook itself.

It wasn’t a bad solution but it was a proprietary solution and not really the best solution, which Facebook quickly found out and in 2011 they made a change to start using something called iFrames which is a much better solution and not proprietary to Facebook.

Usually, people used FBML tags for things and as simple as displaying the person’s name to complex custom content that showed different pages whether the person liked the page or not.

What is a Static FBML App?

Facebook created an “application” that made it easy for people to create Web pages on Facebook without having to have special pages on your on Web site.

Being FBML these pages are gone.

What is an iFrame App?

An iFrame App is now Facebook’s approved way of putting your content inside of Facebook.

Because it’s an iFrame you can do a whole lot more on your Facebook page than you could with FBML, in fact, the range of what’s possible using iFrame and the new Timeline sized pages is orders of magnitude better.

How to Change from FBML to iFrames

It can be very easy to make the translation or… not so much, depending upon what your existing page is like.

Let’s look at some of the major categories of changes needed.

Static HTML Pages

If your existing FBML-based pages are just static HTML then it’s very easy to convert them to iFrames.

All you need to do is copy the existing static HTML and paste it into an iFrame.

There are 2 tools that do a very good job of making it easy to create Facebook pages with HTML in literally a few seconds:

1. Static HTML: iFrame Tabs at http://apps.facebook.com/static_html_plus/?fb_source=search&ref=ts
2. WooBox Custom Facebook Page Tab at http://woobox.com/customtab

The first is simple and totally free while the second is more full featured and has both free and paid versions.

If you only have one simple page then you can use the first one but if you have more than one Facebook page then go with the second one; the free version is good enough for most people.

Static Pages with a Bit of FBML

This is a little more difficult if you want to keep the functionality being used, like the putting the person’s name on the page I mentioned above.

This will require some additional programming to your HTML or find a solution that includes the functionality you want; there are a lot of options with different choices but be careful because not all of them are good enough to consider basing your business on.

Static Pages that Use Conditional Rendering

What this means is if you show different content depending upon some user information like what country they are in or if they’ve liked the page.

This is a better way to create pages but it will make converting the FBML to an iFrame more difficult.

You can do some of this with the Facebook JavaScript SDK library  or better yet, since you can control the page content on your own server you can handle it there.

Either way though there will be some work and the easiest way is to use one of the existing products or services; my favorite is Jason Fladlien’s WP-FanPro from http://dahsu.com/WPFanPro, but whatever you use, make sure the product will do what you need it to do or it will be a waste of money.

Complex FBML Pages

You will need to custom create a new iFrame page although some of the products and services like the WP-FanPro may be able to handle your needs, try that first before going the custom page route.

Custom FBML Pages

If you have a completely custom created FBML page you’re going to need to have it rewritten for your iFrame page.

Follow These Steps

Now that you know what’s going on and what solutions you have for the different situations it’s time for you to take some action, just follow these step:

1. Go to your Facebook Timeline and look at the tabs, if you see any with the little icon I showed you above then they are FBML pages.
2. For each FBML page, if it’s before July 5, 2012 then immediately reactivate the page.
3. Look at each page and see which of the above categories they fall into.
4. Take your most important pages and get them converted using the whichever is the correct solution for the type.
5. Do the rest of your pages using the appropriate solution.

Recommended Resources:

• WP-FanPro
• Static HTML: iFrame Tabs
• WooBox Custom Facebook Page Tab

Facebook’s FBML pages are gone… and it’s about time is a post from: From The Desk of David

Stop Bothering Me!

I got this e-mail from Paul yesterday and while it’s a reasonable request on the surface of it I thought my response would be valuable for you to read if you struggle with the same problem or help you get some understanding if you have the same complaint.

Here is the e-mail:

“Today is Sunday, my day, a day that I hate getting business emails. You have the whole week to send me your stuff but come Sunday I don’t want to see your name, the next best deal, or that I am going to die if I don’t buy something by such and such a time. I consider it rude and inconsiderate that you would bother me on this day, when we are pounded unmercifully during the week. Please do not tell me what I can or cannot do as I know my options, I just do not want to be bothered on Sundays.“

As I said, it sounds reasonable on the surface, I certainly don’t mean to be “rude and inconsiderate” and I appreciate Paul taking the time to express his opinion in a calm and civil manner; something that is definitely lacking in today’s world where everyone seems to feel they have to be harsh and mean.

Unfortunately, when you think about it you realize the sheer impossibility of actually complying with the request.

Why It’s Impossible

I have many thousands of people who have chosen – via double opt-in – to receive e-mail from me and those people are all around the world, in many cultures, with many differing desires.

For example, some people may have Saturday as “their day” or Monday or maybe their day off is Wednesday and that is “their day” or they don’t want to be bothered on a Friday because they’re trying to finish up things for the weekend and, of course, many people don’t have a day so there is no generally good day or bad day for them.

Different Locations, Different Time Zones, Different Cultures

I can also show you e-mail from people who ask me to send my e-mails on Sunday (I don’t usually send a lot on Sunday) because Sunday is the day when they have the time to go through e-mail and if it’s sent earlier then there is more likelihood they would miss it.

In addition, with different time zones around the world, what is one person’s Sunday may be another person’s Monday or another person’s Saturday!

Then, factor in that there is no way to know what days each person prefers — even if you asked them, the odds are most people wouldn’t be bothered to tell you — but, anyway, there is no way (or no way other than a long, hard, error-prone way) to do it even if I did know their preferences.

Potential Arguments

Now, I could make an argument that Paul could have just deleted the e-mail because it has my name in the From column but that wouldn’t be correct or fair because his point is he didn’t want to receive it in the first place, he didn’t want to be bothered to have to delete it.

I could also make the argument that I rarely send promotional e-mail — maybe 10-20%, although this one was promotional because of the time sensitivity — but again, it wouldn’t be a fair and correct rebuttal.

While Paul mentioned promotional e-mail in general (and I agree there is a flood of them) he wasn’t upset that it was promotional just that it arrived on his day — and thank you for understanding that about promotional e-mail Paul, because online entrepreneurs and marketers who get upset about other online entrepreneurs and marketers sending promotional e-mail just make no sense to me because that is, after all, part of the job of the sender and of the receiver.

You see, the point is, there is no solution to this problem and so neither you nor I should be concerned about it, however much we might want to help the receiver.

You Can't Please Everyone

You can’t please everyone and you shouldn’t even try. There is no successful venture that tried to please everyone; which is a reason why Wal-Mart doesn’t try to appeal to the Saks Fifth Avenue crowd and vice versa.

And even your ideal customers won’t like everything you do because they may have different focuses or be in different stages of their business or any number of other differences depending upon the situation.

That’s why not everyone invests in everything you promote and why I don’t think everyone should invest in everything I create or promote. It has to be the right thing at the right time for each specific individual.

Possible Solutions

The only “solution” I know about for Paul’s issue is to put the burden on the receiver, although, of course, that isn’t optimal from many receivers viewpoint and Paul specifically rejected it

You see, while the sender has very few, if any, options — other than never sending e-mail — the receiver has a range of options, here are some of the primary ones:

1. People don’t need to check their e-mail at all on any day they choose; admittedly this restricts them from getting personal e-mail so the solution isn’t that great.

2. To overcome the issue with #1, people can decide what e-mail addresses to provide and “filter” out business e-mail by using a separate e-mail address for business purposes or even for the purposes of subscribing to other people.

Then, they can just not check those e-mail on any days when they don’t want business e-mail.

3. People can use filtering mechanisms to move e-mail from specific sender to a specific folder and then just ignore those folders until they are ready to deal with them.

In fact, I do this as a matter of course, not because I have a day I don’t want to be bothered on but because I have priorities on my time and my e-mail and this is an automatic way to help me manage that and be more efficient and productive.

This does take a 15-30 seconds to set up each rule though.

4. Unsubscribe. This is the ultimate signal to say you don’t want the e-mail but you need to decide for yourself if the “bothersome” e-mails are outweighed by the useful ones or not and then unsubscribe or not based upon that compromise.

Yes, I know Paul seemed to reject that option to but, since the sender can’t really do anything, it is a viable option for the receiver.

Ultimately, while it’s unfortunate I disrupted Paul’s day, there is really nothing I or anyone else can do to please everyone so for me to attempt the impossible isn’t really reasonable for me to try or, when it comes down to it, for anyone to ask.

I hope that Paul is getting value out of what I provide and continues as a subscriber if that’s the best thing for him but otherwise I would recommend that anyone who doesn’t want to continue as a subscriber of mine or anyone else just do what I say at the top of every e-mail I send: “If you don’t want to get e-mail from me anymore please use the link at the bottom, just click it to unsubscribe.”

Both you and the sender of the e-mail will be better for it.

So, what would you do differently? Or how would you respond? Tell me in the comments below…

Don’t Bother Me on Sunday is a post from: From The Desk of David

This blog post has been moved to
Street Guide to Copywriting.

Writing Subject Lines That Double Your Clickthroughs is a post from: From The Desk of David

Building Your Value Proposition

Marketing is really nothing more than communicating the value of you, your products and services, and your company to your prospects in the most effective (and efficient) way you can so that they will take the action you want them to take.

Usually there is a series, maybe a long series, of actions you need your prospect to take to get to how you are defining “success”.

Each of those actions requires your prospects to (consciously or subconsciously) decide whether or not to take the action and each decision (and hence each action) requires you to provide them with a reason to continue, this reason is a value proposition (“do this and you’ll get that.”)

There are 4 levels and questions you need to answer to define your value propositions and each are more specific to a particular situation than the last; these are levels of the value proposition, let’s look at each in turn…

Primary Value Proposition

Your company needs a primary value proposition, The first and core question you need to answer is: “Why should someone (an ‘ideal prospect’) buy from you rather than any of your competitors?”

Answers can be any number of things depending upon the industry, location, target audience, etc., some of the things you may include in your answer are:

• You’re better thought of in your industry (won awards, many positive press mentions, etc.)
• You are the low cost provider
• You are the premium price provider
• You have better “references” (like a prestigious list of customers)
• Your company provides superior benefits to your customers (more effective results, superior user experience, etc.)

Find the core value proposition and explicitly use it in your messages.

Prospect Level Value Proposition

Each Prospect Type Needs a Value Proposition

Many marketers stop with the primary value proposition but that’s a big mistake.

You see, you need to dig deeper and ask “Why should a specific prospect (one being targeted in a campaign) buy from you rather than any of your competitors?”

This is the prospect value proposition.

Rarely does a successful marketing campaign target all the different prospects you may have unless you are very narrowly focused.

Therefore, for each campaign you find the answer(s) to the above question; this is generally focused on benefits that prospect will receive.

But don’t stop there.

Product Level Value Proposition

Unless you are a very small company with only one product or service you need to drill down even more and answer the question “Why should the identified prospect buy this specific product rather than any other product?”

This is the product value proposition.

Like with prospects, the vast majority of really successful marketing campaigns target a single product — don’t believe it, just look closely at TV ads, magazines ads, billboards, direct mail, online banner ads, etc.

That means that you need to know why your specific product should be what they buy and, of course, communicate that in your message.

This is usually also focused on benefits but you can communicate that in a number of ways: demonstration videos, free trials, etc.

You’re not done yet!

Yes, you’ve gotten your primary value proposition and aligned your prospects and product value propositions with it but there is one final step and question to answer.

Process Level Value Proposition

Every Action You Want You Prospect to Take Needs a Compelling Reason

As I said above, every time you want a prospect to take and action you need to give them a reason to take it, that is, provide them with a value proposition.

Since you’ve gone through the above, you will have identified your primary, prospect and product value propositions and now you have to come up with a value proposition for each action in the process from first touch to successful completion; these are the conversion steps to get a specific prospect to buy (or whatever the goal is) a specific product.

To do that you need to answer the question for each step, here are some example questions:

• “Why should the specific prospect for the specific product open the e-mail rather than another e-mail?”
• “Why should the specific prospect for the specific product click this PPC (or other) ad rather than any other ad?”
• “Why should the specific prospect for the specific product enter their e-mail address?”
• “Why should the specific prospect for the specific product read your sales letter rather than someone else’s?”
• “Why should the specific prospect for the specific product click the ‘buy’ button?”
• “Why should the specific prospect for the specific product register for your webinar?”

Conclusion

Once you’ve been able to come up with your value propositions you should be able to create much more effective marketing campaigns.

Are you explicitly using value propositions? What have been your results (positive or negative)? Do you think I’m totally crazy ? Let me know below.

Value Propositions are the Key to Success is a post from: From The Desk of David

But did you know…

That you can customize any link to your site that you control/define and get the exact same information from those links.

By that I mean everything from banner ads to text links to forum posts to even Twitter Tweets!

Well, you can do that and more, read on…

You just customize the links by adding some custom tags to the end of each link Web address (URL) and they will get tracked and reported right in your Google Analytics account.

Let’s look at each custom variable tags (see some examples below):

• utm_source: this is where you put the location of where the link is located, that is, the vendor or Web site where the link is.
• utm_medium: this is where you identify the kind of advertising medium, like a specific banner ad or an email.
• utm_campaign: this is how you identify the campaign, like a holiday sale for a specific product or a new launch.
• utm_term: if you are manually tagging paid keyword campaigns then put your keyword here.
• utm_content: this is where you would differentiate between versions or placements of an ad like different banner ads for the same campaign or even different call-to-action links in a single email.

Note, you should always use the first three variables and remember that Google Analytics is also case sensitive, so the values in any of the above tags would be too, for example, utm_miduem=Bannerad is different from utm_miduem=bannerad is different from utm_miduem=BannerAd.

Here are a few examples:

• http://www.YourDomain.com/?utm_campaign=Christmas2012&utm_source=JVNetwork&utm_medium=Referral
• http://www.YourDomain.com/?utm_campaign=Christmas2012&utm_source=OmarMartin&utm_medium=SoloAd
• http://www.YourDomain.com/?utm_campaign=FriendsSpecial&utm_source=SuccessChef&utm_medium=Email
• http://www.YourDomain.com/?utm_campaign=NewYear2013&utm_medium=SGtWT&utm_source=TopSideBarLink
• http://www.YourDomain.com/?utm_campaign=NewYear2013&utm_medium=SGtWT&utm_source=FooterLink

Sounds good doesn’t it, but maybe a lot of work.

Google actually has a URL builder where you just enter the various information in some text boxes and it will create the link for you to copy and paste.

You can get to it here:

==> http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1033867

The Google URL Builder is a handy little tool but to be able to track any and all links in custom campaigns (or not) right from a Google Analytics account is spectacular!

Free Google URL Builder Tracks Your Custom Campaigns is a post from: From The Desk of David

Speedy Profit Creator

Speedy Profit Creator 2.0, a product of Omar Martin is a combination of training on how to build a profitable online business as well as training and software on how to create digital products, particularly digital books.

What follows is an extensive review of the entire Speedy Profit Creator system based upon me reading every word, watching every video, and using the product creation software.

At the end, I will also summarize the recommendations I’ve made so if that’s all you want you can jump to there but if you want to know why I like something or why I don’t then you’ll need to read the detail.

You’ll also see a link to get my bonuses if you decide Speedy Profit Creator is for you.

Before I start though I want to be fully transparent and upfront.

I’ve known Omar for a while now, about 2 years, and have become very friendly with him; I’ve also learned a lot from him during that time and he might have even learned a thing or two from me

In addition, also created a very (VERY) small part of the Speedy Profit Creator system, barely enough to mention, but I felt I should mention it to be open and honest.

Speedy Profit Creator’s purpose is, as you might have realized from its name, to get an online business going and making profits quickly.

While it focuses on quick profits, it isn’t a “get rich quick” type of product, it’s for people looking to build a real, long term business but to have that business get profits quickly.

Speedy Profit Creator is organized in sections inside the member’s area and I will be reviewing each section one by one, giving recommendations as I go along.

Speedy Profit Creator Menu Bar

Okay, let me tell what Speedy Profit Creator is and what it is not. What I like and what I do…

Jump Start

Jump Start Report

The Jump Start section covers the first 2 steps of the creating an online business: (1) researching and selecting a profitable niche and (2) creating a lead magnet.

The paragraphs in the report are a bit dense and long and it could have used another round of editing but the information is good.

I believe the problem is the report is a not that good transcription of the video course, but again the information is worth it.

In the video, the first thing is researching and selecting a profitable niche.

When explaining the importance, Omar sums it up nicely with this quote: “If you screw this part up and you don’t truly understand the needs of your customer then you have a snowballs chance in hell of actually meeting those needs or even attracting the right customers. You’ll end up not making sales and wondering where you went wrong.”

That is so true.

Omar does an interesting thing in that he explains this in the context of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

He then goes through doing niche research from step one, using Google’s keyword tool along with other resources.

Along with a nicely detailed discussion there are strategically placed screen shots so you get a visual on key points he discusses.

After picking a niche, Omar shows how to quickly and easily create a professional report to use as a lead magnet; he uses PLR and the Speedy Profit Creator software.

He shows some good, free resources to get and create graphic images and icons, including one I’ve added to my personal list of resources.

He even shows how to easily create a header image using the free program Gimp.

By the end of the Jump Start, if you’ve been following along, you should have a niche picked out and a lead magnet created.

Only one of the 3 videos are available for immediate download but you can easily get the other 2 videos by making a Tweet, posting to Facebook, or putting a link in one of various places.

Speedy Profit Creator Digital Book

This is the foundation course in the Speedy Profit Creator system and is made up of 8 sections, they are:

1. Create the Plan
2. Selecting the Product
3. Domain and Hosting
4. Modifying an Existing Product (PLR)
5. Creating a Product from Scratch
6. Creating Graphics
7. Creating a Sales Page
8. Driving Traffic

As you can see, it’s a fairly complete look at product creation and, while it won’t tell you everything about everything, it does reveal those things you absolutely need to know; after all, it would be near impossible for Omar to distill years of knowledge into a single, inexpensive digital book.

1. Create the Plan

I like the way this starts, the first paragraph is:

“The first thing I am going to show you to do, is how to start creating your products so you can make some quick profits… something that is going to generate speedy profits for you that you can do rather quickly without a whole bunch of technical know how.”

Then, without further ado, he gets right into it.

He starts with the 3 things that make up a good plan and spends the rest of the chapter detailing how to create the plan.

While doing that he doesn’t just tell you what to do but explains why you need to do it and some of the choices you can make along the way.

He also has a section on some free and paid resources you can use as you execute the plan.

A thing I like is that he tells you that you need a plan, so many people miss this step, and I also like that his plan isn’t like the old Soviet 5-year plan and kills half a forest making it.

He shows what you need to create a bare-bones plan that contains the necessary things without all the puffery and distraction that some plans contain.

2. Selecting the Product

Again, he starts with a truism: “The unnecessary fear around the whole “selecting a product” dilemma never ceases to amaze me.”

He then shows you why this fear is unfounded and is caused by a lack of knowledge and understanding.

The rest of the chapter then gives you the knowledge and understanding you need to lose that fear.

He reveals things like:

• Why having a great idea may be your first step to disaster.
• What the most important thing you need to do when selecting a product.
• What focus you MUST HAVE to make sure you don’t end up broke and despondent.

Let me put in another quote:

“My point is that selecting a product is more important than creating a website or driving traffic.”

That is so true because, as Omar shows you in the book, having lots of people coming to the most beautiful Web site is worthless if they aren’t interested in your product.

The thing I like about this section is that it provides a foundation of what to do rather than using a step-by-step “do this, do that” methods that may be easy to follow but you really have no idea what you’re doing or why.

Don’t worry though; the step-by-step comes later in the videos.

3. Domain & Hosting

This is frequently a boring and confusing thing for most people.

But, it is important to have a domain and hosting and not just any old thing… Omar tells you why you shouldn’t necessarily go with the cheapest or the easiest options.

He does this by revealing the mistakes he made and how it cost him a lot more time and money… so, remember don’t be “penny wise and pound foolish”

Again, Omar focuses on what and why and leaves the how to the videos.

4. Product Creation

There are essentially 2 ways to create a product, either build it from scratch or take an existing product and modify it to be unique to you and Speedy Profit Creator shows you how to do both

Modifying an Existing Product

Omar focuses on taking private label rights (PLR) products and the why and what you need to do to turn them into unique, sellable products.

In fact, he gives you 11 ways you can take PLR products and modify and enhance it to be unique to you and superior to the original.

He provides some free and paid resources to help you along.

Let me end with a quote from the book: “Always, always, always, make changes.” Indeed.

Creating a Product from Scratch

In this section, unlike many, you do get a high level look at the steps you need to take to create a product from scratch, starting with research and an outline through creating the finished product — both with and without the Speedy Profit Creator software.

He ends the section with a list of resources that will help you to write the book yourself or to get it written for you.

5. Creating Graphics

This section shows you why you need graphics and where you’ll need them including the minimum graphics you’ll need: a web site template; a product image; a page header and footer; buttons.

There are two options for graphics: pay for them or make them yourself; he covers both options but spends more time on the second one because there is more to say.

One bit of great advice he gives is “You’ll want to brand your product image through consistency.”

6. Creating a Sales Page

He starts by showing why this is a very important part of the creation process.

He also tells you some of the best things to do and not do and looks at both traditional sales pages and the newer video sales pages.

He goes through to advantages and disadvantages of each and how to go about creating them so they will convince your prospects to buy.

In essence, he gives you the “formula” you need to make a good sales page.

Now, writing a good sales letter isn’t easy but if you follow his guidelines then you’ll do better than 99% of other people who follow no guidelines or rules; don’t ignore this, if you don’t believe it then it’s because you don’t understand, it’s been true for millennia.

7. Driving Traffic

The first paragraph points out something very important about the different methods of getting people to your Web site — that is, driving traffic. Let me quote the entire paragraph:

“There are hundreds of ways to drive traffic to your website and I’m not going to pretend to know them all. As a matter of fact I can probably name only about a dozen or so, but more importantly, I really only use a few. In all sincerely, that’s all I need. As a matter of fact to be 100% truthful, these days I spend very little time driving traffic. I don’t really have to anymore. The reason I am able to do that is because when I first started I invested hours and hours in driving traffic and it built up like a snowball turning into an avalanche.”

There are actually several very important points in there but the one I am talking about is one that some many people don’t get.

You don’t need a lots of different was to get traffic, you need to find a few ways that work well for you and for your prospects and do A LOT of that.

Another really important thing he emphasizes in this section is that there is no such thing as “free traffic”.

“Free traffic” sounds very enticing, particularly to people who are trying to sell “free traffic” products to the unsuspecting, but it just doesn’t exist; nothing comes free.

If you are someone who is not sure about this or thinks I’m wrong, I can tell you that it will cost you a lot of time or money or both to get free traffic.

Sure, if you do all the work then no money leaves your pocket but you’ve paid in time and, most people don’t think of this, you’ve paid in lost opportunity.

By that I mean the money you could have been making otherwise if that time had been spent elsewhere.

I’m not saying it may not have been worth it to do all the free traffic generation work yourself, I’ve done it and Omar did it, and it can be very worth it but don’t kid yourself that free traffic is free.

Anyway, in the rest of the section Omar talks about the “free traffic” methods he’s used and the best ways he’s found to use them for your success.

These are things like Article Marketing, Video Marketing, even safe lists.

“Over-the-Shoulder” How-To Videos

The next section follows up the what and why book with 13 “how-to” videos where Omar goes through each specific topic he talked about in the book and shows you on screen just how to accomplish what you need to do.

This is a place where Omar really shines, he is a gifted speaker and video maker and his videos are direct, entertaining, and actually useful (unlike many videos); sometimes he talks too fast though so be ready to hit the pause button

There are 11 primary videos:

1. Create the Plan
2. Select the Product
3. Get Domain & Hosting
4. Edit/Modify/Create A Product
5. Create a Product Graphic
6. Create a Top Banner
7. Create a Sales Page
8. Create a Sales Video
9. Create a Payment Button
10. Drive Traffic – Free Traffic
11. Drive Traffic – Paid Traffic

There are also these 2 bonus videos:

1. Create A Physical Product (Part 1)
2. Create a Physical Product (Part 2)

Many of the videos start with a goal that you will achieve in the video.

The “Create the Plan” video runs 28 minutes and goes through all the things you’re going to need to do, the order you need to do them, resources you’ll need, creating milestones and task lists, etc. — all parts of the plan you should create before you begin.

The “Select the Product” video runs 37 and a half minutes and immediately starts with the 4 key factors you need to look at when you are looking for a profitable niche and product; includes tools and Web sites to help you do this quickly and confidently.

Then he talks about where to find sources of content for your products.

He goes online and shows you exactly how to find ideas and content you can use to create your product and how to quickly verify that the things you find are something that people are interested in and who are willing to buy products.

The “Domain & Hosting” video runs 23 minutes and in it Omar shows how to get a domain (which is essentially the online name of you business, your Web address) and a hosting account (which is like your online store front.)

He shows how to access your new hosting account, create e-mail addresses, add multiple Web site domains to your account, and how to get your Web pages onto your new Web site.

The “Edit/Modify/Create the Product” video was bad when I previewed it but Omar was notified and I’ll update this review when it’s fixed.

The “Create a Product Graphic” video runs 55 and a half minutes and reveals the 4 core principles to creating/getting graphics including your product graphics; he takes you online to show you his favorite resource.

Omar shows you what are the key images you need as well as tools to use.

He then opens the free graphics creation program GIMP and shows you how to quickly create the basic “flat” product graphic; you can follow along with him to create your own product graphic!

He also goes online to show you how to find: ideas; matching color palettes; free graphics and icons you can use as part of your product graphic, how to create the 3D cover.

Again, you can just follow along with the video and make your own product image.

The “Create a Top Banner” video runs 31 minutes shows you how to use the product graphic created in the previous video to create a banner for the top of your Web site.

Omar also goes online and shows you some other Web sites where you can create or get banners, even animated banners.

He ends this video by using GIMP to create a page header for your digital book.

This video, along with the previous one, I found very fascinating because I rarely use GIMP and didn’t realize how much it could do; I literally sat there saying “wow, I didn’t know you could do that so easily” over and over again.

The “Create A Sales Page” video runs 35 and a half minutes and he uses a free Web page creating tool to show how to quickly create a sales page and the download page and how to copy them to the Internet.

He does a good job and if you follow along with him you should be able to create a Web page yourself. However, it looks like an old video and out of place with the others.

What I would have liked to have seen were 2 things:

1. Creating a new video using the top banner created in the previous video.
2. Use the Chunk Copy “Speedy Sales Site Templates” included with Speedy Profit Creator (see below).

The “Create a Sales Video” runs 33 and a half minutes and begins by looking at various tools that will help you create your sales video — tools like Audacity, Vox Flair and others; he gives you a quick demo of using each tool.

The video ends with Omar showing how to upload the video to YouTube and to put it on the sales page that was created in the previous video.

Like the previous video, this video has good information but it appears to be an older video from Speedy Profit Creator 1.0 and isn’t really integrated well with the first 6 videos.

The “Create A Payment Button” runs 43 and a half minutes and Omar goes online and shows, step-by-step, how to create a PayPal button and shows how to put on the sales page.

Omar then goes beyond a basic PayPal button and shows, again step-by-step, how to create a PayDotCom button instead; this let’s you have a button on your page that lets other people promote your product for you and earn a commission or referral fee.

After you have the button created and put on your sales page, the next thing Omar does is show how to create a “Johnson Box” around the button and add call to action text to improve the number of people who’ll click the button; he also shows how to add a second one at the bottom of the page.

The next thing Omar shows is how to finish the download page with the creation and insertion of a linked download button as well as how to add advertisements to get some back end income also.

This was also an older version video and, as the other ones, had a lot of good information I would have liked to have seen it updated and integrate with the rest of the videos.

The “Drive Traffic – Free Traffic” video runs 28 minutes and starts with an overview of how to get traffic and what to do with that traffic when you get it.

Then Omar points out that you have to use Google properly to ensure you are getting enough of the right traffic while showing why “free traffic” isn’t free and it isn’t instant traffic.

After that foundation Omar shows you 12 good ways to get traffic and shows you, in detail, how to do 5 of those methods; including how to streamline Article Marketing so it isn’t so time intensive.

This video has some good information and isn’t meant to be an all inclusive course on getting free traffic but I would have liked to have seen a little more depth here.

The “Drive Traffic – Paid Traffic” video runs 29 minutes starts with giving you a quick foundation of what paid traffic is and how to buy it; this includes the most common types of paid traffic.

Then Omar goes into more detail of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising both search engine PPC and Social Networking PPC (like Facebook Ads); one good thing is Omar doesn’t limit himself to Google AdWords but broadens to other search engines like Bing and Yahoo!

Focusing on Facebook Ads, Omar shows specifics on how to optimize Facebook Ads to most profitable; he goes through how to create the ads.

He ends with the advantages and disadvantages of paid traffic and points out some of the key points of paid traffic.

Like the “free traffic” video there is a lot of good information in it but it doesn’t go too deeply so is more useful for less knowledgeable online business owners.

The “Create A Physical Product Part 1” video runs 44 and a half minutes and in it Omar goes into an in depth look at the powerful advantages of creating physical products; note the physical products could just be taking your digital book and putting it on a CD/DVD to sell.

He also shows the main disadvantages, these are primary additional costs you don’t have with digital products.

He then goes into what you can put on a CD/DVD and how to link to other files on the CD or to files on the Internet.

Omar ends with what you need to do to physical create the master CD/DVD.

This is a nice overview and foundation with some good ideas and directly actionable tips. I thought it was well does with one editing glitch towards the beginning.

The “Create A Physical Product Part 2” video runs 41 and a half minutes and follows up the previous focusing on how to fulfill your orders of the physical disks.

He looks at the two ways of handling orders: (1) doing it all yourself, including creating and mailing the DVD/CDs and (2) having someone else do it.

He goes through the advantages and disadvantages of each.

During this, Omar goes to eBay and shows you how to get the supplies you’ll need to create professional DVD/CDs and package them up.

After that he shows some recommended fulfillment companies and what services they provide.

Omar ends looking at marketing channels for selling physical products as well as some ideas of ways to sell physical products.

Library

Along with all the information and training, Speedy Profit Creator now comes with 40 private label rights (PLR) products that you can use to start making money right away; this is a great way to “Earn While You Learn.”

You can use them as the basis for creating your products and put your name as the author.

These are standard PLR products and it’s possible you already have some of them, I know I do, but you probably don’t have all of them and one of the things Omar tells you to do is to quickly create a product and release it and do it again and again, so have 40 quick options available to you which is very valuable.

Those 40 products are spread around 15-20 different niches including Dating/Relationship, Making Money, Dogs, Health/Fitness, Weight Loss, Finance, etc.

The library includes 2 bonuses to help you get the most out of the products.

The first is the keyword research spreadsheets, one for each product; these were actually created by me using output from Market Samurai which I organized and prettied up.

You get all the information Market Samurai spits out related to keywords and to the SEO competition for a keyword. Information like:

• The average number of searches each day for the keyword
• The estimated number of visitors you would get to your Web site if you were the #1 ranked site
• The number of Web pages competing for that keyword
• Indicators about the strength of the competition
• The estimated cost of paid traffic
• The Google Page Rank of the top 10 sites
• The number of back links those 10 sites have, both to the Web site as a whole and to the specific page that is ranked in the top 10.
• etc.

Along with the spreadsheet is a short guide to help you understand keyword analysis, SEO competition and the individual columns in the spreadsheets.

The second bonus is the “Speedy Sales Site Templates” which are 4 Chunk Copy sales letter templates to help you create your own sales pages using methods that have proven to have worked very well in the past; they are basically the same template in 4 colors schemes.

The library is very useful to you to quickly kick start your Speedy Profit Creators even though you can get the included products elsewhere (now you don’t have to!)

The 40 products along with the matching spreadsheets and the sales page templates are a good complement to Speedy Profit Creator even if they are more like a nice side dish and not the main dish.

Software Tools

The software tools section is the main addition to Speedy Profit Creator 2.0 and is made of 5 parts: the digital book creator software, tutorial videos and a written manual to use the software, a “text cleaner” tool to use to remove all the extraneous formatting word processing file contain, and a range of graphic tools and resources.

Let me go through them…

The main software tool is the digital book creator online software (it runs right from the Speedy Profit Creator member’s area so it works no matter what type of computer you are using (Windows, Mac, Unix, etc.)

Here is a screen shot of the top part of the creator software. As you can see you enter some information, check some boxes, and upload your front cover and page header images to be included in the book.

Book Creator Part 1

It’s all pretty easy and things I particular like about it are:

1. You can edit existing file, many times this type of software can create files but not edit ones previously created

2. It has standard disclaimer text available that you can include in your book if you want but then they went further and let you edit the text.

3. You can choose to have Speedy Profit Creator create a clickable table of contents.

Here’s another screen shot of the next part of the software, where you can put in the author’s information so a page about the author can be included if you wish (including a picture) and where the chapters of the book are enter.

Book Creator Part 2 (Updated)

As you can see, you just copy and paste the chapters into the boxes including inserting of images.

This is also where I think the weakest part of the software is.

Some of the things that I’d like to see changed here are:

1. The formatting capabilities are minimal at best — just bold, italics, and underlining are supported — which don’t give you much latitude. I’d like to see highlighting, section headers, choosing different fonts and sizes, alignment (like centering) and other things. (Update: Omar has already added many of these capabilities, and you have the ability to add to put in HTML which gives you some additional flexibility)

2. You have to paste in plain text so any of the original formatting done in the original must be removed before you paste your text into the chapter boxes.

3. You can have up to 3 images which is nice but I’d like to see that restriction removed and the method of insertion made easier.

4. You’re limited to 10 chapters, I understand some of the reasons this was done, but I’d like to see this restriction removed.

5. Ability to add links with in the text of the book. (Update: Omar has already added this ability)

6. Having a spell checker would be nice although not absolutely necessary. (Update: Omar has already added a spell checker and also a thesaurus)

Since Speedy Profit Creator is built on the WordPress platform I am surprised they didn’t use the TinyMCE editor that WordPress uses which has a lot more formatting options and doesn’t require plain text pasting (it comes with a text cleaner which doesn’t lose formatting) all of which you can see from this screen shot of the top of the TinyMCE editor.

The last section of the software is where you can add an optional (but recommended) resources page as well as save the file and create the finished PDF book ready for use; here what it looks like:

Book Creator Part 3

All in all, the book creation software works well and easily creates high quality PDF with little work.

I just wish it had better formatting options so I could recommend the software completely; it will definitely restrict how often I would use it despite the ease and quality of the finished book.

The text cleaner software is simple and necessary because of the plain text restriction I mentioned above. There are other easy ways to do this but it’s handy to have it in the same place as the creation software.

The graphic tools come in 3 parts: 2 online tools right on the page; 2 collections of graphics for you to download and use; and 2 resources (1 free and 1 paid) where you can get graphics and icons).

The online tools are color related and the first lets you easily find just the right color you are looking for while the second lets you easily come up with pleasing color palettes (which Omar explains the need for in the graphics video above).

The downloadable graphics are 100 textures you can use for the backgrounds of your graphics (or parts of your graphics) and 90 different seals to use on you book and sales pages.

The resources are both previous mentioned in the videos but a quick link is provided for you ion the resources page.

There are other sections but they are where you can download the resell licenses if you became a Mac Daddy member, some resources, to access support and to become and affiliate of Speedy Profit Creator.

Affiliate Program

Sample Banner Ad

The “Earn Money” section is where you will find marketing material you can use to market Speedy Profit Creator and earn a 50% commission or referral fee.

Omar provides 5 different types of marketing materials:

1. E-mails you can use to send to you subscribers
2. Product review/blog post template
3. Signature blocks
4. A number of different product images in different sizes.
5. Lots of banner ads (a sample is to the right)

These are all of excellent quality and very useful for your marketing, and he provides a way to just enter your ClickBank ID and it will automatically put it in the embedded links in all the material.

There is one thing I’d like to see done and that is you need to do this every time you want some of the marketing materials and if it retained the ID and reused it then you’d only need to enter it once.

A small thing I know but a nice touch and easy to add.

Resell Rights License

Sample Resell Rights License

If you get the Mac Daddy membership then you “can resell the BASIC & PRO membership for 100% profit.”

This is actually a little misleading in that you aren’t selling the memberships you are given a license, a sales page and the actual Speedy Profit Creator PDF, MP3, and Videos files, and the Library that you put on your Web site and sell it like you would your own products; the only thing missing is the Speedy Sales Site Templates.

A minor point but one I thought was worth mentioning because some people will assume they didn’t need to worry about the web site or getting the product to the customers because they were just selling memberships.

The other sections are Resources and Support Access,.

Conclusion

Speedy Profit Creator is a good product and very nice value for the money.

It surprised me that it had things for more advanced online entrepreneurs but I would say the greatest value would be gotten but newer or less successful people.

Let me summarize for you here:

Jump Start

The videos are very good but the PDF transcription isn’t so good.

My recommendation: watch the videos but only read the PDF report if you wanted to refer back to something in the video, it would be a quicker way of finding it than searching through the videos.

Speedy Profit Creator Digital Book

Fairly complete and, while not very deep, it reveals the things that are absolutely necessary.

I don’t find this a negative because the expectations are that an inexpensive digital book can’t be comprehensive and all-inclusive in a topic as large as this and what is shown — the what and why — is done very well and will provide a solid foundation.

My recommendation: Read it at least once and reread until you build a solid foundation of knowledge.

“Over-the-Shoulder” How-To Videos

Most of these videos are new and very good while a few of them are older versions but the information is still good and valid.

They build upon the foundation of the book and show you how to do many of the different things you must do to be successful online with digital books and beyond.

My recommendation: definitely watch the videos at least once and refer back to them as necessary. I’d also recommend that you put in a formal request to have the older videos updated although I want to reiterate, the information is still there, it’s good and it’s relevant.

Library

This is 40 private label rights (PLR) products which you can use as the basis for products you create to quickly create profitable streams of income.

While they aren’t new or unique that really doesn’t matter much because you should be modifying and updating them anyway.

The keyword research spreadsheets and the proven sales page bonuses are very nice and useful additions.

My recommendation: use the PLR books to make products to sell and use the spreadsheets to help you focus on what the best and most profitable keywords are (which should help you decide how to focus the product). Many of the PLR products come with sales pages but move them over to the “Chunk Copy” versions.

Software Tools

This consists of the digital book creation software (and accompanying training) as well as some graphics resources.

The software creates very good quality digital books but I’d like to see some additional features that take it from adequate to good then to must have and the software is now more than adequate (although it still needs some updating).

The graphics are definitely useful but there aren’t as many as I’d like to see.

My recommendation: use the software if you don’t have complex needs or you want to do everything with the same tool. And certainly put in a request to have the improvements I’ve mentioned above added to the software.

Affiliate Program

Omar has provided a good selection of high quality marketing material for you to use and he’s certainly made it easy because he’s using ClickBank to manage the affiliate program for Speedy Profit Creator.

My recommendation: if it fits into you business and business model to be an affiliate of Speedy Profit Creator then definitely use what he has for you.

Resell Rights License

Mac Daddy members of Speedy Profit Creator get a license to resell what is essentially the Basic and Pro versions of Speedy Profit Creator; the only thing missing is the

I’ll again note that you are not selling actual memberships because you are provided with the actual documents and audio and video files that are included in those memberships and it is up to you to make a Web site for them, to create a sales page for them (a sample is included), and to deliver the products from your Web site (either streaming or as a download).

My recommendation: again, if it fits into you business and business model then this is a nice additional way for you to get some speedy profits. If it had been me though I would have let you sell the actual memberships without having to worry about product delivery, although I understand why it wasn’t done this way.

Who Should Get It?

Speedy Profit Creator isn’t for everyone and it may not be right for you at this point in time.

This is my opinion of who would benefit most:

• You are very new to online business and are looking for something to give you a good starting foundation so you can quickly be earning some money.
• You have struggled to be successful in your online business, you sell digital products, and feel you need some additional guidance to get you to the next level.
• You’ve been an affiliate marketer and would like to dip your toe into creating your own digital products to sell.
• You are more advanced and more successful and understand the value of just one good idea; most people will find something of good value here.
• You’ll looking to supplement your existing income relatively easily (you’ll need to work but it won’t be excessive unless you want faster results).

Don’t get this if:

• You are looking for a “get rich quick” method (there isn’t one) this isn’t what you want and Omar doesn’t even suggest that it is.
• You need to make a lot of money quickly. Yes, it’s called Speedy Profit Creator and you can be making some money relatively quickly but there is work to be done and you should expect the amount of money you will make would be small at first and build over time.
• You’re a very advanced and successful marketer.
• You’re someone who just buys things without ever actually using them.

Which Membership to Get?

If you are relatively new to having an online business or haven’t been able to successfully sell products then I can wholeheartedly recommend Speedy Profit Creator.

If you are completely new I would recommend starting with the Basic version to see if it’s something you really would like to do and would be able to do. The basic version gives you some fundamental knowledge on being successful online.

However, in general, anything less that the Pro version won’t be very satisfactory because you’ll only know the basic of what and why (very important indeed but not enough) whereas will the Pro version you’ll build upon that foundation with the how-to videos and you’ll have access to the Library which alone is worth more than the investment Omar is asking for.

What the Mac Daddy version adds is the software and graphics along with the rights to sell what the other 2 versions contain.

Despite the quality of the digital books being created I have trouble unconditionally recommending the software because of the restriction I mentioned above. (Update: with the additions already added to the software during the product launch I now feel good recommending it without qualifiction; I hope they continue to improve the software to make it exceptional)

However, if your immediate needs are simple (or selling the other versions has immediate value) then get the Mac Daddy version because Omar has told me that enhancements to the book creation software are currently being made and will be available soon already made significant improvements in the software.

Otherwise, stick with the lower memberships and upgrade later.

My Bonuses

If you do decide to get Speedy Profit Creator, I am providing some additional bonuses worth $750 that are specifically picked to to enhance Speedy Profit Creator; you can review them at http://GetYourBonusesNow.com/SpeedyProfitCreator

Speedy Profit Creator Review is a post from: From The Desk of David