In this article, we'll review the Matomo Analytics for WordPress plugin, discussing what it's like to use in practice and some of the reasons you might want to use it instead of other popular solutions like Google Analytics and Jetpack Site Stats for WordPress.

So what exactly is it that differentiates Matomo from other analytics solutions?

The main answer…

Control & Ownership of Your Analytics Data

When you are compiling a large data set about your business or a collection of people, it is important to consider the potential privacy impact of the data and where it is stored. The majority of people with analytics probably use Google Analytics, but this presents a few potential problems…

Protecting Your Competitiveness

Previously I worked with a company who were competing with some of Google's business units. If you're in this position, it simply doesn't make sense to funnel all of your website insights to a direct competitor, no matter how many assurances they provide that it won't be used against you.  But even if you're not directly competing, it isn't always great to reveal your entire operations to a third party.

Matomo fixes this by giving you complete ownership of your data. You don't have to share the inner details of your website and its users with giant internet companies who likely have an incentive to access your data where legally possible. 

Avoiding Data Centralisation Risks

As a good citizen of the Internet, the fact that Google is not only the search engine market leader but also collecting data on millions of websites in a central repository should at least give you pause for thought. If this data were to leak or be abused, there could be significant impacts for both businesses and individuals. Not to mention the extraordinary amount of power that Google holds behind a simple motto of “Don't be evil”.

If history tells us anything, large corporations don't always hold the interest of their users as their top priority. Changes don't have to be sinister to impact your business massively. Recent years have seen many of Google's previously free services being integrated with their cloud API platform, which requires payment when you reach a certain point. 

Matomo fixes this by allowing you to self-host your analytics on your own server. You aren't at risk of being included within a mass data breach, and your data isn't at risk of a toll suddenly being applied to access your own data.

Data Sovereignty

Over the past few years, many new and updated privacy laws have been released to protect users. Some of these feature data sovereignty sections which essentially state that data about a user of your site must be stored within their home country or at least a country with adequate privacy laws. When you use many hosted solutions, you are bundled in with their other clients in unknown jurisdictions, and quite frankly, you often don't even know where your data is being stored behind the scenes. 

Matomo fixes this by allowing you to self-host with servers in any country. By default, the WordPress plugin version of Matomo stores all of your data on the same server as your website, so if you are using a host like Kinsta or WP Engine you can be assured of the same level of security and that it will be stored in the same data centre that you selected when signing up. 

Which version of Matomo?
Self-Hosted vs On-Premise vs WordPress

You may have noticed in the section above that I mentioned a WordPress version of Matomo. There are essentially three versions of Matomo; Matomo Cloud, Matomo On-Premise and Matomo for WordPress. The bulk of the functionality is the same between them, but there are a few differences. This article is primarily about the WordPress version, but there are advantages to each, and you can get a taste for their distinguishing features below… 

• Matomo for WordPress – This is the main focus of this review and is certainly the easiest way to get started if you have a WordPress website. You simply install the Matomo for WordPress plugin and then you can easily configure and access your analytics from within your WordPress dashboard. It also provides ecommerce tracking at no extra cost and supports the WP Rest API.
• Matomo On-Premise – This is the full standalone hosted version. It requires a little more technical knowledge to get started, but in return, it offers a broader feature set and the ability to manage analytics for many websites with a single login. If you are already using this, you probably don't need to switch to the WordPress version.
• Matomo Cloud – This version is not self-hosted, so you lose some of the related benefits like choosing the country your data is stored in, but they do offer a strong privacy policy. One of the biggest benefits of this version is it removes the technical overheads required by self-hosting. Plus, if you're using a lot of Matomo's premium features, it may work out cheaper than individually subscribing to each of the premium plugin extensions.

One thing that isn't immediately obvious is their Mobile app currently doesn't work with the WordPress version. This is something to do with the way they manage API keys. However, whichever version you use, it is possible to migrate the data between them if you decide to switch at any point. 

Navigating Matomo for WordPress

After installing the plugin, you will notice a Matomo Analytics menu item that links to everything you need:

• Summary
• Reporting
• Tag Manager
• Settings
• Diagnostics
• Marketplace
• About

You will use some of these much more than the others, and the most relevant sections are described below…

Reporting

The reporting section takes you out of the WordPress dashboard and into a dedicated interface for Matomo Analytics, as seen below. This provides a similar experience to the one found in the dedicated Matomo Analytics On-Premise edition. Although it is important to realise, this panel is still hosted within your WordPress installation. You can see an example of what it looks like in the screenshot below (containing example data only). You will also notice that the WordPress dashboard is always one click away via the WordPress Admin link at the top of the page.

The top section of the page allows you to select the timeframe you'd like to focus on as well as specific segments of users or just All Visits. While down the left-hand side of the page is a link to the various sections of the reporting tool. And last but certainly not least, the bulk of the page contains all of the reports and data generated from your website statistics. The best way to start learning about all of the Matomo features is through the official user guide found here.

Tag Manager

The Tag Manager link takes you out of the WordPress dashboard again and into a dedicated interface for Matomo Tag Manager. This is one of the hidden gems within Matomo Analytics. While not always a core feature on analytics tools, a tag manager is a powerful solution when you need to dynamically insert scripts and collect specific data across your site, for example, by inserting a marketing pixel or capturing eCommerce actions so you can pass them to your CRM tool. 

While Google offers a free tag manager too, it's another situation where you are feeding them more data that they simply shouldn't need to access. By using the self-hosted alternative within your Matomo installation, only you have unrestricted insight into your marketing scripts and logic. It's also worth noting that Matomo is much more powerful than the many WordPress plugins that allow you to inject simple header and footer scripts.

You can create any number of tags, triggers and variables to achieve your goals. An example might be a marketing script that is contained within a tag and is triggered by any pageview on your site. Within the script, you could use a variable that collects user data, such as a username, to enrich your marketing data.

Using tag managers effectively is a BIG topic that is beyond the scope of this article. However, it is important to note that they can be a very powerful part of your marketing toolkit. The Matomo Tag Manager is very well-featured, and while the integration is not “officially” supported, it also works perfectly with the Google Tag Manager for WordPress plugin in our testing and experience. This allows you to automate the painstaking process of creating a working data layer from WordPress components. If you know, you know. 

The only snag that I've hit a couple of times compared to externally hosted tools is that sometimes the Matomo container script is cached by WordPress plugins like WP Rocket which are designed to speed up the site, so you need to make sure that your containers are excluded from any custom rules that you've built. With that said, it is a much better situation than getting your custom tags filtered by aggressive ad-blocking tools, as is often the case with other tag managers.

Marketplace

The Marketplace section of the plugin is where you can access a collection of both free and premium plugins to extend the functionality of Matomo for WordPress. You should take the time to read through the full selection to see what each of them do and carefully consider whether they would benefit your site. As they are each installed as extension plugins within your WordPress installation, you can quickly build up a large number of plugins if you get carried away!

If you're earning money through your website, it may also be worth investigating the Premium Bundle, which includes the most popular premium features such as heatmap tracking, form analytics and the ability to track your funnels at a combined discount. This is the combination that The Modern Entrepreneur site has been running with for the past year.

Matomo Analytics vs Google Analytics

The first thing to say here is that if you have used Google Analytics, you should easily be able to navigate the reports within Matomo for WordPress. It includes all of the standard universal analytics features that almost every analytics software offers by default, such as page views and reports. 

However, another one of the big benefits of using Matomo is you will also get access to features that usually require an enterprise-level paid account with Google Analytics. I won't go through a full blow-by-blow comparison, but if you want to compare the feature set, here is a handy Matomo vs Google Analytics comparison. 

Switching from Google Analytics

I was a Google Analytics user for ten years before I moved to Matomo. One of the biggest things holding me back from making the switch was that I didn't want to lose access to the existing data and insights that I had collected over the years. Luckily Matomo has an open-source plugin ecosystem not too dissimilar to WordPress, and there is a free plugin that you can use to migrate your data from Google Analytics into Matomo. Overall, the Google Analytics importer plugin is really useful, however, I did encounter a few challenges while using it (neither due to Matomo itself, I must say!). 

The first issue that came up was related to the hosting configuration for WP Engine, where this site is hosted. They offer a highly configured environment optimised for WordPress. Unfortunately, this meant that a PHP feature that isn't used by WordPress but was required by the import plugin was blocked and could not be manually enabled. I got around this by running the import plugin on a cloned version of the site on a different server and then merging the analytics database table back to my site. Not ideal, but it did work. If you are in a restricted hosting environment and need to do this, you will either need to be comfortable in the command line or get a little help from a developer. 

The second issue was actually due to limitations on the Google Analytics API. Something that I was certainly excited to be leaving behind! Google places a limit on how many times you can query their API within a single day, which means that you likely won't be able to bring all of your data over in one go. The documentation for the Google Analytics importer plugin suggests you can process about four months in a day. So as you can imagine, several years of data will take more than a couple of days. Luckily, you can leave it running in the background on your server, so once you've confirmed it is processing, you can just leave it and check back in a couple of weeks or months later, depending on the size of your data set. 

Once everything is processed, it all works well and allows you to easily explore your historical Google Analytics data within Matomo. In the odd case where the metrics between the two platforms don't align perfectly, Matomo provides a small warning. In my case, this hasn't materially impacted any of the reports I rely on, but it is something to be aware of.

Matomo Analytics vs Jetpack Site Stats

One of the big benefits of Jetpack Site Stats is that you can easily access your stats within the WordPress dashboard. Not surprising considering it was made specifically for WordPress! There has always been a workaround with other analytics solutions, but luckily the Matomo WordPress plugin also features a native way of viewing your key statistics within the WordPress dashboard. And whenever you need more detail, a comprehensive analytics suite is just a couple of clicks away, unlike Jetpack site stats which remains pretty basic wherever you view it from.

Initially, I thought that Matomo was missing the ability to view your stats within the dashboard page shown when you first log in as with Jetpack Site Stats. However, it turns out this feature is just a little bit hidden…

Matomo offers a summary page containing a whole collection of reports as seen in the screenshot below. This page shows you a high-level breakdown of your stats over various time periods which you can toggle using the buttons at the top of the page. But what isn't immediately obvious is that you can also click on the pin icon to add these reports to your main dashboard page. Very cool!

Getting Support for Matomo

There is ample documentation on the plugin available through the official Matomo Knowledge Base and FAQs. One thing to keep in mind when browsing is that there are subtle differences between the versions of Matomo, so keep an eye out for sections mentioning WordPress specific features.

Support for the Matomo for WordPress plugin is offered through the WordPress repository as with most plugins. They appear to have a high issue resolution rate which is always a nice bonus for a free plugin. Additionally, Matomo has community forums where you can access support from the wider Matomo community.

If you are using any of their paid tools, then I'm sure you could also reach out to their support team at any time if anything didn't appear to be working correctly, although I can't say that I've done this myself.

In Conclusion

Matomo is a powerful analytics tool that competes with and outperforms many of the most known players in the space. The WordPress plugin version makes integration with things like WooCommerce a lot simpler. The range of reports available for free is more than enough for your average user, and for the analytics power users, there are a ton of paid extensions available that take things to the next level.

For those with a small business budget, the premium extensions may feel a bit pricey when compared with more basic free WordPress analytics solutions. However, if you use all of the features or you're a more advanced user, you will quickly find that you are spending a few hundred dollars a year for things that you wouldn't be able to get unless you were willing to spend six figures as part of an enterprise software solution. Plus, if you're using the tool wisely, it can likely justify the cost many times over!

Whether you're interested in Matomo for its privacy and data sovereignty features, the fact that it's an open-source and self-hosted analytics solution, or if you're just looking for a way to get stats about your website, I can highly recommend Matomo for WordPress.

NOTE: It looks like they are currently offering a 30 day free trial of the premium bundle, something that wasn't available previously, so if you're on the edge, now is a great time to give it go!

Disclosure

I was provided with a one year free trial of the premium features, however, this review is based on my genuine experience and feedback as a real user of the plugin. Additionally, the biggest vote of confidence I can give is that I plan to continue my subscription for the foreseeable future.

Full disclosure: I have affiliate relationships with a few of these companies (the ones without a *) so I may make a few bucks if you buy from my links. Either way everything included here has been chosen because I genuinely believe in it and would be happy to recommend regardless of any official relationship.

So without further ado here they are…

Black Friday Picks

Deposit Photos*

I'm a sucker for this deal every time it comes around but that is because it is genuinely useful. Deposit Photos are a provider of stock photography for creating websites. AppSumo have a special promotion where you can get 100 or more image credits for less than a $1 each and they have saved me many times when you can't quite capture or find the right shot elsewhere.

Gravity Forms

This is my go-to contact form solution for WordPress. It has stood the test of time, there are a bunch of official and third party extensions that can make them even better. I've even built pseudo web apps using it that have generated thousands of leads for my websites. I've actually been a subscriber for years now so I won't technically be picking this up, just keeping it. For general purpose forms, this is the one.

LearnDash

This is a course management plugin for WordPress that helps you create online training courses. I've used it for everything from general business subscription websites all the way through to high school education providers. It is both versatile and respected and comes with a pretty deep discount for Black Friday (50% off with coupon: BLACKFRIDAY50 ) and Cyber Monday (50% off with coupon CYBERMONDAY50 )

OptinMonster

I've actually used this before and took a break to start using Gravity Forms in their place, but unless you spend a lot of time testing and rebuilding them you just won't get the same level of conversions. Creating and stying forms with OptinMonster is a super quick and easy process, plus they offer a surprising amount of advanced targeting options if you're a data driven marketer. So, for email marketing optin forms I'm back on the OptinMonster wagon…

ProtonMail*

ProtonMail are a secure email provider based in Switzerland. While they don't offer the integrations you'll get with something like gmail, they do have a solid web interface and accompanying apps designed to help you keep your business, your own business.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the go-to eCommerce solution for WordPress. I've used it to create stores for clothing brands, tourism companies, membership sites, conference planners and much more. Much like WordPress itself, if it's missing a feature that you want to make use of, there is almost certainly a plugin that will have your back. They are offering 40% off all extensions this Friday with the coupon code “BLACKCYBER2019” and there are more than a few I have my eye on.

WordPress Hosting

I'm not picking sides here because I use both all of these options with different projects. So if you're current hosting kind of sucks and you've been looking for an upgrade, look into one of these options.

• SiteGround* – If you're just launching a new site this should keep you going until things really kick off. Solid shared hosting with great integrations and built in caching to speed your site up. They also offer pretty deep discounts for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
• WP Engine* – Managed WordPress from one of the largest WordPress focused providers. I'm currently an agency parter and this website is currently hosted here, enough said.

That's All Folks…

Of course I haven't even slightly made a dent on the full scope of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals that will be hitting the web this weekend. But hopefully the selection above will help you to narrow down some of the best options before it is too late.

Until next year…

Cleaning Up Facebook Tracking Tags From Your Analytics

If you spend enough time in your analytics and you receive traffic from Facebook you will inevitably start seeing duplicate page results with a strange fbclid parameter attached. In this article you'll get a brief overview of what it is and then ultimately how to get rid of it and why you might want to.

If you haven't see it in action yet it looks a little something like this:

https://domain.com/page-path/?fbclid=JYGNyugnGiyn

What is the fbclid parameter?

The fbclid parameter is set by Facebook when somebody clicks through to your website from an advert on their platform. It is a feature that was introduced in late 2018, likely in response to emerging cookie policy updates and anti-tracking features in browsers. It almost certainly allows Facebook to more reliably collect click data on third party websites featuring the Facebook pixel by setting a unique URL for each visitor.

Unfortunately a side-affect of the unique URL structure is that your analytics package can think that hundreds or even thousands of your pageviews are for different pages even though the only difference is the tracking ID.

Luckily Google offers a simple feature for removing the fbclid and any other parameter from your analytics…

How to remove the fbclid parameter from Google Analytics

1. Log in to Google Analytics.
2. Go to the Admin section.
3. Go to your View Settings.
4. Add fbclid to the Exclude URL Query Parameters field.
5. Hit Save

So there you have it, a super simple fix for this annoying quirk in your analytics. You can also use this same technique if any other parameters are messing up your analytics views.

TIP: Using Matomo Analytics instead?
Follow this guide to exclude query parameters with Matomo.

If you run a website then the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) should be on your radar. The rules cover how personal data is collected and controlled by organisations and there is a useful infographic on it's core components here. The rules come from a European privacy directive however they impact businesses around the world as they apply whenever someone from Europe interacts with your business even if you are outside of the EU. The regulations were introduced in 2016 and enforcement begins on May 25th 2018.

In this post we introduce a process for achieving compliance and take a look at the practical implications for people running websites on WordPress. We will also provide some specific steps you can take towards compliance by collecting informed consent from your users, while also anonymising and minimising instances of personal data collection.

Important Notes & Disclaimer: We are not legal advisors and this is simply to show you some of the steps that can be taken on the road to GDPR compliance based on our best understanding at the date of publication. Following the steps in this post alone is not enough to ensure compliance and nothing contained within should be considered legal advice. We strongly recommend you consent with legal professionals and privacy authorities experienced with both GDPR and your local market, which may or may not have stronger protections or differing definitions. 

Introducing The AD-MACE Approach to GDPR Compliance

While analysing several websites, business tools, systems, and processes for GDPR compliance, I developed the AD-MACE process for strategically approaching each unit. AD-MACE is a two phase process for reviewing (AD – Auditing Data Practises, Deleting Unnecessary Data Elements) and optimising (MACE – Minimising Data Collection, Anonymising Data Collection, Collecting Consent, Educating Users) organisational data and data privacy processes.

The Data Review Phase

• Audit – The first step to GDPR compliance is understanding exactly what data is being collected and processed by your business and its partners. You need to look at all of the software, processes, and places that touch personal data within your organisation. You also need to take a look at all the data you currently hold and exactly how it was collected, even if you no longer use those methods or systems.
• Delete – Sometimes it is clear when a tool is collecting data but it may not always be immediately be obvious. For example Facebook Like buttons and Widgets don’t directly pass you information in most cases but they still collect data and pass it back to Facebook. Ask yourself whether you really need the information or functionality something provides and if the answer is no, then you can simply remove it so that you no longer collect or control that information. You may also want to review the data you have previously collected and if you no longer need it or you are not sure how it was collected, you might want to consider deleting it.

The Process Optimisation Phase

• Minimise – The first part of the optimisation process is to minimise the amount of data that is collected as much as possible. This is the main focus of this blog post and we will provide examples of how you can strip unnecessary data from contact forms and provide explicit opt-in mechanisms for more aggressive data collection.
• Anonymise – Sometimes you may collect personal information that doesn't actually need to represent a specific individual. A good example of this is general website analytics data. If you only need general trends to understand website usage then there is no point in storing something like an IP address which can be tied to a specific user. Later in this post you will learn how to anonymise Google Analytics data collection.
• Collect Consent – Even the most privacy-centric organisation will often need to hold personal information for the business or website to function effectively. But in cases where the information is not essential, you will need to get explicit consent of the user you are collecting data on. Later in this post we will show how you can activate optional data collection via Google Tag Manager only after a user provides consent.
• Educate – Once you have removed all unnecessary data collection and implemented appropriate controls for future data collection it is time to document your activity once more. This stage differs from the initial audit in that you are classifying your data usage and processes for the future. You should use this information to update your data policies so that they are entirely transparent. Additionally you should be aiming to include notices that educate users about exactly what is happening whenever they interact with a part of your business that collects their data.

You can run the AD-MACE process against; your organisation as a whole, individual websites, specific tools, and more. It is important to consider each stage of the process every time even though not every stage will require an action every time. For example there will likely be some limitations in the data you can actively delete or anonymise in relation to your compliance and fraud protection processes.

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Throughout the rest of this article you will find examples of how you might action the AD-MACE process for a modern WordPress site. Where specific tools are mentioned they are not necessarily the only or best way of achieving a desired end. Techniques, tools, and goals vary so you may find that you select alternate methods whilst going through the exact same process for your WordPress site.

Audit: Understanding Your Data

The first step to GDPR compliance is understanding what data you are collecting and how it is being processed. To aid this you are encouraged to complete and information asset register. If you’re a smaller business this may not be required by law however it is still a useful step to begin understanding where you are at. For keeping track of this part of the process you might find it useful to use this template from digital analytics provider Matomo.

Performing A Data Audit For WordPress

WordPress Audit

The team behind WordPress are hard at work to ensure GDPR compliance but there are some steps you can take before they make changes. WP GDPR Compliance is a popular plugin that provides checklists and notices about the core components that collect data and how they might be affected by the regulations. It also bundles in some functionality that can help you to educate users and collect consent for these features.

Plugin Audit

Whilst no two sites are the same there are a few things that you can do which should identify the majority of data collecting processes on your websites. The first and most obvious place to get started is a simple plugin check. Head on over to your plugins page and consider whether each plugin is likely to collect any user data. Data collection could include anything which can be used to personally identify an individual such as:

• IP Addresses
• Personal Contact Information
• User actions on the website
• Demographic Information

Cookie Audit

Once you have completed this process for all of your plugins you can complete a cookie audit. There are various tools for this available online, but if you use Google Chrome then there is a useful extension called Edit This Cookie. If you install this and visit your site then you can get a list of all cookies that are loaded when you visit a specific page. As a side note it can also be used when testing your consent solutions to confirm they actually work.

As cookies are not typically user facing, they can sometimes have very cryptic names. For most common cookies you should be able to Google the name shown in bold and discover what tool is creating them. If you get stuck then you may need to ask a developer to help you identify the source.

Delete: Stop Holding (and Collecting) Unnecessary Data

Once you are clear about what data is being collected, processed, and stored, you should create a plan for removing any unnecessary data collection. This would include deleting any user data that you aren't required to hold by law that isn't being used by your organisation. Many businesses find themselves collecting data just in case they decide to use it at some stage. If you can think of anything you are collecting “just in case”, this is the perfect opportunity to drop the data and stop collecting it. You might even find this will save costs by holding less user records or using less server space.

This stage of the process isn't limited just to user data you hold… If you have identified any tools that are collecting data from your users without providing any quantifiable benefit to your organisation, then you should probably delete those too. For example; do you really need that social media widget for a social network that you haven't been using for months? The less data you collect and control unnecessarily, the better. By respecting your users privacy you lower the attack surface and insulate your website against potentially costly data leaks and breaches of trust.

Minimise: Creating Privacy Respecting Forms

Web forms, and contact forms especially, are one of the most common ways that you will collect clearly personal information such as; names, emails, phone numbers, and often this will be linked with an IP address. Chances are you will need some contact information to reply to people that reach out to you through a form, but you can still take steps to minimise the data. For example; do you really need to collect a phone number if you only offer email support?

Another common case of over-collection with many WordPress form plugins such as Gravity Forms are that they collect IP addresses by default. While there may be some cases where this information is useful, for the majority of site owners it makes more sense to simply stop collecting IP addresses. It may not be possible to anonymise your contact form data, but if you are not using actively using the IP address why risk holding it? Luckily Gravity Forms have planned for this possibility and in our case it we just needed to add this code snippet to our website.

This is a great start but if your form collects lots of highly sensitive data anyway it may not be enough.

By default Gravity Forms sends all contacts to your email and also stores a copy in your websites database. Another step that you could take is minimising the amount of data you store directly on your server. You could use a plugin to ensure that contacts are only sent via email so that the information remains protected if your site were ever to get hacked.

Also Consent & Education: Informed Consent to Usage of Form Data

Ensuring your forms only collect and store the information you need is important but it is only one part of the equation. You still need to ensure that end users understand what information you are collecting, what you will do with it, and any measures you have in place to protect that information. This is especially important in the case that you are using a form to collect personal details for email marketing processed by a third party such as ActiveCampaign or MailChimp.

If you are not already collecting an explicit opt-in preference, you will want to ensure that you include an optin checkbox that is not checked by default with a label saying something like: “I would like to opt-in for email marketing updates in accordance with the privacy policy”. This makes sure that users take action by checking the box to provide consent and it protects you as you have a record of consent. As long as you provide all necessary disclaimers and notices of third parties within the linked privacy policy it also contributes to educating your users and creating informed consent.

Anonymise: Google Analytics Anonymisation

It is speculated that analytics may exempted in a future revision of this law, but even without this compromise you can anonymise the data you collect through Google Analytics specifically. There is an optional plugin for Google Analytics called anonymizeIp. If you enable this feature then the IP address of a user which could be considered as personally identifying information under GDPR is masked.

Google explains this feature as such:

“the last octet of the user IP address is set to zero while still in memory. For example, an IP address of 12.214.31.144 would be changed to 12.214.31.0. (If the IP address is an IPv6 address, the last 80 of the 128 bits are set to zero.) Only after this anonymization process is the request written to disk for processing. If the IP anonymization method is used, then at no time is the full IP address written to disk as all anonymization happens in memory nearly instantaneously after the request has been received.”

If you have installed your analytics through Google Tag Manager as we recommend, make sure are using the Universal Analytics tag and enable the anonymizeIp option on all of your Google Analytics Universal Analytics tags. You can do this under More Settings > Fields to set with the Field Name set as anonymizeIP and the Field Value set to true.

One thing to consider is that even with the above steps it is possible that you still may be inadvertently including personally identifiable information in your analytics. For example if users register on your website and visit a URL that contains their membership ID or place orders that include transaction IDs these could potentially be used to identify them and as such you may still want to delay Google Analytics firing until you have received specific consent.

Collecting Consent: Cookie Consent for GDPR Compliance via Google Tag Manager

The next step to take is implementing some control over when tracking cookies are fired. For the purpose of this guide we will be using Google Tag Manager Triggers to fire all of our marketing and tracking tags. One example of a tag that uses non-essential tracking cookies is the Facebook Pixel used for building custom advertising audiences. Usually you would add the Facebook Pixel code to your website directly or place it inside GTM as a tag that fires on All Pages. However the standard method offers no way to gain consent from the user before Facebook starts collecting data. Instead we need a way to fire marketing tags only once a user has provided explicit consent.

Getting Consent for Advanced Marketing Tags

The first thing you need to do is set up a notification that collects consent to receive marketing tags. You can do this by presenting a popup based on the slightly older cookie consent laws. If they Decline, their preference will be stored in an essential cookie to disable the notification. However if they Accept it will set a cookie consenting to marketing tags which you can use as part of of your Triggers aka firing rules inside Google Tag Manager.

While a WordPress plugin like Cookie Consent by dFactory seems like the obvious choice for a WordPress site, it actually makes more sense to implement a solution through Google Tag Manager. The reason for this is because WordPress plugins are more likely to be updated and if the targeted element IDs inside the plugin change your solution could break.  This could put you at risk of breaching GDPR regulations without noticing the change had even taken place. Another thing that came up during initial testing is that WordPress plugin cookie consent solutions were being affected by caching so not all users were being presented with the consent notifications as expected.

Ultimately the decision was made to use a script called Cookie Consent by Insites that you can easily inject through directly through GTM. One thing I did notice whilst testing this solution is that the script is picked up by some ad blockers, perhaps as it has GeoIP elements in it. Ultimately this likely isn’t a problem as anyone that has actively installed an ad-blocker is unlikely to provide consent and receive your full set of marketing tags anyway.

Setting up Cookie Consent by Insites

The easiest way to get started with Cookie Consent is by following the wizard on the official website. There are several design options and you can customise the wording to match your specific use case. One point of consideration when crafting your custom text for the consent is that you need to be specific about the intent of your data collection, methodology, and duration of consent.

Here is the text used in our initial tests but please consult a legal professional for exactly what is required:

“This website respects your privacy by adhering to international regulations. We may use your personal data for analytics, testing, personalisation, conversion tracking, marketing automation, remarketing, and advertising for as long as you consent in line with our policies. We never sell your data.”

As we are aiming for full GDPR compliance, the most important setting is the compliance type. You will need to select “Ask users to opt into cookies (Advanced)”. As the name suggests there is a little bit more work to do once you have finished using the wizard.

An example configuration is provided in the snippet below, but please bare in mind you will need to update your domain, colours, and messaging if you use this so it may be easier to use the official Cookie Consent Wizard to create your own script.

Example Cookie Consent Configuration

You should copy the code that is provided and create a new Custom HTML Tag inside of Google Tag Manager that is set to fire on all pages. This will make sure that all of your users are presented the option to accept cookies or not. This lays the foundation of the full consent solution but it won’t prevent your marketing tags from firing on it’s own.

One side note is that the script provided by the wizard loads some assets via the Cloudflare CDN. The URL contains a version number so it is unlikely your code will break due to changes in the script, however for increased security and assurance you can host the two required Javascript and CSS files on your own server. You can find both files on GitHub here, upload them anywhere on your server, and replace the links in the snippet with the full URL of the files on your servers. This is certainly not a required step but could give advanced users extra piece of mind.

Linking Cookie Consent to Triggers in Google Tag Manager

To access the users decision inside in your Triggers you will need to link the cookie inside Google Tag Manager. To do this you should configure a new 1st Party Cookie Variable inside GTM with the Cookie Name set to cookieconsent_status. This will store the decision that a user has made and can now be used within your triggers.

As an example of how you might set up a Facebook Pixel that was previously firing on All Pages; you can create a new Trigger called All Pages – Cookies Accepted Under the configuration options you would select Page View as the Trigger type and have it set to fire on Some Page Views. The additional logic that makes sure a user has consented would be as follows:

• Variable: url – Matching Rule: matchesRegEx – Value: .*
• Variable: cookieconsent_status – Matching Rule: equals – Value: allow

The first filter confirms that this Trigger should impact all pages and the second filter states that it should only apply on these pages if the user has the cookie showing they have provided consent through our Cookie Consent dialogue.

Now some of you that have been following along will see there is still a potential flaw in this logic. As the trigger is fired during a page view it won’t fire on the page that the cookie is accepted on by default. For this to happen we need to set up a second Trigger that is fired at exact the moment the user provides consent. There are several ways you could do this but to keep things as simple as possible we are going to set up a new Trigger of the Click – Just Links type which we will call Click – Cookies Accepted. It should be set to fire for Some Link Clicks with the following filter:

• Variable: element classes – Matching Rule: contains – Value: cc-allow

This targeting matches the acceptance link in our initial Cooke Consent script and should fire immediately when somebody provides consent.

At this stage you have set up one Tag that injects the initial Cookie Consent dialogue on All Pages so people can set their preferences, you have one Variable that contains a users Cookie Consent preference and two separate Triggers that will only fire if somebody has provided consent for marketing cookies. These two triggers can be added to any marketing tags inside Google Tag Manager that you would like to load only after consent has been provided. You should also be able to use the above examples to create custom triggers by using standard targeting as long as you ensure to include a filter confirming that the cookieconsent_status value is always equal to allow.

Bonus Tip: Tracking Cookie Consent trends in Google Analytics

Assuming that you have set up Google Analytics with IP Anonymisation in the first part of this article, you can also set up anonymised tracking of cookie consent. This will allow you to monitor trends in relation to how many people are accepting and or disabling your advanced marketing cookies.

To do this you set up a new Universal Analytics Tag which we’ll call GA – Event – Cookie Consent. The Track Type should be set to Event with an appropriate Category such as Cookie Consent and the Action set to the variable {{cookieconsent_status}}.

The above tag will need a Trigger of the Click – Just Links type. It should only fire on Some Link Clicks filtered by the following details:

• Variable: element classes – Matching Rule: contains – Value: cc-allow

This will then register a Cookie Consent event in Google Analytics whenever a user interacts with your dialogue along with the specific action that was taken; either allow or dismiss. This should also assist in creating an audit trial for explicit consent. More advanced usage might link these events and their pseudononymous Google Analytics IDs against users in your internal databases however this would likely make your analytics records fall under the category of potential PII so you would need explicit consent for loading even the anonymised analytics script.

Revoking Cookie Consent

Now that you’ve got consent for including marketing and tracking tags on your page you are well on your way to compliance. But for complete consent compliance you also need to provide a way for users to revoke their consent and opt out. With the script we installed above there are two main methods. If you included the revokable setting as in our example script then a user can hover over the cookie policy tab on your page and decline consent. This will change the status inside the previously set cookie linked to the variable in GTM and your advanced marketing tags will no longer be added to the page.

What the above setting won’t do is clear the users cookies or delete their data from any linked marketing platforms. Therefore it is important that you include instructions on removing cookies in your legal policies and also provide full instructions for opting out of their data being stored by your organisation and marketing partners where possible.

Educate: Update Your Legal Policies & User Experience (UX)

The last step of AD-MACE process is to ensure that you are doing enough to educate your users. A good place to start is by updating your privacy policies to communicate your data processing and partners more clearly. The UK ICO offer some information on what you should cover. When updating your legal policies you might look towards the open source legal documents from WordPress which you are free to re-use and adjust to match your websites stance.

The GDPR is not like previous regulations where including general privacy information in your policies was enough. Although this piece is still essential you need to go further by including prominent links to it at key moments such as form submissions and when a user provides consent to various types of data collection. Where a user provides consent, you should be creating clear expectations about exactly what is going to happen with that data and how they can manage consent.

Further WordPress GDPR Considerations

This article covered our AD-MACE process and some examples of the steps you can take to layer GDPR compliance onto WordPress, however they do not address WordPress functionality as its core. There are many projects focusing on the different ways to comply with the Right to Access, Right to Be Forgotten and Data Portability.

An aptly named project called GDPR WP set out to standardise the way WordPress plugins manage personal data and it's efforts are now being worked into WordPress core for future release. Together these projects will ensure that functionality baked into WordPress itself is compliant with the key features of GDPR and it should also enable website owners to more easily exercise control over user data and respond to user informationl access, deletion, and portability requests.

Notable WordPress GDPR Efforts To Follow

• Automattic (WordPress.com) and the GDPR
• GDPR for WordPress – An Industry Standard Across Plugins
• Jetpack GDPR Compliance
• WooCommerce GDPR Compliance

Final Notes

The GDPR is a complex price of legislation that will have far reaching consequences for business around the world. It could go through several revisions and specific guidance may change over time. At its core it is about respecting the data your users provide. Whether you use the specific methods in this article or not, as long as you follow a good process and keep the best interests of your users in mind, you should well be on your way to doing the right thing.

Acknowledgements

The information and guidelines within this post are based on countless hours of both primary and secondary research. There is no way I could credit everyone that has influenced this approach or the example techniques within. With that said I would like to say a special thanks to; AnalyticsMania.com, BlastAM.com. SimoAhava.com, the GTM team, and Insites.com for online technical and legal contributions that have helped inform this direction.

When WordPress announced their AMP plugin, the design was basic and you couldn't add forms. Tools soon came out to tackle the design issue but opt-in forms remained a problem.  Luckily in October 2016 forms became supported within the AMP specification. In this post you will finally learn how to create AMP email opt-in forms on WordPress. 

As mentioned before; one of the first hurdles with AMP was creating unique designs for your site. The AMP for WP plugin is one of the most powerful ways to integrate AMP pages on WordPress. In fact it is so powerful we launched an AMP for WordPress configuration service. 

Even with the AMP for WP plugin pages were still lacking email opt-in forms for lead generation. So I began researching how to build custom opt-in forms for amp. By hooking custom code into development hooks included in the AMP for WP plugin I built my first AMP opt-in form. 

Unfortunately there were a few kinks… The biggest being that it didn't run well over HTTPS, pretty much a deal breaker. Clearly it wasn't ready to roll out across client sites. It was around then I got word that the team behind AMP for WP were soon releasing an email opt-in form plugin. I decided to wait and as soon as it was ready, I reached out to the team to trial it. 

AMP for WP: Email Opt-In Form Plugin Review

The official extension looks great and worked first time. You can manage everything in the WP dashboard, no cutom code required! Not only that but the full set up time was a fraction of the time it takes to create AMP opt-in forms without the plugin. You can check out my full video overview below.

Needless to say I can highly recommend the AMP for WP: Email Opt-In Form plugin for WordPress.  

How to Create AMP Email Opt-in Forms on WordPress

The core AMP for WP plugin is completely free and you can add the WP Email Opt-In Forms for less than a hundred dollars. If you want to do it all yourself then using this combination will save you a lot of time and stress. Take it from someone who knows ;) 

Or if you'd rather have someone set everything up for you, then check out the AMP for WordPress setup package. Your WordPress site will configured to fully support AMP. Plus you'll also get an AMP Email Opt-In form set up at no extra charge. 

Either way both the AMP for WP plugin and the new AMP email opt-in form extension are my top recommendation. They are a powerful combo for creating accelerated mobile pages & forms with WordPress.

I’ve always wanted to do my own thing. I think there’s a natural route to becoming a modern entrepreneur. Unless you’re born that way, the following is what I’d say is the route to being an entrepreneur:

• Start a side project (on the side of a 9-5 job)
• Become a Freelancer (and be CEO of your own company – quitting the 9-5)
• Hire, outsource and step away from being 100% involved
• Grow your small business and scale it to many users and income levels way above what would have been capable in “9-5” employment
• Start another business, and do it all over again :)

You may have jumped straight into being a Freelancer, or into running your own small business but either way there’s one thing which I wished I did when I started back in 2011.

Start using a CRM straight away

No matter what stage of your business you’re at you should start using a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager). When I launched Epic Plugins in 2012 and Epic Themes in 2014 I followed the advice I was reading at the time from Internet Marketers.

Grow your Email List. Emails are opened way more than other advertising means. Grow your list and then launch new products or services to your list.

So I did. I signed up for Mailchimp and started growing my list. This still rings true even today. Growing your list is something which can really help your business. If I was to turn the clock back I would have started growing my list in a CRM.

What made me realise?

In early 2016, my email list was sitting at about 1,500 subscribers. I had subscribers tagged whether they had purchased from me or not and I thought everything was going great.

Then I started working on a product called Zero BS CRM as a joint venture, following on from the requirements for a CRM for a family business.  One of the first things I built was a PayPal data importer. This let me import my customers into my CRM from my PayPal history (spanning back to 2011).When the import had finished I could see I had almost 2,000 customers imported into my CRM as customers (not just leads, but as customers). These customers had spent money with me before and I wasn’t giving them any attention.

They may have chosen not to be on a generic email list, but that doesn’t mean you can’t check in with them as a person, every now and then. They may even not be aware that you have a mailing list and would love to be on it.

With a CRM I could send all customers a quick note along the lines of ‘Hey there, just checking in, I see you bought {product / service} and I wanted to check how it’s all going’.

But a lot of my customers spanned back a few years, and it was a bit late to hit them with that kind of message.

If I was using a CRM from day 1, these customers could have been better looked after and developed into higher value assets to my business.

Why a CRM makes sense

A CRM makes sense no matter what stage of business you’re at and I’ll go into each area and touch on why the Zero BS CRM makes sense for each stage. The common stages of a growing entrepreneurial cycle is:

• Side Project
• Freelance
• Small Business (run by you)
• Growing Business (with team members)
• Scaling that business

Side Projects

You’re starting a side project. This might be an e-book launch or a new WordPress plugin or theme. I started off with building a simple plugin and if I was using a CRM back then I could have done things like the following:

• Captured admin emails (with permission) into the CRM of the ‘Lite’ version as ‘Leads’ for the Premium Version
• Sent tailored communications to the Lite / Pro plugin customers depending on their status
• Kept notes about support tickets and interactions between leads and customers

Instead, I had email sign up opt-ins and couldn’t easily tell if they had purchased the Pro version of the plugin.

When it came around to launching my second WordPress plugin, I could have seen all the leads in my CRM and let them know that I’m building a new plugin. I could have asked if they wanted to hear about it when it was released.

Sure, I could have done that with a mailing list… but the added bonus of the CRM is I can see that they are Dilemma Lite users who have been using the plugin for 30 days or more for example, and email them based on that. This kind of segmentation is a lot harder to do using something like Mailchimp.

As things started to grow for me and I launched more plugins, this process could have been repeated and my list of potential contacts could have been a lot larger.

Freelance Work

I also started to take on Freelance work over the years. From custom plugin builds using systems like People Per Hour or Upwork to custom website development.

I always managed this either via the respective platforms or via email. Turning the clock back (and doing what I do now) I would use a CRM for this.

Freelance clients are part of my overall customer list. They’re tagged based on the project I’ve worked with them on and through using the CRM I can do things like:

• Ping all my clients an email inviting them to special events
• Let them know about my availability for more work (if I’m running low)
• Give them special offers off new plugins or themes (depending on the type of work)

I can also see at a glance, the total value of a particular client and know which clients are pure gold to the business. I can also:

• Generate leads using front end forms (or Gravity Forms)
• Give clients their own Client Portal
• Accept invoice payments online (using Invoicing Pro)
• Send Targeted Emails (using Mail Campaigns)

All central to growing a Freelance business into a Small Business.

Starting a Small Business

This sort of just happened for me. Through developing WordPress plugins I launched a new plugin every couple of months. This grew my portfolio and I officially “launched” Epic Plugins Limited as my small business.

At this point, the CRM just evolved with me. I had my past plugin customers (from the PayPal import) as well as the email list subscribers (from my mailing list) so I had a combination of Leads and Customers in my database.

I also had my Freelance clients and my Outreach Partners. These are all tagged within my CRM as contacts and I’m able to use my Zero BS CRM to manage and search through customers based on their tags.

I can also create Mail Campaigns based on customer metrics and see all the history of my contacts and notes I’ve made in the past.

One of my Freelance clients had a baby boy a couple of years back and had told me the baby’s name in conversation. I made a customer note about this in the CRM. A few months passed and I got another email from the client asking for some more work.

I replied saying sure, I can fit this in in a couple of weeks, I hope all is going well and Barry is settling in OK.

Needless to say he was chuffed I could remember the name of his baby and that strengthened the relationship between me and the client. All because of the ability to add a note to the client record.

If you’re at the Small Business Stage then again I would recommend using Zero BS CRM. I may be a little biased here of course but The Entrepreneur’s Bundle is a clear choice and comes with access to all extensions. With it you get access to all the extensions and all the future extensions for Zero BS CRM.

The Sales Dashboard is really easy to use and has saved me countless hours when it comes to preparing the transparency reports on the blog. I just change the dates and have a view of the sales performance over any period (compared the the period prior).

Growing Business (with Team members)

This is the stage I’m at now. The business is growing (but revenue is still volatile due to its nature). I’m lucky in being in a position of being the Co-Founder of Zero BS CRM and therefore able to develop features which fit each stage of my business.

At this stage I have the following team setup:

• Myself – leading the strategy of the business
• Support team – who help customers with queries
• Business relationship manager – who deals with freelance clients and sorts invoices

In my CRM I simply give them specific user roles.  I can assign people roles that

• Can only view + manage customers (adding and managing leads)
• Can only view + manage quotes
• Can only view + manage invoices
• Have full Zero BS CRM admin capability (but not full WordPress admin)

I also like to report on the progress of the business growth and for the past year I’ve been writing transparency reports over at the Epic Plugins blog. For these I use the Sales Dashboard extension and continue to use this to check in on my sales performance.

Why choose Zero BS CRM

Zero BS CRM is a WordPress ‘Plugin’ which we have developed which installs a CRM on your own server. This is great as it gives you full control over the data for starters. In my opinion it’s also the most feature packed (and simple to use) CRM out there (check out the comparison of features).

WordPress is self-hosted and I can be in full control. I can also be in complete control over exactly what features I want in my CRM and who has access. If somewhere like Agile CRM has their database hacked I’d be one of the casualties.

With my own CRM hosted on my own servers I can be directly responsible for the security of the data (and run various plugins like limit login attempts, and WordFence to name a few).

I’m also not stuck paying for features I don’t use (like an appointment scheduler) or even a task manager. If I want to start using features like this I can install something like Bookly Lite which lets me manage my appointments (and sits alongside my CRM).

I can also expand my team and grant them access to the CRM without having to pay an extra $15 per month each time I add someone. There’s also no limits when it comes to the number of customers I can add.

The latest addition to the Zero BS CRM gives the ability to connect to Zapier via the Zero BS CRM API. This really widens up the connections which Zero BS can make, for example you can:

• Add new customers to your mailing list (Mailchimp, ConvertKit, aWeber) with particular tags
• Add new Gmail email messages (sender email) to your CRM as a contact
• Plus more more through their integrations

The introduction of an API really makes running your own CRM at any stage of your business super flexible and something every modern entrepreneur at whatever stage of their business should be seriously considering.

In Summary

Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or an established one, using a CRM should be high on the list of must-do’s with your business and aspirations. Self hosting your own CRM saves you thousands of $$ a year which can be used in better places (such as expanding your team).

As your business grows, something like Zero BS CRM grows with you and is flexible enough through the modularised features, extensions and the new API that once you’ve started to use it you won’t want to use anything else.

Once you have completed your initial setup you will need to click the subtle link pictured below to get to the advanced settings section and find the Analytics section.

Step One

Step Two

This is where you will be adding the extra code to enable Google Analytics for Instant Articles. Whilst you could simply drop in the standard Universal Google Analytics snippet here and it would “work”, there are a few optimisations that can improve the data you'll receive.

Here is the snippet you should actually use, making sure to replace the UA-XXXXXXXX-XX with the actual Tracking ID that you can find inside your Google Analytics Admin page under the Tracking Info heading.

Update: New Google Analytics gtag.js Version

One of the most important things about this Google Analytics snippet vs the standard one is that it also sets up a Campaign Source and Campaign Medium so you this can be broken out in your reports to differentiate from other traffic. Additionally it also sets up the page title for your reporting by hooking into a javascript variable provided by Facebook. Whether you understand the above or not, know that this is a good thing that will help the data make sense inside your Google Analytics dashboards and reporting.

The last step that you may need to complete is to head over to your Facebook Page's publishing settings (you may find this under your pages settings or in Business Manager) and refresh your Feeds. The path to these settings is:

• Publishing Tools > Instant Articles > Configuration > Production RSS Feed
• Publishing Tools > Instant Articles > Configuration > Development RSS Feed

It should look something like this:

With this step complete, you should have successfully installed Google Analytics on Facebook Instant Articles for WordPress. Make sure you monitor your analytics and over time you should start to see Facebook Instant articles beginning to show up in your Google Analytics data.

Addendum: How To Manually Add Google Analytics for Older Instant Articles

If you add the Google Analytics code after your articles have already been submitted to the Facebook Instant Articles service then the code may not be be added to older posts. There are two ways that you can combat this:

• Option 1: Head into your WordPress dashboard and make an edit to all of the articles that you wish to update. After this you can resubmit your feed to Instant Articles. Facebook will detect the changes and update your Instant Articles including the analytics code at the same time.
• Option 2: Head to the Production Articles section of Instant Articles in your Facebook settings and manually add the code shown below (Note the additional figure and iframe tags). Make sure you remember to add your custom Tracking ID as described in the previous method.

Update: New Google Analytics gtag.js Version

Which method you use will depend on which version of the analytics snippet you use and how many articles you need to update. If you have thousands of posts then you may want to select your most popular evergreen content to get started or make the decision to focus on posts made after Instant Articles.

You may also want to review the official Instant Articles development documents for further information.  

If sales numbers are your only metric, you won't be able to diagnose problems that come before the sale. For example a lack of sales could suggest a conversion problem or it could be that nobody is visiting your site. At the most basic level your website analytics can tell you how many people are visiting your site. But it can also let you know how they got there and what they do once they arrive.

Introducing Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most popular tools for collecting website analytics. You add a snippet of code to your site and it sits quietly in the background collecting data. It then pushes your data to a private online dashboard or apps that can help you understand your results.

With a few days of data collection you can start to learn things like:

• How many people are visiting your site.
• How long people are spending there.
• How many people come back to your site.
• Which pages of your site people are visiting.
• Which pages they visit before buying something.
• Which other sites are sending people to you.
• Which marketing mediums are working (i.e. Social Media, Email, Pay Per Click Advertising, etc)

This is just a small sample of the data you'll start to learn. Google Analytics literally tracks hundreds of metrics on your behalf. You can then start combining this data to build a very broad picture about what is working or failing for you. And most importantly you can use the data to decide how to focus and improve your digital marketing.

How to Get Started With Website Analytics

You can get started with Google Analytics for free and learn more about analytics through the analytics academy. But if you'd rather have it all set up and configured for you by a certified professional; check out our Data Driven Marketing Quickstart Package here.

Email is often said to be one of the most profitable marketing channels for online business. All the more reason to make sure that you choose the right platform. So before I begin the full ActiveCampaign review I want to provide a little context…

The Old Days of List Based Email Marketing Autoresponders

Traditional email marketing via email autoresponders is primarily list based. You sign up to a “list” and receive emails on a date or time based schedule. On top of this you can send out email blasts to the entire list in real time.

This can be powerful but you often end up with a list for each brand, product or even purchase stage. The number of lists can quickly get out of hand and managing contacts is even worse. A contact who is on many lists may find themselves getting duplicate emails from the same company.

When I first started email marketing in about 2008, I signed up to a company called Aweber. They did me well for a time, although truth be told I probably didn't actually email as much as I should have. As I started to email more I realised that I wanted some extra features.

In a short period I experimented with many other email marketing providers. I experimented with; 1ShoppingCart, Campaign Monitor, ConstantContact, GetResponse, MailChimp, and even an add-on service to Aweber called AW Pro Tools. Whilst many of them were great in some ways, none of them had it all until I discovered a different breed of software.

The Dawn of Small Business Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation platforms go beyond the simple date and time based email campaigns. You can often still find “Lists” in their user experience. However you'll also find; site tracking, advanced segmentation, and behaviour based email marketing campaigns. Enterprise level businesses have been using tools like this for a while. However software wasn't readily available with small business friendly pricing for a long time.

Infusionsoft were one of the first companies on my radar to offer this type of platform for smaller businesses. At the time they required an up-front fee, and had a monthly cost roughly 10x the average autoresponder. Not to mention several marketers call it “Confusionsoft” due to its complexity.

Eventually Infusionsoft lowered the price and dropped the sign up fee in a promotion. I was on the verge of signing up, or at least I'd booked a sales call (ugh!), when I started to hear about ActiveCampaign. As recommendations started to come from people I respected, I decided to take a detailed look.

Getting Started with ActiveCampaign

The first thing that stands out with ActiveCampaign is they offer a free trial. Far from having to schedule international sales calls, you can jump right in with a free for life trial. Once you grow past the trial there is a simple sliding scale based on number of contacts and features.

After signing up you still create a List and Optin Form in a similar fashion to email autoresponders. But the features available once somebody is on your list are what make ActiveCampaign stand out.

For example; on a single site that offers an email newsletter and just two products for sale. In a traditional autoresponder you might have:

• A General Email Marketing List – For sending newsletters, etc.
• Product 1 Interest List – Used to promote the primary product.
• Product 1 Customer List – Used to keep P1 customers up to date.
• Product 2 Interest List – Used to promote the second product.
• Product  2 Customer List – Used to keep P2 Customers up to date.
• Bonus List – A list used to deliver a digital bonus for a campaign.

In ActiveCampaign you would have the following lists:

• Company Contact List – Contains all contacts for the business.

Yes, that is just one list in the above ActiveCampaign example. Why is that important?

When you have all of your contacts contained in a single list then you can get a complete overview. Your overall number of contacts is going to be more representative. i.e. 1 person = 1 contact. Where as in the older methods with the example 6 lists means; 1 person = 1-6 contacts.

Now you might be wondering how you can be as targeted with a single list. That is where tagging comes into play…

The Power of Tags in Marketing Automation

Every contact in an ActiveCampaign list can be assigned an unlimited amount of tags. In essence a tag is a small data field attached to each contact in your list. Contact tags can tell you;

• Contact Preferences
• Which Products They Own
• Which Products They Are Interested In
• Which Bonuses They've Requested and Downloaded
• Which Topics Interest Them
• How They Found You
• What Stage of Your Sales Funnel They Are At.
• How Engaged They With Your Content
• Which Campaigns They Are Currently Being Sent
• Much much more….

Tags go beyond simply knowing extra data about a contact. In a marketing automation platform tags can be set by events. Events like; visiting a sales page, buying a product, watching a video, or clicking a link can set tags.

Once a tag is set on a contact, they can also be used to start marketing automations. For example you could add a customer tag when somebody makes a purchase on your site. When a contact has the customer tag, you can prevent ActiveCampaign from sending further sales material for the product. After all why would you keep on trying to close a deal that you just closed.

When a contact has a Customer tag you can move to onboarding and retaining that customer. The Customer tag might also start an email campaign. You could have new customers sent helpful documentation for their purchase or review requests.

Or in the case of setting an Interest tag; if you had a pet store for example. You might see that a contact on your list always clicks links about cats. The same contact might read 5 practical blog posts about cats and not a single one about dogs. Here it seems likely the contact is more likely to buy cat related products so you can tag the interest. You can then use this tag to send promotions specifically designed to appeal to cat owners.

When you start using tags as opposed to single purpose lists you have a lot more options. Tags are only limited by your ability to think them up and use them strategically. They increase your ability to send the right message, to the right contact at the right time. Of course they can also prevent you from burning out your list by sending them the wrong things at the wrong time!

Marketing Automations: The Final Part of The Puzzle

If Tags are the “Data” then Automations are the “Apps” or how you interact with the data. I have referenced them above but it is important to realise how versatile they can be. Most Marketing Automations are a collection of triggers (things that start them) and actions. They can get a little more complex once you mix in some logic such as If This Then That statements.

An example automation might be:

Trigger: Contact Visits Sales Page for Digital Whiteboard

Action Steps:

1. Add “Digital Whiteboard Prospect” Tag to Contact.
2. Send Contact Details to Sales Team.
3. Wait 7 Days.
4. If Contact has purchased Digital Whiteboard, skip to step 8, otherwise continue.
5. Send Contact email case study relating to product.
6. Wait 7 Days.
7. If Contact has Customer tag from another product send Digital Whiteboard Coupon, otherwise continue.
8. Wait until Contact has bought Product (Goal).
9. Send Thank You email.
10. Wait until Contact has activated Digital Whiteboard.
11. Send Follow Up email.

This is just a quick example for a sales situation but there are a huge variety of triggers and actions. You can build your own marketing automations to be as simple or as complex as you want. Some people prefer lots of simple automations, while others have huge sequences spanning months.

Currently the following Contact triggers are available in ActiveCampaign:

• Subscribes
• Unsubscribes
• Submits a form
• Opens / Reads an email
• Clicks a link in email
• Web pages is visited
• Event is recorded (Customisable)
• Shares an email
• Forwards an email
• Replies to an email
• Tag is added
• Tag is removed
• Contact Field Changes
• Goal is achieved
• Date based
• RSS based
• Reads a site message
• Score changes (Lead Scoring Feature)
• Enters a pipeline
• Deal stage changes
• Deal status changes

These can then lead into action sequences that you build with a drag and drop campaign builder. You can chain actions together and even end up with many paths, like a choose your own adventure book or app.

Currently the following Actions are available in ActiveCampaign:

• Sending
  • Send Email
  • Send a site message
  • Send SMS
  • Notify someone
• Conditions and Workflow
  • Wait
  • If / Else
  • Split
  • Go to
  • Goal
  • Start an automation
  • End this automation
  • End other automation
  • Webhook
• Contacts
  • Subscribe
  • Unsubscribe
  • Update contact
  • Add tag
  • Remove tag
  • Add note
  • Adjust score
• CRM
  • Add Deal
  • Update title
  • Update status
  • Update owner
  • Update value
  • Update stage
  • Add task
  • Add note
  • Complete task
  • Adjust score

You don't need to fully understand what every one of these trigger and actions mean right now. Instead I share them to give you an idea of just how customisable these automations are. In comparison to a time based autoresponder, this is like moving from a calculator to a full computer.

ActiveCampaign User Experience: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

ActiveCampaign offers a clean, modern and well labelled interface. Once you understand the various terms we've discussed, you can find your way around.

The interface is simple enough for less tech savvy people with a drag and drop automation builder. When it comes to creating emails there is an easy to use visual email editor.

If you are a more tech-savvy user then you can also dig into HTML email editors. A couple of times I have noticed minor changes when using the visual editor after using custom HTML. The email editing system has also seemed to improve over time.

You can also manage advanced email functionality like DKIM and SPF. Don't worry if that sounds like another language, they do it for you by default.

There is a lots built in so you might not find yourself using everything straight away and that is OK. If you're new to marketing automation, your usage will likely evolve over time and it's simple to do so. You can edit everything from List names, to tags, to custom fields later on if needed.

Emails from your marketing automation campaigns are stored separately from one-off campaigns and autoresponders. This caught me out at first. But once you know, you know, and this shouldn't impact your workflows.

There is a lot of documentation and support information available online. If anything, there can sometimes be too much. When you find forum posts, Help Center articles & blog posts on the same topic, knowing where to start can be hard. Luckily if you do get stuck; the support team are helpful. I've spoken with them over both live chat and email with ease.

To Conclude The ActiveCampaign Review…

Where ActiveCampaign really shines is in the automation and contact management options. If you're selling products or services online, ActiveCampaign can manage the customer journey. Or if you get leads from multiple sources, then tagging & automations can help your campaigns.

It doesn't have eCommerce and affiliate functionality built in like some other providers. But this means you can easily integrate with hundreds of other platforms. Plus with the advanced contact management features you can easily sync eCommerce data. Update: I'm aware they are also starting to build some deep integration options for Shopify and WooCommerce.

If you want to do more than send the odd email out to your audience then it is definitely worth investing in. But even if that is all you do, the competitive price of ActiveCampaign means it is still a good option.

I am definitely happy to recommend ActiveCampaign as my marketing automation platform of choice. I've been using it for two years on my own sites and I've been working with it on client sites for at least a year. Overall ActiveCampaign is a solid email marketing and marketing automation platform.

You can sign up for a free trial here.

Push Notifications should be familiar to anyone with a smartphone. They are a simple way for app users to stay up to date with changes and updates so you've been receiving them for years. They are also a powerful way to keep users engaged, and now that power is available to you as a website owner.

Your push notifications can alert people to your latest blog posts, direct them towards offers in your ecommerce store, or even just say hi. With that said, you should focus on providing true value with every notification. Bombarding your audience with relentless sales pitches and useless notifications will work against you.

How Desktop Push Notifications Work

The simple concept is this: Somebody visits your site, they see the optin, and clicks to become a subscriber to your push notifications. You can then manually send custom crafted notifications or simply hook it up to your RSS feed so they get a notification every time you post to your site. You can even offer sign up bonuses to people directly after they optin in a similar fashion to how many people manage their email marketing lists.

Push Notifications, when used correctly, can bring visitors back to your site, grow traffic to key pages, and increase sales. If these benefits sound like something that you can get on board with then the next question is…

How To Get Started With Push Notifications for your Website

Well you'll be happy to know that it is relatively easy to get started if you are already managing your website yourself. Even if you work with a developer, it is a simple copy and paste style script to start the magic. It's not too dissimilar a set up process to adding Google Analytics if you use already that.

We are using a freemium solution called PushCrew. The free version offers more than enough to get your started. And yes, there is a PushCrew WordPress plugin that can do it for you (it is free too!). Or you can just drop the tag they will give you into Google Tag Manager, so you can have more control over how it loads.

Once you sign up with PushCrew they will guide you through the process step but step, but if you need any help you can always reach out to us. We can help you set up Push Notifications through our Business Support service or with our Marketing Tag Management solution.

• Aelia Currency Switcher for WooCommerce
  If you have an international audience this plugin is almost essential and it took me far too long to find! It allows you to not only display your product prices in other currencies but also to selectively charge in them too. I've tried several other plugins to do this and this one definitely stands on top. You can even set up geo-location so that the local price is displayed automatically and link different currencies to different payment processors.
• ActiveWoo
  This is one for those of you using ActiveCampaign as an email marketing and marketing automation service (recommended!). It collects your customer data from the WooCommerce cart and can automatically tag your customers into specific marketing automations, such as new members, cart abandons etc and keep track of your CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) inside your marketing dashboard.
• Schema App Structured Data & Schema App WooCommerce
  I was hesitant to add this one as it can feel fairly technical at times however if you are committed to your store and believe that the ability for search engines and other automated services being able to understand your product data could be important then this is worth the investment.
• WooCommerce Cart Reports
  Whilst WooCommerce is great for selling and fulling your products, it lacks a little in the reporting department by default. This plugin goes some way to fill that gap and give you a quick overview of your store and product sales reports from right within your WordPress dashboard. Of course there are other business reporting tools you can use and if you use something like Zapier (below) then you can easily export your WooCommerce sales data for reporting elsewhere.
• WooCommerce – Gravity Forms Product Add-Ons
  When you are selling customised products and services, like prints with specific customisations or services that require additional information to configure, a simple “Buy Now” or “Add to cart” button might not cut it. In this case you can hook up WooCommerce with Gravity Forms to enable highly customisable interactive forms that let your customers provide you detailed information as they go through the purchase process.
• WooCommerce Memberships
  Originally WooCommerce integrated with Wishlist Member however to take advantage of the full range of functionality in WooCommerce, eventually a fully featured membership solution for WooCommerce was built and this is the result. It allows you to sell membership access to areas of your website and protect information, videos, downloads, whatever to people who have made specific purchases. The main thing that could make this plugin better is… (see next)
• WooCommerce Subscriptions
  Whether you are creating a full membership site or simply a subscription service that delivers a certain product or service on a recurring basis, this plugin allows your customers to set up regular subscription payments. When combined with WooCommerce Memberships this is powerful for content creators that want to sell access to their websites.
• WooCommerce Zapier Integration
  This is another plugin that relies on a third-party service, however the power it reveals if definitely worth the investment. More websites and software than ever offer APIs which is developer speak for a cool way to share information back and forth between your services. Zapier is an online service that essentially ties together all these APIs so you can send your WooCommerce data pretty much anywhere without using code. A few ideas are; spreadsheet software such as Google Sheets and Excel, email marketing services such as Active Campaign and Mailchimp, Accounting Software such as Xero or FreeAgent and project management tools like Basecamp, Trello and Jira.
• Yoast SEO: WooCommerce
  The final plugin in this list is technically an extension for two plugins; WooCommerce and Yoast SEO. You will need to be using both plugins to make this worthwhile, but if you are then this plugin makes sure that all the meta data hidden behind your products is structured properly for sharing on social media. It is similar to the magic that happens with the Schema plugin mentioned earlier, except this plugin is almost plug and play so you can be set up in just a couple minutes without manually defining all of your data for each and every product as it pulls it all from your WooCommerce product settings

Of course just because I mentioned a plugin doesn't mean it should be included on every WooCommerce and equally just because one isn't mentioned here doesn't mean it isn't awesome. The extension market for WooCommerce is huge and I haven't possibly seen them all. Just recently I came across two plugins I'm excited to test in the near future when I can (AutomateWoo and UserInsights if you're interested).

If you have a plugin/extension for WooCommerce that you're in love with then please feel free to tweet me @danielmcclure or leave a note in the comments especially if it so good you don't know why any store wouldn't have it. I'm always interested to see the creation solutions people come up with for their stores.

And last but not least if somehow you got this far but you still don't know what WooCommerce is, then you must be a pretty determined reader ;) You can find out all you need to know and grab the core plugin for free on WooCommerce.com and if you need WooCommerce development help then get in contact for a quote here.

In university they teach you that Marketing is all about bringing the right people, to the right product, at the right time, in a profitable manner.

To me this sounds like something that every person in an organisation should be engaged with!

Your sales team are the heroes on the front line bringing in new business and ensuring that you maintain the lifeblood of almost any business: cashflow. More than anyone they should understand the objections that customers may have to your product or service and should be a central source of information and key stakeholder in many marketing decisions.

Your customer service team shouldn’t be relegated to putting out fires and answering generic questions from potential customers, they should be working to understand and relate with the customer, embodying the authentic voice of an organisation and its values whilst regularly feeding back new learnings into your company.

Your development team should be focused on not just making sure your product works, but that it also works for you. Growth hackers have been focused on embedding marketing style features into the product itself for years. Companies like Dropbox and many others have continued to grow because virality is baked into the product itself, through invites, incentives, sharing features and more.

Your accounting and finance team are responsible for making sure that everything balances and makes sense financially. But they can also have a significant impact on the perceptions of your audience based on your company structure, interactions with debtors & creditors and can often shape the reputation of a B2B company or one that relies on other vendors, which is pretty much everyone in a modern business environment.

Your HR team touch almost every person in your organisation and will be key in both building and maintaining the culture within your organisation. The way you relate with and support your staff and even potential hires, will affect how they feel about your company and their attitudes to work which will reveal itself in the work they do within your organisation.

Your R&D team are the future of your company and should be constantly seeking to disrupt or at least innovate within your organisation. It is absolutely essential that they are involved in the marketing process to understand what is working now, what isn’t, what speaks to your customers, what is having the desired impact and where there are areas for improvement.

Your IT team are your gateway to the modern networks of the world and responsible for the integrity of your data. Any downtime in operations is going to affect your ability to serve your customers and significant incidents can shape both public and staff perceptions of your company, especially in the world of technology.

Your Marketing & PR teams are usually the key areas people consider when thinking of marketing and advertising, however they should be invested not only in the latest marketing campaign, but also able to understand and react to anything that is happening within your entire organisation that can affect perceptions and likely results of the company delivering your product or service in a profitable manner.

Marketing is (or should be) a team sport!

Whilst marketing may be presented as a department, team, or individual within an organisation, the way I that I see it every department has the ability to empower or detract from your marketing efforts. Therefore it is key that every person in an organisation should be allowed to understand how their work relates to the overall mission. There should be regular two way (or company wide) discussions to ensure that all teams are ready and able to work together in mutually beneficial ways for the sake of an organisation.

Note: I’d love to hear what you think and wether it is something you are already doing, or would like to do in your organisation. Have I missed out a team? Or is there a situation where this may not apply?

Compiled after devouring countless help pages, image cheat sheets and far too many social media blogs. This Twitter media size guide is intended to act as one-stop resource for quickly referencing the latest recommended image sizes for use on Twitter.

Click the links below to skip to any size you need…

• Twitter Profile Picture Size
• Twitter Header Photo Size
• Twitter Summary Card Image Size
• Twitter Summary Card With Large Image Size
• Twitter Photo Card Image Size
• Twitter Gallery Card Image Size
• Twitter App Card Image Size
• Twitter Player Card Sizes
• Twitter Product Card Image Size
• Twitter Lead Generation Card Image Size
• Twitter Website Card Image Size

Recommended Twitter Profile Image Sizes

Your Profile Picture

Your Twitter profile photo is the main image for your profile across the networks and will be displayed on your profile page, alongside your tweets and in any ads or recommendations linked to your account.

• Recommended Dimensions: 400 x 400 px
• Minimum Dimensions: 200 x 200 px
• Allowed File Types: JPG, GIF, PNG
• Max File Size: 100 KB
• Image Scale: 1 x 1

Your Header Photo

This is a large visual photo that is placed at the top of your profile page and is your biggest chance to make an impact when somebody first visits. Make sure you use high resolution, emotive imagery that communicates who you are and what you are about.

You may also want to check out this awesome post on making the most of the space.

• Recommended Dimensions: 1500 x 500 px
• Allowed File Types: JPG, GIF, PNG
• Max File Size: 10 MB
• Image Scale: 3 x 1

Recommended Twitter Card Image Sizes

When you publish a web page it is possible to specify images and other media via HTML (or this handy WordPress plugin) to be attached when the page is shared via Twitter. The resulting output of the combined Tweet and media is called a Twitter Card. This section covers the recommended media sizes for each of these types of cards.

Twitter Summary Card

This should be a unique image that is representative of the content found at the link. The image for this type of card will be seen in various places at sizes of 120 x 120 px and 120 x 90 px.

• Minimum Dimensions: 120 x 120 px
• Allowed File Types: JPG, GIF, PNG
• Max File Size: 1 MB
• Image Scale: 4 x 3

Summary Card With Large Image

This should be a unique image that is representative of the content found at the link. The images for this type of card will be shown at varying sizes depending on the type of device.

• Recommended Dimensions: 876 x 438 px
• Minimum Dimensions: 280 x 150 px
• Allowed File Types: JPG, GIF, PNG
• Max File Size: 1 MB
• Image Scale: 2 x 1

Twitter Photo Cards

These tweets place an emphasis on the photo and will retain the aspect ratio without cropping in most cases. The image will be seen at sizes of 375 x 435 px and 375 x 280 px as well as 750 x 560px depending on the device.

• Recommended Dimensions: 750 x 560 px
• Minimum Dimensions: 280 x 150 px
• Allowed File Types: JPG, GIF, PNG
• Max File Size: 1 MB

Gallery Card Images

The images in this card should follow the general guidelines for photo cards, however they will be displayed at varying sizes depending on the number of images, viewing state and device.

• Recommended Dimensions: 750 x 560 px
• Minimum Dimensions: 280 x 150 px
• Allowed File Types: JPG, GIF, PNG
• Max File Size: 1 MB

Twitter App Card Image Size

This image will actually be pulled from the relevant app store however to ensure the best experience on Twitter, you should make sure that the image you have uploaded to the app store is less than 1 MB in size.

Twitter Player Card

Whilst embedded the player card displays videos, audio players and animated GIFs at no larger than 435px and will always maintain the original aspect ratio.

Twitter Player Card – Image

You will need to specify a thumbnail image for browsers that don't support embedded videos. The image should be at the same dimensions as your video where applicable.

• Recommended Dimensions: Same as your video
• Minimum Dimensions: 350 x 196 px
• Allowed File Types: JPG, GIF, PNG
• Max File Size: 1 MB

Twitter Player Card – Other Media

• Video: H.264, Baseline Profile (BP), Level 3.0, up to 640 x 480 at 30 fps.
• Audio: AAC, Low Complexity Profile (LC)

Twitter Product Card Sizes

All product cards will be cropped to 160 x 160 so you should aim to provide a square image with your product image displayed at the appropriate proportions within.

• Minimum Dimensions: 160 x 160 px
• Allowed File Types: JPG, GIF, PNG
• Max File Size: 1 MB
• Image Scale: 1 x 1

Twitter Lead Generation Card Sizes

Lead generation cards are shown above a call-to-action button with a full tweet above them so you should take the layout as a whole into consideration whilst designing.

• Minimum Dimensions: 800 x 200 px
• Allowed File Types: JPG, GIF, PNG
• Image Scale: 4 x 1

Twitter Website Card Sizes

These cards are slightly taller than the lead generation card type however they maintain a thinner profile than full photo cards and are designed to get people taking action.

• Minimum Dimensions: 800 x 320 px
• Allowed File Types: JPG, GIF, PNG

Have you found this page useful?

Thanks for checking in! I aim to keep this page constantly updated to the latest recommendations based on Twitter rules and guidelines as well as real world experience. If you notice any inconsistencies then please let me know via @TMEntrepreneur or the comments below.

Now that you've found your way here, you may as well pay it forward and share ;)

[bctt tweet=”Want to know the recommended sizes for your #Twitter profile and tweet cards. Check this! “]

Mobile Twitter Apps

• Official Twitter App* – This works well, links in to all of the official features and allows for managing multiple accounts these days. My go-to app for ad-hoc sending on the iPhone.
• TweetBot for Twitter – This is my default app for #Twitter use on the iPad. Great for managing multiple accounts and tracking hashtags. It works well on the iPhone too, however I tend to use the official app for iPhone more often these days, especially with its built in advertising stats.
• Buffer App* – This links in to the Buffer service mentioned in the online tools below. I prefer using the web interface, however this is great for adding scheduled content you discover via mobile and checking whats next and the stats on things that have just gone out.
• TakeOff* – If you prefer to manually Tweet then you can draft updates and then use this app to identify the best times based on your follower activity. You'll get a notification when it's time and you can manually push your pre-written tweets through. It also has a suggested hashtag feature built in and the ability to link with Instagram too.

Desktop Twitter Software

• TweetDeck – This used to be a powerhouse for social media management across networks, and then Twitter bought it… Whilst it felt a lot more powerful before the acquisition, the tool is now squarely focused on Twitter and this allows you to have a focused view across multiple accounts and track various hashtags with desktop notifications, all for free.

Online Twitter Tools

• Buffer – Simple yet powerful Tweet (& other social network update) queue that allows you to post many updates which go out at set intervals.
  • Bulk Buffer – If you use Buffer to schedule your tweets you can use this tool to upload tweets in bulk via CSV files.
• Canva – Create beautiful viral images for Twitter and other social networks without having to hire a designer.
• Hootsuite – Manage multiple social media accounts from a single dashboard with built in scheduling and monitoring tools. This is really powerful if you have to manage and track lots of accounts but I find simpler tools like Buffer and TweetDeck much more enjoyable to use.
• Post Planner* – I believe this began as a Facebook tool but it now lets you post to Twitter as well. It's an account manager and scheduler with a twist. It actually suggests viral content and fillin the blank statuses for you to share. If you often find yourself stuggling for what to say, this could be the tool to take your tweeting up a notch.
• Share Link Generator – Create links with pre-written status updades for Twitter and other social networks.
• Tweriod – This tool helps you to maximise your reach by analyzing your followers and identifying the best times to Tweet based on your account data.
• TwitterCounter – A free tool to track your follower/following growth over time. There are also some cost effective subscriptions for deeper insights on your account.

Twitter Plugins for WordPress

• CoSchedule* – An editorial calendar plugin for WordPress that lets you plan your content and related social media updates in advance. This is great for keeping to schedule and making sure you follow your own planned sharing schedule if you run a tight operation and are always writing several posts ahead.
• Click To Tweet /  Better Click To Tweet – Both of these plugins are for WordPress and allow you to easily create “Click to Tweet” inside your content that encourages sharing. Currently using the latter on this site.
• JetPack (Publicize & Sharing Module) – This is a super-plugin for WordPress with lots of varied functionality built in. Publicize allows you to automatically share new content you post to your social media accounts.
• JM Twitter Cards – This is the most powerful Twitter Card integration plugin for WordPress and covers every card type that you might need to integrate with your website.
• Twitter – This is the official plugin for Twitter. It does a bit of everything but doesn't give as many customisation options as other single focused plugins.

This page will be updated constantly as I try new things so make sure you check back in every now and then :)

To provide full transparency, please note all links with an asterisk *”next to them are affiliate links and we may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking them.

User Clicks on Ad > Like to Reveal Hidden Content > Optin To Receive Bonus > Bonus Offer

The funnel was great because it worked. And because it worked everyone was doing it. In fact if you added a bonus sales offer on the end many campaigns would practically pay for themselves. There are still old pages with thousands of likes and subscribers from the glory days. But unfortunately after some timeline changes it stopped working and uddenly you could no longer send people to these app pages.

But by all accounts it looks like the glory days may be coming back!

Recently Facebook quietly announced a new Ad Type called Facebook Lead Ads that lets you collect optins straight from the newsfeed. When people see content in their feed they can once again; Like your page and optin to your list. However as Facebook only integrate with enterprise level solutions, the rest of us are left with excel exports and a missing ability to automatically send these contacts an email (which can be key for instant bonus offers).

That is where Connect Leads comes in… It is a powerful tool that takes your funnel through that last mile. It gets the leads from Facebook and automatically links them into your email provider so you can immediately start presenting bonus offers and essentially making your Facebook Ads campaigns pay for themselves. Not to mention the fact that it can save your time where you would have to manually import contacts from the lead ads. You simply need to link your ads campaigns to the Connect Leads tool and it actually does all the hard work for you.

Note: For a limited time the team behind Connect Leads are offering an exclusive Lifetime Offer rather than monthly, so you pay once and you have the tool for life. This is definitely my preference as there are already so many things you have to pay for monthly. If you're using Facebook Lead Ads, or think you might soon, then I'd definitely recommend that you pick this up now.

You can find all the details on the Connect Leads tool and earlybird offer here.

You can find out the results and top recommendations below…

iOS Google Analytics Apps Reviewed

This is the full list of Google Anlytics apps that were downloaded for review. To see a specific review you can just click on the name of the app and you will skip to that section.

• Abondo – Ecommerce Analytics
• Analytics for iPad – Google Analytics
• Analytics for Google Analytics
• Analytics Pro 2
• AnalyticsPM for Google Analytics
• Analytiks – Google Analytics
• Dashboard (Pro) Google Analytics
• Fast Analytics for Google Analytics
• Google Analytics
• Measure for Google Analytics
• Quicklytics for Google Analytics
• Realtime for Google Analytics Real-Time
• SimplyStats for Google Analytics

TL;DR – Skip to the recommendations >>

[easy-tweet tweet=”If #ECommerce results matter more than detailed #anayltics reports Abondo for iOS is great!” user=”TMEntrepreneur”]

[easy-tweet tweet=”The Official Google Analytics #app for iOS has come a long way and is actually quite usable.” user=”TMEntrepreneur”]

[easy-tweet tweet=”#Quicklytics is the beast of Google #Analytics #apps for iOS. Great for iPhone & iPad!” user=”TMEntrepreneur”]

[easy-tweet tweet=”Check out #Realtime for #iPhone If you need detailed real time #GoogleAnalytics stats for live events & campaigns.” user=”TMEntrepreneur”]

So what is the Best Google Analytics App for iOS?

Whilst I'd love to say there is one app that is great for all situations, the reality is that some of the apps are great at some things whilst lacking at other. Abondo is great for checking up on ECommerce stats, Realtime is great for finding out who is on your site right now, and the official Google Analytics app is probably your best free option.

However if I had to pick the best all-round iOS app for Google Analytics, it would have to be Quicklytics. You can run deep-dives into the data almost as easily as using it for a quick checkup on your daily stats. It may be paid, but it's definitely not the most expensive on the market and with regular updates it is more than worth the money.

[easy-tweet tweet=”"If I had to pick just one #iOS #app for #GoogleAnalytics, it would be #Quicklytics."” user=”TMEntrepreneur”]

Do you agree with these selections? Are you using something else? I'd love to hear your experiences with this so please feel free to comment below or tweet @TMEntrepreneur

Two Week Update: Originally this experiment only shared the first idea in this blog post and people would have to contact the paywall email to get the last four or five ideas. During the last two weeks I had two contacts and none paid for the full content after the initial mail. There are many reasons it may not have worked; it's a different process than people are used to, the bait wasn't intriguing enough, the price was too high, or people just weren't interested. Either way, this is an interesting service and I'll be testing it out in other experiments and if you play with it, I'd love to hear how your experiments go :)

Recently I was tipped off about a new email paywall service called wrte.io that lets people pay you to receive their email. Definitely a novel concept and one I'd only heard of once before as an extremely aggressive way to prevent spam. But this service was different and it got me thinking. Why would people pay to have an email read by someone? After a little brainstorm I came up with a few ideas on how to use this service.

Idea Number 1 – Knowledge Requests

Often when seeking to replicate something that has already been done before, people will want to seek advice from those that have done it before. This can be through consultancy relationships, advisory boards and even long term mentorship. However if you want something with a little but less commitment you're often limited to a quick tweet here and there or asking someone if they fancy a meeting over coffee. This can be great but it's not always an investment that makes sense on both sides. What if all you really want is a quick thought out answer to a specific question? That is one avenue where I can see this service working and one of the ideas that I've decided to experiment with first.

Idea 2 – Community Paywalls

I recently signed up to join a community on Slack for Digital Nomads. As part of this process I had to fill out a form and make a payment to show my commitment to the group and help fund development of the community. After a completing a quick form and making the payment I was added automatically invited to the group via email. Whilst this particular community had used a paid form solution and some custom coding to automate the process, you could just as easily set up a unique email address with an auto-responder that emails an invitation to anyone who makes the payment and gets through to you.

Idea 3 – Product Delivery

If you've ever developed a digital product such as an information product or software then you will have invariably had to work out the best way of actually selling the thing! There are many options these days ranging from your own eCommerce store, online marketplaces and of course email delivery. This service strikes me as a simple way of automating the email delivery of a product. If somebody wants to purchase the product all they have to do is email your purchase address and they will receive an invoice which they can pay to receive an auto-responder delivery of the product. If you use a unique email for each product you will also have a log of every person that has purchased your product if you need to send out updates and communications in the future.

Idea 4 – Paid Services by Email

If you offer services that can easily be delivered by email then you could easily use this as your eCommerce solution with minimal effort. This would be ideal for simple one-off services such as article writing, proof reading and research tasks where you can easily set a flat payment level or use the initial payment as a deposit for you to begin processing the order. This wouldn't even require an automation and you could personally respond with the finished product within a certain time-frame specified in advance.

Idea 5 – Pay Per Lead: Lead Generation for Business

This one is a little bit more technical however it is still a relatively simple process with tools like Gravity Forms for WordPress. If you can build simple lead generation sites online you could make a deal with business owners where they pay for each lead they receive. All you would need to do on the backend is set the sending email of the website as the business owners standard email (so they receive the invoice) and the receiving email for form submissions as the businesses paywall email so that they only receive the original form submission email containing the full lead details once they make payment.

Bonus Idea – Gated Content

One last idea for fun that you might just recognise! Simply seed some content on the web and then have people email you if they want to receive the rest of the content in full. If the experiment worked then this is the exact reason that you happen to be reading this right now ;) There are probably lots more ways to get creative with this, for example seeding partially password protected content for free through file sharing networks where people need to email you and pay to access the password for the full thing.

In Conclusion….

The beauty of a service like this is that there are very little overheads to get started so hopefully these ideas have sparked a few of your own ideas that you can implement today. If you've used this  service or plan to set up any of your own micro-businesses/revenue streams with it then please feel free to comment below. I'd be interested to see what others are already doing with it!

There is never enough time to get everything done in a day, but that doesn't always mean that you are ready to hire a full time employee for your business. For the work that falls in between the limits of what you can realistically do yourself and the work that you really need to hire an employee for, there is a large amount of tasks and jobs that you can actually outsource.

Outsourcing is sometimes considered a dirty word because of its bad rep for heading overseas. There have also been waves over the years of people losing their jobs as part of an organisation moves to a third party  company leaving a bad taste in many peoples mouth, but outsourcing isn't inherently a bad thing. If you only need someone to help with the odd task or for a very specific project then outsourcing work over the web makes perfect sense and enables you to get more done whilst only paying for the resources you need.

I’ve personally hired people for things that probably took them a few hours or even less if they were organised. In this case the alternative was never me actually hiring a full or even part-time employee to do the work. Realistically if they hadn’t done the work it would have fallen on me and at that time it made more sense for somebody else to be doing the work, freeing me up to spend time on things that would have a bigger impact on the project.

It’s not only about increasing capacity though, you can also hire people that are far more skilled than you in certain areas and the beauty of online outsourcing is they will work tirelessly on your project in their own environment so you only need to fund the work itself, rather than office space and other fixed overheads.

Your outsourcing team can be based anywhere in the world and as long as you can communicate the work efficiently you can often outsource work at or even above their local rate whilst still saving money comparatively to hiring within your own market. Not only this but you can hire someone on the other side of the world to do something one evening and then wake up to the completed work the next morning. One caveat to this I must add is that whilst it sounds amazing it might not always go right the first time. When working with multiple people for short periods you don’t have the rigour of a full interview process or a deeper understanding of the person working for you so things might get lost in translation or you might simply make a bad hire. To give yourself the best chance of success the best thing to do is get really specific about exactly what it is you want and set clear milestones that they can easily summarise back to you.

There are many different ways to outsource and all with varying levels of budget and reliability. The first is simply going to a professional agency or online professional advertising in the area of support you need and getting them to do the work for you. For custom work this can often be the most expensive but if the firm or individual has a good presence and appears to be recommended then you can have more confidence in the outcome.

Alternatively you can look at one of the larger outsourcing marketplaces such as upwork.com. Here you will post your project and have several companies bidding on the work and supplying proposals. You might post a project overnight and find the perfect person with the first bid or you could wait all week and still find that nobody seems like the right fit for the job. In the latter case you may want to review your project description to check that you have presented the project clearly and concisely but sometimes it just seems to be the way it goes.

Finally you can post some work through sites like 99designs.com and pay a fee to have a selection of designers working to develop several finished ideas so you know exactly what you are getting and simply pay for the best result from your selection. Whatever area of expertise you are looking for will also probably have a few job boards where you can post your project if you can find them.

Choosing the type of work that you actually outsource will vary depending on your business but common things are logo and web design, one off programming projects, and content creation. Whilst you won’t have to do the work itself, you will still have to manage finding the right person and ensure you’ve given enough detail at every stage of the way. For that reason it is best to outsource projects where you can benefit from someone more skilled than yourself or the where the time a project takes to complete will be significantly higher than the time involved to manage the project.

Whilst drafting this Wishlist Member review, I realised I'd been using it for six years! It seems hard to believe but it has been 6 years great years using Wishlist Member for WordPress. I was only just starting to work with WordPress professionally and I created a few great sites with it that are still running today. However as time moves on, the internet has definitely evolved and of course software grows up and changes with it so I thought it worth revisiting my original reviews of Wishlist to make sure everything is still accurate.

The Wishlist Member Review

When I first found out about Wishlist Member I was in the process of researching how I could make a membership site based on WordPress. I was happy using WordPress as both a blog and a CMS (content management system) and knew that if I could find a way to create private paid areas using WordPress it would be a lot easier than using an external system. After a lot of research, reading various sites, checking out reviews and forums I finally decided to give Wishlist Member a go. It turned out there were already a lot of membership plugins available but Wishlist came out on top from my research. As a sidenote; I've since tried many other membership systems at the request of clients and most of them are severely lacking or overcomplicated in comparison.

I decided to take a punt and go for the Multi-Site License that allows for an unlimited number of sites to be run with it. Again that turned out to be a great decision as I've used it on over 20 of my own websites and many more client sites over the years.

What's so Good About the Wishlist Member Plugin then?

I'm glad you asked ;) The first thing that stands out about this plugin is that even somebody that doesn't know how a thing about code can use it. Everything can be managed through the plugin with no need to tweak ‘this and that' bit of coding on your WordPress installation.

Installing the membership plugin was easy, so easy in fact I was at actually shocked at how quick and simple it was. If you've ever installed a plugin on WordPress before then you are good to go. Even if you had never installed a plugin you could probably do it I'd say. But in that case perhaps you should be spending a little time getting used to using WordPress first.

Once it's installed onto your WordPress the next thing to focus on is configuring everything. Every step of the way is documented in free videos that you can access on the Wishlist Member website and you are also provided with reference manuals when you purchase. Both the videos and the guides can come in useful at this point as you get used to the way the plugin handles things like different membership levels and protecting specific pages.

From start to finish you are able to set up a complete WordPress membership site in less than an hour and with practice, using only the basic options probably a lot less. As if they could make it any easier the team even throw in a couple of themes which you can use for your website if you haven't had a chance to source one of your own yet.

Some of My Favourite Features

There are so many things possible with the Wishlist Member plugin that it would be silly to list them all for you after they have done such a great job at their website. What I've decided to do is share just a few of my favorite features that this membership site plugin offers.

Click Here to see Everything that is possible with Wishlist Member

• Unlimited Membership Levels – Multiple Levels Possible on the same blog!
• Sequential Content Delivery – Schedule content based on the length of a user's membership.
• Create Teasers – Benefit from higher rankings by choosing to share teasers.
• Integration with PayPal, 1ShoppingCart, ClickBank & More – Enough Said.
• Secure RSS Feeds – Stop RSS thieves from accessing your content.
• Simple User Management – Everything handled in your dashboard, no need to touch the database!

Wondering What a WordPress Wishlist Membership Site Looks Like?

One of the beauties of WordPress is that you can use any number of themes to customise the look of your website and the overwhelming majority will work with modern plugins. I understand though that it can be hard to imagine how some of the features would work when applied to a real website, so I will share with you a couple of real world examples.

Mixergy is a popular membership site for entrepreneurs, offering interviews and courses from successful entrepreneurs. The entire membership system has been built with Wishlist Member and they have been going strong for years.

Another great example of Wishlist Member is on the official site for the membership site plugin. They distribute all of their plugins and bonus material using Wishlist Member so you will get to experience everything from the perspective of a customer as well from the very start. It's always satisfying to see a company that actually uses the product they sell!

 In Conclusion…

If you haven't guessed already I highly rate this plugin and have absolutely no regrets for purchasing the Multi Site License. The only thing that I could possibly complain about is that if you plan on developing membership websites for other people then they will need to purchase their own licence. Slightly clutching at straws for a drawback there but I really haven't had any other problems with the software.

UPDATE: Wishlist Member are now offering commercial licenses on request. They've also told me about a ton of new features that are soon to be released so I would definitely sign up now before they decide to change the pricing structure.

You can purchase a Single Site License for only $97 and if you decide to opt for the Multi-Site License like I did, it's still only going to set you back by $297. Both packages come with full documentation, three months support & free updates. I give this plugin four and a half stars out of five.

Disclaimer: I am a long term user of Wishlist Member and an affiliate, but the big reason for this Wishlist Member review is that they are still delivering the goods after 6 years. In that time I've seen many great products come and go, but Wishlist has stayed strong and evolved over time so I'm still happy both using it and recommending it to WordPress users old and new.

• UK Business tax – guidance | VAT: supplying digital services to private consumers
  This resource from the UK government shares documents describing the full details and scope of the law and also offers a fairly simple VAT MOSS flow chart (pdf) that can help you to understand if or how the new laws may apply to your business.
• Small victory for UK micro firms as HMRC tweaks EU VAT MOSS rule
  If you're a micro firm in the UK that previously did not need to register for VAT then this article may bring you some comfort.
• WooCommerce and the 2015 EU VAT Changes to Digital Goods
  If you are currently using WooCommerce to sell digital goods with WordPress then this is the primary resource you should need to learn how you can start collecting necessary information to comply with the new laws.
• EU-VAT GitHub Resource
  This GitHub was developed collaboratively and contains links and information on pretty much everything you will need to know including software solutions and discussions with government if you need or want to know all you can about the law and how various business types can and are responding.
• Internet Marketers Survival Guide to The New EU VAT Rules
  This is a more curated and tailored approach specifically for traditional “internet markets” selling information products online. This a paid resource from a qualified UK accountant along with two internet marketers attempting to translate the guidance into the business context.

Hopefully with these resources you should have more than enough information to work out if and/or how the law applies to you. If you find that you are directly impacted then you will want to get the recommended solutions in place as soon as possible as this became law on the 1st January 2015.

Image Credit: GetResponse

Whilst inevitably we may grow up physically, sometimes we take these traditions with us. That's why so many brands are now getting on board and creating their own unique online advent calendars for the Christmas season. It's a way to recapture some of that nostalgic excitement, whilst connecting with your audience over the festive period. Here is a selection of brands using advent calendars creatively in their marketing to kick of the month.

1. Modern Toss

These guys are described as cult cartoonists and create strips with a humorous slant to modern life. If you don't like profanity then you probably won't enjoy their comics but they make some great sarcastic and witty Christmas cards every year in the UK and have turned some of their designs into an advent calendar for 2014.

2. Love Magazine

Love Magazine is a style focused magazine and every year they release an online advent calendar with potentially NSFW content from their models. This tactic already seems to be working for them with lots of online commentary for this years catalogue in mainstream media and around the web already.

3. The Economist

In all honesty this is probably one of the least exciting calendars in the collection however it s clear and simple and is already building up a collection of social shares. It is designed to get people over to featured content on their site daily and the fact that they have been making and hosting these since 2011 goes to show they are probably getting what they want out of it.

4. Advent Wellington

This interactive advent calendar for Wellington has partnered with local businesses to bring a different promotion every day such as a free coffee or chicken wings, to encourage commerce with local businesses in the area. It also collects emails in exchange  for redeeming the promotions to build an email marketing list.

5. The Modern Entrepreneur

Last but not least, we're also running our very own advent calendar for the second year running. It's all powered by the Promotion Calendar WordPress plugin we created for this very purpose, so it would be rude not to. You can expect gifts and discounts throughout the month for your business. From a marketing standpoint we we're already getting extra traffic and leads from this page before we have even begun promoting it properly!

 
In the age of content marketing and social media it seems that online advent calendars are definitely in, no matter how old you are. We'd love to hear from you if you're running your own advent calendar promotions this year? Feel free to share it in the comments below :)

We've been scouring the web for our collection of the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals for Startups, Freelancers, and Entrepreneurs. However if you don't know exactly what you are looking for already we thought we'd highlight some of the best Cyber Monday deals for businesses.

SiteGround (Web Hosting) – Save 50%

No coupon code required.
Whilst I've not personally used SiteGround I've heard great things from many people and more than that; they offer PCI compliant hosting for WordPress at very affordable prices. If you're not familiar with PCI regulation it applies to people that host and handle payment processing details on their server so this mainly applies for people with e-commerce sites.

WPEngine (WordPress Hosting) – Get 4 Months Free

Coupon Code: CyberHosting14
WPEngine is a premium managed hosting solution for specifically for WordPress. Whilst the previously mentioned host is great if you have an e-commerce site, WPEngine is more catered towards traditional blogs so you won't get as complete server access as with a more generalised host. They can help you to handle huge spikes in your traffic and heavily manage your site to ensure that you stay online, with fast speeds and the bad guys are kept out.

Coming Soon Pro (Coming Soon / Lead Generation Plugin) – Save 40% + 15%!

Coupon Code: GET15OFF
Some of the most successful startups today built up their audience in advance through coming soon pages that pre-sell visitors and capture email leads and social shares before their full site is even live. The Coming Soon Pro plugin from SeedProd makes it easier than ever to create beautiful coming soon pages that convert without touching a single line of code.

OptinMonster (Email Marketing WordPress Plugin) – Save 35%

Coupon Code: BF2014
This is the new kid on the block in regards to creating optin forms for your website. Whilst we're not using the plugin on this site, many others have bee getting great results and if you want a solid plugin to build optin forms without touching code then OptinMonster is worth a look.

Promotion Calendar (Advent Calendar WordPress Plugin) – Save 50%

Coupon Code: BlackFriday
It wouldn't feel right if we didn't include at least one of our own products ;) Promotion Calendar is a timely offer as it allows you to create promotional advent calendars that you can use to build an email marketing list with WordPress. You can create unique offers for every day of the month, encourage sharing and keep people coming back for more.

S3Flowshield (Amazon S3 Download & Video Protection) – Save 40%

Coupon Code: CyberHosting14
This plugin has saved us more than a few times and is great if you need to protect downloads or videos on your websites from Pirates. We've been using S3Flowshield for years now and its still our top recommend plugin to protect content you have hosted with Amazon S3. You can get this plugin and the entire back catalogue from Rapid Crush Inc at a steep discount.

WooCommerce Extensions (E-Commerce Plugins for WordPress) – Save up to 50%

No coupon code required.
WooCommerce is by far the most popular plugin for running an e-commerce store with WordPress. It is what we use to manage the sales of our plugins and trainings on this site andhas been downloaded millions of times. One of the biggest drawbacks is you ypically end up having to buy several extensions if you want to customise your store beyond the basics. Luckily they are offering a sliding discount this weekend so you can get all of the extensions for up to 50% off.

We'd love to hear about your results if you invest in any of these. And if you're still looking for more then check out the full collection of Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals for startups, freelancers and entrepreneurs.

There are 2 smarter ways to play Black Friday that can benefit your business.

1. Invest in upgrading your business for the cheapest price you're likely to find.
2. Promote you own products to people that have been sitting on the edge.

With just a little planning and forethought you can likely do both of these things!

1. Invest.

In every business there are the things you need and use to just get stuff done but eventually you outgrow them or realise you need to add extra possibilities into the mix.

Take some time to think about everything that you've stumbled on in the past few months; maybe it is limits with your current marketing tools, unreliable hosting, or just something you need to do but can't get your head around

There is a very good chance that someone will be selling the services, tools and training you need at a discount so if you know what you need to focus on and don't get distracted there are some great savings to be made.

I've personally built a collection of some of the best offers for entrepreneurs here.

Check back over the next few days as I'm adding new deals when I find them…

2. Promote.

Whether you have your own products and services or you make money by recommending others. Black Friday and the following Cyber Monday is when millions of people and hitting stores with their cards and wallets in hand just waiting to jump on the right deal.

Think about how you can structure a promotion that your audience will get excited about. Perhaps it's as simple as a price reduction, but you can also bundle products together and even create exclusive offers with built in scarcity as people just can't get them all year around.

You don't even need to overhaul your existing site or sales funnels. Simply offer coupon codes if your cart allows it or edit your payment buttons for the day.

Whether you decide to invest, promote, or both this Black Friday, be smart and you can benefit from a lot more than just a new gadget in the long run.

When you spend enough time in your analytics, certain referrers of traffic to your site will definitely stand out if they keep appearing. Whilst referrers are typically a good thing as it means somebody is sending traffic to your site, this isn't always the case. In this post we will cover how we blocked a source of referrer spam from this site, however this same method can be used for blocking any unwanted referrers.

How to Block SPAM Domains From Accessing Your Site

The first step I undertook was to block the domains via my .htaccess file. You should find that all WordPress sites have one of these in your websites root directory. The code that I used is pasted below and was inspired by Paul Thompson from Buzzwords to Business. You can add the code to the bottom of your existing .htaccess file making sure to include any domains causing referrer spam. This should prevent further abuse from the problematic domains but unfortunately it is an uphill struggle and new domains are popping up all the time, so you may need to update this file over time.

The second step I took was to filter the referral domains from Google Analytics so that the spam attacks did not affect the accuracy of my analytics. The above methods should work for any unwanted referrers that you need to be blocked from accessing your site and skewing your statistics in the process.

“Data that is loved tends to survive.” — Kurt Bollacker, computer scientist, open-source advocate

2019 Update: Block Even More Referral SPAM

WARNING: The method described above will filter the raw traffic data being saved to your Google Analytics account so you may want to add the filter in a new view.

It is also important to note that it will not impact any existing referral SPAM shown in your analytics already.

Check out the video review below for a case study on how we used Gravity Forms to generate over 3,540+ contacts, grow our email marketing list and make money all with just a single form.

The Modern Entrepreneur Gravity Forms Video Review

In the video above you'll learn how you can take advantage of conditional logic and a few simple add-ons to turn Gravity Forms into a powerful list building and profit generating machine for your business. You'll also get a quick tour behind the scenes on one our sites using Gravity Forms so you can see how easy it is to get started with Gravity Forms.

Why Gravity Forms is Better at The Basics

When I first started building forms on WordPress all I was looking for was a simple way for clients and prospects to get in contact. This led to a few plugins such as cForms II (no longer active) and Contact Form 7. These were for the most part OK, if not a little clunky around the edges or awkward to edit.

However the difference when you start building forms with Gravity Forms is clear; there is a simple drag and drop editor that you can use to edit your forms as well as a large selection of custom form fields which you can add with just the click of a button, i.e. not confusing shortcodes or HTML just to ask for someones phone number in your contact form.

We now use Gravity Forms for all of our clients contacts forms even if they don't need the more advanced features, just because it makes it easier for them to manage, edit sections, view responses and it even provides detailed statistics on just how many people are completing their contact forms once they view them.

The Advanced Gravity Forms Features Kill The Competition

Once you have handled the basics of form building, you can move on to some of the more advanced features that truly make Gravity Forms stand out above the competition. There are many great features and if we touched on them all in detail this page would be a lot longer so here are the highlights:

• Visual Form Editor – Every field can be added with just a click and you can drag and drop to re-arrange.
• Multi-Page/Step Forms – You can split your forms into sections or even pages if you need to collect lots of information.
• Accept Online Payments – If you need a quick and easy way to start taking payments you can build simple order forms and accept payments with Gravity Forms.
• Smart Fields – You don't always need to ask every person the exact same questions. Conditional fields allow you to only display the fields that are relevant for each case.
• Grow your marketing lists – There are simple add-ons that enable you to connect your preferred email marketing service to Gravity Forms so you can automatically collect leads from all of the forms on your website.
• Limit/Schedule Entries – If you only want to allow a certain number of people to complete your form, perhaps for a free sample, or need to limit how long its live for in the case of a competition this can all be down with a couple of clicks.
• Posting Functions – If you run guest posts or allow third parties to upload content to your site you can use Gravity forms to manage the whole process on the front end so your contributors never have to see your WordPress dashboard.
• Build Surveys & Quizzes – Whether you are doing extensive research into a subject or just want a way for your audience to test their knowledge from your latest training course, you can easily build forms for the job with Gravity Forms.
• Conditional Output for App-Like Functionality – This allows you to dynamically create the responses to your forms depending on what is answered. For an example of this in action make sure you watch the review video.
• Supported By Popular Themes – Gravity Forms is designed to look beautiful with custom styling in most modern themes.
• Fully Extensible via Add-Ons – There are over 10 plugins that can be included in a developers license at no extra cost and many more available for free in the official WordPress plugin directory. You can also hook into Zapier to connect with 100s of other sites.

How to Get Started With Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms licenses start from $39 and there is even a free demo if you want to try it out first. But to grasp the full power of Gravity Forms you'll probably want to get the full Business or Developer license which includes the premium add-ons which allow you to start building more advanced forms for your business.

As you've probably guessed I would highly recommend Gravity Forms whether you are looking for a simple form solution for your own site, or you plan on creating lead generation tools across multiple sites for yourself and clients. It really is the swiss army knife for building forms with WordPress.

Full disclosure: I am an affiliate for Gravity Forms so I get a small commission if you decide to buy it through my links but this has no bearing on my recommendation. I've been a paying customer for 3 or 4 years now, you can literally see some of my results in the video and every year it just keeps getting better and better.

With almost every site on the web constantly asking your customers for an email address and the amount of email in our inboxes seemingly growing by the day, we are becoming blind to email marketing optin forms that go straight for the kill the moment you land on a site. After all how do you really know that you want to give you my email in exchange for some bonus content when you haven't even had a chance to check out the content that you came looking for in the first place.

What is a Two-Step Optin Form?

Two-Step Optin Forms, such as the ones created by the Thrive Leads plugin, are a deceptively simple marketing tool for building an email marketing list. The way they work is by simply presenting a link, button or banner describing something that people will want on your website. When people click on this content it then brings up a simple optin form that people can use to provide their name and email in exchange for the advertised benefit. Whilst it may sound deceptively simple there is a whole lot going on behind the scenes that makes this type of interaction considerably more attractive than your traditional optin form.

Imagine the case where you arrive at a website and rather refreshingly you actually get to read the content that you came for. Eventually you get to the end of the article and the last paragraph recommends a useful download that compliments the article. You decide that the download might be useful (after all you just dedicated a few minutes to reading the article), so you click on the link and then a simple box appears offering to send the download straight to your inbox for free. Of course you are going to enter your email address, the article has sold you on why you want the download, you've decided to actually click on the download, and all you have to do is enter your email address to get access to the benefits of the download. This is far from the hard sell of instant popups going for the kill before you've even met.

The Hidden Benefits of Two-Step Optin Forms

There is also some subtle psychology in play with two-step optin forms. Dr Robert Cialidini, the famous author of “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” calls it “commitment and consistency”. When you have taken steps to access something such as clicking on the  link in the bottom of an article, or even a banner in the sidebar of a blog, you've already made a small mental commitment to yourself that you want the thing you are clicking on. At this stage it is both logical and beneficial for you to actually follow through on your commitment and take the next steps to actually acquire the resource you've clicked on.

With a traditional optin form you are always asking yourself two questions; #1 Do I actually want what they are offering? and #2 Am I willing to give this stranger on the internet my email address? The power of the two-step optin form is that it completely takes away the risk on the first steps because you only have to decide whether you actually want what is on offer or not. Once you've decided that “yes, this is something I want” you have made a decision and clicking on the link is a commitment to yourself that you will take steps to acquire this item. Only then you are presented with the optin form at the perfect moment, which provides you with a simple means to access the benefit that you just decided you want.

How to Create Two Step Optin Forms

There are a few ways to create these powerful two step optin forms on the market, however they were previously reserved for big ticket marketers and required you to lock your optin forms into a single provider with monthly subscriptions. After investing in one of these tools myself I soon realised that locking your lead generation, quite literally the lifeline of many businesses, into these tools where you are locked into monthly fees and everything can be cancelled by a third party at a moments notice is a bad idea.

That's why I would recommend the Thrive Leads plugin for WordPress that helps you to quickly and easily create two-step optin forms that you control. You can simply install the Thrive Leads plugin on your WordPress powered sites and within minutes you can add two-step optin forms to all of your posts and pages no matter what themes you are using and with no lock-in or subscription fees. In fact you can create pretty much any type of optin form you might need for your site with this plugin, it's definitely made an impression.

Whatever solution you take advantage of, if you want to increase the amount of leads in your business, I'd seriously recommend that you consider adding some two-step optin forms to your marketing mix to boost your conversions and grow your email marketing list.

Recently I took a trip to Bali for the first time and was thrown into a world where notes are worth hundreds of thousands just for a meal and everyone you meet on the street is selling something. Whilst it's a beautiful country with some idyllic locations once you get a little bit off the main tourist track, in the city where everyone is fighting for a share of your wallet it gets pretty intense. As I came to terms with my new environment these are some of the business lessons that I observed in practice and in some cases relearned.

1. Trust is key.

When you are in a completely new environment you have to make quick decisions with limited information. Even the most frequent travellers can't help but notice when there is a certificate from a recognized brand such as TripAdvisor on the wall of a restaurant in a row of equally intimidating venues. Of course people will try to take advantage of this fact and I'm sure that some of these certificates were less than legitimate. Many of the street traders were aware of this and were going out of their way to offer the familiar by wearing T-Shirts from trusted hotel brands and tourist bodies as they tried to sell you things when they were clearly not related to the organisation in question.

Even if you have no prior reference points you will start to take cues from your environment. Whilst standing out in business is often seen as a good thing; when there is a line of official taxis that are all the same colour and there is a knackered car that looks completely different claiming to be from the same company and the driver is wearing a uniform that is almost but not quite the same, you start to ask questions.

2. Networks matter.

When you are constantly being sold to, when you finally take a chance on someone and they deliver exactly on their promise they immediately get a credibility boost. When it comes to the same situation again unless you are much more likely to return to them. But it doesn't stop there. It can almost generate a type of halo effect so when they go on to recommend someone or something else, you trust their opinion even when it's completely unrelated to the original reason you sought them out.

3. Friendliness sells.

Nobody likes being aggressively sold to but they love to buy from a true sales person. Even when you want something, if somebody comes to you and puts on the hard sell, it generates the same kind of feeling as a fight or flight situation. You are forced to make a snap decision and if it isn't yes, then you are going to do anything you can to stop the person from trying to sell to you. 

However when you can connect with someone and they've built rapport even over a very short time, when they go for the close you are at ease and the positive feeling they've generated forms part of the decision process. Even if you decline on the first instance, if you later decide you want what they've offered the first time and they made a big enough impression you may even seek them out again.

4. There is always more than one price.

Nowhere was this more true than in Bali where tourist packages were often sold in US dollars as well as Indonesian Rupiah with both values quite often being quite different. However beyond even this even the printed prices were variable. There was quite often an unspoken locals price vs a tourist price. Whilst I can't comment on the locals price, there was a lot of room for movement on the tourist price. Quite often the price we paid for something would be less than half of the original price printed or requested, and even then we probably didn't always get their best deal possible. As long as the product is being sold for more than the cost of producing/providing it then a vendor is still making a profit.

5. Where you sell can make the difference.

If you're looking for a painting and you're open to browsing then you will probably head to an area known as the painting district. Differentiate on your quality whilst placing yourself in the right locations and then build a relationship. This is equally true online, you place yourself on the channels, tools, and networks where customers that might want your product are already spending time.

6. Accept no as an answer.

There are plenty of leads for most businesses so work hard but be willing to accept loss and move on to the next target. If you are trying to persuade someone to buy something they don't need or want you are fighting an uphill battle. Learn to push past objections but also to recognise when the sale simply isn't the right fit.

7. Ask people what they want and give it to them.

It will be hard to argue why you shouldn't buy it if someone provides exactly what you were looking for at a good price. The best salespeople we encountered in the streets would go out of their way to make a connection and find out our plans, so they could sell something relevant and push us in the right direction. When they actually understood and delivered what we wanted we were happy to be sold.

Business Lessons Are Everywhere…

All too often there are lessons in life surrounding us if only we took the time to notice. Traveling puts you in a completely new environment and can sometimes make those lessons stand out more than usual. But there is nothing stopping you from taking the travellers mindset to your home wherever that may be and really drinking in what your environment is telling you.

Have you learned business lessons from travel? I'd love to hear some your stores, feel free to comment or tweet @danielmcclure.

“Don't change anything on launch day. Better yet, don't change anything you haven't tested on a staging server before!”

In the world of technology if something is going to go wrong, you can pretty much be assured that it will happen when you least want it. (When do you ever want things to go wrong?)

That is one reason why I'm such a big advocate of regularly backing up your websites and avoiding automatic updates of software except for critical issues and even then, somebody else's idea of critical may be different to yours.

This week we launched a special promotion on a brand new plugin, set up two paid promotions, shared news with some key partners, and of course that is the exact moment that WordPress decided to break on us with infamous white screen of death!

Definitely not what you want when you've got a whole bunch of paid traffic hitting your websites…

The WordPress White Screen of Death & How to Fix It!

The method I used for hunting down the issues was to check the plugins first. If WordPress fails 9 times out of 10 it will be because of a plugin gone wild. To check if the source of a white screen is a plugin you can connect via FTP into your WordPress server and rename your plugins folder. This temporarily removes all plugin functionality without actually deactivating them inside of your dashboard.

No surprises a rogue plugin was causing the white screen error so I got work hunting it down. I updated four plugins manually this morning so to rule them out I set the plugin folder back to its original name via ftp and then renamed each of the individual plugin folders by adding “-test” to the end of the folder names. If it was one of the plugins then visiting the home page should now work.

Unfortunately in my case it wasn't one of these so I had to go through renaming every plugin on the site one by one until I found the offending plugin. After sorting through far too many plugins (note to self – remove deactivated plugins to make life easier (and more secure)). I finally found it was premium shortcode plugin from a third-party I no longer needed. Upon uninstalling it , my site magically sprung back to life.

So in short; I'm sorry if you tried to access the site today and found it down!

It wasn't the highlight of my day for sure, however I thought it worth sharing the story so you would know why and perhaps a few people could learn my bad experience.

Key Takeaways

• Regularly review and deactivate (and delete!) unused plugins.
• Bugs will creep in when you least want them – Backup and Update Regularly!
• Check every type of page on your site after you update key plugins.
• Test everything on a staging server before updating your main website.
• Don't change your website on the day you launch a new product unless necessary.
• To find out if a plugin is causing an error – rename its file folder and check again.
• Make sure you check and check again, every page you are sending paid traffic to.

An Introduction to Negative Keywords

When creating a PPC campaign for search you will typically spend the majority of your time before launching a campaign researching the best keywords. This is obviously an important step as it makes sure that people are actually presented your adverts in their search results, however it can also cast a pretty wide net. In many cases you'll find yourself paying for traffic that never even had a chance of converting. Negative keywords are a simple way for you to filter out people with a search intent that is more likely to cost you money than actually earn anything.

To give you an example someone searching for a “Windows 8 Review” is a whole lot more likely to make a purchase than someone searching for a “Free Windows 8 Torrent”. If you were Microsoft, the chances are you're not going to want to pay for the traffic in the second search query example as they are unlikely to buy and will just end up costing you money in the process. You may not have software that can be pirated but there are many other types of query that might not be worth paying for.

Common Negative Keyword Categories

• Freebie / Discount Seekers – Free, Coupons, Cheap, etc
• Second Hand Buyers – eBay, GumTree, TradeMe, CraigsList, etc
• Hacking/Cracking Searchers –  Torrents, Warez, Hack, Nulled, etc
• Job Seekers – Careers, Jobs, Hiring, Work, etc
• Information Seekers – What is, how to, About, Stats, etc
• Tutorial/Guide Searches – Training, Class, Books, etc

These categories are a good starting point to think about other ways that people might be using your selected keywords. If the type of search doesn't match your goals from the advert, the chances are you shouldn't be paying for it.

Of course there will always be exceptions to the rule and in some cases your product may even fall into one of the categories above in which case you definitely shouldn't include related negative keywords.

Managing Your Negative Keywords

If you are driving traffic to more than one landing page or offer, you should always try to add negative keywords on a campaigns or case by case basis rather than coming up with a long list of every possible situation that your company might want to block at some point.

Whilst your business is likely focused in a specific area, the context of your conversations is likely to change over time and depending on your specific goals with each paid advertisement, e.g. leads vs sales. You might be offering a sale or purchases one day and promoting a lead generation report on a topic the next.

To make the process of adding negative keywords for your campaigns simpler you can build your own personal swipe file of keywords and categorise them so they can easily be copy/pasted into your next campaign.

I use a simple text file in my campaigns that contains categorised lists of negative keywords for specific scenarios, but it makes sense to build your own unique lists as every case is different.

If there is enough demand we may release a tool for creating your own starter list to work from so if that sounds like something you'd want, feel free to raise your hand in the comments or via email.

No matter how you build and manage your negative keywords, just don't forget to include them in your next campaign. Your PPC budgets will thank you for it.

Looking At The Numbers

One of the things I got right early on was using a central tool to create dynamic links that I could change on the fly and would track visitors numbers and referring domains. The first of which was GoTryThis before later moving onto a self hosted WordPress solution called Ninja Affiliate. This has allowed me to go back over fours years worth of data and look at products I drove the most traffic to and also where the referrals came from.

[su_note note_color=”#e8e6f7″ radius=”0″]Please Note: The data shared here is based on approximately 60,000 affiliate offer clicks in just under four years and only relates to links that I could route through my tracking systems. Sometimes due to technical capabilities, policy restrictions and various other reasons some promotions won't have been tracked within this data set.[/su_note]

Top 10 Most Trafficked Affiliate Products

The first step I took was to analyse the most trafficked products that I recommended over the entire four year period. The top promoted products in alphabetical order are:

• Hostgator (1.89%)
• FreeAgent (2.07%)
• OptimizePress (1.75%)
• OptinSkin (1.73%)
• Namecheap (3.48%)
• S3Flowshield (3.55%)
• StandardTheme (No longer active)
• StudioPress (3.79%)
• Thesis Theme (6.67%)
• WooThemes (3.55%)

The list of products isn't surprising considering my main focus has been around WordPress development and digital marketing. In fact I only recommend products that I use myself or would recommend for use, which still covers all of these products to this day except the StandardTheme which is no longer sold and was moved to WooThemes.

What The Most Clicked Products Don't Show You

Considering the products above accounted for a combined total of over 28% of all my affiliate traffic you would expect to see some healthy commissions on all of those products. In fact to the best of my knowledge; I never made a single sale of any WooThemes product, I've haven't received any commissions for Namecheap, and I was never credited with the sale of any copies of the Thesis Theme even though I've sent more traffic there than anywhere else. Traffic alone doesn't tell you the full story!

It's not that I don't make any affiliate sales, on the same account that my Thesis promotions flopped I actually have an extremely healthy $46.05 EPC (Earnings Per Click) across all my promotions which means that if the total commissions I earned were split evenly between every click I sent, each one would be worth over $46! This means I could theoretically spend up to $45 to get a single click and I would still be in profit, even more if you ruled out dud products that have never made a sale.

Of course this will vary depending on the traffic source and how they actually get to the point of clicking as some sources are much more likely to be primed than others. i.e a personal recommendation to a friend or client vs a generic click from a banner ad. However it highlights the importance of tracking traffic and tying it back to actual data about the number of sales. Whilst I am quite happy to recommend products that weren't making sales because I use and believe in them, if I were paying for that traffic and relied on breaking a profit it would be a very different story.

Show Me The Money 

When looking at the promotions that have actually driven the most profit in my affiliate marketing over the past few years the top 10 would look very different. There would still be one or two of the top 10 trafficked promotions however there would also be others that have consistently made money over the years with very few clicks, there would be affiliate programs where I make recurring revenue from a single sale and there would be products and promotions such as live events that had a limited shelf life but generated healthy commissions.

Note to affiliate marketers: Whilst most of the above could apply to both product or in house marketers as well as affiliates, there is one thing in particular that affiliates should be aware of if paying for their promotions. In some markets more than others, there are some shady practices used by affiliate program owners, affiliate networks and even other affiliates that can hijack your commissions.

If you're sending significant traffic to a company and it doesn't seem to be converting or if someone claims to have bought through your link but it isn't reflected, then you should double check your links first and if they appear to be working, it is probably worth reaching out to find out what is going on. Whether it is a simple mistake or a larger problem at least you will be aware of what is going on.

Biggest Affiliate Marketing Traffic Sources

Now this next section is very likely to be indicative more of my own marketing methods over the four year period rather than a conclusive report on which sources work best but I felt it could be useful to explore anyway.

In order to simplify things for analysis I decided to limit the referral data to referring domains. So rather than looking at inpidual pages such as a specific blog post, I grouped under the top level domain. To take things a step further, I then categorised each domain so that anyone could get a feel for the types of traffic sources without needing to have a deep knowledge of my business or to dig through all of the sites.

One last problem challenge… 77% of my traffic had no referring domain tracked for one reason or another, either it was a direct link, it didn't come from another site, or it failed to track. Therefore what follows is a list of the types of sites that have been the biggest sources of traffic to my affiliate marketing promotions and any percentages shown are of the 22.71% of visits that were tracked to a referring domain. Simple! … hopefully … probably not ;)

Top 20 Affiliate Marketing Traffic Sources

• Own Website – Blog 55.27%
• Direct Link 20.10%
• Social Publishing 7.00%
• Social Media 3.35%
• Own Website – Banner Promotion 2.84%
• Online Video 2.73%
• Own Website – Dedicated Affiliate Site 1.87%
• Link Shortener 1.61%
• Direct Link – Redirect 1.53%
• Web Service or Tool 0.75%
• Own Website – Product 0.66%
• Search Engine 0.55%
• Email Marketing 0.47% (*see note below)
• Directory 0.36%
• Scraper Blog 0.28%
• Own Website – Services 0.20%
• Social Bookmarking 0.16%
• Third Party Site 0.16%
• Online Forum 0.10%
• Own Website – Support 0.02%

As you can see from the above the top traffic source across all of my affiliate marketing has been through my collection of blogs and this isn't by accident. As we've already discussed the products I promote are the products that I use or recommend, and what the data above doesn't explicitly tell you is that most of these referrals are probably plain old reviews. Not cheesy review sites or fake review tables but just simple honest product reviews on a blog.

In fact taking things further, I would guess that a large share of the social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc), social publishing (e.g. HubPages, Squidoo, etc) and online video (e.g. YouTube, DailyMotion, etc) are also from my reviews and short recommendations.

As all of the tracked links are simply redirects, it is unlikely they would be bookmarked so the Direct Links are probably personal recommendations to friends and clients (or in some cases; me, messing up the stats to test they are working).

The only more traditional “digital advertising” is the 2.84% of banner promotions which I know offhand weren't converting well and the dedicated affiliate sites, which did convert well until they were obliterated from search results for being thin on actual content.

With the majority of almost 60,000 clicks in 4 years coming from simple reviews and recommendations of products, it goes to show that this can be an effective way of generating buzz even if you don't want to get in too deep with affiliate marketing.

[su_note]*Re: Email Marketing – This is not representative of my actual email marketing as most of my email traffic goes through a different tool so the actual numbers here would be much higher and would likely fall into the top 5 sources.[/su_note]

In Summary: Measure What is Important 

I was all too eager to get started and when the money started rolling in I probably could have asked a lot more questions. In my naive view of affiliate marketing the only thing that mattered was that I kept driving traffic to my affiliate links and then the money would keep coming in. Little did I know I was probably throwing money away by ignoring the Pareto Principle a.k.a the 80/20 rule.

Actively tracking traffic only tells you half the story. It tells you how many people saw an offer but it doesn't tell you how many converted into a sale or even which products were the top converting. Wherever possible you should integrate conversion tracking so you can get direct feedback on how your offers are performing rather than having to manually tie together multiple dashboards. You should try to set unique tracking links depending on the source of your traffic so you can see which sources are driving the most conversions. And last but not least it can be beneficial to keep track of how products are converting over time in relation to the amount of traffic you send. If you notice that you are driving more traffic whilst conversions are dropping there is probably a problem somewhere.

Additional Takeaways for Product Owners

Affiliate marketing works.  If you have a product that provides genuine value to someone the numbers are there for both traffic and revenue even at smaller scales with a few advocates.

Traffic is not equal to sales. You need to stay on top of your conversion rates to ensure that you make the most of any traffic that affiliates send you. If people are pro-actively driving traffic to your sites and you waste it, most will stop putting the time in.

If you found this analysis useful or would like to share you own affiliate marketing experiences, I'd love to hear from you in comments, or even feel free to drop me an email.

Alternatively if you're interested in being an affiliate with us here then you can apply here.

Any business that has been active for a while will start to develop certain complexities and some of them may be hurting your business. Whether it is the way that a customer signs up for your newsletter, the system you have for accepting payments or even just the way they find information on your site. When one of these things is less than ideal it can be easy to forget ignore but eventually they will pile up and you can end up with a bad experience that simply won't convert

What do you want your customer to do?

Many businesses will share the same kind of goals; subscribe to our emails, contact us, and not least, “buy our stuff” but the actual route for doing this will look different in almost every company you look at. To really understand how your customer experiences your processes, you need to take some time out every now and then to look at your core business objectives and then go through the full process that a potential customer would have to go through.

Actively observe, even obsess, about every little detail as you go through the experience and you might be surprised at what you find. We recently ran a full audit of the processes on one site where several of the optin forms lead to pages that no longer existed and on a few pages the primary “BUY NOW” CTA (call to action) buttons on a site were simply broken, i.e. you clicked them and nothing happened, nothing at all, talk about a conversion killer!

Even if your problems aren't that bad, if you haven't checked in on your customer journeys in a while there is likely to be something. Perhaps you are linking to old or no longer relevant content or support articles? Are the dates or statistics on some of your content starting to look a little stale? Is there an opportunity to consolidate similar content or even remove entire steps from the journey to make things easier on your customers.

Breathing New Life Into Your Customer Journeys

Once you've been through the process of updating, fact checking, simplifying and reducing steps relentlessly there is one final thing that you may not be undertaking which can really help you to take things to the next level. That is of course the process of split-testing for conversion optimisation.

Now that you know your customer journey is solid. You can begin to actually optimise the process further. So many businesses focus on trying to bring in huge numbers of traffic to their site whilst placing relatively little focus on actually maximising the impact for your existing traffic numbers. You can start to test even with just one or two elements such as:

• Your page and section headlines
• The size, colour and location of your CTAs
• Short vs Long Form Content
• The alignment and whitespace of your content
• Your website copywriting itself

Even if you've tested these things in the past, the simple fact is your processes may have changed throughout your review, the web is constantly evolving regardless, common devices adapt, your business will have been evolving and the type of customers using your business can change too. Like they say in the financial markets; your past performance may not be indicative of future success.

If you take some time out every now and then to review your customer journeys, you will be able to squash bugs, cut out conversion killers and constantly take steps to improve the value of existing traffic to your site even if your audience doesn't grow. However in reality when you take the chance to review these things, you'll probably do things that naturally grow your audience anyway so it is a win either way.

As we invest more in our social profiles we place our trust in large organisations that in many cases won't even know who you really are on one to one basis. If they decide they don't like your account for any reason they can shut down your profiles without notice at any time. It's been seen again and again and touches everyone from unconnected personal profiles all the way through to celebrity and corporate profiles so if you think you are safe you probably aren't.

There is one tool to help you take back control and it's called SocialSafe. At its most basic SocialSafe is a tool that you can use to back up your social media profiles and updates to your own computer. You can simply set up a regular sync so that every status you ever post to your profiles is backed up and protected in the even that the company shuts down or bans your account for any reason.

In most cases SocialSafe not only backs up your data but also keeps a record of your connections for you so if you find yourself in the situation of having to rebuild and reconnect you will have a highly targeted list of who was following your before. If you do nothing else backing up all of your professional social media profiles with Something like SocialSafe is exactly the kind of insurance you need when investing in social media marketing.

SocialSafe As A Marketing Tool

I also mentioned at the go beginning of the article that using SocialSafe presents a few hidden opportunities. You see once SocialSafe actually downloads a local copy of all this data it also provides high level summaries and offers you the ability to export all of your data as well. You can export data or simply use the basic social media analysis tools built right in.

Social Media Insights

You can use the Insights section of the tool if you are not using any more advanced monitoring tools to get a quick feel for the people who are most engaged with your social media profiles by look at the Most Interactions section. Additionally you see what types of content have been working well for you recently by browsing the Most Popular Photos and Status Updates. This on its own is nothing ground breaking if you use other professional monitoring tools but if even if you have it can be a great quick insight that looks across all of your social accounts rather than dipping in and out of various other social media dashboards and you can easily customise the data to look over a custom data period or even the entire lifetime of your accounts.

Mining Your Own Social Media Data Via Export

If you really want to start digging deep into your social media data you can export pretty much anything and create spreadsheets containing the underlying trends in your social media profiles to build charts showing your activity over time, keep track of the growth rates of your profiles and more.

To give an actual example of one of the ways that I use SocialSafe; One thing that has always bugged me in Twitter was the fact that searches on the site are limited to recent updates and if you want to look through the history of your account, you have to forever scroll down as the page reloads the next small batch of Tweets. With SocialSafe you can simply export all of the Tweets from an account, set up searches for specific types of content and mentions and browse your entire history. If you find that perhaps an old dynamic link points to something you would no longer need you can update the links to something more relevant. Alternatively if you you linked to content that is no longer relevant or accurate you can simply use the exported link to visit the Tweet on Twitter and delete it from the site.

Getting Started With SocialSafe

SocialSafe is a paid tool however it really doesn't cost much at all, with its current pricing set at £4.99 / $6.99 per year, a tiny cost in comparison to how much time and effort we invest in these accounts over a year. I've been using this tool for years now and it is constantly being developed and upgraded. On the odd times I've reached out and suggested features or with queries about a particular feature the team has always been very friendly and responsive. Whether you're simply backing up your social media profiles to protect yourself from the social giants or you want to dig into the data behind your profiles I can't recommend SocialSafe enough.  I don't have a professional relationship with the company but if you have any questions about getting my post or getting started, just reach out and I'll do my best to help.

Here are a selection of sites that you can take advantage of if you are based in the UK…

• Yelp
• Yell.com
• BrownBook
• Google My Business
• My118 Information
• Market Location
• The Local Data Company
• Infoserve
• Brownbook.net
• Thomson Local

One word of warning/opportunity: Many businesses also use these directories to acquire B2B (Business to Business) sales leads, so once your phone number and email are out there you are going to receive sales calls. Make sure you use your business rather than personal number, and if you use an extension number then be strategic with what you list.

What do SSL and HSTS actually do?

SSL is a security system based on a cryptographic protocol for the web that essentially scrambles any data being transferred between a user and a website in a certain way that only the two original parties can understand the information being sent utilising an encryption key generated when they connect. It's the reason why you see some sites like ours with an address starting “https://” rather than “http://”. SSL prevents malicious actors from stealing confidential data in transit such as login details, payment information and more. Plus if you're not already sold on using SSL just for its security benefits it could also give your site a boost in the Google Search results.

HSTS, which stands for HTTP Strict Transport Security, is an additional layer of security which ensures that if you visit a site with SSL enabled that your browser only loads that site over SSL from that point forward to prevent future attacks as well where people may hijack the connection.

The Different Types of SSL

There are two main types of certificate that you can get; Standard Validation which verifies the domain and places a secure green padlock in the address bar as seen on our site and the image below and Extended Validation which verifies the domain and the company behind it and gives you the green bar seen below in the PayPal example. There are also specific variations which allow Wildcard Validation so you can use the certificate across multiple domains or subdomains.

How to Enable SSL & HSTS

The first step that you will need to take is purchasing an SSL certificate. I personally purchased the one for this site from Namecheap but you can use any reputable company selling certificates from trusted certificate authorities (the companies that actually issue the certificates). The easiest way to get your certificate set up on your domain itself will likely be asking the support team from your web host as each environment may differ. Once the domain itself is secured you may also want to read about how to enable SSL on a WordPress site and how you can enable HSTS with this simple WordPress plugin.

Once you have everything set up on your site you can check that it is configured correctly by entering your domain on the Qualys SSL test. This is worth using veen if you're sure you got it right because it can also suggest improvements that you can make to ensure your site is extra-secure.

So let us know; is your site on SSL yet?

You can either use Scribe SEO as a WordPress plugin, Microsoft Word Add-On or simply use the web based app to write your content and the system will help to suggest appropriate keywords to use, provide tips on how best to optimise your tags and content and provide you with both a page and site score so that you can be sure you are on the right path.

One of the best things about using Scribe is that even though all of the suggestions are generated without requiring you to undertake extensive market research you will naturally start to learn about what people are searching for and how to structure your content whilst following along so that in time you may not even want or need to use it.

The professional Scribe plan comes with 300 evaluations included and up to 700 keyword evaluations every single month meaning that you will likely be able to use the service across more than one site and even a small team of bloggers is unlikely to run out of evaluations so you will always have Scribe at your side making sure your content marketing is sending out the right message whilst helping more people than ever to discover your membership site.

You can find out more about Scribe SEO here!

I've spoken before about building your customer avatar so you can connect with your audience on a deeper level. Essentially you build up a profile of what your average customer looks like so you can communicate more effectively. One of the activities we recommend is thinking about what other sites your customers might visit but beyond a few educated guesses and actually asking them getting real data isn't always easy since sites have become more privacy/security conscious.

However there is a little known trick you can use to get a general idea of some of the sites your customers are visiting. You start out by creating an account with Perfect Audience for retargeting campaigns (which are also very powerful in themselves). Then once you've gathered at least 1000 visits to your site with the tags in place, your ads will start appearing on their ad network. Eventually a profile will start to develop of the top 100 sites that your ads are served on and where conversions are coming from. This is usually used for optimising your conversions depending on the traffic source but it can also give you a window into some of the other sites your audience are visiting.

A brief look into the history of domains that appear in my list show dating sites, which could suggest that some of my audience are both seeking a partner. Several other sites are dedicated to CSS (a design oriented programming language), as well as a few icon and graphics sites which would suggest that there are a few web developers or designers visiting my sites. There are consumer focused real estate sites, suggesting that some of my audience may be in the market for a house, as well as a few hits on holiday accommodation and hostel sites suggesting travellers in the mix. There are some professional advertising blogs which suggest an interest in mainstream advertising and a few sites that seem so new it is possible the owners themselves or one of their close contacts are viewing the sites.

You can guesstimate a lot of things by looking at the sites that appear in your reports, but it is important to note that it is definitely not conclusive and should only be considered as part of further research. There is every possibility some of the sites that appeared in the list were launched by popups or over-aggressive marketing from other ad networks. It's also possible that other users of the same computer were visiting sites after the original visitor was cookied. However over time there is a high likelihood that you will start to see patterns and larger numbers of visits for certain types of sites so there is a fair chance these are things that your audience are actually interested in.

It got me thinking; what if you could harness the excitement that an advent calendar creates as part of your marketing. I did some research and found out that many large companies have already been doing this for some time but with solutions costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars, I knew it could be made more accessible for the smaller businesses and the challengers.

Promotion Calender for WordPress is the latest plugin released by The Modern Entrepreneur and it is designed to get you more optins, convert more sales and spread more excitement around your brand through a simple advent calendar that you can host on your WordPress site and provide daily gifts to keep your users coming back for more.

To find out exactly how the plugin works and why I'll be using it this December and check out the official Promotion Calendar page and take it for a test drive to see what results you can pull in this Christmas.

When creating a content focused website one of the first things you will need to decide on is the types of content that you will be offering your audience. This will have a big influence on the way that you ultimately choose to structure your site. If you are creating a tightly focused training on a specific area of a topic then an instantly delivered mini-course many be most appropriate, however if you are delivering a more generalised training course it may be better delivered over time in a modular fashion or even consistent ongoing posts with no definite starting point of finish.

If your site follows the latter models of ongoing content then it's important that you stick to a set schedule to keep your audience engaged with your site and to increase the sticky-ness of your site. Whilst its all too easy to set a schedule at the start of your site with no real plan, its just as easy to miss a post or two and let your site begin to slip. One way to counter this is with scheduled content.

The Power of Scheduled Content

In most modern content management systems, and definitely in WordPress, you can set up scheduled posts in much the same way that you would any other…

You go through all the standard steps of creating a post for your membership site but instead of simply publishing the post you edit the “Publish On” date to one in the future and then hit Publish. Your post will then be held in a queue and will post at the exact time and date that you have selected (remember international times may vary).

Creating a Publishing Calendar

Once you've mastered the art of “future publishing” scheduled posts you can easily spend a few hours or days every now and then creating lots of content at once and set everything to publish for a future date. Once you create enough you can begin to create complete calenders of content so that you can take your mind off publishing to a particular site for months at a time as it all runs in the background.

When you start future publishing on a regular basis the standard WordPress post management page can quickly become quite crowded and hard to navigate. Luckily there is a plugin called WordPress Editorial Calendar that adds an easy to understand publishing calendar to your site so that you can easily see what posts are coming up at a glance and make any necessary changes or updates as you go along.

The WordPress Editorial Calendar Screen Cast from Zack Grossbart on Vimeo.

What is Grandfathered Pricing?

When launching any subscription site it's not uncommon to offer a discount or trial offer to your new members. Often your site isn't as full as it will be one day, the community is just forming and coming together and it can help people to make the jump and become members of an unproven site. However one way you can build retention into your launch is by setting a low price for your first members during your launch period and locking them into that price for the lifetime of the site.

With grandfathered pricing, if you increase the subscription price of your site in the future your first customers still only ever pay the same subscription level that you offered during your launch. This is powerful because it acts as an incentive to sign up during your launch to get the discount and creates a genuine urgency deadline for members to register before the offer closes. But it also means that when a member signs up to your site they are far less likely to leave it as they risk losing the discount even if they decide to register again at a later date.

If your site is running Wishlist Member then setting up grandfathered pricing is a simple process as the subscription price is somewhat detached from the subscription levels with most payment processors so all you need to do is set the lower price as normal during your launch. After your launch period is over just raise the price on your payment button for future members and all your existing members will continue to pay the subscription price that they set up their contract with. This is also true for most membership solutions that integrate with PayPal.

Whilst it's not often you could say a Hollywood celebrity might just be the positive spokesman for entrepreneurship to the modern generation, however it seems like Ashton Kutcher may have just pulled it off. He recently won a Teen Choice 2013 award and rather than roll into a list of “thank you”s he launched into a five-minute speech that took the audience and public by surprise. Talking of opportunity looking like a lot of hard work, smart being sexy and living a life you build his speech sounded a lot like the voice of many modern entrepreneurs.

He recently spent a long time studying for the role of Steve Jobs in Jobs and some might say that it rubbed off on him. Whether you take his speech as sincerity or a cynical marketing ploy to reach out to the audience of the movie, it's hard to fault his message to a celebrity-inspired generation that often seems to be lacking role-models with substance. I for one hope that he continues to share that vision, if even one young person takes it to heart and manages to break from a negative world view it will have been worth it.

Respect to Ashton Kutcher and the next generation of entrepreneurs and world changers!

Watch Ashton Kutcher's Teen Choice Awards 2013 Speech

Bitcoin for business could offer a lot of promise as a payment solution in the digital age and for that reason many entrepreneurs are starting to take note. In fact there have been several recent investments in Bitcoin companies such as CoinBase and BitPay by major players in the tech space. Armed with this validation the question on a lot of entrepreneurs mind is whether their business should accept Bitcoins.

Should You Start Accepting Bitcoins in Your Business?

Whilst I'd love to give a yes or no answer it isn't quite that simple yet. There are a lot of things that will have implications as to where you fall on the fence to that question. A few things that you will want to think about are:

• Will you directly transfer bitcoins into fiat currency i.e. USD, GBP, EUR, etc?
• Do you see bitcoins as currency that you will use or as an investment?
• Are you happy holding a currency that tends to fluctuate in value on a mostly upward trend?
• How easy is it to integrate with your current payment solutions?
• Will your customers actually use and pay bitcoin?
  (Hint: You might find new ones by accepting bitcoin!)

After asking those questions in my web and marketing services business I decided that I was ready to accept bitcoins and set out to get started. Once again I was faced with the reality of working with an emerging currency…

How To Actually Accept Bitcoins

The current options for accepting bitcoin for business on an automated basis are fairly limited right now. If you are providing services on a personalised basis you can easily create receiving addresses with the bitcoin wallet software that is available, however using bitcoin as a merchant or retailer with managing the whole process can be a little trickier.

My initial thought use a Bitcoin WordPress plugin but these are pretty limited which lead to me building my own Bitcoin Payment WordPress Plugin, however until that is fully tested and ready for public consumption I registered with a company called BitPay for payment processing, the application took about a day to process before they got me set up.

Letting The World Know You Accept Bitcoins

Once you've decided to accept bitcoins and actually have the means to start trading then it's time to let the world know. The easiest way to get started is simply by adding an image to your site notifying people that you accept bitcoin. There is a great collection of royalty free images for this purpose on the Bitcoin Wiki and you may want to share a blog post letting people know.

However if you really want to utilise your acceptance of Bitcoin as a marketing asset you can also promote your services through the Bitcoin Wiki Trade listings. There is a small one time payment (currently 0.01 BTC) and you are good to go! Another option is to start networking and offering your services in the trade sections of popular bitcoin forums.

So is Bitcoin Ready for Business?

As I hope this article has shown, Bitcoin is ready for enthusiastic entrepreneurs and businesses to start utilising it as a currency but it is in its early stages. Anyone that gets on board now is definitely an early adopter, however this early adoption might also be the ticket to getting some extra free/low-cost promotion and if the trading price of bitcoin continues to rise, the money you accept for your products or services could rise in tandem.

Do you agree with their definition?

If not, what would you change?

The problem is most people aren't taught how to set up these kind of videos at school, it's not something that you would come across until you really need to know how. That gives you an advantage if you learn how to make these videos and can guide people through the process of something. Whether you are selling software or teaching something you can get your point across in the half the time and in a way that accelerates the learning process.

To get started all you need to do is pick up some screen capture software. I've personally used Camtasia Studio (you can get a free trial), Easy Video Suite and a few others that don't deserve a mention. Both of these solutions work great with the main difference being that Easy Video Suite manages the whole process for you from recording through to hosting it on the web and even tracking and analytics once your videos are live, where as Camtasia Studio is more of a fully featured screen capture software solution with advanced editing options but a steeper learning curve as you need to manage the full process and host the results yourself.

Once you've mastered the process it is easy to create short demonstration videos and tutorials for pretty much anything you can do on your computer. Here are a few ideas to get you creative juices flowing:

• Software Demonstration – Are you selling software or SaaS (Software-as-a-Service)? Increase conversions by showing people how your software works before they buy access.
• Video Marketing – You can create and publish video tours of your websites and digital products to social media sites and blogs to expose a wider audience to your offering.
• Customer Support – If people are having issues with any part of your product or service, often a quick video can help you to clear things up and if you're not sharing personal details you might even be able to reuse the video for marketing purposes.
• Training Videos – Create videos that teach people how to  do something very specific (like how to build a membership site for example ;) ) and then you can sell access to those videos online.

After creating your screen-capture video, the next step is to get them to rank. Discover the hacks to ranking your videos on Google in this post.

1. Increase Trust With a Personalised Appearance

In many cases people may just want to check that you are actually a real company and that they can contact you if they need anything. In these cases a personal picture of somebody from the business or the premises can go some way to reassuring the user that you are a legitimate and trustworthy business. It should go without saying this is most definitely NOT the place for stock photography if you really plan on earning their trust. For those users that do actually want to contact you this will also add personality to your website and if staff images are used it can give them someone to envisage writing to.

2. Reassure People With Introductory Text

When arriving at a blank page with just a contact form you can instantly put a lot of pressure on a users. The following thoughts can start to run through their mind:

Am I in the right place? How long will it take them to respond? Should I try call them instead? Have they answered my question elsewhere? 

You can prevent all of this with some well written and concise introductory text. A simple message that lets people know why they might contact you, how long responses typically take and potentially alternative methods of contact for specific queries can set aside doubts and encourage users that they are in the right place and should be reaching out to you through this medium.

3. Ruthlessly Reduce Form Fields

How many fields should a contact form have? According to Eloqua the optimum number of fields is between 5-10 but the more observant will notice that they are also basing this on the most commonly used number of fields. There is a clear pattern that the less fields you have the higher the likelihood of a form converting so if you don't need 5 then don't use that many. The key takeaway here is that you need to use as few fields as possible without sacrificing the objectives of your business. If you need to take telephone and web addresses then take them but know that you will be scaring away a percentage of users than if you could simply get these details at a later date.

4. Don't Make People Fill Out Necessary Fields

At first this may seem very similar to the last point but there is a key difference. Sometimes there are fields that you need to include for one reason or another but it may not be applicable to everyone that fills out the form. A simple “(Optional)” message besides the field may encourage people to fill out the form where they otherwise would have left due to an aversion of filling out a particular form field. If your form designer or contact form plugin allows it then you may also want to increase conditional logic to show fields only when they are needed.

5. Provide “Real World” Contact Details

When visiting a contact page users may also be seeking an address if you have a physical premises or a phone number so they can speak to somebody with on your company. Even if somebody decides not to use these details they can increase the level of trust just through their appearance as it shows your company is not simply hiding behind a website and the relative obscurity of the internet. You can also improve the SEO value of your contact page by including Schema markup either manually or through a local seo plugin to get your business appearing in local searches. A bonus to including your phone number is the click to call feature on many mobile devices.

6. Include a Privacy Notice

Whilst many users will be happy to submit an email address and name in exchange for a response many others may be wary if they have no prior experience of your business and if you ask for even more personal information this experience can be amplified. Including a simple notice along with your contact forms letting users know that you respect their privacy and even linking to your privacy policy can go a long way to reassuring people that you will respect their data. Whilst it depends on the audience your site aims at, attempts to make this friendly and personable whilst backed with a genuine privacy policy are likely to inspire more trust than a block of small print that nobody but a lawyer could understand.

7. Link to Support Pages

Whilst this tip may not increase the conversion rate of your actual contact form, it can seriously improve user satisfaction. Many websites have a support desk with a knowledge-base or at the very least an FAQ. Providing a link to these pages can often bring them to peoples awareness so that they can help themselves. A user that can get an instant answer on a question that has been bugging them with a single click will often be much happier than one that has to sit around waiting for their email to be responded too no matter how fact you email back.

8. Think Mobile, Act Universal

With the rapidly increasing adoption of the mobile web it is more important than ever that your website loads quickly and is fully accessible. Form elements like dropdowns can often be a nightmare to complete on a mobile device, especially when scrolling though countless countries to reach one near the bottom of the list. Try to use open and simple form fields that validate instead of complicating the entry method and where possible apply the correct HTML mark-up so that smartphones can present an optimised keyboard for the task at hand, plugins like Gravity Forms for WordPress are great for this.

9. Don't Lose Your Users With Maps

Whilst things like Google Maps can be useful for people that need to find your business premises they can also significantly impact page loads times. If you must include these then consider using an image of the map that links to the appropriate map page so that a mobile device can open it in the browser or app of their choice. If people aren't likely to need the map it may even be worth removing it completely to maintain the focus on getting people to contact you rather than being distracted by countless widgets.

10. Be Social

Whilst many early adopters in tech started this, it's quickly been adopted by some pretty large companies with great success. If you are highly active on social media sites like Twitter then simply providing your username or link on the contact page can encourage users to reach out so that you can fire back quick fire responses to their message and spend even less time in your overflowing email inbox! Users that connect through these channels are likely to receive other messages you broadcast through the medium as well which can spark the basis of a long term relationship.

In Summary…

Taking some simple steps to improve your contact page just one time can have a positive impact over the long term and increase the number of opportunities you have within your business. Whilst not every one of these tips will be applicable every time it's also important to consider whether they are for each case. It can be far too easy to just throw up a default contact form and think that your work is done but a little effort can go a long way.

Bitcoin

It is a decentralised digital currency without ownership or control and is built using open source technology and is community driven just like WordPress which is one of our key development platforms.

What are bitcoins?

Bitcoins are a form of virtual currency based on cryptographic code that enables people to transfer digitally and without the fees of premium merchant accounts. In essence they are one of the first global stateless currencies built for the digital age.

How Do Bitcoins Work?

Bitcoins are essentially encryption keys and lines of code stored in a digital wallet. This wallet can either be kept on your own computer Bitcoin Wallet or a hosted Bitcoin Wallet company such as Coinbase or Bitcoin exchange such as Bitstamp These keys are exchanged between wallets in exchange for goods, services, or currency and the market value follows supply and demand of the currency.

Why Did We Decide to Accept Bitcoins?

Bitcoins represent a growing economy and whilst the currency is widely regarded by people in finance, places to spend bitcoins are still limited in comparison to currencies like the Pound, Dollar, or Euro. We would like to do our little bit to encourage wider adoption of the Bitcoin currency and provide a legitimate way to invest bitcoins into building your business.

How Do I Get Bitcoins?

If you want to start trading in bitcoins or to use them as a Payment method then the easiest way to get started is with a bitcoin exchange such as Bitstamp to exchange your local currency, e.g. USD, GBP, or EUR, into bitcoins. The currency exchange will provide you an estimated value of a bitcoin compared to your local currency .

You can learn more about Bitcoin in this short introductory video from WeUseCoins.com:

In this article we take a look at a premium membership site designed for business owners that manage a flexible workforce to improve employee engagement.

Membership Strategies in Use

Annual Subscriptions
With one-time annual payments the site ensures that a premium price is paid for the monthly content even if the contract isn't renewed past the first year, which could easily happen when the content is specific to a change period of change within a business.

Tiered Content
Multiple levels of content available with premium slides that can be used in business environments falling into higher tiers.

Live Interaction
The top level members receive live interactive webinars and one-one-one consultation and strategy advice allowing for consultancy level pricing.

You can click on any item to find out more…

• Events Calendar on WordPress – Event Manager
• Events Calendar Plugin – WordPress Scheduling Plugin
• Contact Form 7 – Contact Form Plugin
• Google Analyticator – WordPress Analytics Plugin
• WP Audio Player – WordPress Audio Plugin
• Flv Player – Flash Player
• FV Flowplayer – Video Player
• SSG Google Audio Player – Audio Player
• All-in-One SEO – SEO Plugin
• Google Analytics – Web Analytics
• Unite – Business & Magazine Theme

Click here to see the site in action > 

To this end thousands of businesses around the world are now being run completely remotely with their team based all over the world. Whilst this easily works for small sole trading companies, the rise in technology dedicated to remote working means this approach can scale too. One example is a company called Automattic, creators of WordPress.com and many associated technologies for the popular WordPress publishing platform, who were founded in 2005 and were valued at over $1 billion as of May 2014 with an almost entirely distributed workforce. Whatever your business aspirations geography is becoming less of an issue.

When working on a business that allows you to work from anywhere it ones up a lot of new opportunities for yourself and people you work with. You can work out of your local coffee shop, work from home to schedule your time around family life, you can jump on a plane and travel the world whilst working at the same time or you can even rent office space and be content with the fact that you have the flexibility to dip out of the office every now and then, plus you will have less downtime when taking unavoidable trips.

With so many people now choosing to work remotely a new type of casual office space has started to emerge, the so called anti-café or co-working space. These are places where you can connect with people working in other businesses and get the benefits of working around other people without necessarily being tied to a single space. These co-working spaces will often hook you into a local community of business people and events that can help you to bring your business to the next level.

When you first start working remotely, if you haven’t done it before, you might not know how you work best so it is important to trial a variety of environments. You may also find that you work best on different types of things in different types of environment. For example you might find that you tend to work best in public places like coffee shops on things that require a certain amount of creativity but need a completely silent environment at home for writing or working on strategy.

One of the biggest things that I find influences my workspace is music so I always make sure to have access to some offline playlists and a decent pair of headphones. There is even a website where you can stream the ambient sounds of a coffee shop to help get you in the zone when you are somewhere else. However what is most important is understanding what helps you to work and finding those key productive environments wherever you may be working from.
What Next

They key things that you’ll need to be aware of are likely to be power sources and WiFi, although sometimes having some offline time can be just as if not more productive depending on your skillset. Whilst finding a local coffee shop shouldn’t be too hard, even in smaller towns, affordable office space is another thing. There is not really a single source that can be recommended as it will be different in every area, however your best bet is to ask other people that work remotely in your area, ask people at meetup groups or check out sites like ShareDesk.net.

In this article we take a look at a membership site that brings the personal fitness training service online.

Membership Strategies in Use

Sequential Content Delivery
Members get daily content in the form of workout videos. These keep the customers engaged and staggers the delivery of content so its delivered just on time.

Private Facebook Groups Community
Premium members get access to a Facebook group to encourage community engagement and continued membership.

Community Engagement
Content is delivered through a forum system to encourage interaction and commitment.

You can click on any item to find out more…

• Infusionsoft – Membership & eCRM
• Facebook Groups
• Google Analytics
• SimplePress – Membership Plugin
• Anything Slider – WordPress Slider Plugin

Click here to see the site in action > 

Membership Strategies in Use

Premium Training
Multiple training courses and eBooks are sold through both one-time payment fees and fixed term subscriptions ranging from $97 – $1997.

Mentoring Membership
A top-tier mentoring option is provided that includes one-to-one contact with the owner of the site.

Free Newsletter Promotion
The site and it's free newsletter is promoted through social media and video marketing to encourage sign ups.

You can click on any item to find out more…

• JW Player – Video Plugin
• CommentLuv – Blog Community Plugin
• Pinterest Pin It – Sharing Plugin
• WP Email – Sharing Plugin
• Contact Form 7 – Contact Form Plugin
• WP Post Ratings – WordPress Ratings Plugin
• W3 Total Cache – Performance Plugin
• WP Polls – WordPress Polling Plugin
• WP Minify – Performance Plugin
• WordPress Audio Player
• OptimizePress – WordPress Marketing Theme

Click here to see the site in action > 

The truth is that if you want to play the SEO game today you are going to have to do things a lot differently to how they have been done in the past. To provide some insight on what it takes for successful search engine optimisation I present to you an infographic that covers some of the most important shifts that you need to be aware of to rank well in 2013…

Membership Strategies in Use

Monthly or Annual Payments
Premium content can be purchased under an annual or monthly access membership that includes tutorials and bonus content.

Freemium Marketing
Many written and video tutorials available with full premium offering containing even more tutorials and content.

Premium 1-to-1 Support
Customers can email in their work for direct feedback from the membership site makeup artists.

Certification Programme
After completing all of the training inside the membership customers can take a 40 minute test to qualify for a real world printed certificate of completion.

You can click on any item to find out more…

• Google Analytics for WP by Yoast – Analytics Plugin
• JW Player – Video Player Plugin
• All-in-One SEO – SEO Plugin
• cforms2 – Contact Form Plugin
• Simple Survey – WordPress Survey Plugin
• Slick Social Share – Social Media Buttons
• NextGEN – Photo Gallery Plugin
• OptinPop – WordPress Optin Popups
• Q&A WordPress Plugin
• Avisio – Business and Portfolio Theme

Click here to see the site in action > 

In this article we take a look at a membership site that has been designed for a community that started as an offline newsletter for childrens book writers.

Membership Strategies in Use

Premium Only Content
There are no levels of free content available. To access the site people must sign up for a monthly or annual subscription.

Premium Course as Bonus
Rather than sell a front end course for writing childrens books the CBI Clubhouse offer their complete premium step-by-step course to everyone who signs up as a paid member of the site.

Premium Monthly Newsletter
Every month members can log in to download a new premium newsletter. This can be downloaded and printed which could be preferred by more traditional authors who may not be web savvy or enjoy reading online.

Community Engagement
Every member gets access to their active forums. This helps to create a sense of community and support which members will rarely want to leave.

You can click on any item to find out more…

• BackupBuddy – WordPress Backups
• Google Analytics – Site Statistics
• Wishlist Member – Membership System
• Cartpauj PM – Private Messaging Plugin
• WordPress Audio Player – Plays MP3s & Audio
• Pippity Lead Generation – Email Popup Plugin
• Pointelle Slider – Premium Slider Plugin
• Stick Admin Bar To Bottom WordPress Plugin
• Wishlist Tabs – Adds Tabbed Sidebar Widget
• WordPress Admin Bar Improved
• Better WordPress Minify – Speed Improvements
• BranfordMagazine Mobile Responsive Theme

Click here to see the site in action > 

1. Welcome Video / Message

When somebody logs into your membership for the first time they don’t know where things are, they've likely not had to navigate your site before and they won’t always know what they should be accessing first. They will also be looking for validation that they have made the right decision by investing in your membership site. This combination of factors can have a negative impact on your members if they feel lost and alone. Therefore a simple video introducing the community manager or a written message stating the great benefits they will receive from being a full member will help you make a great first impression.

Create a simple welcoming video. You can host it with YouTube but if you use something like Easy Video Suite or Wistia then you can also track how effective your video is and whether the majority of people are listening all the way through for the key points.

2. Membership Dashboard

In addition to this video you should also make sure that you craft a membership dashboard that connects new members with the introduction video, a getting started guide and also provides new and returning members with quick links to the most important areas of the membership site.

If you use Wishlist Member there is an Dashboard plugin available through their insiders club however this can simply be a standard WordPress page where you list all of the most important links for finding specific content and navigating around the membership site.

Surprises Bonuses

If you can identify supplementary things that your audience will appreciate  such as extra tools or extra trainings, then providing them as an unadvertised or surprise bonuses will go even further to show that you care about your new remembers. A side bonus to this that may not be immediately obvious is that it can often offer the perfect lead in for when they are recommending your site to their friends and contacts.

Surprise bonuses are most effective when they are something that your members actually want, or something that will help them rather than just piling on extra junk they don’t need. If you’re stuck you could try licensing content but make sure it is relevant!

Final Words…

If you provide solid content that is backed up with these three membership onboarding and retention tactics you should be well on your way to making sure your members stay past those first crucial days.

What Exactly is Drag & Drop Design?

Headway works differently from most themes in that it gives you a very basic starting block and allows you to create your own designs. These can be different for pretty much every type of page that you get with WordPress and really allows you to create a unique personality and appearance for your membership site. To create your unique layouts you simply select the page type you want to edit; for example you could choose the category page, and you quite literally drag and drop content areas, header sections, widgets, blocks and whatever you need into the area where they should appear on your live membership site.

Headway Theme & Blocks

As well as offering easy customisation of your layouts without any coding required there are also many “Blocks” available from the theme creators and the community that allow you to extend your site even further. Once a Block is installed you use it as if it were a building block for your site and simply drag it using the editor to wherever it is needed. This allows you to add quite complex functionality without requiring expensive development or attempting to integrate complex plugins in standard widget areas.

Click here to view the official Headway Theme site!

Great Blocks Available for Headway

Storefront for WooCommerce

Community Builder for BuddyPress Empower Your Membership with BuddyPress

Headway Pin Board Display Your Content in a Pinterest Style Layout

Headway Features Block Create Powerful Sales Pages & Descriptions

> Get The Headway Theme Here <

Traditional WordPress themes look great on the web but when you shrink everything down to the size of your average mobile device things can quickly fall apart and become unusable. This has led to many websites switching to new “Responsive” designs that adapt their sizing and layout dependent on the size of the device. Whilst responsive designs look great they are often very time consuming and expensive to create, especially if you have your own custom design that you would like to maintain.

Enter WPtouch Pro…

Not quite a responsive design and not quite a mobile theme; WPtouch Pro is a plugin that automatically adapts your WordPress powered membership site into an easy to read app style design when users visit your site from a mobile. Everything is laid out in a clean and readable setup that can easily be adapted with the plugins extensive admin settings.

Not only this but with the pro version you can customise your site for both smartphones and tablets, add mobile advertising that won’t appear at all on your desktop site and create highly customised and exclusive menus for the mobile version of your site.

If you’re not ready, or don’t want your site to go fully responsive, then this plugin is the ultimate mobile solution for WordPress.

You can find out more about WPtouch Pro here!

HosterStats – Domain Hosting History

You can use HosterStats to discover which hosts a domain has pointed to in the history based on DNS settings. The DNS names can often be quite revealing in regards to which companies controlled the hosting, or if an internal DNS name is used you can often discover the corporate owners of a website.

The Wayback Archive

The Wayback Machine Internet Archive periodically takes “snapshots” of how a website and individual web pages looked on a certain day in history. Whilst not every page will be captured and some less frequently than others you can usually find a few records at a minimum for each site. This can give you insight on how a website looked before an owner let it drop, how a company marketed themselves historically and if you're really bad at keeping backups, it can sometimes save your ass when a page is deleted but still recorded here!

DomainTools WhoIs

This site is especially useful when a domain name is still registered as it allows you to lookup their WhoIs record. Inside you will usually find the contact details for the owners and administrators of any website and can get an idea of how long they have owned the site for. This site is very powerful when conducting marketing research and if you stretch to a premium subscription you can also pick up a lot of historical changes and cross reference other sites owned by the same people.

In conclusion…

There are many tools that you can use to find out additional information about a domain name or website. Whether the site is still going or has been dead for years, there is often a wealth of information about its ownership and status at any given date in the past. The more you play with these tools the more creative ideas you will probably find your using the information.

Happy Hunting!

Several years ago I uncovered a link management tool that would completely change the way I ran my affiliate marketing campaigns. Ive written about this tool before on the blog, it was called GoTryThis, however one of the downsides was that it was a monthly subscription service. There is nothing wrong with that of course, especially when some of the systems need to be hosted but after a while I felt like I needed greater control over my affiliate links. With a subscription system there is usually an element of lock in and I didn't want all of my hard work to go to waste months or even years down the line if I decided to change systems.

Luckily I saw this early on and began my search, I used a few basic systems like redirect pages from the Thesis Theme and the Redirection WordPress plugin however none of them were even close to the central dashboard that GoTryThis offered. I was wondering if I would ever get anything that compared when luckily I stumbled across a plugin called Ninja Affiliate from MaxBlogPress.

The Ninja Affiliate plugin allows you to store all of your affiliate links in one central dashboard and link to all of the products you are promoting from your own domain. If you install the plugin to a short domain name it can even act as your own short link service when linking to any URL on the web.

The built in central tracking dashboard lets you know exactly how many times each of your links has been clicked and also the sites that people are actually clicking on them from which is great for working out which activities and channels to focus on.

I've been using the plugin for several years now and it's been a central part of my online marketing efforts. I would highly recommend the plugin to anyone that runs affiliate promotions online or wants to host their own link shortening service. You can check out the MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate WordPress plugin here.

MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate Plugin Christmas Promotion

The team over at MaxBlogPress have clearly had one too many Mulled Wines & Mince Pies… For the next 3 days only you can get all four of their best selling plugins including the powerful Ninja Affiliate plugin for almost the price of just one. This is an incredible deal and one I wish I could have taken advantage of if I'd had the chance.

Download The MaxBlogPress Christmas Bundle (Including Ninja Affiliate) Here

Membership Strategies in Use

Free Blog
The front end of the site is a blog full of recent digital marketing news and articles styled in a similar fashion to Pinterest with endless scrolling. This engages the casual visitor, increases the SEO footprint of the site and positions the brand as a reliable source of industry knowledge.

Paid Newsletter
The first level of premium content is a newsletter subscription which is delivered as a monthly downloadable PDF. It is priced at an affordable level and offers practical information on the latest marketing trends.

Tiered Content
The highest level of content is delivered via a section known as the “Digital Marketer labs” where you can access to more in depth reports, tools & more.

Software Spotlight

The list below shares some of the key software and solutions in place on the site.

You can click on any item to find out more…

• Contact Form 7 – Basic Form Creator
• Fonts – Manager for Non-Standard Fonts
• Google Analytics for WordPress by Yoast
• iMember360 – Infusionsoft Membership System
• Infusionsoft – Small Business CRM
• Job Manager – Job Listings Plugin for WP
• Kampyle – User Feedback Analytics Tools
• Theme My Login – Creates a branded login page
• Visual Website Optimizer – Multivariate Split Tests
• WordPress Popular Posts – Popular Posts Widget
• WP Cufon – Font replacement for unique designs

Click here to see the site in action > 

When you consider the potential reach of YouTube and the fact that you can host your video completely free of charge it might almost seem perfect. However there is one factor that has stopped many businesses from truly embracing YouTube as a video host and that is leakage.

In the same way that people can easily discover your videos, they can just as easily click onto related videos directly from the final screen of your videos, even if they are embedded on your own site. For a simple blog video this could be annoying but for a sales video it could be disasterous to your results.

LeadPlayer addresses this issue by embedding your YouTube videos in it’s own custom video player whilst adding a whole host of advanced functionality to take your YouTube marketing to the next level.

With LeadPlayer you can embed opt-in forms to your videos to grow your email list and even set a timer so that a sales button appears on a web page at exactly the point your video is promoting your product. This technique has been used by video marketers for a long time and this plugin makes it as easy as setting the timer and dropping in your button code.

You can find out more and try the LeadPlayer demo here!

The OptimizePress Internet Marketing Theme

OptimizePress is the gold standard for internet marketing themes. What this means is you will get almost everything you need built in without using plugins but the downside is there are going to be thousands of sites with a very similar layout unless you spend a lot of time customising it. The other downside to using this theme is if you ever decide to change your theme further down the line you will lose a lot of the functionality that you will have grown accustomed to and will likely need to find premium plugins to replace them. With that said, OptimizePress is still one of the most powerful internet marketing themes & there is a reason that this is one of the most popular themes for business owners. It also has a ton of unique layouts designed especially for membership sites which means it is definitely still worth the investment. Click here to view the OptimizePress theme site!

Example Layouts Using OptimizePress

> Get The OptimizePress Theme Here <

The truth is often far different from the scary picture that is painted by many, at least when you start out. PayPal is one of the most popular online payment processors and is the first choice of thousands of business owners, big and small, around the globe.

To set up an account you will still need to have a ‘real world’ bank account but you can send and receive payments via your PayPal account in many different currencies. You can even hold multiple currencies if your PayPal account at any one time if you have an international customer base. Getting started is easy and you can also plug in your PayPal account to a lot of other payment services so that they can manage more advanced features of your payment processing.

Once you have the basics handled with yout own PayPal account you might want to start looking for the more advanced functionality such as the ability to recruit affiliates or even host your own digital store rather than sell single items with a simple ‘Buy Now’ button.

The first method for taking things further is by registering an account with an online marketplace such as ClickBank. This gives you instant access to an established userbase, often including customers and affiliates. You will also be able to borrow the credibility of larger marketplaces meaning consumers can trust giving over their bank details more easily as they already have experience with the payment brand.

When you want a little more control, either by running your own store or manage your own affiliate program, you will typically need to start investing more into your payment systems. There are some great payment systems and shopping carts out there and most of the choice will boil down to what functionality you need.

Three Top Online Payment Systems

PayPal

The simplest way to start accepting payments online. It is used & trusted around the globe by millions can still pay even if they are not a registered user.

Top Recommendation!

Find Out More…

ClickBank

A marketplace for digital products that manage the entire payment process for you. It also has a huge network of active affiliate marketers.

Find Out More…

1ShoppingCart

Slightly more involved however you also get a lot more cutomisation options and extra functionality. Worth it if you want to manage everything yourself.

Find Out More…

The Thesis Theme was one of the first premium theme frameworks that I used and it’s been my first choice for many years. They recently just bought out version 2.0 and have completely rebuilt everything from the ground up making this a very interesting option.

Introduction to the Thesis ‘Skins’ System

Skins work in a similar way to frameworks and child themes however in this case you have a central theme that controls much of the code base so that you are always using the latest and safest functionality whilst controlling the look and feel through a skin.

Thesis manages this by allowing you to change many of the design options with a custom settings panel and overhauls the rest by installing skins containing code that sit inside the theme and add extra layers of design and functionality.

The new dashboard editor allows for limited drag & drop design functionality, design settings page and also has a built in skin manager so you can export and import ready made designs to your site in seconds.

Thesis has always placed a relentless focus on SEO which means you are best to use the built in SEO features rather than a plugin if you choose this theme.

Unfortunately I would say this theme is more relevant for the more intermediate/advanced WordPress user so make sure to check out several reviews or tutorials if you want to fully customise Thesis yourself.

Click here to view the Thesis theme site!

Where to Get Pre-Made Thesis Skins

Themedy Themes – Themes for Thesis & Genesis

Themedy has one of the widest range of Thesis skins available under a single subscription offer and packs in a lot of value if you plan on designing multiple sites with the Thesis theme or Genesis Framework.

KolaKube Thesis Skins

Kolakube has designed some of the most popular premium skins for Theis and the quality shines through when you browse the site. Make sure you check out ‘Marketers Delight’ if you’re looking to buy.

> Get The Thesis Theme Here <

Whilst it is free and can be loaded onto almost any hosting server there are several reason you might want to invest in premium hosting designed for WordPress. The first reason you might be interested in choosing a premium managed hosting account for your WordPress membership site is because of the speed.

With more mobile devices than ever before and Google now taking the load time of your website into account for search rankings it’s important to make sure your site loads fast. Typically managed hosting is built on scalable cloud systems with servers across the globe meaning your site will load fast wherever your visitors are.

The second reason you might want to consider managed WordPress hosting is to increase your sites security. Managed servers often have powerful systems in place to detect & block hacking attacks and generally keep the bad guys out. I’ve launched products before and had hundreds of thousands of attempted entries in just a single weekend. The effect of this on your business can be very costly, not just in lost sales if they succeed but also excess bandwidth costs.

As well as making your site faster and protecting your content managed WordPress hosting can also help to prepare your site for success. If you suddenly get hundreds of thousands of visits when your site is mentioned on the news or linked from an authority site the average host will simply shut down under the pressure. As was previously mentioned managed WordPress hosting is typically built on scalable cloud servers and has been specifically designed to survive the spikes.

Which Premium Managed WordPress Hosting?

You can check out three of the most recognised premium and managed WordPress hosts below!

Kinsta

This is one of the newer hosts in this space but they are definitely worth checking out. Their offering is based on the Google Cloud Platform so you know it is fast and secure. Plus they have a very helpful round the clock support support team

Find Out More…

Page.ly

One of the original premium managed WordPress hosting outlets, however they primarily support enterprise level clients so if you are just getting started they may not be the best solution.

Find Out More…

WP Engine

WP Engine are one of the most well known managed WordPress hosts, plus they have now acquired StudioPress themes so you get a full collection of premium StudioPress Genesis themes when you sign up with them.

Find Out More…

There are of course thousands of apps available on all of the various app stores but the apps featured here are the ones that can really make a difference to your productivity when running your business on the go. Every app has been chosen based on a solid cross-platform cloud offering and is available across iOS for iPhone, Google Play Store for Android, and also offer a web interface at the very least.

1Password

Visit The 1Password Website

If you work with any frequency online you will find yourself building up quite the collection of different passwords for different services, or worse using just one password so you don't forget them. 1Password can save hundreds or even thousands of unique logins under a single secured password and is the software that I personally use and would recommend. It is optimised and works well with both Mac & Windows (unlike other big players in this market). You can pair the app with Dropbox and automatically have all of your passwords synced across your mobile and desktop devices in seconds.

1Password may sound like a simple concept but it means there are no more sticky situations where you find yourself locked out of your site whilst you're away for a weekend, or worrying about changing 100s of passwords when your favourite social media company gets hacked. Just create a unique secure password for each and every account you own and you only need to remember one!

Evernote

Visit The Evernote Website

Notes. We all make them. Many of us lose or forget where we put them. Evernote acts as your second brain so that any time you need to note something down, save an article for later, record a quick personal message or archive almost anything for future reference, you just tag it and drop it into one of your Evernote notebooks. You can save audios, images, text & written notes and manage everything with a simple yet powerful tagging/notebook(category) style organisation system. It can take a little while of using it before you finally connect the dots but once you do you will never want to use another notes application again.

Dropbox

Visit The Dropbox Website

This is personal cloud computing at its finest so far. You can save, edit, and work from documents in your Dropbox folder exactly as if it were a normal drive on your computer and everything automatically syncs with your cloud account so you access it anywhere. There are Dropbox applications for just about any device and there is even a web interface that allows for sharing. My business pretty much lives inside of Dropbox so no matter where I am or what equipment I have at my disposal I can always get access to my most important files!

Google Drive

Visit The Google Drive Website

This is considered by some as a competitor to Dropbox but in fact I see them quite differently. Whilst Dropbox is focused on making the files you use available to you in as many places as possible, Google Drive along with Google Docs acts as a portable Office Suite with cloud storage. You can work directly from your browser and collaborate on documents around the globe and save everything to your Google Drive. Once your project is finalised it's a breeze to export it to a standardised format, save it elsewhere, share it with the world, or just forward it on.

Hootsuite

Visit The Hootsuite Website

If you manage more than a few social media accounts you are going to want to use Hootsuite. With a full featured web based app and multiple native apps you can easily Tweet your latest news, update your Business Page's Facebook status, and post to Google+ in just a few clicks (or taps of your mobile!). It may not be the most beautiful social media client but it gets the job done and is packed full of features above and beyond your average social tool.

Remember The Milk

Visit The Remember The Milk Website

If you overlook the slightly mainstream name what you'll find is a powerful Task List manager that you can use to keep yourself organised through your browser, mobile, or tablet. It offers both lists and tagging to ensure that you can narrow things down to the most important tasks at any one time and offers power features such as recurring events, scheduling, and prioritising. It's simple, it's clean, and it works.

Skype

Visit The Skype Website

Where would any list of apps for entrepreneurs be without a feature for Skype. Love it or hate it, it's still one of the most widely used VOIP (Voice over IP) solutions for business owners and with a built in instant messaging system as well, you can contact your clients and connect with business partners for free (or a couple of cents) from pretty much anywhere around the world. This can be especially powerful for nomadic and remote workers!

So there you have it my personal pick of the top seven apps for highly effective modern entrepreneurs. I personally use all of these apps on a daily business and they have all saved me on many occaisions. Working with these seven core apps can give you a distinct advantage in the productivity war but what you do from there is all up to you!

I'd love to hear if you agree with these choices. Are there any apps you think I've missed out or something that you use on a daily basis. Let me know on any of my social media accounts or leave a comment below…

When you actually make the decision to start a membership site you have to get to grips with the membership software, then learn how to market your product, and then learn how to actually keep your members. It can be a pretty intense process and large learning curve if you're new to information marketing. Luckily although there is a lot to know, it doesn't mean it has to be hard…

Ever since founding The Modern Entrepreneur in 2009 one of our core offerings has been providing membership site development and consultancy services behind the scenes and I've personally seen how sticky it can get at times as well as how much of a difference a success can make. You've no doubt heard people say that you just need one product, one great idea and then you can reach success, but what if instead you had thousands of members paying you a monthly fee for access to your website or product, that is a real business presence with real value.

I've long been a fan of using WordPress as the basis for membership sites and there are some pretty heavy duty tools to get the job done these days. Many of which I discuss in detail on the Membership Maximizer course. Whilst you will almost certainly want to use a robust membership solution for a launch designed to attract thousands, there are also ways of setting up much simpler membership sites using WordPress for free with fairly basic tools.

In an effort to completely remove any excuses for getting started with membership sites I set myself the challenge of creating a system that would allow anyone to create a membership site for free, regardless of their skill level. The result was a simple yet effective membership setup that can easily be upgraded to the more powerful membership systems when you want to take your membership to the next level. I created the following infographic to show how it's all possible.

Overall it's a fairly simple process to create basic membership sites for free, without even paying hosting, and as long as you follow the steps you could get the whole thing up and running in less than an hour. Whilst it's a simple process if you want to get started with a full step-by-step guide then you can check out the full video course in our new membership training. The Membership Maximizer training is the first product offering we've launched through The Modern Entrepreneur that goes into detail about exactly how to set up a membership, whether you are using entirely free tools, or want to go with the best WordPress membership software. Access the whole training and get your new membership site online this week here.

Founder Spotlight: Andrew Warner

Mixergy is owned and run by Andrew Warner. He co-founded a business that reached $30+ million in annual sales before moving into the online membership site business to delve into how other entrepreneurs were gaining their success.

Membership Strategies in Use

Expert Content
One of the keys to the success of this site is that when you register you are not just getting access to one persons perspective but quite literally hundreds of successful entrepreneurs from around the globe. Each entrepreneur then has their own network to which they will promote their interview which can lead to even more traffic and subscriptions to Mixergy.

Expring Content
All interviews start out as free which can help to bring in new members to the site and after a set period they are locked to premium members only. Premium subscribers get access to the full vault.

Tiered Content
There are two main types of content inside the site; interviews and courses. Whilst you can initially access interviews for free the courses are have a set structure and are always considered premium content. This allows for a more defined and genuine distinction between the the free and premium product offering.

Software Spotlight

The list below shares some of the key software and solutions in place on the Mixergy site.
You can click on any item to find out more.

• Wishlist Member – Membership System
• Premium Web Cart – Payment Processing
• WP Engine – Web Hosting Services
• Wistia – Video Hosting & Analytics
• Swiftype – Search Platform
• Sharebar – Social Media Button Plugin
• Disqus – Social Commeting Plugin
• WP Missed Schedule – Post Schedule Plugin
• Audio Player – Audio Plugin
• S3 Flowshiled – Membership File Protection
• Get Clicky – Real Time Analytics
• Google Analytics for WordPress – Analytics Plugin
• KissMetrics – Customer Web Analytics

Last Words…

It would be very difficult for a newcomer to replicate the depth of knowledge & amount of access this site gets to entrepreneurs. However if you can access a large network of contacts in another industry or a certain niche this can be an extremely powerful way to leverage others expertise to create a successful membership site.

Click here to see the site in action > 

What Support Software to Use?

Below I’ve shared three of the best software solutions for managing your support. Use the best system you can but remember it’s your assistance rather than the specific system used that customers care most about!

Zen Desk

Web based customer support software with mobile apps available. Very popular, easy to set up and use with a low starting price of just $20 per year. Find Out More…

SupportPress

This is a WordPress theme that works as a support system. It is simple to use and has no ongoing payments with a one time fee of $100. You will need to host it. Find Out More…

Gravity Forms

When you are just starting out it’s often enough to simply have a contact form for your site. Gravity forms is a WordPress plugin that lets you to make powerful forms starting from $39 for a single site. Find Out More… Recommended for most site owners!

Introduction to ‘Theme Frameworks’

When styling a WordPress site usually you install what is called a theme; that is what gives every WordPress site its unique appearance and layout. A framework is still a theme but it focuses more on creating a solid code base for making sure a site is easily customised whilst retaining the most powerful features.

The actual appearance for most theme frameworks is either controlled by an options panel or via the use of ‘child themes’. These child themes require that a framework is installed so that they can borrow code from it and they simply focus on the sites appearance.

The Genesis Theme Framework from StudioPress

The Genesis Framework is something that I’m starting to use more and more in my WordPress blog and membership work. It’s reliable, customisable, easy to use, secure and has a great community around it.StudioPress is the company that produce this theme framework for WordPress and it’s fair to say that they have been pivotal in the development of the premium theme market for WordPress.

The Genesis Framework itself doesn’t look amazing out of the box but as soon as you install any one of their themes you can instantly launch a professional looking site in most cases.They also offer a special ‘pro-plus-all’ package that gives you over 40 different theme appearances for one up front payment. This is still one of the best value collections of the market right now.

Popular Genesis Child Themes

Lifestyle Child Theme

The Lifestyle Child Theme was one of the first released by StudioPress. With it’s ‘magazine’ style home page its perfect for membership site owners covering lots of different topics. It can also be useful to set up different columns for both your free and paid content.

Generate Child Theme

The Generate theme was released more recently but is already gaining significant ground. It follows a more traditional blog style appearance however it features a very prominent email optin form so that you can generate leads for your business.

>Find Out More & View Demos Here <

At the time of publishing this article WordPress have just released an update. Typically this would mean that you need to go into the dashboard of each of the sites that you own and/or manage for others and go through the standard WordPress updates process. However with ManageWP for WordPress you can update hundreds of websites with just the click of a button. To show you how simple it is to use I made this quick video as I updated some of my WordPress sites to the latest version this morning.

As you can see it's an extremely powerful tool yet it's so simple to use that even a young child could update your entire network of WordPress sites. If you run any amount of sites on WordPress you owe it to yourself to get ManageWP so that you can free up you time to focus on the more profitable areas of your business!

The Basic Evolution of SEO

There are a few key guiding principles of SEO that stay true whatever else goes on within the world of SEO. But obviously the world of technology moves a lot faster than traditional business do so the exact methods for doing each step have evolved over time.

Key Principles Guiding SEO

• Find a topic/keyword that people are looking for
• Create epic content that will interest people
• Publish keyword optimised content online
• Get lots of people linking to your content

The Evolution of SEO Methods

In regards to the topic and keywords it was once easy enough to go for broad obvious keywords like weight loss, internet marketing, or dog training but eventually people needed to get more and more specific and along came the long-tail optimisation which meant people suddenly were optimising for five word phrases and specific product models.

Epic content used to mean a well written article. You'd either be considered an expert yourself, learn enough about a topic to write about it or go out and find an expert to write the article for you and then perhaps add a nice complimentary image. Fast forward to the current state of web content and we have infographics and videos being released daily that can take hours, days, or even weeks to produce.

To optimise for a keyword people would simply throw in a bunch of meta tags, add the keyword to the title, and use it a bunch of times within the post with a bit of highlighting through bold styling and anchor text. Whilst it's still wise to use appropriate styling and well placed anchor text you are literally asking to be ignored if you dump a load of irrelevant keywords into your content.

Last of all people would publish their content online first with raw HTML, site builders, and later with CMS (Content Management Systems) like WordPress. They would go out and speak to other site owners to run link exchanges, get the site listed in a few different directories and maybe even go out and comment on some blogs. Now everyone is writing guest posts, creating sharable content that gets embedded around the web, crafting linkbait and working on their “social signals” from social media links.

Why Keyword Research Is Still The Most Important Element

As you can already see from just this short post alone, there is a whole lot to consider in the world of SEO. Far more than the average person will ever keep up with unless you decide to dedicate your entire business to it. The simple fact of the matter is whilst you may pick up tactics every now and then or work with certain SEO strategies over time every fad will pass and just two key elements will remain.

You will ALWAYS want to know what people are searching for…

You will ALWAYS want to create epic content that people enjoy/find useful…

Luckily both of these key aspects of SEO can be covered with some considered keyword research. If you knew that a thousand people were searching for a certain keyword every day whilst another keyword was being searched for just once a month then it's obvious which content is more important to get your content found and shared. If you could simply tap into the search engine data to see the exact things that people want you could create the epic content that they are looking for. That is the power of keyword research…

The Keyword Research Tools I Can't Go Without

Over the years there have been just two tools that have really stood the test of time in my business for Keyword Research. The first is the official Google Keyword Tool which is free and useful for quickly checking out a search term and the second is the Market Samurai which a premium tool that allows you to really go deep into the search engine data and work out the most profitable and attractive keywords to target. Both of these tools allow you to check out how many people are searching for certain topics and the level of competition if you create content in a certain area.

If you always focus on creating epic content (whatever that may be at the time) that is targeted to the right keywords for your audience then you will always have a solid base to work from and you can worry as much or as little as you want about adding the latest search optimisation technique or link building campaigns.

It's often said that content is king, but the truth is “creating epic content that people want to consume is king” (Tweet This). It may not sound as catchy but it's the one truth in SEO that will never change. Focus on your keywords and content and the rest will follow.

[note color=”#FFCC00″]> Click Here to Pick Up a Free Trial of Market Samurai <[/note]
 

“Strive for perfection in everything you do.
Take the best that exists and make it better.
When it does not exist. Design it.”
– Quote from Sir Henry Royce

The interesting thing about Pinterest from a marketers perspective is that most of its users are younger affluent females which is typically a harder market to target. It's also a very visual platform which requires a very different approach compared to more text and link based social bookmarking sites such as Twitter and Reddit.

I've personally been using the site for a while and after researching what tools and strategies other professional marketers were using for Pinterest I created this infographic showcasing 10 powerful Pinterest Marketing Tips & Tools you can put to use in your business…  

The Pinterest Infographic

Embed This Infographic on Your Own Site:

<a href=”https://www.themodernentrepreneur.com/10-powerful-pinterest-marketing-tips-tools-infographic/”><img src=”https://www.themodernentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/pinterest-marketing-tools-infographic-medium.jpg” alt=”10 Powerful Pinterest Marketing Tips & Tools”/></a><br /> Infographic Courtesy of <a href=”https://www.themodernentrepreneur.com”>The Modern Entrepreneur</a><br />

I have been living a lie. I've been in “business” since 2009 and in that time I've achieved a lot by my own standards. But I haven't built a business…

Now don't get me wrong; I do earn a living online and I spend a lot of time building my “business” but really all I've done is build myself a job. There is nothing wrong with that of course, if that is what you set out to do, but that is not the case for me…

I Have Spent Over 3 Years Building a Job

Rather Than Building a Business

Yes, I'm working for myself. Yes, its beautiful being able to work from anywhere with an internet connection. Yes, I have launched products that earn me money whilst I'm out partying, sleeping and studying (still at university for another year!). But the reality is that it all lives on a very fragile balance.

Last month my house was robbed. They took all my computer equipment, they essentially took my job away from me. Luckily I had the foresight to actually back up 99% of my business data and encrypt everything but all the hardware I use on a daily basis was gone. Insurance wouldn't cover it as someone I live with had left the house unlocked and like that I had nothing…

Around the same time my granddad passed away and I had to travel down to London. Without my “business” there was no quick way to make money, there was no backup in the bank account (silly I know and will not happen again!), and I had to borrow money from my family to get down and see them. Now I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like a successful business person to me and it's definitely not who I want to be.

“I Refuse To Be a Victim”

The truth is I have the skills to build a business, I won't go into figures but I earned more than enough to keep me happy last year; I went travelling abroad multiple times, and the month before things went downhill fast, I earned over double what I ever earned in full-time employment.

My clients build successful businesses with my help; one launched in multiple countries with a network of sites I built in one of the most exclusive markets I know of. I have created membership sites for others that now boast membership well into the thousands.

I really do love that I can help others build their business but at the start of every new project I work on it is back to the drawing board. At the end of the day I'm still just working a job. It's a job that I've created for myself as opposed to it being given to me but it's a job none the less… If you take me out of the equation for just a few weeks it all falls apart.

Job vs. Business: What's the difference?

I'll turn the definitions over to my friends at Wikipedia…

Job – A job is a regular activity performed in exchange for payment.

Business – A business (also known as enterprise or firm) is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers.

The distinction here is subtle but important; a job is an exchange of activity for payment. Where as a business is an organisation engaged in the trade of goods and/or services.

A job will always require you to exchange some form of regular activity for payment, the minute that activity disappears, the payment goes with it. Whereas a business is an organisation, it's not something you do, but a collection of people and processes that work together to create and exchange value.

More importantly from a personal perspective, a business does not always require activity for payment! In our current age we are blessed with technology that can automate a whole ton of stuff that used to require a whole team of staff but we still manage to find ourselves trapped by the same routines.

How I Butchered a Business and Turned It Into a Job

My denial to this point is such that I even managed to take one of the most business like attributes, creation of products, and turn it into a job. Wondering how that works? I would work hours, weeks, and more into creating a product (we are talking software, info-products, and membership sites) and then promote it in the most short-sighted market places. Whilst the thrill of getting large chunks of money into your bank account in a short space of time is great, when it comes at the cost of sustainability you are sacrificing too much.

Of course we all know that it takes far more than a build it and they will come attitude to survive in business online or otherwise. You have to create massive value, promote like a mad man (not literally!) and then they will come…. BUT if you only ever promote and optimise for a marketplace of one hit wonders your products fate is set in stone from the outset.

Marketing Is a Process That Starts Well Before a

Product is Made and Continues To The Very End

Heck if anyone should know this is then it's me. I've read more books on the subject than I can count, studied the subject at a British university, helped my clients tweak their campaigns and launched several products myself but that is the problem… I “launched” my products. I put them out there, but I didn't tweak them even half as much as you should, any optimisation was for short-term benefit and long-term plans could wait until tomorrow… There were no other people working on promotions, developing new solutions, tweaking campaigns and customer research was nothing more than an occasional email when I got a spare moment.

I was a one man band playing from the wrong song sheet. When there was a dip the solution the solution was too often to “launch a new product” or “launch a new campaign” and not tweak, explore, and attempt to understand the reasoning.

The situation was very reactive and ended up in what can be classed as a job “regular activity in exchange for payment”. When you build an asset for a business you should leverage it to the full, create evergreen campaigns,  you can even build in launches and short-term activities but only when you do it to the tune of a long-term strategy.

What is Your Online Business Strategy?

If you're building an online business and you haven't considered this then I can almost guarantee you are building a job too. A business isn't a product, it isn't a marketing tactic, and it isn't $1000 from promoting a product as an affiliate. A business is a mission, a guiding vision that you use to create value for your customer base.

Screw the work life balance for now, let's be honest here if you're in business because you want to do better for yourself you know that it takes work to get there! You understand there is no push button solution and you're willing to graft it out. But what if you're grafting it out in all the wrong places? What if you never graduate from the school of grafting? Best case scenario you make a half decent “job” for yourself, worst case you give up or go broke and find yourself stuck in some place you don't want to be.

What you really need to focus on is The Work Future Balance. It's a reality for those of us that weren't built into a silver spoon existence that you have to work to survive. That's fine we get it! If you have the internet access to read this right now and the ability to take any action at all then you really don't have it that bad. As long as you can accept that you won't always be able to work on your “dream project” every hour when starting out it's important to remember that you can't always be working to survive!

From Building a Job to Building a Business

If you really want to build a business but feel that you've fallen into the fake business trap, or are stuck in a job that you don't like then you really can't afford to wait. Habits build fast and and breaking them takes a commitment. If you have any time at all you need to be working on a plan of action for building your business the right way…

If you don't have the time log out of Facebook, sign out of Twitter, turn off the TV and make the time. When you truly care about building a successful business then you will find the time and there will be no excuses.

From here on in, I personally and publicly commit to taking continued action towards building long-term and sustainable business ventures. I would love to share my journey and experience with you through this blog. If you've been through a shift like this before or you feel like you probably need to make one then I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

Sedit qui timuit ne non succederet.
Tempus Edax Rerum.

Image Credit: One Man Band

Public video content is a simple choice; YouTube is one of the biggest search engines, has amazing viral potential and best of all does everything you need for free. In fact you can even earn money with its built-in ad system and partner platforms. Unfortunately when it comes to serving private members/customer only content it's a little less robust and that is where <a href=”Amazon S3 comes in…

When you need to protect videos and want full control over the access levels Amazon S3 is very powerful. It's a completely scalable cloud solution where you only pay for your usage, you can host your content around the globe and most importantly you can secure your videos. The problem is that it hasn't always been the easiest solution to use if you are a non-techie!

When I started using Amazon S3 I searched long and hard for instructions on how to get everything set up and I still managed to mess up a few times in the beginning (110,000 stolen downloads anyone? >.< ). Luckily after using their services for a while now I've managed to find two solutions that allow me to securely manage my video content with ease.

The first is CloudBerry Explorer and it's a simple desktop application that allows you to explore your Amazon S3 buckets in a similar fashion to the Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. You can drag and drop your uploads and set access levels in just a couple of clicks. It's definitely my favourite tool for managing S3 files although it is Windows Only (Mac Users – I would recommend Cyberduck).

Once your video files are in your Amazon S3 bucket you will still need an extra solution to deliver them securely through WordPress though and that is where this next tool comes in handy. It's a WordPress plugin called S3Flowshield and it has saved me hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, in lost revenue and stolen bandwidth. It generates authenticated URLs for your files and streaming content so that only your members/customers can get access to your files even if the web address for your files are leaked by hackers, crackers and pirates. This is probably a lot more common than you think even for smaller businesses!

The video below shows you both of these tools and explains how you can start uploading your videos to Amazon S3 today. I use them both almost daily and would highly recommend them to anyone that is looking to deliver secure videos on WordPress.

Did you like this video? Have you tried either of these tools? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below!

10 Entrepreneurs That Dominate In Their Field

So there you have it, 10 online entrepreneurs who really do dominate online in their respective fields and have earned my respect. They all feature in the Web Domination 20 which is a new product from Michael Dunlop and based on my opinion and knowledge of the entrepreneurs mentioned above I will definitely be checking out the full product within the next few days.

Regardless of whether you check out Web Domination 20 yourself, I highly recommend that you connect with these entrepreneurs & internet marketers online and check out what they are all up to, you will not regret it!

There is significant variations on the law and still a lot of confusion about what it actually means for website owners based in these countries however this is not being accepted as an excuse for non compliance. To get an idea of the bigger picture and the various ways the laws are structured check out this table covering the multiple interpretations of the cookie law.

One of the biggest differences between the laws if whether consent for cookies can be considered opt-in or opt-out. When the UK first delayed the introduction of enforcement to this year they stated that it would have to be opt-in however with less than 48 hours until UK Cookie Law enforcement recommendations were changed to opt-out.

With all of this going on it's easy to see how your average SME business owner could get confused. It seems an almost full time job keeping up to date with all the changes for this site and the donation funded CookiePolicyGenerator.com. Whatever may happen the facts are that the law is here right now and it looks set to stay in one form or another. The best thing you can do right now is make sure your site is compliant with the current Cookie Law guidelines in your country or you risk facing enforcement letters and potential fines of up to £500,000.

If you've been marketing online for any amount of time you already know that the appearance and placement of your email marketing form can make all the difference from a complete bomb (read: no subscribers) all the way up to hundreds if not thousands a month! The problem is that setting up good looking forms isn't really something that most people would describe as “fun” and in many cases it can be tedious at best… Luckily it seems that all of that is about to change with the new OptinSkin Plugin that I discovered today.

I had the task of updating my optin forms across several web pages and decided to see if there was a slightly more simple solution than hand coding each one and to my luck; not only was there a brand new optin plugin for WordPress but it also came from Glen Allsopp who is a very highly respected marketer online. When I saw this I knew I had to try it out and what follows is my OptinSkin review video that goes straight from buying the plugin all the way to actually installing it and setting up my first form in less than 15 minutes!

OptinSkin Review Video

After-note: It's worth mentioning that these are my first impressions of the plugin however I have a lot of experience working with WordPress and custom optin forms so I'd definitely say my impressions count. I have already added the optin skin plugin to the three of my sites that needed updating and will definitely be rolling it out to more of my sites in the near future. Make sure you check it out!

OptinSkin Feature Summary:

• 18 Beautiful Designs
• Easily Customised
• Optional Fade-in Forms
• Reliable Tracking
• Professional Split Testing

Click Here to Check Out OptinSkin Now

Update: I contacted support with a question and feature suggestion and received a response in less than an hour direct from the founder. Great support guys!

Personally I manage quite a few pages for myself, my clients and several other brands I work with so it's been an interesting process going through the changes from different perspectives. During the transition I've been trying out all sorts of tools including plugins, custom coded apps and web based systems to manage my fan pages so I can make a judgement for what's best and what is best for my business. However whilst I'm still playing with a couple of them I figured I should let you know that one of the systems in my shortlist is having a huge sale today!

Five Minute Fan Pages is a web based system to create and design professional looking Facebook Fan Pages and app pages. It's built on the Pagemodo system which has been featured everywhere from Tech Crunch though to Inc. magazine and takes a chunk of the work out of setting up your pages. It usually costs $97 up front and then $25 a month but when you order today you can get the entire system for just $1. After that you simply pay the $24.95 a month to maintain your pages which is a massive saving compared to the $1,000 a month I was recently quoted for a similar system!

You will also get a ton of extra training free from Brian Moran, creator of Get 10,000 Fans. As you can imagine from the name of his business and the fact his page now boasts 186,000+ fans you can definitely do a lot worse than adding his ideas to your fan pages. So if you want to get finally get started with Facebook landing pages on the new Facebook Timeline layout or even if you just want to bulk up your Facebook landing pages you can try the entire Five Minute Fan Page System for just $1 here.

Please Note: Discount is applied when you add to cart. I maintain an affiliate relationship the software provider mentioned in this post however I am also a fully paid customer of theirs and have not been approached by the company to write this article.

What do you think of the changes for Facebook pages?

Ryan is recognised as one of the leading digital marketers today. He is the CEO of Digital Marketer and owns several multi-million companies across the globe. He is a well-known coach, innovator, and speaker on marketing business strategies. One of his creations is the Ryan Deiss Digital Marketer lab, a premier online community for marketing professionals.

That's why it wasn't unlikely that every man and his dog had been mailing their lists with this Ryan Deiss YouTube Google Hack course. I tend to stay away from guru style products these days but as it was only $7 I figured I would take a peek…

The result… It's a well rounded short report which, unlike the name suggests, isn't so much of a hack but solid video marketing advice. The report starts out with a brief state of affairs which sets the scene but won't hurt to skip over. However it quickly shifts pace with an introduction to the style your videos should be made in and the elements included various types of video.

Moving forward the report discusses various tools you can use to actually create compelling videos including services such as Prezi (One that I've really been meaning to get up to speed with!). Ryan also shares the site that he uses to get doodle videos (a lot more impressive than they sound…), it's Sellamations.com if you're wondering ;)

And finally he jumps headfirst into the stuff I'd bought the report hoping to find. He shares a few on site optimization tricks for YouTube such as Video Title Stacking, something I'd always suspected but never confirmed and a really interesting use of Fiverr for getting your videos ranked in no time at all.

Whilst the YouTube Google Hacks report was in no way comprehensive at about 13 pages (not including cover etc) it does go over the basics of everything you need to start marketing with Google and packs a punch with a few tips and tricks that even advanced video marketers can start adding to their arsenal. If you market your business with video online then I can recommend this as a great, if not comprehensive, resource for raising the bar with YouTube marketing and setting up your videos and channels for real online business.

The best companies always try and breed a culture of positive customer service, hire the best people and allow them a certain amount of freedom to undertake acts such as this example from Sainsburys. Most people would be amazed at how many big, typically corporate, companies send out gifts, birthday cards and little tokens of customer appreciation in situations both good and bad!

Google+ is all about adding a social layer to the ways you are already interacting with Google and this will continue to grow. The ultimate success of Google+ as a social network will rely heavily on it's continued integration with Google at the highest level. With 40 million members already on board and more people than ever signing up for Google accounts through Android the rise will continue and Google+ will remain a viable communications, ranking and marketing platform for the foreseeable future.

So long as you are prepared to pay attention to the details, it really can be that simple. Here are 12 traffic conversion secrets that even a newcomer to Internet marketing can do:

1. Refine your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). What makes your product different, special, better or more desirable? That’s the USP. Now get the answer to that question down to one or two concise sentences.
2. When writing for sales you need to sound friendly, not slick. Sales copy has to sound like you are simply excited to tell one of your friends about a great buy that you've come across. The last thing that you want to do is sound like a high-pressure infomercial.
3. Engage your viewers by asking for assistance. When you give viewers a reason to interact with you such as their opinion on a survey or requesting a product rating; you will not only get useful information but you will keep your prospects thinking about your product longer.
4. Don't overwhelm your viewers. If you there are three different products that you are trying to sell then take the time to create three websites. When you make the mistake of offering too much at once you can confuse your readers into buying nothing at all. The exception to this rule are major retailers, but they already have a brand and a following.
5. White space is your friend. If you leave wide on your sales page it makes it easier to read. Your potential clients will be able to focus on your your copy without distraction and in turn, you will increase your conversions.
6. Get people excited about your offering. When your product has a great rating or multiple endorsements from satisfied customers, share it with the world and let them brag about the product for you.
7. Leave plenty of hooks. When you are designing your sales letter or squeeze page make sure, the more hooks that you leave, the more chance you have of converting. It's better to have too many offers than to leave money on the table when you lose a potential buyer who was just one step away from taking action.
8. Find problems. Even after your sales page is complete, keep thinking about other problems that your product can solve. You might get a hint of new ways to promote your product by asking buyers how they use the product.
9. Direct your viewers attention. In addition to white space there will be times when you want to use moderate highlighting. This will bring focus to the most important parts of your copy. Be warned: Too many highlights or excessive colors frustrate online readers.
10. People love value, so give it to them. After presenting your USP, you can always sweeten the offer by adding more free information, more tools or more services to create a package deal. To increase the effectiveness of this method set a time limit on your offers to create a sense of urgency for the buyer to act.
11. Ask for the sale. If you are offering your customers value as we've already discussed then you shouldn't feel guilty about asking for the sale. Even somebody who is highly interested in your product may need to be asked up to three times to become a buyer. You can’t ask too many times.
12. And last but not least, always say “Thank you.” Have a gracious, personal sounding, “Thank you” email with the order confirmation you send out. It doesn't cost a penny to have good manners and show your buyer appreciation!

As technology has evolved the cost of providing many products and services has fallen to practically zero leading to the dawn of the Freemium era. Forward thinking companies have embraced a business model that we've come to know as Freemium. The model combines two different words and ideologies; free and premium, bringing them together to create freemium business ventures.

Freemium is not simply giving away premium products for free or even charging for previously free products. It's an entirely different model that relies on providing as many people with a free version of their product for mass distribution whilst upgrading a percentage of it's consumers into premium customers by adding more features, throwing in a bonus or removing certain restrictions.

The concept of freemium is deceptively simple; you generate revenue by offering a free product or service with an upsell or premium edition. The real art then is in deciding how much of the farm you give away for free.

One of the key components of the freemium model in the tech world is based on the decreasing costs of production. In a traditional business creating several thousand books to give away for free in the hopes that a small segment would attend an event by the author would require a huge upfront investment and may even cause a monetary loss. However in the digital age you can create hundreds of thousands of ebooks for practically the same price as producing a single book as each extra ebook requires no extra materials. In the industry this is described as the marginal cost (the cost of producing an additional unit of product) reducing to zero.

Going back to the case of the author wanting people to attend his event, in this latter scenario it actually makes sense to give out as many books as possible at no cost, in order to cast a wider net and bring in more people at no extra cost. The key thing to grasp here however is that the ebook is still a full product in itself, it is not simply an advertising platform but rather a complete book that can be read, enjoyed and learned from without actually ever meeting the author. There are also no adverts or subscriptions subsidising the ebook, it is simply given away without expecting anything in return.

You can duplicate digital products at almost no cost. So after producing an initial file, say a tutorial video, the production of either 100 or 100 million files costs practically the same as it is only distribution costs which technically decrease per unit in a fixed cost scenario. Compared with traditional physical production, this is a very disruptive. These changes create a situation with a lot of new challenges such as mass piracy.But more importantly, it also creates a lot of new possibilities, to experiment with a completely business model.

The beauty of this model is that it can benefit from the best of both worlds (free & premium). Users enjoying the free part of your product can help your brand go viral by sharing links, inviting friends and generally making a lot of noise. A certain percentage of these people will then go on to become paying members when their curiosity peaks and their interest and desire for more justifies paying for the premium version.

If you simply want to get out a few sites quickly however you are likely better off hiring somebody. One thing that is definitely worth considering is using a content management system, more commonly known as a ‘CMS', such as WordPress or Joomla. These allow you to easily edit your site with a simple editor whilst a theme controls the look of your site.

In regards to HTML editors I have an ancient edition of dreamweaver the latest and greatest version of Creative Suite ;) that I sometimes use for visual editing but usually find myself falling back on NotePad++ for Windows and Text Wrangler for Mac which will highlight your code for you. This way you know that any code inserted is there for a reason rather than being added on a whim when Dreamweaver takes the long route to something.

I'm a huge advocate for WordPress personally as you design or purchase a theme once and it's applied to all of your pages and posts rather than having to build each individual pages look and appearance individually. There is also pretty much a plugin for anything that you can think of adding to your site and thousands of themes ready made to dive straight in.

Whilst only you can decide whether you want to actually learn to build websites or whether you simply need a website. There is a difference! For most entrepreneurs I would recommend that a base level of understanding would be a huge help but not a necessity. You can always hire someone to develop your website and then learn how to improve it along the way.

You can already see the first hints of the AuthorRank system being worked into Google with the introduction of pictures from an individuals Google+ profile being shown directly within the search results.

In the image above you can see that there is an author image to the right of the search results which also links to the author's profile. This is the first steps into an author optimized web where articles and web content in general is ranked and shared in relation to the authority of their creator. As you can imagine an image of yourself placed directly on the search results page will really draw peoples attention, especially whilst you are one of only a few that are taking the time to get ahead of the authorship rush.

If you currently publish content on the web or even run your own websites there are several steps that you should be taking immediately…

• Create a Google+ Account So You Can Start Linking your Sites
• Use a Real Picture of You On Your Profiles (No Graphics Unfortunately)
• Configure your WordPress Blog for Authorship Optimization
• Run a Test To See if Your Authorship Optimization Was Successful

If you are not one of the millions of sites that are running a WordPress site then you can use the official AuthorRank Optimization guidelines from Google to make sure your site still complies with the new AuthorRank attributes.

Whilst this article has hopefully give you an introduction as to what AuthorRank is and one of the most immediate ways you can benefit from it you should keep in mind that we are still in the early stages of it's adoption across the web. Those who are quick to adapt will gain the fastest benefits to their site and it could be the difference between gaining and retaining a first page ranking against falling into obscurity.

Through this site I will be keeping you up to date with all of the most important AuthorRank news, tips and strategies so if you want to be kept in the loop then please consider subscribing to the feed or our email subscription feature below.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on AuthorRank and how your adopting it within your websites so please feel free to comment below. And if you have any burning questions about AuthorRank and the changes rolling out across Google then please do share them and I will try to address them all in future features.

If you are involved in the world of affiliate marketing then it is likely you've heard of CPA as some underground secret society where people are making fortunes online. Indeed this was the view that many have when they first start investigating exactly what CPA is, I know because I was one of them. I remember wondering whether I was even qualified to be researching them when and my very first interview.

The very first network I joined was MaxBounty and as they re-launched their updated website today, it got me thinking about my first experiences entering the world of CPA. I decided that I'd get an article out there to dispel the myths about CPA and give a brief overview of what exactly it is.

CPA: Back to basics

To start out out any kind of introduction I'll first share my definition of what CPA is. It may not be dictionary perfect but it'll at least give you a model to work with whilst considering the points throughout this article.

CPA (Cost Per Action / Cost Per Acquisition): This is an advertising model where publishers are paid for an action that is taken as a direct result of their marketing. This differs from typical affiliate marketing in that you may not necessarily need to make a sale to get paid within a CPA network. Payments are usually based on lead generation such as submitting a phone number or email address to get some free product or information.

As you can imagine the fact that you can get paid without even having to make a single sale can make CPA networks very attractive to the “make money online” crowd and can potentially leave a lot of room to be exploited. This means that CPA networks will usually be a little stricter than your typical affiliate network when allowing people into their network.

When people hear that CPA networks are stricter they often get scared off. You shouldn't let this happen to you because the truth is, if you are an honest upstanding affiliate or plan on becoming one, they really do want you involved. It's really the scammers and spammers of the world that they will try and weed out.

Methods of CPA Promotion

There are many differing ways to promote CPA campaigns, some of which involve having your own website, some that don't. The truth is that CPA marketing is really not all that different than other types of marketing. At it's most basic you just have to take some time to consider the product that you are promoting and where you will actually find a market that is interested in either learning more or purchasing a product.

Having said all of that I will list a few examples of the more popular CPA promotional methods that you may come across:

1. Review Website – Generally these types of websites will contain three of more products within a certain niche i.e. Weight Loss Pills or Lawn Fertilizer. They will then give you a brief introduction to each product, a review of the products performance and then usually a star rating out of five. Each of these products will usually be ranked in order and all will contain links to either a personalized landing page (introduced below) or direct to the merchant.
2. Sales/Landing Page – This site is usually more of a direct sales page and will likely introduce a lot more information on the product that it discusses. It will typically be a very hard sale and work to get it's reader either clicking through to the merchant there and then or at the very least signed up to the site owners mailing list. Some sales pages will actually try to do both of these things, though it can often be beneficial to have one direct path through a landing page. Too many options can ultimately mean losing clicks.
3. Splash Page – This is usally content light and will have flashy graphics with some punchy headlines and copy  to encourage readers to input their details or click through to the merchant. Product information is usually minimal and these types of pages are often reserved for products that need little explanation or are already famous i.e. competition for an iPhone or Macbook.
4. Quiz / Fun Landing Page – Similar to the spash page but even simpler. There will usually be a question with two or more answers that can then be clicked on through huge domineering buttons. Sometimes some sort of game may be used in page of this style and it is definitely not the kind of page that someone will be revisiting. It's only purpose is to get that click-through and get it now.

Having given you all these examples of websites that are used don't be mistaken into thinking that you can only market through your own website. Other possible methods of promoting CPA Offers include posting to message boards, emailing a list of contacts, adding links to videos on YouTube and once you've risen the capital possibly even text-in adverts in magazines or regional/national TV.

CPA: How hard is it really?

I know you're wondering how easy it is to get into all this. I mean it all sounds great in theory but what's this talk of national TV? The truth is you needn't go to these kind of lengths to make money in CPA. Whilst it's nice to know that it's possible to go to these lengths, there are ordinary people out there making thousands of dollars per day simply by running CPA promotions online. I want you to realise through this article that it's not some secret society and it's definitely not some pie in the sky idea. It is still a business model and it will take work to make it. You should really discover for yourself that with a bit of work to get yourself started you too can have success in the world of Cost Per Action Marketing.

How To Get Accepted into CPA Networks

Almost without fail this is one of the first questions that pops into peoples minds when they hear that you have to apply to join most CPA networks. Whilst there is not one simple way to get accepted every time, there are ways that you can increase your likelihood of being accepted. You should always remember that if at first you don't succeed, try and try again. As much as I'd like to claim that I'm perfect, I've been both accepted and rejected in the past. That's the way that life works, however if you follow the steps in this article you will be giving yourself the best chance of success.

• Get Yourself a Website – If you don't already have a website, then now is the time to get your first one. Whilst it is possible to get accepted to some networks without your own website you may as well give yourself the best chance of success. If you are a major publisher or an experienced marketer and plan on running the CPA ads on your site then can apply with your current domain. However it's more likely that you will have several smaller sites or none at all. In this case you will want to create a website that brands yourself as an online marketer and describes the areas that you work in. A good selection of skill sets to include are your experience with PPC, SEO, Email Marketing or any other methods that you may use. Choosing a name such as SOMETHINGmarketing.com will also give you a more professional feel. If you can't or don't want to design the website yourself then hire somebody to do it for you within a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress so you can edit yourself at a later date.
• Use an email on your domain – I received this information on good faith from an industry insider a while back. If nothing else you will want to use an email that looks a little like this ‘yourname@yourdomain.com'. Even if you primarily use a GMail account or similar you will want to do this and set up a redirect. Many CPA networks will instantly reject any applicant who uses a free email address as they are so easy to set up and they have no verification you are actually the person who owns your site.
• Open & Honest in All of Your Communications – Whilst this may get you denied by some of the more selective CPA networks I truly believe that honesty is important especially in this area. If you say that you plan on driving 1000 keyword targeted leads from per month from PPC and they phone you up and it's clear that you've never even used PPC it will start to raise flags about other areas. Whilst you may think that stating you can do everything will help your case it may actually hurt it. As CPA networks usually give you your own rep/manager you can often get extra support in the areas where you are lacking, even if it's just a prod in the right direction. After all your success is where they will be making their money.
• Be Proactive When Applying – Many CPA networks will require an interview over the phone or via instant message before approving your account. Sometimes it can take up to a couple of days before they get a chance to call you back. If they provide a phone number or IM contact details then you should use them. You will have all the details that you've provided fresh in your head and even if they can't speak to you on the spot it proves that you are serious about joining and they will likely recognise your name when calling back.

So there you have it, armed with the following information you should be well on your way to getting accepted into your first few CPA networks. And on that note it's worth saying that you should likely apply for a few of them. Even if you do get accepted into them all you will find that many of them have different offers available that others don't.

In Conclusion…

Hopefully you haven't been too overwhelmed by the amount of information contained within this post but I felt it necessary to give a full overview of exactly what CPA is and how you can get involved. You've learned a few of the methods that CPA affiliates are using right now to earn money online. Even armed with the information you've learned today you are way in front of the average persons level of knowledge about CPA so please don't waste this opportunity.

My personal challenge to you is this: If you're considering getting into CPA Marketing then either sign up with a network or set the wheels in motion today!  Too many people read information online and then forget about it after a couple of hours and never go back. If you really want to succeed in any online marketing endeavours the real key is informed action. This article has given you the power to take your first steps into CPA, now what you do with that information is up to you.

Get Started Today with the MaxBounty CPA Network
Relaunched with a powerful new website that makes finding and tracking offers easier than ever.

When deciding whether you should add PLR content to your site it is also important to remember that you need to focus on providing real additional value to your members. Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. Also you should not being adding filler content to simply make your site look like it offers more than it does whilst providing empty content.

Everything that you add inside to your website should be adding value for your members and be in line with the core value offering of your website. As long as you meet these criteria you can add as little or as much PLR content as you want. With that said it is possible to provide so much content upfront that you overwhelm your members, or worse content that provides a contradictory message. For this reason the best time to add PLR content is probably going to be when it fulfils a need for your customers, that you don’t currently provide for and supplements your primary product.

Rather than deal with the constant barrage of complaints and chargebacks that these deceptive sites have been generating both Visa and Mastercard have now put the wheels in motion to shut down sites that employ these marketing strategies. As you can imagine this is causing quite a stir amongst the internet marketing industry and not only with the ‘bad eggs'. This is a blanket movement that will also have an effect on those who are ethically using this strategy so you will want to keep up to date on exactly what this means for you and your business.

Ryan Lee is an expert in the field of continuity programs and has recently posted to his blog one of the most detailed reports explaining the death of forced continuity that I've seen. If you use forced continuity or free trials within your business you will want head on over to find out more.

Overall I think this will have a positive impact and reduce the amount of deceptive offers that you find online but there is no doubt that this will have a knock on effect for many honest business owners as well. What are your thoughts on the issue? And if you currently run one of these types of offers, where do you see things going from here? Feel free to leave your comments, I'd love to hear from you!

Whilst Twitter is not specifically designed for business, more and more companies are beginning to see the value that this micro-blogging platform offers and are creating profiles for individuals on the team and even for the brand itself. When you consider that Twitter will have more than 18 million users by the end of 2009 it would be silly to ignore.

There are two main methods to add your tweet's and I've added a quick video introduction below. You can choose which method you'd like when activating your Twitter account through LinkedIn. The first method will simply catch all of your Tweets and automatically add them to your profile page. The second method is a little more sophisticated in that it allows you to select which Tweets are published by inluding a simple hashtag (#in).

Whilst this news is certainly nothing ground breaking; it's definitely something worth paying attention to. Social media has been hailed by some as the top marketing tactic of 2009 followed closely by eNewsletters and blogs so any integration and extra exposure that you can gain via this medium will be important for both you and your business.

You can find the author of this article, Daniel McClure, on Twitter Here.

As a side-note some of these websites will also let you choose a custom vanity url so people can have an idea of your content in advance (example: http://bit.ly/getwishlistmember) and some services such as bit.ly will even let you track the number of clicks.

There are other hidden benefits that many people get out of using url shorteners as well as a simple short link. Affiliate marketers advertising other peoples products for cash will often need to use links which hold their name on the end and will not want to share this link directly with the world for a few reasons. Affiliate links are often; ugly, confusing, left unclicked or even worse; all three.

URL shortening services took off in such a big way because everYone can find a use for them, from the casual Internet user sharing funny images with a friend all the way through to the Internet Professional who makes their living online. At a guess I'd say you fall into the latter category or at least somewhere in-between seeing as how you've made it to this site and that is why you must be aware of the potential piTfalls.

“When Good Links Go Bad!”

You've been promoting something for a while now and have shared your links in literally hundreds of places online. Suddenly without warning the company that you've been promoting goes bust and you are left with hundreds of links leading to a dead site. Perhaps  it's something as simple as the company that you've been linking to starts to slack a little and you decide that it's time to promote somebody else that is consistently providing a better product or service. In either of these situations with a traditional url shortener you are left in a position where you will need to not only find a replacement service to offer but also work on building new links to the replacement offer.

Another thing that happens more often than you'd think is that somebody has a bad experience when clicking on a shortened link and then no longer trusts anything that comes from that domain. Whilst most companies offering short urls do their best to keep the bad guys out this could happen on any of the public url redirect sites and you find yourself losing out on valuable page views.

If You're Involved in Online Marketing You Need a
Dynamic URL Redirection Service!

A new breed of url redirect services are starting to emerge that give you more control than ever on your links. Want to change the destination of a link several months after posting it across the net? Done. How about linking from your domain to create a higher click through ratio? All common problems are solved by tiny url services such as Pretty Link Pro. There is no point in sitting around and waiting until one of your affiliate programs drop out, the truth is that you are potentially losing views already so the sooner you get a hold on your link management the better.

Finally, all your marketing in one place:

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• Pretty Link Pro is robust and very easy to use.

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The most common solution for this is by turning certain design elements into images i.e. your headers and logo etc. This works well enough that it is considered common practise, however when you create a whole page this way the text no longer becomes accessible in a few crucial ways.

A page completely consisting of text as images:

• Will lose SEO value (Lower or Non-Existent in Search Engines)
• Will be inaccesible to those with eyesight problems who increase fonts or use screen readers.
• Will take a longer time to load than text based pages

So What Can You Do?

Option One – Images & Standard Fonts

The first, which happens to be recommended and most common, is to use the fancy fonts only in headers etc and complete the rest with a web safe font. The fonts that come with the Thesis Theme are generally considered web-safe.

Option Two – Web Font Replacement

The second option is a little more involved. It often requires the use of flash and javascript which may slow your sites loading time somewhat. The end result however is that you can retain the fonts that you had originally intended and they will still be accessible by search engines and screen readers. This is usually a more time/resource-intensive task and therefore will demand a higher investment whether that be your own time or that of your designer.

Possible Font Replacement Solutions

• sIFR3
• @font-face

So there you have it, there are ways of adding non-standard fonts within your web design. Whilst neither may be the perfect solution it is definitely a workable solution whilst the finer details of this area are worked out between the font and browser developers. With some luck we will be able to use fonts more with less restrictions in the near future..

Props to @ericnicolaas for his recommending the @font-face method whilst researching this post

Trust me I understand that it's not the most glamorous subject in the world but that's also why it's so important. Not everybody is talking about it, apart from maybe lawyers but they are in it for the commission. When you are acting as the consumer it's all too easy to dismiss the contract, however once you step into the world of the business owner it becomes unavoidable (or at least it should do).

One of the very first things you should be doing with any project you decide to undertake is, create a contract so that all the parties involved have an understanding of the agreement. Here are just a few examples of the times you will almost definitely need a contract on the web or otherwise:

• Freelance Projects – When taking on a freelance project the specifics will obviously fall back to whichever area you work in.
• Joint Ventures – In this case I'm discussing the kind where you work in co-ordination with another party to create a product or provide a service etc.
• Affiliate Relations – Whilst promoting other peoples products you will have almost definitely come across “affiliate agreements” so when it comes to paying affiliates the situation is no different.
• Selling Products – You will obviously have the initial exchanging of money but you will also need to think about things like return policies. The kind of contract you'll require on subscriptions and recurring payments is likely to be even more in depth.

Now don't get me wrong, that was by no means an exhaustive list but you will find that all of these different situations require a contract of some sort. While for many of these a contract is best left to the professional, if you can't do that you definitely shouldn't skip this step. At the very least you will want to create a basic contract touching on things like the scope, payment terms, deadlines and responsibilities for all parties involved.

Contracts can save you hours of unnecessary work, unhappy customers, failed business ventures and even protect from you in the case of a lawsuit. With a bit of luck once the contract is signed and out of the way you won't need to refer to it. However when the sh!t hits the fan (WTSHTF) it'll be your ass that's covered.