I had a situation come up where I wasn’t going to make a deadline for a client. I had to go to work the next day, and all the software I needed was on my home computer. I didn’t feel like ordering GoToMyPC (I’ve used it in the past and loved it). When I typed in “Go to my pc alternative” Logmein.com came up.

I signed up and installed the software. Sure enough I was able to do what I needed on my lunch. It worked like a champ.

Listener Feedback

Gary Leleand from fatpitch.tv is now using Magic Members and loving it. He bought it as it makes it easy to sell access to one post at a time on his website.

The boys at copyblogger.com have come up with another great product. I’ve previously spoken about Scribe (the SEO plugin that delivers advice on your post ) and now they have added Premise to their arsenal of premium WordPress plugins.

This plugin provides you with seven different ways to create a landing page. In addition to the different types you also get complete control over the look and style. Throw in some great graphics, and (you guessed it) built in SEO advice and you have a great plugin for those who are looking to sell a product with their WordPress site.

Here are some key points:

Quickly and easily create 7 critical landing page styles in WordPress, add visual flair with included custom graphics, and control fonts, colors, and styles without code.

Make your words work with copywriting advice delivered directly from your WordPress interface for each type of landing page, plus the Premise Guide to Effective Copy.

Detailed conversion optimization seminars, easy split-testing from WordPress, and SEO tools ensure that you’re getting the absolute most out of your landing pages.

Premise delivers copywriting advice for each type of landing page directly from your WordPress interface, so you get better while getting things done.

Premise makes conversion and search engine optimization a snap, so you can get back to focusing on your business.

How Much is it?

$85
Unlimited landing pages
Unlimited domains
6 months of:
Optimization seminars
Copywriting advice
Graphics library
Updates
Support
$165 – On Time Fee
Landing pages
Domains
Optimization seminars
Copywriting advice
Graphics library
Updates
Support

So no matter what type of page you are building be it a video sales page, an opt in form, pricing table, thank you page, tab scroller, Premise will walk you through the process to not only give you a great looking landing page, but an effective landing page as well.

For more information go to getpremise.com

I found this plugin that sends puts your keyword results at your fingertips and thought, “I can get this from my Cpanel. In thinking about how often I DON’T check my rankings, I can see where having them at your fingertips would be valuable. You can havethem emailed to you on a daily, weekly, monthly, basis. You can specify how frequently to count a keyword (so keywords that don’t show up frequently don’t count). You can find out what is driving traffic to your site. Check it out at www.weeklywebtools.com/ranktracker.

Market theme is a flexible (over 20 different color schemes) powerful, and easy to use WordPress theme that turns your WordPress installation into a store. If you’re thinking that you will lose your front page, a way around losing the look of your site is to install WordPress into a subdomain. This makes for great tracking to see how many people are visiting your store.  You can sell physical or digital products, and it works with a large amount of ecommerce sites (paypal etc). It’s only $55 and you can check out the demo at weeklywebtools.com/markettheme

Today I talk about some great tools that make it SUPER easy to put a streaming radio station on your website with no monthly fees. I love the Wimpy Player (wimpyplayer.com) as you simply upload a script, and the upload your mp3 files. Copy a bit of code and you’re done. They have great “skins” that allow you to completely customize how your player looks. If you need an ID3 tag editor, check out http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ as you can put a purchase links in the comments field and it turns into a link when people listen to the file.

The player I REALLY like has the ability to enter an RSS feed (great for podcasters) and have an additional list of file to mix in between. This means you could have one list with information, and one list with “advertising spots” (with affiliate links) that run on your website. This is great for the podcaster who wants to have ads, but is worried about having them in the downloaded version of his podcast (as these would only be heard by people streaming the audio/video on their website. The Rave player also has a WordPress Plugin which makes configuring it a breeze.

The only drawback to the RAVE player is that is not HTML5 compliant which means people who view your website on an iPad or iOS device won’t be able to see it. (They do have a “Pickle Player” which is html5 compliant but it doesn’t have the “Dual play list capability).

Check all these tools out at wimpyplayer.com

I signed up for an “offiical” merchant account at Charge.com which lead to me getting an authorize.net account. However it turns out that Authorize.net handles the credit card purchase, but used another company (which is what charge.com was selling in the first place) to then deposit my money. It turns out that if you want to sell American Express, it costs more. If you want to store customer data, have reoccurring charges, etc it was more.

Then I changed my focus by adding podcast equipment sales to my website. My sales went from $50-100 a sale to $1000 a sale. That threw up many red flags and in a nutshell the people a cynergy data fired me as a merchant as I was too much of a risk (because I was selling things I didn’t own). The bad news is Authorize.net then charged me for another month to the tune of $130.

In the end I went back to PayPal, and everything is fine. I usually tell you what tools I find that I like. This week, I’m telling you that unless you’re going to have a HUGE amount of sales, a merchant account may not pay for itself.

Have you every gone to a website where you see that they’ve embeded into some graphic, maybe they have some cool icons to click on, and it just looks cool. You thought to yourself, “I wonder how they do that?” Well now I know. They are using a system like Vitomy. What’s Vitomy? It’s a great video system that allows you to create custom players, with custom ads (if you want) clickable logos, etc. In general a custom player. With the ability to create customized video players, the sky is the limit in terms of what you can do with it. Vitomy includes professionally designed templates, ready to use within minutes! Simply select with template you want, add your videos and you’re off! Vitomy’s included templates will instantly add a professional design look and feel to your online video presence. They also have built-in sharing features that will help your video go viral.

If you are not thrilled with using the free bandwidth of YouTube, you can upload your videos to Vitomy and their system makes it super easy to add videos, create playlists, all via a drang and drop layout system. To add some icing to the cake, they have built-in analytics. For more information got to www.vitomy.com

In watching the tutorials on their site, I would say that if you want to push your brand this tool is really super easy to set up and use. If you are worried about your videos showing up on iPads you can rest assured as their players aer completely HTML5 complaint.It;s so cool they even offer ways to embed videos into email.

My Favorite Feature

I see they have included my favorite feature which is a redirect at the end of a video. This is great for affiliate marketers. Now you can redirect your viewers to a purchase page at the end of the video.

How Much Is Vitomy?

There is a free plan if you want to kick the tires. You have all the full features, but a limit amount of storage and bandwidth (so a great way to see all the bells and whistles without dropping any cash). The next version is $9.99 a month. This is for the person who is looking to enlist the great branding features, and use the free bandwidth of YouTube. You can create a custom player, but all our videos will be coming from YouTube. This sounds like such a no brainer to me. Wow. There is one additional level and that’s for the person who wants no piece of YouTube. Here you can create customer previews, add a search capability of your video, and you have 200 Gigabytes of storage, you also get all of our options plus the ability to completely design and customize your own video templates. The price for that plan is $59 a month

Why Not Just Use YouTube?

While prospective clients who get to your YouTube channel can watch (and comment on) your videos, they really don’t get to do much else in terms of interacting with your brand. A Vitomy player, on the other hand, not only showcases your video content, but promotes your brand with linked calls to action, logos and other graphics as well. Instead of having clients experience your content on YouTube pages that look just like everyone else’s, you can upload a branded image to wrap around every video. You can also place branded logos on your players and upload and include a call-to-action banner.

For more information got to www.vitomy.com

I believe I’ve talked about comm100.com in the past. They havea suite of tools that include

Live Chat

Knowledge base

Help Desk

Forum

Email Marketing

The thing I love (and hate) is IT’S ALL FREE. Why do I hate this? Because typically business that don’t charge money for their service go out of business. In the meantime, this is a GREAT service (and many of the modules tie together).

Almost Free Options

Another service I kept tripping over is zoho.com they have 22+ applications that you can use. I was looking at their Invoicing tool as I need something that lets me provide quotes to lcients (preferrably wheer I can see how much profit in the deal – anybody know of one?).  Zoho has tools that are similar to Microsoft Office (except online), as well as tools for tracking software bugs, recruiting, CRM, Book Keeping, Online Meetings (less expensive than Gotomeeting), and many more. If you’re looking for an application it’s worth checking out. As for their invoicing system, in the end I stuck with freshbooks. I don’t have that man clients, and I love the numerous third party options for tracking time (zoho does have a timer for your smart phone). If I ever end up with a ton of clients I may switch (as freshbooks charges you buy the number of cleints).

Today we have the Keyword winner plugin that allows you to research keywords for your blog posts easily, you can drill down for blog post headline suggestions for either short or long tail keywords in less than 1 minute right inside your blog dashboard. Up to 10 keyword suggestions will appear in a drop down menu along with color coded stats. The idea is not to go for the keywords that are the most popular (because those also have TONS of competition) but to go for those words that are having 100,000 searches or less. This allows you to be a big fish in a small pond. This translates to clicks.

Why would I use this instead of something like Google’s free keyword tool? To save time. The plugin makes it super easy to see what keywords are ripe for the picking. It color codes the results so you don’t need to download a spreadsheet and go through all the hassle of evaluating the data. It makes it quick and painless and lets you focus on creating good content.

The great thing about his plugin is unlike Scribe, there is no monthly fee.

For more information go to keywordwinner.com

Tungle.me was great when I first started using it. It’s still free but was recently purchased by blackberry. There have been some rubmlings that its not as reliable as it was rpeviouslyt, and some people don’t like all the blackberry banding. I went to find an alternative. Here is what I was looking for:

A clean easy to use interface.

I wanted to set up one service (consulting) and have theclient be able to order this service in 15 minute increments.

I wanted it to remind me of a booking, and alert me to new bookings.

I wanted people to be able to book me without leaving my website.

Potentially I might want people to pay for the booking through the booking system.

Time Trade

Time trade has a great interface for the end-user. It allows you to customize every service you have with pictures, questions, etc. When I went to set up my service (podcast consulting), and then offer it in different time frames, it seemed I had to repeat myself over and over for each time frame. There is the ability to copy one service and then alter the differences. For whatever reason, I got frustrated half way through the setup. Their service is very affordable at $49/yr. They do not take payments. You can have your calendar on your website. I can’t remember why, but I just lost interest half way through. For more information go to timetrade.com

Your AM

A clean interface (almost fisher price), and a free option. Their booking page was easy to use (although I had to send people to their page).  I placed a booking, and later when I went in and added 15 minutes to the meeting, instead of updating the meeting it started another one. Then it had issues syncing my google calendar. That was the end for me. The paid version is $8/month. For more information visit getyouram.com

Booking Bug

The good news about booking bug? It does everything. The bad news about Booking Bug? It does everything (so the setup is a sizeable at times). This site made it easy to set up my service , and then enter in durations. This was done super easy. It allows me to customize my booking page (if I want to send people to their website), and it allows me to customize a widget that I can put on my website. This includes colors, and questions I may want to ask my potential clients. I can have people pay for the booking through paypal, authorize.net, google checkout, and a multitude of other payment options. If you are a single person or have a staff, they have you covered. If you charge more for your services on the weekends they have you covered. If you want to put the widget on Facebook they have you covered. If you need to sync with google calendar (or get your schedule via RSS) they have you covered. There is a free version (for 14 days), and for a solopreneur it’s $14 a month.

For me, I found booking bug to be the tool I will use in the future. I don’t have to charge people up front, but I can if I want (Or I can have my clients request a quote). If you’ve got a bit of time to go through and set up your business (it may be worth the $50 to have them do it), once this baby is up and running it looks like a great tool to lighten your burden of managing your calendar (they have a great feature to print your calendar for those who still love paper). Fore more information visit bookingbug.com

I just read an article that said in 2001, “Those celebrating are expected to spend slightly more too, with the average American shelling out $72.31 on decorations, costumes and candy, up from $66.28 last year, the NRF said. Total Halloween spending is expected to reach $6.86 billion.”

Every year people go nuts at Halloween. You may have affiliate programs to costumes, etc. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could create ONE post or page, and have it show up on your wesite automatically? Well there is a premium plugin that allows you to get creative on when to display content. It’s called the content of the month pugin.

You can specify a month, date, and year. If you leave any field blank, it treats it like a wild card. For example if you specify a post to be shown on July 4 (but no year specified) it will show up on your blog every year on July 4th.

If you have a product launch and a price is only good through a certain time, you can have the sales page with a discount automatically taken off the site, and a new page replace it.

It’s pretty cool, and you can find out more at contentofthermonth.com

Today I sahre two tools for shairng large files with your clients. The first one I talk about is Dropbox. This has a great syncronizatino feature so you can set up a dropbox and everything you upload to it will be available on your PC, your Laptop, and now yout smart phone. You can also share folders with clients and they can download the contents (or vice versa). Best of all it’s FREE and yo uget two gigs of storage space (if you need more it’s only $9.99 a month). I’ve used it on and off with other clients, but I’ve recently been editing audio for a radio station, and when you are dealing with massive WAV files this really comes in handy.

The second tool for sharing large files (without FTP I should add) is yousendit.com This allows you to send very large files right through their website. Like dropbox you can create and share folders, but they don’t have the synchronization feature of dropbox. What they do have is the ability to sign documents digitally. So if you are tired of looking for a fax because you have to sign something, you may want to check out yousend it. Like dropbox they have a free version as well.

Calibre eBook Management Tool

If you hate trying to read a PDF on a Kindle, check out Calibre which is an eBook management tool that can be used to sync eBooks to devices, convert eBooks into a variety of formats (i.e. iPub for iPhone and iPad) and is also a comprehensive eBook viewer. You can convert a pdf or other document to a readable format and send it directly to your device. There are other options I’m not currently using like getting news feeds delivered to my kindle, but if you are using a enabook reading device you may want to check it out.

Special thanks to Joe from for touching base and filling us in on Optimzepress. This thing is just as cool as the video makes it out to be. Joe showed my how it makes squeeze pages, video pages, newsletter sign ups, testimonials, bullet points, sales boxes, it super flexible and it enables you to create a great looking sales letter in minutes. Its super flexible, and allows you to do cool stuff like.

It works with membership plugins like Wishlist, S2member, and Drigital Access Pass (my favorite). If you are a person who is always looking at other other websites and wishing yours had that kind of polish, you might want to check out optimizepress.

When I watched Joe (by the way you can share your screen via Skype) and I saw just how powerful, flexible, and yet easy it was to create a great looking squeeze page, i was amazed. It’s one of those things that when you see a video for a product (there is an 18 minute video on their website) you always wonder if the product lives up to the video, and in this case Optimizepress does that and then some.

When I talked with Joe, this sounds like another “Saturday” product. Meaning that if you really want to get the most out of this product, you’re going to need to watch all the videos, and play with it a bit. You can get into fun areas like built in Google Optimizer tools. The list goes on and on, and I had no idea that you had that many design elements to choose from.Watching it integrate with aweber was impressive. With a few simple copy/paste clips it was good to go.

If you wanted to get picky you could say the “down” side of the plugin is that there isn’t much customization to some of the forms. You mean the forms that convert and look like a million bucks? To this I ask, “And you want to change these why?”

It’s only $97 (for a limited time) check it out at optimizepress.com

Today we look at some tools you help you put advertising on your website in just about any location that you want.

OIO Publisher

The pros of OIO Publisher is that it handles the selling of advertsing of your website. It doesn’t allow you to sell clicks, or track stats based on a banner. You get stats for the whole system. It also lists your website in their network for available ad space. It’s $47

Max Banner Ads

The Max Banner Ads plugin is for the person who wants to put their own advertising (i.e. Affiliate Links). This plug allows you to add banners, just about anywhere you want on your site. It’s super versatile. I’m using it on this site. You get easy to understand stats. You also get the code if you want to paste it into the coding of your website. It also has pre built widgets, and makes it super easy to add your ads to text widgets. This plugin also goes for $47 There is a free version that is fully functional. The free version has a link back to Max Banner Ads. More info at maxblogpress.com

Openx.org

A web based system, and a little bit like OIO Publisher is has a market for people looking to place advertising. This system is free, but in my travels its slow, and I couldn’t always get it to work. You can find it at openx.org

Ad Manager Pro

Ad Manager Pro is from PHP Web Scirpts. This company has phenominal customer service and one of their scripts is for the person who really wants to take advertising on their websit to the next level. This is not a WordPress plugin, but it is still easy to use. Features include multiple ways to sell advertising, multiple ad types, you can set up yoru own advertising network and pay people for impressions. Its an incredinble powerful script. It’s $99 ($130 with installation). I’ve used this on a few sites and its very powerful. Check it out at phpwebscripts.com

Headway Themes – Blows Me Away – Thesis Who?

I’ve been blessed to be playing with such a flexible, powerful, and easy to use wordpress theme. This is one of those you have to see it to believe it. You can drag a header in place, then drag in your navigation, then drag in your sidebars, slit your footer. It’s just impossible to describe except to say, I don’t think there is a layout that this CAN’T Create. I mean seriously complex layouts could be done in minutes.

Throw on top of that you now get to make your own widgets, design content that ony display certain items, and if you wanted to you can have every page have a different layout. It’s really that crazy.

Now with flexibility, there is a learning curve, but I was able to do a bunch just by playing with it.

Easy Profit Bot

This software is simple. It install WordPress for you, installs themes for your and special plugins. All you do is put a list of keywords, and it will find articles and videos from youtube. It then schedules those articles and videos in the future. Then the plugins it loaded make it easy to go in and specify keywords, and when those keywords appear in the page they link to an affiliate program that you specify.

I helped with some of the training videos, and was amazed at its power. It is available tomorrow, check it out at easyprofitbot.com

When I first heard about this popup, I couldn’t believe it. It sounded like a bad infomercial, “But wait there is more.”

It does the basic. It puts up pop ups to help you build your email list. OK fine.

It also has a banner and footer tool. Cool. Those banner and footers can be opt in forms, or anything you want (video, images). Very cool

Want a count down timer that makes the opt in form disappear like Cinderella? Wow.

Want it to integrate with Facebook so you can collect email addresses from those folks?

It does common sense things likes invites people to join your list if they subscribe or leave comments on your website.

You can add an opt in option in each post, or if you want it only for a certain WordPress category, it can do that (see what I mean – this is slick).

You have to see the demos. When you go to wpsubscribers.com scroll to the bottom and click on some of the demos. They are very very impressive.

Want to add some exit pop ups that can be completely customized? Yes, like Prego in the 80′s – its in there.

The prices is $47 for 3 sites or $97 for unlimited with lifetime upgrades – I know its hard to believe. Check it out at wpsubscribers.com

The prices is $47 for 3 sites or $97 for unlimited with lifetime upgrades – I know its hard to believe. Check it out at wpsubscribers.com

In the past I’ve posted about Scribe SEO plugin for WordPress (and now Drupal, etc). It has added functionality to not only go through a checklist for best SEO practices (word count, meta data, keywords, links, ) but now it will help you do keyword research from within WordPress. It’s a cool tool. Currently I have 300 evaluations per month. When I get ready to post, I click a button and Scribe SEO evaluates my post. It runs me $27 a month. If I do not use all of my evaluations, I lose them at the end of the month.

I was told today about SEOPressor. This plugin has similar functions to help you with your search engine optimization. It goes through a checklist (Do you have keywords in your H1, H2, H3 headings), it checks your keyword density, is does an analysis of your images and links, it bolds your keywords, it evaluates your post and offers suggestions. The price is $47 for a single website or $97 for unlimited sites.

If you are new to SEO both of these offer great suggestions. SEO Scribe is authored by the people behind copyblogger.com and Daniel Tan (The SEO Guy) is the person behind SEOPressor.

I know as time goes on, I get bummed when I pay Scribe for evaluations I never used, and it would be nice to have a one time payment options for Scribe (my guess is he is using some service to check keywords that is not free).

If you are new to SEO, or if you are using virtual assistants, this may be something you look into as both plugins help you tweak your copy to maximize your posts and get top 10 Google rankings.

Check it out at seopressor.com

Many times when you embed a video on your site it takes up room, gets in the way of text, or you end up with an image that makes you look awful. I’ve got the solution. Best of all it does more than video.

• Easily embed videos Anywhere on your WordPress site
• Give your sales pages a fresh look with professional looking  lightbox effects.
• Embed Youtube, Vimeo and Viddler videos
• Embed flv, mp4, flash (swf) and mov video files
• Embed Image files
• Embed mp3 files
• Embed PDF files (the PDF file will open in a lightbox overlay)
• Embed videos stored on your Amazon S3 account
• Embed Private/Protected videos stored on your Amazon S3 account to add protection for your videos (Works on all major browsers, iPhone and iPad)
• Embed media using an anchor text or an anchor image (the lightbox pops up when the text or image is clicked)
• Load HTML page from your site in an overlay/popup

Affiliate Royale

There is a new tool for managing an affiliate program in WordPress. It’s called Affiliate Royale. It does what you want an affiliate script to do. It manages banners, tracks clicks, commissions, and makes it easy to pay your affiliates. This plugin is from the same people who brought you Pretty link which is one of my favorite plugins of all time. However with this plugin coming in at $85 I’m not sure I see anything super special to warrant that price. yes it is cheaper than idevaffiliate, but $49, I think if I had to but one today, I’d go with the obviously names WordPress Affiliate plugin.

Looking to Start a Podcast?

Check out the step by step tutorials, and one on one personal attention at the School of Podcasting

One of the things we talk about in More Podcast Money is using affiliate links on your website. If you use no other affiliate network, you should use Amazon.com simply because they carry everything.

It’s not too hard to configure your site to showcase affiliate links from Amazon.com. You have to pop back and forth between your site, and Amazon.com. If you want to use an image, then there is the joy of downloading and uploading the graphic to your site. Nothing too hard, but it was king of a pain in the butt. Well I just found (and for the record – purchased), Easy AZON. Its a WordPress plugin that makes finding and adding affiliate links on your blog a piece of cake.

The best thing is for $47 you get the plugin (to use on any of your sites), lifetime upgrades, and a quick ebook featuring tips on getting more affiliate sales. Not a bad deal.

For more information go to easyazon.com

SPECIAL NOTE:  I tried a new recording technique, and it sounds awful. I apologize and will return back to the old way of recording.

Today we talk about a new player in the online backup game. It backs up everything (even USB drives) but not your system files (you have those on CD or DVD so you have a backup). The Backblaze service backs up all your data. They believe you should not need to worry whether you selected all the files you care about, put any files in a different location on your computer, or added any new files that may not be included in your online backup. Therefore, they automatically select all your data. You can access your files from any web browser anywhere. Backed up a PC? Restore to a Mac. And vice-versa. You can download any files you need over the Internet for free.

If you have more than one computer, you can have ONE account and backup each of these computers for $5 a month.

Find out more or sign up for a free trial at www.weeklywebtools.com/blaze

Want to create your own iPhone app. Spp Secrets is a website that shows you via tutorials how to go through the whole process, but also shows you how to market it. Check it out at www.weeklywebtools.com/appsecrets‘

The nice about this is instead of being an overpriced book, it is a website that will be updated as technology changes. It is NOT a memberhsip site. It’s a course that will teach you how to create and market your own iPhone app in four weeks.

Each and every week, there is a new module that particularly focuses on a particular area. This can prepare you to develop into a much better developer and also a marketer at the same time. Most effective of all, you may have to find out every thing within the comforts of your own dwelling, at your own personal time and at your personal pace.

I just watched a video and did some quick googling to learn about List Eruption. This tool basically combines the thought process of affiliate marketing with your email list.

List Eruption is a WordPress plugin currently for $47 for a single use liscense or $97 ($77 if you watch the exit pop ups) for unlimited.

How does it work? When someone signs up to your email list, they are taken to a special thank you page with a referral link. If they have other people use their link to sign up for your list, they earn rewards.

It work with all the major email providers (Aweber, Mail Chimp, etc). It has some professional landing pages that will show them their referral URL. You can use their landing page, or use your current wordpress theme. There is even a tool to have the sign up form be in your sidebar. You can also choose to have a twitter and facebook tool on your landing page so your new subscribers can get their referral link, and blast it to their networks.

You can decide how many bonuses levels there are, and how many referrals it takes to get each bonus.

You can create the welcome email right from within WordPress. You can customize it and explain the referral system, and what they can earn for telling their friends. There is even a reminder system built in so when they reach “Level One” List Eruption will remind them how many referrals they need to get to level 2. You can see the results of how many people have signed up, and you can see how effective your bonus content is.

What Do You Think?

With only watching the tutorials at listeruption.com I can see the interest this might have. To build on people’s competitive nature to want to earn more rewards. That part I see as an interesting twist. However, what is to stop people from putting in bogus email addresses? When you start reminding them they have X amount of reards left before the next bonus, won’t that make them want to unsubcribe? (Which is the direct opposite effect).

I like the rewards idea, and you had some old ebooks that weren’t really doing much, (and you had a following) I could see this working. With the built in Facebook and Twitter, I can see the ease of use. For me personally I think its going to depend on your audience. What do you think?

You can watch the videos at listeruption.com