Well, guess what… Page Expiration Robot is now available as standalone script where you can install it and use it on ANY website or page you want. It includes all the same features as the WordPress plugin and as long as you have PHP and MySQL installed, you can get it running very quickly.

So What Does It Do?

As long as you have PHP and MySQL installed on your server, you can get it running very quickly. You’ll enjoy the exact same features as the WordPress plugin including…

• Attention-grabbing flash counter
• Expire by IP or Cookie on a visitor-by-visitor basis
• Expire visitors on very first visit (OTO)
• Set fixed-time expiration for all visitors
• Create perpetual expiration for automation
• Set timer to expire on specific date or period
• Redirect expired visitors to any URL or offer
• Ability to redirect visitors automatically
• Splashscreen on finish to create ‘fear’ of loss
• Show your own splashscreen
• Ability to customize counter’s colors
• Ability to customize counter’s size and set alignment
• Works with ANY server with PHP and MySQL installed

What Does It Look Like?

Click on the image below to enlarge:

Not a customer already? Existing customers who bought Page Expiration Robot PRO in the past can get this standalone version for free. However if you didn’t purchased it yet, you can click here to purchase it while is at a discount and you’ll also get the WP Plugin version too!

Installing Page Expiration Robot PRO – STAND ALONE

1. Unzip the expirerpro-standalone.zip on your local machine
2. Upload the entire folder /expirerpro/ to your public_html using your FTP software
3. Start your installation process at http://YOURDOMAIN.com/expirerpro/
4. Access your cPanel and create MySQL Database (instructions are in PDF file)
5. Login using the username and password you got when you first purchased it!

If you need any assistance at all, please visit our support dashboard.

Please do me a HUGE favor and take a moment and use the comment section below to provide me any feedback, thoughts or questions about this this announcement.  Thank you and enjoy PER standalone!

]]> http://www.internetmarketingwizard.com/page-expiration-robot-standalone/feed 0 http://www.internetmarketingwizard.com/how-to-build-links-after-google-penguin-update http://www.internetmarketingwizard.com/how-to-build-links-after-google-penguin-update#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 13:26:18 +0000 Bill Zimmerman http://www.internetmarketingwizard.com/?p=1013 So, here’s the scoop…

On April 19th Google released another Panda update (3.5).

On April 24th Google rolled out a new update to their algorithm, now known as the Penguin update.

If your site’s traffic dropped on one of these days, then now you know why.

Quick Panda Recap

If you are new to all this, the Panda update is all about on-site issues like duplicate content within your site, ad placement, poor content, thin affiliate sites, high bounce rate, etc.  For example, one of the Panda updates penalized sites that had too many Adsense ads “above the fold”.

One of my sites was hit because I had a squeeze page as a homepage, and it was seen as a “doorway page”.  Obviously a squeeze page as a home page is not meant for providing a good user experience.  It’s meant to gather leads, so it got penalized.

To avoid the Panda updates your site should be all about increasing the “user experience”.  You want well-written content that is properly categorized within your site.  You want to have videos to increase visitor time-on-site.  You want to have good inter-linking between posts and pages, and you want to link out to related sites and authority sites.  The days of 1-5 page affiliate sites that easily rank are over.  Sure, you still see some out there.  But they are few and far between.

And Panda’s evil buddy the Penguin

And onto Penguin.  While Google has stated that only about 3% of searches were affected by this update, it does seem to be quite a bit more.  I have spent the past week reading horror stories of people with sites they have put 10 years of work into, creating valuable content for their visitors and never having built a link themselves, lose all of their traffic in an instant.  They had seemingly done it “the right way” according to Google.  But they still got hit.

I tried to not take in too much of the “panic” to heart as I read the various marketing and SEO forums over the past week.  You read lots of stories like “my site did this and got hit, my site did that and didn’t get hit,  but this site did this and got hit” etc, etc.  But these are just stories for the most part.  It’s hard to take anything concrete away from them.

The fact of the matter is that there are so many variables to the Google algorithm, we’re all just taking guesses at what works.  We don’t work for Google, and we don’t know their algorithm.  SEO is mainly about doing something and following best practices, and seeing if it works, and then trying to repeat that.  Problem is when people discuss their sites, you never really know the whole story.  You only know your own story and your own site.

Most of the discussions I have had with my SEO friends as well as the threads at the various forums seem to have revolved around 2 main ways Penguin hit sites.

Anchor Text

1 - Sites that have too many links built to their site with exact match anchor text to keywords their websites are optimized for.  For example, let’s say you have a site in which you want to sell green light bulbs.  Your homepage has the keyword “green light bulbs” throughout the content, in the title, in the H1 and H2 tags, etc.  The page is totally optimized for that keyword.

And then to rank for it, you have been building a majority of your links with the keyword “green light bulbs” as your anchor.

These are the sites that have seems to have taken a big hit.  I have one site like this that lost about 70% of my traffic with this update.  And this is what I expect is the problem.

There is also some fantastic data analysis that was done by the folks over at Microsite Masters that supports this.  These are the guys I use for tracking my SERP positions.

Webspam

2 - The next big plausible reason seems to be sites that created links that are surrounded by content that is totally unrelated.  Here is an example:

The two studies, published in the May 3 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, compared low- and high-dose radioactive iodine in a total of more than 1,000 patients payday loans. The participants, from Britain and France, also received either Thyrogen or thyroid hormone withdrawal as part of the therapy.

In this example, assume payday loans is linked to some site.  This site is trying to rank for payday loans and just spams totally unrelated content on the web with their link in there.  Again, this seems to be another culprit.

Don’t let this confuse you with “spun content”.  I personally believe that this update only targeted sites with links on totally unrelated content whether it was spun or not.

If you have links on content that was spun and still mostly a copy from other content somewhere on the web, as long as it is related to your anchor text linking to you site, then it’s fine.  Again, this is just my opinion based on observations and conversations over the past week.  For example:

Payday loans are specifically designed to be based on the amount of money a person earns at a job. The lender uses the borrower’s pay packet to determine how much can be lent. Because the amount being lent is dependent on the borrower’s actual income, borrowers can avoid getting into more debt that they can handle.

Let’s assume this is spun or copied content from the web (which it is ha).   Here we have the same anchor, “payday loans”, linking out to a site.

So if you were hit by Penguin, can it be fixed?

Well, I’m not sure.  Google has said that this is a algorithm update, and not a “manual” penalty, so in theory it can be fixed if you correct the problem.  For example, if your problem was too much targeted anchor text, you can start building links with generic anchors like “click here” or “see more here” and also more URL anchors like “mysite.com” and “www.mysite.com”.

If these bad links were just devalued, then you can come out of it.  If however your site is now somehow “filtered” or “penalized” then it might not be easy to come out of it.  I, and alot of others, are assuming these links are just simply devalued.  If they are not devalued, and sites are actually now being “filtered” or “penalized” then that opens up even more opportunity for negative SEO.  This would be very, very bad.

More information on this will be coming out in the next few weeks.

How to build links going forward?

I think all of the ways we have been building links will continue to be effective.  We just need to be smarter about it.  Don’t go crazy with the spam, and keep the content surrounding your anchor text related to it.

It seems fairly clear that you need to diversify your anchor text as well, to give the appearance of a natural link profile.  Think about the sites out there that don’t actively build links and just get them from other sites.  They probably have thousands of unique anchors, with a small percentage of anchors with keywords (like “green light bulbs” or “these are the best green light bulbs”) and another percentage of anchors with their URL as the anchor (like “lightbulbshq.com” or “www.lightbulbshq.com”).

If you are going to use blog networks, stay away from the very public ones or the ones that everyone seems to be using.

Build your own network of private sites for linking purposes, or better yet…build a network of related microsites that actually look and feel like a real site.  Yes, this is expensive and time consuming and all that.  But it works.

Guest posting still works too.  Contact webmasters in your niche and ask them if you can contribute high-quality content in exchange for a link.  Some will also take payment for the content as well.

And never forget: if you depend on Google for all your traffic, that you are just one algorithm shift away from losing everything.

So wherever you can, look into other traffic sources.  Social networking, paid traffic, etc.  Where it’s possible, get them into the game as well.  This way if you lose your Google traffic, you don’t lose ALL your traffic.

If you have any questions or want to share your experience with the latest updates, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

If you don’t backup your WordPress sites you are playing with fire.  This is something you do not want to mess with, so please address this now!  I know backing up is something you have on the “I’ll get to it” list but you better move it to the “Do it now” list.

Even if your hosting company backs up your sites, you should be making your own backup as well.  It’s called redundancy and you can never have enough of it.  Even the biggest and best of hosting companies can screw up your backups.  So if your sites get blitzed, and your backup from your hosting company is damaged, then what?

Well, then you’re screwed.

At the very least, you can use a free WordPress plugin called BackWPup to backup and restore your WordPress sites.  It’s very easy to use, so I thought I would create a couple of quick videos showing you how to backup and restore using BackWPup.   And like I said it’s free!   Sure there are other solutions out there and paid ones as well, but this plugin works great and it’s easy to use too.

Now, if you are very technical this tutorial won’t be of much use to you because this stuff is probably quite easy for you.  This is for people like me.  I know my way around FTP and WordPress but I don’t mess with databases or anything like that.  Here are the steps:

Backing Up

OK here are the high level steps for backing up:

1.  Install BackWPup to your domain

2.  Create a new JOB within the plugin settings.

3.  You can keep the defaults in most cases for WHAT to backup.  You just need to define WHERE you want the backup to be saved.  Then you need to enabled SCHEDULING if you want it to backup on a regular basis.

4.  After you configure this new JOB, go to the JOB options and RUN the job you just created.  This ensures that you have a backup now, and ensures that you configured it correctly.  Check the location where the backup was supposed to be stored to confirm this.

Here is the video tutorial:

Restoring

Here are the high level steps for restoring:

1.  Install WordPress to the domain you are restoring to

2.  Install BackUPwp to the domain

3.  Copy the backup file (zip file) from it’s location to your desktop

4.  Then copy the file from your desktop to the PUBLIC_HTML folder of your domain

5.  Locate the database file (SQL file) in the zipped backup file on your desktop.  Extract this SQL file from your zipped backup file to your desktop, and then copy that file to the PUBLIC_HTML folder as well.

6.  Go to your BackWPup plugin.  Select TOOLS.   It should show your file saved like this:

“SQL File to restore: /home/awesome/public_html/awesome_wrdp1.sql”

(In this case ‘awesome‘ refers to my domain.  Yours will say something different)

7.  Click RESTORE.  Then be sure to delete the SQL file from the PUBLIC_HTML folder.

8.  Open up cpanel, go to File Manager, and go to your PUBLIC_HTML folder.  Find your zipped back and select it.  Then click on EXTRACT.

9.  You’re done!

10.  Last thing – delete your backup zip file from the PUBLIC_HTML folder

Here is the video tutorial:

That’s it!   Easy right?  Now go right now and backup your most important WordPress site now!

If you have any questions or comments shoot ‘em down below.  Thanks!

So What’s New In Version 2.0? A LOT!

Here’s a quick list of the changes since 1.1.4:

• NEW better-looking-attention-grabbing flash counter
• Ability to redirect visitors automatically
• Show your own splashscreen on finish
• Ability to customize counter’s colors (numbers & background)
• Ability to customize counter’s size and set alignment
• Ability to hide any label such as Days/Hours/Mins/Secs
• Added a “Counter Live Preview” upon creating a post or page
• Set counter to expire on specific date. time or period

What Does It Look Like? COOL!

Click on the image below to enlarge:

Screenshot of Page Expiration Robot PRO 2.0

Not a customer already? Existing customers who bought Page Expiration Robot PRO in the past can get this version 2.0 for free. However if you didn’t purchased it yet, you can click here to purchase it while is at a discount!

Upgrading from 1.x to Page Expiration Robot PRO 2.0:

1. Deactivate any existing old version of Page Expiration Robot plugin
2. Make sure you also delete all plugin files as well
3. Upload new plugin using from your WordPress Dashboard
4. Activate the new plugin
5. Done!

If you need any assistance at all, please visit our support dashboard.

Please do me a HUGE favor and take a moment and use the comment section below to provide me any feedback, thoughts or questions about this this announcement.  Thank you and enjoy PER 2.0!

What is the best rank checker?

I am going to briefly run down the top rank checkers out there that I know of and give you some basic information.  And I’m going to discuss what I use and why I like it.

This is by no means going to be an exhaustive and deeply researched review article.  I guess that’s because I kind of sat back and listened to what everyone said about the various tools for a while, and then when I found something that made sense I jumped on it.

So yes, some of what I say here is going to be hearsay and not first-hand info.  What I tell you will be stuff based on what I’ve read online as well as my conversations with other SEOs.

I’m just being honest here, because I didn’t test all of this software thoroughly.  I don’t have the time nor the inclination.  But I can tell you that I am pretty abreast of the latest in SEO, so you’re just going to have to take my word for some of which I say.

I’m not going to compare prices much.  In all honesty, I think the price of each of the programs I am going to discuss is quite fair.  And none of them charge what I would consider an unreasonable amount, but you can judge that for yourself.  They all have a trial/free version as well, so you can try it before you buy it.

So at the end of this article at the very least you’ll have a list of the 5 programs out there as well so you can do some research, along with the memory of my thoughtless and baseless comments on them.

In the end, I suggest you take what I said and do your own research and make the best choice for you.

I used to use Market Samurai because I wasn’t checking alot of keywords.  It was slow, yes.  Very slow.  And I didn’t check keywords too often, just a couple of times a week if I saw traffic changes.  But as I got more serious about SEO I really wanted to move to something else.  And then a few months ago Market Samurai took a big crap and could no longer perform rank checks.  They had claimed that Google made some changes that affected their software architecture.

Others speculated that the real reason was that they could no longer economically support the amount of rank checks they made on their servers on a daily basis so they had to shut down and reevaluate their system.  Either way they shut down and had to make some big changes to their software.

They have since opened back up with those changes, which I will get into in a moment, but when they shut down it gave me a great excuse to finally start using a better rank tracker.

Now don’t get me wrong, I still use Market Samurai quite a bit.  I use their keyword research tool and their competition analysis tool all the time, and I still think it’s a great investment for those purposes.  But for rank tracking, I don’t really recommend it for most people.  I’ll get into that more as well in a bit.

So who are the big players that most SEOs that I know use?  I’m going to list them here for you and say a few things about each one.  And then like I said you can decide which is best for you.

For me personally, I want 3 things when it comes to software that tracks keywords…

I want it to work!

I want it to be fairly simple to use without alot of filler “features”!

I want it to be accurate!

The rest is just bells and whistles.  I am not into the bells and whistles.  I want these 3 things.

So here they are…

1.  SEScout – SaaS (Software as a Service aka web service)

I have never used SEScout personally, and it’s the only one on this list I have never used at all.  All I can go by is what I read and what I hear from my peers.  And what I hear time and time again is that this software is wildly inaccurate.  And I also hear alot of ‘SEScout is great when it works‘…well, that’s certainly not a glowing review.

And after I hear that so many times, I’m pretty much forced to believe it.  And I am not hearing it in just biased reviews you might read in which someone has an agenda.  I am reading that in private Skype chat groups of SEOs who track hundreds of keywords per day.

So what’s the skinny?

Does it work?  Sometimes

Is it simple?  Fairly simple

Is it accurate?  Sometimes

2.  Rank Track from Link Assistant – Desktop software

I used this on trial and never actually purchased it.  Good software for the most part if you are tracking a small amount of keywords.  But once you start tracking more you will need to use your own proxies.  And once you need proxies the results start to get inaccurate.

You can read all over the web regarding the shady way they charge you.  I always knew about it so it never bothered me really.  Basically on lots of their pages, including their checkout page, it seems like you are paying a one-time fee for the software when in fact you need to start paying recurring fees after 6 months.  I honestly expect to pay monthly fees for this service, like most people I would imagine.

As far as the performance, I have used the free version and it’s OK.  It was fairly accurate and worked.  And it’s pretty simple as well.

The skinny…

Does it work?  Yes

Is is simple?  Not really.  Interface isn’t the best in my opinion.

Is it accurate?  Yes and no.  Yes for fewer keywords, but once you get a higher amount of keywords not as much.

3.  Market Samurai – Desktop software

As I mentioned above, this is what I used to use.  Really the only reason I used it was because I had purchased it to do keyword research and competition analysis and it also had a rank checker so I started using that feature too.

It was so damn slow though that I only used it sparingly, and usually only when I saw some traffic changes and I wanted to see if a keyword I was working on was what made the difference in the tracking.

Since I stopped using them they have made a bunch of changes you can read about here.  Originally MS used to be a one-time fee software.  Now they are going to start charging extra after a certain amount of keywords.  And from what I’ve read they will also send you your rank results once a week.  Once a week is a show-stopper for me.  I want them at least once a day.

The skinny…

Does it work?  I guess finally it does?

Is it simple?  Yes

Is it accurate?  If it’s like that way it used to be, then it was accurate 90% of the time.  Many times I would run it and it would show inaccurate results.  Not sure if that is going to change.

4.  Advanced Web Ranking – SaaS

I tested out this software with their free version.  As soon as I started using it I hated it.  That’s all I can say.  I didn’t like the interface, and it seemed filled with crap I would never need.  The prices for this software are pretty good, and alot of SEOs I know use it and like it.  It wasn’t for me though.

The skinny…

Does it work?  Yes

Is it simple?  I didn’t think so, but I’m kind of stupid

Is it accurate?  From what I’ve heard Yes

5.  Microsite Masters – SaaS

This is what I am now using.  It’s awesome.  I love it.  It’s the shiznit.  If I didn’t use this software, I would probably end up using Advanced Web Ranking and just deal with the interface and fluff, but I found this and I’m happy with it.

You can easily add sites and keywords, and it has the perfect amount of features for me.  It has the important stuff without the crap you don’t need.  And it has some great features for client work as well if you need it.

The skinny…

Does it work?  Yes.  I haven’t run into any glitches at all.  And they keep adding features that are important (in my opinion).  For example they just added the ability to look at all of your keywords in a given project instead of having to look at each domain separately.

Is it simple?  Yes.  It is simple enough and intuitive.  Easy to setup and get going.  It has good features for those with clients as well.  For example, their dynamic export feature which you can send to clients which show they keyword, the rank tracking, as well as notes added by the SEO regarding what was done/changed.  Click here for an example given by them.

Is it accurate?  Yes.  When I first started using it I would check manually against some keywords.  Every one I checked was very accurate.

It hits my 3 criteria so I have no reason to look elsewhere.  Do the other programs have features that MSM doesn’t?  Yes, they do.  And maybe they would be a better fit for you.  I personally love SaaS.  I mean, we built VooPlayer, 1ClickLead, and VideoSalesletterCreator as SaaS so I guess that makes sense.

I want all of the software updates behind the scenes, and I don’t want to run anything on my machine.  And I want the system to run the rank updates for me so I can just log in when I want and see the latest on my keywords.

So hopefully this list helps you out a bit if you are searching for rank checking software.  Agree with me?  Disagree?  If you have any comments about the above or want to tell me I’m full of it, feel free to do so in the comments below!  And good luck with your keyword rankings!

Recently Market Samurai made big changes to their software’s ability to check rankings in the SERPs, so I no longer use them for checking my rankings.  I do still use them quite often to check competition for keywords and also for keyword research.

For checking my keyword rankings in the SERPs I just purchased a subscription to Microsite Masters and so far it’s awesome.  Here is a look at the rank updates of the 3 main keywords:

Click To Enlarge

Keyword 1

Click To Enlarge

Keyword 2

Click To Enlarge

Keyword 3

Here are some updates for the month of February:

1) February Earnings

Earnings for the month almost eclipsed the $100 mark.  If the rankings didn’t take a bit of a hit recently, we would definitely have gone over the $100 mark.  We did almost double the earnings from January, which is great.

Click To Enlarge

2) Customer Reviews Strategy

I don’t want any content from Amazon on my site, like the customer reviews for example.  I have seen some sites copy and paste customer reviews directly, but I don’t want to do this.  Call me paranoid, but I don’t think da GOOG would like that.  So what I did was take screen shots of the reviews with Jing, which is free and awesome, and then included them in my product reviews.

But when you paste those images on your article, you can’t read them very well because you have to shrink the image to make it fit the page.  So I found a great image zoom plugin simply called Image Zoom and used it for my images so visitors can click the review image to enlarge it and read it (I also use it for this blog as I’m sure you can tell).  So the customer reviews end up looking look like this:

When you click on that image there is a little icon to enlarge it.  Works pretty well.

Also, if you want to highlight a quote from the review to put under the image, what I did was type it out underneath the image.  Then I previewed the page and took a screen shot of the quote and made that an image too.  It looks like this:

So then together, they look like this:

For some reason this theme we’re using here for IMW puts borders around .png images.  But in the niche site there are no borders so it does look much better.  In either case I think it looks pretty good, allows the visitor to get a taste of customer reviews, and also solves the problem of copying any content from Amazon.

3) Design Improvement

I ordered a header from Crazy Headers.  They are only 11 bucks!  I had heard about them and wanted to try them out.  Must say I was pretty impressed by the quality of what I got for the price.  They take as many revisions as you want too.  Pretty nice setup.

4) Personal Touch

I added the About Me Widget plugin so I can put in an image and “About Me” section in the sidebar.  It makes it more personal, and there is nothing wrong with setting up a ghost writer like this.

5) Get Rid Of The Spam!

I installed the Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin to help with the spam.  It works great!

6) Affiliate Link 307 Redirects

I’m not sure why I didn’t mention this my earlier post when I first told you about the plugins I used.  But I used Pretty Link Lite to redirect to my Amazon affiliate links.

7) Get The Social Stuff In There

I added this Facebook plugin that I have found to work quite well.  I include the LIKE and SEND buttons on all posts and pages.

So these are the updates for February.  If anything big happens during the month of March I will throw up a post, otherwise I will update again at the end of March.  Hopefully we’ll double our sales again and get over $200 for the month.  That’s the goal.

If you have any questions or comments I’d love to hear from you!

]]> http://www.internetmarketingwizard.com/amazon-niche-site-part-six-february-earnings-and-updates/feed 4 http://www.internetmarketingwizard.com/how-to-create-a-wordpress-plugin-from-scratch http://www.internetmarketingwizard.com/how-to-create-a-wordpress-plugin-from-scratch#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:25:50 +0000 Bill Zimmerman http://www.internetmarketingwizard.com/?p=902

Creating products is a great way to increase your streams of income.  There are so many different kinds of products you can create in the world of Internet Marketing, and that is what makes this business so exciting.  There are thousands of ways to make money and endless possibilities.  As I type this right now, people are coming up with new ways to make money and new ways to market products online.

Since WordPress is so huge and so popular, creating and marketing plugins is a great way to not only make money but to also get some exposure to your brand.  And if you are a WordPress user, you have likely at one point or another had this thought:

“I wish there was a plugin that does THIS”

OR

“I like this plugin, but I wish it did THAT too.”

OR

“I like this plugin, but it’s just too buggy and not very easy to use”

These are the thoughts that lead to a new product and a new way to make money online.

So in this post I’m going to go over some steps to take when creating your own WordPress plugin, and also some things to keep in mind.

Find One Problem

So you work with WordPress alot right?  I’m sure you do.  Everyone loves WordPress, and I’m not an exception.  Most of our sites are on WordPress.  It’s easy to use, easy to customize, and looks great.  And let’s not forget about the plugins available.

There are thousands of plugins out there that do all sorts of stuff.  Believe it or not, plugins are still coming out every single day because there are just so many different types of blogs, webmasters, and markets out there that there is ALWAYS some plugin that can be developed that will make a task easier, make a site look better, make conversions a little better, or make some technical task easier to do.  The list goes on and on…

Not to mention, there are always plugins coming out that IMPROVE upon a plugin that already exists or just does something a little different. 

Just look at all of the plugins out there for backing up your blog or for your on-page SEO.  Most of them generally do the same thing, but some have more features and some have less.  Some are free with little support, and some are paid with full support.  Some do just one thing very well, and some do a lot of things pretty well.  I think you get the picture.

That brings me really what encompasses what you need to do to create a WP plugin:  Find a problem and solve it.

Perhaps there isn’t a plugin available at all for what you want to do.  In this case, you will come up with a brand new concept and be the first to come out with anything like it. 

Coming up with a brand new idea is the first way you can create a plugin.

Or perhaps you are working with a plugin, one is popular for a particular task, but it just doesn’t do a few things you want.  Or it’s difficult to work with.  Or it’s not supported.  Or it’s buggy.  You can completely redesign the plugin to do what you want and how you want it, and improve upon the shortcomings of the plugin.

For example, let’s say you are working with a plugin that make it easier inserts tables into your blog.  It works, but not very well.  It’s clumsy and buggy and the task still takes longer than it should to do. 

Take that same concept, which is adding tables into a blog, and design a new plugin that does it better.  Make it easier to work with and less buggy.  Give better support.  If you do this, people will use it.

So taking an existing plugin, and making it better is the second way you can create a plugin.

Find The Solution

I already got into this a bit, but this part is pretty self-explanatory.  If you are developing a concept that hasn’t been done before, then this part will be more tricky because you don’t have a plugin to look at that already does the task so you can use it as an example.

So if it’s a brand new idea, just use your experience with plugins to imagine how it will work.  What exactly will it do?  How will it make the webmaster’s life easier?  How will it make the site look better?

If you are taking an existing concept, and just making a better plugin, what will be better?  Will it be usability?  Functionality?  Features?  Support?  Make sure you plugin stands out completely from the plugin that already exists for that task.  There is no sense in creating a plugin that does something another plugin already does, unless you are sure you are making it MUCH better.

Design It

This part will take some time, and will certainly take a little while if you are new to it.  You can use wire frame software to design the plugin.

Here are two pieces of software we use.  They are both good and both have free trials.

http://www.carettasoftware.com/guidesignstudio/

http://www.smartdraw.com/

Before you use design it with the software, you might want to take a large white board if you have one and start brainstorming some designs.  If you don’t have a whiteboard, just use some paper.  Yes, even in this age of technology Internet Marketers STILL use paper believe it or not.

Find A Programmer

This is probably the hardest part.  Scratch that.  This is definitely the hardest part.

If you have never tried to hire a programmer before, then maybe this is a surprise.

If you have tried to hire one, then I KNOW that this is NOT a surprise.

Sites you can use to find a programmer:

Odesk
Elance
Rent A Coder

Do’s and Don’ts of Hiring a Programmer:

Do’s:

Make sure you are absolutely sure on what you want before you start to look for a programmer.  You don’t want to be half-way through the project or near the end only to realize you forgot something.

Make sure your wire frame is easy to understand and has plenty of explanations.

Your features have to be explicit.  Don’t assume that the programmers will ASSUME what you want.  Be SPECIFIC about EVERYTHING.

The programmer should have experience in WordPress plugins

Read through their feedback on Odesk or Elance or whatever you are using from previous people that hired them.

Interview them on Skype and if possible over the phone as well.

Make sure you tell them upfront if you expect support after the plugin is complete.  Once it’s done and you’ve found all the bugs possible, you will want to release it to the public.  And chances are that they will find bugs too.  Tell the programmer if you want the price to include, for example, 30 days of support for more bugs after you release to the public.

Pay them in milestones.  I would recommend at least 4 milestones.  For example:

• First payment a deposit
• Second payment after design is complete
• Third payment after coding is complete
• Fourth payment after testing and bugs are complete.
• Fifth payment after 30 days of support after you launch it.

Also something else to keep in mind about programmers:  MANY will give you a low offer when first working with you.  And then when you want to update your software or change something, they really increase their price.  They do this because they know it’s easier to work with them and you would rather not have to look for a new one.  Be sure to hold your ground and get a fair price for your new versions and updates.  Make sure they know you have no problem going elsewhere to find another coder.

Don’ts

Don’t pay full price upfront.  Don’t even pay half upfront.  If you are working with them for the first time, I wouldn’t recommend you pay more than 15% up front.  Even though you are protected by Odesk and Elance if they don’t complete their work, there is nothing worse than the hassle of chasing down programmers who disappear.  Don’t tie too much money into that hassle.

Don’t hire someone without any feedback, even if they are very inexpensive.  You don’t want to waste your time and money being the one to experiment with a new programmer.  If you are experienced with outsourcing already and this is not your first project and is a fairly easy job, then maybe you can risk a new coder without feedback just to save a few bucks.  Otherwise, stick to the coders that have feedback.

Never allow too much time to go by without updates.  You should be upfront and clear when you hire the programmer about how often you expect to be updated.

Paid or Free?

Well, this one is tough.  In my opinion, it’s best to have both a free and paid version.  Have a free version with valuable features, and then a paid version with even more features or enhanced features.  There are many ways you can play around with this.

Or you could simply create a free version and use it as a lead-magnet.  People love plugins, so having a free one that is desirable is a great way to build your list.

Other Things To Think About

You will need an ecover created.  You can find various ecover designers on Odesk or Elance, or you can use Fiverr as well.

Also, make sure you think of a good name.  Just go over to the Warrior Forum Special Offers if you want to look at some names to get your creative juices flowing.

Here’s How We Did It

When we created Page Expiration Robot, it was out of need.  We wanted a plugin that allowed for pages to expire on a visitor-by-visitor basis because we knew they would be more effective that way.  So when we present a one-time offer to a customer, we tell them they have 30 mins to purchase.  If they come back after 30 mins, the offer will be expired or different.  And sure enough, if they wait and come back they will see a different offer or see that it expired.

Now we put a great deal of time and money into the plugin, but we still wanted to be able to offer a free version so we could include it in the WordPress directory and also so we could offer it for free to generate a list.

So we came up with a good solution…The free version would allow the functionality of the plugin, but the paid version would make it much more effective.  Basically the free version was good and valuable, but the paid version was definitely better.  It’s a win-win-win-win

So if and when you decide to delve into the world of WordPress plugins, I hope this stuff will get your gears grinding and provide some insight so you don’t make the same mistakes that John and I made.  And we made alot!

The problem: For the last 17 months or so we’ve managed to capture over 25,000+ subscribers to a single opt-in list in just one of the many lists we have in multiple markets. The problem that I’ve noticed was  some LOW open rates. So I said to myself and my partner “We have a problem here” so I decided to do something about it.

I spent the next 2-3 hours trying to figure out ways to make that list more responsive with more open rates and more clicks that will drive more sales!

And in this post I’ll share with you the exact steps I took to discover what’s going on, why the low open rates are happening and how to beat this obstacle with a simple way — that’s free!

My Initial Goal Was…

To find out what content they like and what they don’t…and I believe that by reviewing the Good VS. Bad open rates and Unsubscription percentage of each follow up email we can identify what they like and what they don’t.

Makes sense right?

So how to you find this information? Easy.

We’re using Aweber so if you also use this great autoresponder service you’ll see at the top navigation bar a tab called Reports (see the screenshot below)…

The "Reports" tab

Once clicking that tab you’ll see TONS of options where you can go very DEEP to understand your subscribers, but in my case the most important sections were:

• Tab #1: Weekly New Subscribers – to find out if your list has an ongoing increase or decrease on weekly basis
• Tab #2: Followup Status – Unsubscriptions – to find out what follow ups make them stick and what makes them leave
• Tab #3: Followup Totals – to find what emails have good and bad open rates

So let’s take a look at each one and see what valuable info I gathered…

Tab #1: Weekly New Subscribers

Purpose: To find out if you have an ongoing increase or decrease of subscribers on weekly basis.

Click to enlarge screenshot

Results: After reviewing these stats, it’s seems that we have about 50-100 more subscribers consistently every week since some changes we made. We’re getting about 550-600 subscribers per week with about 35-45 unsubscriptions per week. Not bad.

Tab #2: Followup Status – Unsubscriptions

Purpose: To find out what follow ups make them stick and what makes them leave.

Click to enlarge screenshots

Results: So as you can see on the screenshot above, in my list I have the following problems:

1. 20% unsubscriptions comes from follow up email 1
2. 21.30% unsubscriptions from follow up email 31
3. 30.10% unsubscriptions follow up email 32

Obviously there are some serious problems here and we had to do something. (I’ll explain what I did at the end of this post.)

Tab #3: Followup Totals

Purpose: To find what emails have good and bad open rates

Click to enlarge screenshot

Results: I consider good open rate emails with over 20% and bad open rates anything below 10%, so here are my “good open rates” emails:

 

• Email 1: 35%
• Email 2: 33%
• Email 3: 23%
• Email 4: 20%
• Email 5: 21%
• Email 8: 22%
• Email 13: 22%
• Email 15: 21%

This is part five of a series of posts in which I am building an Amazon niche site from the ground up.  Here is a summary of those past posts:

1. I found a product to promote on Amazon and checked the keywords for it

2. The main keyword for the product has alot of searches

3.  I checked competition for this keyword, and I think I can rank it top 3 of da GOOOOOG

4.  I found a suitable domain and bought it

5.  I ordered the first article on for the first product review

6.  I installed my WordPress theme and plugins

7.  I uploaded the first article I ordered

8.  I found 6 more products and related keywords, and ordered content.  I now have a total of 7 product review articles, with one or more keywords targeting each page.

9.  Content ordered, delivered, and added to site.  One article was added every 2-3 days.

10.  After I added all of the content, I went ahead and added to it.  I added more details, better information, some product comparisons, and anything else I thought the writer missed.  I also did the formatting and added images.

11.  I made sure all on the on-page SEO was correct.

You can get to all those posts here on my author page:  http://www.internetmarketingwizard.com/author/willzimm

So, here we are.  I have a site.  I have the content.  I have the nice design, and the images, and everything.  Now I guess some visitors would be good right?  So onto off-page SEO we go.

Step One:  I got some web 2.0′s built

Now this step can be done for free, and you can do it yourself if you want.  I paid to have this done, but as I outlined here you can actually do this yourself.  Here are the steps I personally took to get this done…

First I ordered content for this.  Now, this content does not have to be good AT ALL.  It just has to be original.  I paid about $10 for the original article and then to have that article spun into 20 more versions.  Each one ended up at least 70% unique, with most of them over 80% unique.  I got 3 orders of these, one for each of the 3 main keywords I was targeting.

Once I got the content, I got the web 2.0′s created with the content.  I used a service provider from Blackhatworld to get this done.  I’ve also used service providers at Wickedfire, and I’ve used Fiverr as well.

OK so now that I have all of them created, I let them age a bit.  I waited at least a month before doing anything with them because some of them will get deleted by the site admins.

Step Two:  Scrapebox blasts to web 2.0′s

Once a month went by, I began blasting those web 2.0 links with blog comments.  I did this myself using Scrapebox, and I ordered blasts from both Fiverr and BHW as well.  I explained some of this in my SEO for beginner’s post as well.  I didn’t point any of these links to my niche site, only to the web 2.0′s.

Step Three:  Social Bookmarks

Next step was to order some social bookmarking services from Wickedfire.  This step you really can’t do yourself unless you have software like Sick Submitter or Bookmarking Demon.  Some of those guys I buy bookmarking services from also use custom made software as well.  At this point I don’t have time to learn software myself, which is why I outsource so much of my SEO work now.

But if you want to do it yourself and save some money you certainly can.  What I am ordering is anywhere from 1000 to 3000 social bookmarks to my site for each targeted keyword.  I usually use around 5-15 different keyword variations from the main target keyword.  These links all point straight to my niche site homepage

Step Four:  Build My Rank

Build My Rank is a private blog network that publishes content onto their sites with your links in the content.  Basically you sign up for their service, and use their web-based system to submit articles with links in them.  The articles must be at least 150 words to have one link in them.

The one big thing about BMR that people don’t like is that your content has to be 100% original and have no spelling or grammatical errors.  They do this for one reason:  to protect their network.  Lots of networks like theirs have been de-indexed by Google over the past 6 months or so, so BMR is very careful about the content that goes on their sites.

And it’s also a monthly fee.  But here’s the thing:  BMR works.  Yes it can be pricey and time consuming, but it works and it works well.  Highly recommend using BMR.

Step Five:  Authority Link Network

Authority Link Network is another blog network, but it’s a little different.  This one is a little more advanced, and I would not recommend using if you are totally new to SEO.  The idea behind ALN is that you pay a small monthly fee and add your own domains to the ALN network.  You still own the domains, but you add it to their network of sites.

The whole network is completely contributed by the users of the network.  Depending on the PR of your sites, you get a number of submissions per day.  For example, if you have 10 PR3 domains on the network you can submit a certain amount of articles per day to the network.  And if you have 10 PR4, you get more submissions.  So the more PR you add to the network, the more articles you can submit to the network.

I actually outsource this out, but lots of my friends do this manually themselves.  It’s a little time consuming, but it works.  And it works very, very well.  You just have to get content for it, and buy domains for it.  You can even buy just PR2 and PR3 domains so you don’t spend alot of money, since PR4′s and up start to get expensive.  If you have any questions about this, just ask below in the comments section and I will help you out.

About the content needed for ALN…you do NOT need original content for it like you do for BMR.  HOWEVER, you need to make sure that the content is spun very well, or it will not get indexed by Google.  And more and more SEO’s are beginning to believe that links on original content count more as well.  This of course is conjecture for the most part, but it does make sense.

Step Six:  Unique Article Wizard

Unique Article Wizard is yet another blog network with article directories mixed in as well.  You submit articles in the web-based user interface and the articles are distributed at the rate you specify.  You can submit up to 20 per day.  For UAW you do not need original content like you do for BMR, so many people do prefer using UAW because of this.  You can use PLR content or spun content.  But again, the better it’s spun and more original it is, the better.

Now if you are just starting, and can’t afford alot to spend on linkbuilding I would recommend you start with BMR and ALN.  With BMR you can write your own content and submit the links.  But if you do it consistently you will see results.  For ALN you can simply buy some cheap PR2 domains to add to the network and get yourself started.  Write some content and spin it very well with something like the The Best Spinner and submit to the network.  If you really need to spend as little money as possible, then use ALN.  It just freakin’ works, plain and simple.

So, how has this link building been working out so far?

Here are the screenshots from Market Samurai:

Keyword 1

Keyword 2

Keyword 3

I am also ranking top 20 for a variety of other long tails as well.  Currently I am getting around 80 visitors per day, and got the first sales from this domain a few weeks ago, in the last week of December.  For January it looks like I will clear $50 for the month for this domain.  Not bad for the first full month and not much traffic.  Of course with the amount spent on the domain, content, WordPress theme, links, etc I am still in the red.  But I will be in the black in a few months time.

If you pick the right keywords, put up a nice design with quality content, and get traffic then you will see a return on your investment.  It may take some time, but that is the way it is.  This is business.  And no one said internet marketing was easy.

Next Up:

Next I will get into some other details on the site I changed, other plugins I added, other SEO I’ve done, and more fun and random stuff!

So if you’re like me you do not like that admin bar hanging around there and you may want to hide/remove it. There different ways to remove admin bar on WordPress.

Disable WordPress Admin Bar Per User Basis

This method disables the admin bar per user basis. For example, if you want to disable the admin bar for your or someone else account just Go to Users > Your Profile > Show Admin Bar and uncheck on “when viewing site”.

Plugins to Disable WordPress Admin Bar for ALL Users

A number of plugins have come up to delete/disable/hide/remove the WordPress admin bar as well as to modify and relocate it. You can use any the following WordPress plugin to disable/remove your admin bar.

Global Hide/Remove Admin Bar Plugin – Easily add a global option to hide/remove the new Admin bar in WP 3.1+. Adds an option to the Settings Menu to globally turn off the Admin Bar and/or turn off the user option in the profile to show admin bar.

Admin Bar Disabler – Disable the WP Admin Bar in 3.1+ entirely, or only for roles and capabilities which aren’t in the ‘whitelist’ or ‘blacklist’.

WP Custom Admin Bar – A really simple and easy to use plugin to help gain control of the new Admin Bar. This gives you options to change who sees the Admin Bar based on their user role, change or override the default styling and remove the Admin Bar altogether.

Admin Bar Minimiser –The Admin Bar Minimiser Plugin was written to help users keep the admin bar active but be able to minimise it at any time to make it less obtrusive.

Stick Admin Bar To Bottom – Annoyed by the new Admin Bar that is covering the top 28 pixels of your website, but you don’t want it completely gone? This plugin sticks the Admin Bar to the bottom of your screen!

Hide Admin Bar Search – Small plugin to hide the search box in the admin bar in both dashboard and site views.

Logged Out Admin Bar -Makes that admin bar always visible even for logged out users. Adds a login button when logged out, the shortlink also displays when available

Always Show Admin Bar – Always shows the admin bar if the user has previously logged in to the site. Non logged in users will see the bar in the normal place, complete with a login link.

Code to Disable Admin Bar Completely for Everyone

If you want to disable admin bar completely for everyone, you can add one of the following codes  into the functions.php of your current theme:

OR

What’s Next?

If you want to double your sales with existing traffic in JUST 3 CLICKS, go download for free Page Expiration Robot WP Plugin and easily start turning your WP Pages or posts into one-time offers automatically and perpetually!