Monetize your site

Addresses
I realize that it seems to be fashionable to pretend to be
too incompetent to deal with spam. I also know that quite
often that attitude is a real indicator of incompetence.
The rest of the time, it seems to indicate lazyness.

Got more excuses? Keep them. I have heard them all.

It’s time to wake up and look at the situation from
the viewpoint of clients and prospective clients.
When I signed up for AJ’s course, he had a working
email address. THAT is why I signed up, not because
of the windmilling.

I find exactly the same with my clients. They don’t
want to argue with auto-responders or dawdle around
on some forum. They want a real person,
really accessible.

By being instantly accessible via Skype or email,
I can manage the tech support for 50,000 postcard
sites. People can get hold of me before they
complicate their problem with experimenting.
That saves them, - and me - , a lot of time,
and is appreciated all the way around.

If you don’t make yourself accessible, then you are
not serious about wanting to be in business.
People have to know you first, before they can
learn to trust you.

Spam is no valid excuse. Any kid and any granny can
get Mailwasher for about $30. That’s just the
cost of doing business, just like your business license.

Most of the spam these days has your own address
forged in as the sender address. But they don’t forge
in your name. So you simply filter all mail, that has
your address as the sender address, but not your name
in the FROM field, into nowhere, unseen.

The same goes with any other spam. Look what is
common, then make a filter. It’s really not that difficult
to win the spam game.

Mailwasher is by no means the only spam control
program, but for the long run, it seems to be the best
one. No matter which one you use, get comfortable
with making filters. They weed out the bulk, so that
the program only has to deal with the few that don’t
get caught in the filters.

Have FUN!
DearWebby

The flow of froms

Before you worry about inserting the input box,
first you need “THE FORM“.
Placing the actual input box is the last thing.

“THE FORM“ consists of
1. input box
2. primary thank-you page
3. confirmation request email
4. secondary thank-you page
5. thank-you / password / download link email
6. Success / download link page

Usually your form manager program generates those six items
for you, but roughly. You have to pretty them up with your
corporate colors, logos, and a few kind words.
Upload those components.

Only THEN do you copy / paste the generated and prettied up
input box to wherever you want, including your blog.

To paste the input box into the sidebar of your blog, decide
on the exact location, find the last word above it,
open the sidebar in the blog editor and look for that word.

Paste the input box below that word,
save and upload.

To make your life MUCH easier, print out the set-up page of “THE FORM“,
where it lists the file names of the six components.

The better form managers let you re-use components from
existing forms, but you need to know their file names.
Quite often you can partially re-use components, so save a
prettied up master copy of each, so that you can quickly
and easily adapt them to the next form.

I know that forms can be initially a bit confusing, so I
drew up that flow chart. Try to get VERY comfortable
with the concept. Forms are the pick-up trucks of
business, whether on-line or off-line. Once you are
familiar with the process, you can snap up a form
in a minute or two, without worrying whether it works or not.

There are forms managers that can be rented, some can
be used courtesy of the hosting company, and some can be
bought.

Obviously, using the forms manager of your current hosting
company is rather reckless. If you have to move, your work
and your forms are left behind, and you get to recreate
everything from scratch.

The cheaper your hosting, the more likely you will get fed up
and move. If you use bargain hosting, and use the web hosts
form engine, document every single step! You will need all
that info for creating the forms again at the next web host.
I can’t overemphasize the need for very thorough documentation!
Save the source code of the prettied up pages, That way
you have the color numbers and whatever you need to
duplicate them reasonably quickly.

There are some form and list services that you can rent by
the month. Aweber is quite popular with beginners. Their
service is only around $25 a month and they have a fairly
easy user interface.

The problem with rented form services is similar to courtesy
freebies included with hosting. If you make a mistake or
get too busy, you are out on your ear.
Document EVERYTHING! Sooner or later you WILL need that
information again.

The final option is to buy your own forms manager or forms
engine. They range from $75 to $5000. They do about the same,
but the $5000 programs have a lot more hype and sales effort.

I use the MagicForms©. from Webby.
We wrote that in 1995, because I realized the need for forms
in business. Initially it was just for our internal use.

You can have thousands of separate forms running simultaneously,
share and re-use components when it suits you, or tweak the
looks of them with normal HTML. MagicForms© is so simple to
use, that I still have not found a need to write a manual for it.

Purchasing MagicForms© ($75) includes professional
nstallation, but you have to be on a UNIX or Linux server,
and have SSH privileges for the installation.

Summary:
start with freebie forms
upgrade to rented form service
graduate to your own form engine.

Document every step and keep copies of every component.

Have FUN!
DearWebby

How often have you observed that amateur marketers
had launch day problems? It almost seems, that the word
“launch” is a command line call for the gremlins.

OK, so how do you get around that?
Quite simply and easily: Set up a download mirror.

When Garry launched TheProfitPullingProject, HostGator
messed up their router and lost access to North America.

I had opened a site there on HostGator on Sunday,
mostly to see why Alex Jeffreys was so insistent that we

host there. That site, http://monetlists.com/ (similar name
as this one, but with an S at the end) was down too,
not just Garry’s site.

So I quickly made a mirror for Garry on one of my servers
at http://monetsite.com/Garry/ and put his download up
there.

Then I contacted HostGator and told them about their router
problem. Once they had been made aware of it, they fixed
it within a few minutes.

Unfortunately, Garry’s problem is not an isolated case.
Set up a mirror BEFORE you launch anything, and
mention in your mails to go to the mirror site, if the
regular site is overloaded or down.

If you set up a mirror beforehand, you can get all your
pages up there, not just the download file. If you are one
of Alex Jeffrey’s students, it won’t cost you anything.
I have big postcard servers in the Hub of the Internet,
and as long as you don’t launch at Christmas, Valentines
Day, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, those servers are
mostly just idling, and can easily handle even the biggest
launch.

Have FUN!
DearWebby