In preparation for the webinar I’m holding Tuesday on creating affiliate landing pages, I thought I would share this video which shows in under 3 minutes how you can create your own landing page from nothing more than the offer page itself, and a free Paint tool.

You can download paint.net for free (Windows only, Mac users will have to use an alternative like Gimp) and give it a spin.

Enjoy!

Jonathan

One thing I get asked about quite often, is various aspects of actually creating a landing page.  People get stuck on all sorts of things when really they’re just making it more difficult than it needs to be.

I’m holding another webinar for my marketing community on this very topic, and I’ve decided for the first time to let non-members in as well, for a modest price.

For just $49 you can attend this webinar live, and will also receive access to the playback after it’s done.  This will be your chance to learn some of my tricks & techniques for building affiliate landing pages quickly and easily, without wasting huge amounts of time, using expensive software, or paying a designer (and trust me – I’m no designer myself!)

WEBINAR IS OVER BUT THE RECORDING WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON

Among other things I intend to discuss:

• Test quickly by swiping design elements from existing pages and making them your own
• Quick & dirty image manipulation without Photoshop
• Simple HTML tricks without using any fancy HTML software
• How to clone nearly any web page in seconds
• Ways to use WPGen to get the best results
• Whatever else you bring up!

Join us and have your microphone or telephone ready if possible, as I love interacting on my webinars.  I plan for this to be 1 hour long but if you’ve been on any of my past webinars, you know that I generally will stay for as long as people have questions… my record so far is 3 hours straight without a pause! 

Register now so you don’t miss out, I look forward to showing you some things and answering your questions!

Jonathan

I was just hunting for information on SOPA/PIPA because I was told that it had been very rapidly thrown out.  The page that was returned caught me off guard, despite the fact that I had said this was going to be happening not long ago:

http://screencast.com/t/y9BcX82Rcb

Yep – personalized search results are here!

I’m not entirely clear how they work or what results are personal vs. not.  From what I’m seeing, it’s only for some keywords for the moment.  Searches for “SOPA”, “PIPA”, “dogs”, and “cats” all got personalized results, but a search for “dog food” was not.

I imagine Google will be rolling this out more and more this year until ALL searches get “personalized”.  Care to share your thoughts on how this is going to effect the SEO industry?  Comments below!

Jonathan

I wrote about this a little while back, but the matter at hand is getting closer and closer to reality (we have less than 2 weeks left!!) and it must be stopped!!

Please take a moment to look at the official stance from WordPress.org on this matter, and do what you can to help kill this insanity in its tracks.

No matter where in the world you are, if you’re reading this now then you use the internet, which means you could be affected in a big way by this really stupid and harmful regulation.

Jonathan

If you do any work with people other than yourself, you probably have at some point looked into task or project management solutions.

I’ve tried a whole bunch of them… HiTask, NozBe, Things, AceProject, BaseCamp, and too many others to count. So far every single solitary one of them has had a minimum of one totally fatal flaw. Even the almighty BaseCamp is, for my purposes, totally useless.

But today I found out about Flow and I have to say…

ME LIKEY!!

The single most serious fatal flaw I’ve found in most other systems is that ALL members of your “company” or “team” can see EVERYTHING ELSE the company is working on.  There are COUNTLESS reasons this is a terrible idea.  Not the least of which is proprietary information that you only want specific team/company members to see… but also just to not clutter up a developer’s list of items with marketing stuff that they have no involvement with, for example.  Flow solves this by allowing you to make as many “lists” as you want, and tasks within that list can be assigned to only specific people and nobody else knows about them (or the list itself).  PERFECT!  Now I can have a “Marketing” list that only myself, my designer, and maybe a marketing partner can see, but also have a “Development” list that only myself and my coders can see.  Loads of flexibility here.

I’m still in the first day of my 14 day trial but so far I’m super duper impressed.  It really feels like an application even in the web-browser version, and its free App integration on my iPhone 4s is phenomenal.  I am actually reporting bugs and defining tasks for my team by VOICE rather than typing!  It’s fantastic.

My only complaint so far is that Flow has no external calendar integration.  So while it DOES have due dates and the like, I can’t sync it to my Google Calendar and have all of my milestones or other important date-related items, in one place with the rest of my life.  If it had that… I think I’d be just about to my personal Holy Grail of Project Management Systems.

Actually, we’re currently working on adding calendar support to Flow, so you can view your tasks in your favorite calendar app. It’s not ready yet, but we should have it very soon. If you need anything else, just let us know. Thanks for using Flow!

The one thing I am still a little unhappy about though is their pricing.  Don’t get me wrong – in the big scheme of things it’s still peanuts.  But compared to most other apps I’ve looked at… they’re quite expensive at $9/month per user.  True you can get discounts for buying an annual membership or adding batches of people at the same time.  But I tend to work with people sometimes on very short-term projects of a few days to a week or two… so having to buy them an account is annoying.

Thankfully anyone can join your team at no cost and receive tasks, comment on them, mark them as completed, etc.  They just can’t CREATE tasks, add contacts to the team, etc.  And that suits me perfectly.

There’s also currently a deal running on AppSumo (current offer shown in the sidebar) where you can get an annual subscription for only $39!  I’m going to play with the trial account for the weekend but I’m pretty sure I’ll be buying on Monday.

So if you deal with teams of people like coders, designers, or any freelance or contract workers at all, I strongly suggest you check out Flow.  The only person I think it might simply NOT work for would be a hardcore Android user, as there is no Android App currently.

Hoping this helps you get into the Flow of things!  ;)

Jonathan

There’s a relative newcomer to the IM world, and they’re adopting the “Group Discount” model ala Groupon, but for Internet Marketing related tools and other products.

My KWBot keyword tool was featured there recently, and I allow other products of mine to be featured there at some point in the future.  They call themselves “The Daily Gangster” and while I’m not crazy about the whole “Gangster” motif personally, I can see that they’re having some fun with it.

Anyway, check it out and see if anything grabs your fancy.  If you don’t have to pay full price for stuff… don’t! 

Jonathan

OK all you closet Dungeons and Dragons players! Now is your time to shine!

Wait… what??

Sorry… let me explain.  Based on looking over the recent Google Quality Rater Guide that was leaked out, I believe that for marketers, this is the “Age of the Persona”.

Now it’s not exactly a new concept to use a pseudonym, or even an entire other persona, when marketing online.  But Google has very clearly stated that they want to see “experts” delivering useful information and opinions on web pages.  And that their raters have been instructed to see through the “thin affiliates” and all the other games & tricks, to determine who is REALLY an expert, and who isn’t.

So, does this mean you have to go become a leading expert on everything you want to market?

No I don’t believe so.  But you better LOOK LIKE ONE!

This is where the RPG reference in my title comes in.  If you’re going to market something and don’t want to put your personal name on it (which often makes total sense to do), then you better make sure that whatever name you DO use, appears to be a genuine expert in the field.

So if you’re a man marketing fitness products for women, you’d better create a female “character” and really flesh her out.  Figure out her stats… give her a backstory.  Create profiles for her on social networking sites, business sites, etc.  Make it so that if someone looks her up, she’s real and “out there” and has the appearance of credibility.

I think that now more than ever might be the time to really dive deep into your “alter egos” and let them shine.  Give them a Flickr album of personal photos, an active twitter feed, friends who actually write to her on her Facebook wall… etc.

This should go a long way towards pleasing the quality raters if they come to her product site and decide to look her up to help determine if she’s truly an expert on women’s fitness.

So no matter who you really are, learn to create believable characters and portray them as fully as you can.  Doing so shouldn’t really take more than a few hours to set up a few accounts and post some content… and could provide you some long term benefits!

Jonathan

I just threw this video up real quick to illustrate something I think is just outrageously awesome…

http://screencast.com/t/COHuk5yJCJBI

If you aren’t already familiar with Remarketing, and aren’t already a member of VanCluteSolution.com, then you might want to check out my Remarketing Unleashed videos.  For the cost you can’t find better info anywhere on the topic.

Are you using remarketing yet?  If so how’s it going for you?

Jonathan

Anyone who knows me personally probably know that I’m almost rabidly non-political.  My general view is that “the system” is so utterly broken down to it’s foundation, that I refuse to participate if at all possible.

In my lifetime there have been very, VERY few exceptions to this rule for me, but today is the day for one to surface.

This is SO completely insane that I thought it had to be a hoax… like those “Microsoft is giving away a million dollars for passing on this email” chain letters (yes, they are a hoax!  LOL)

But this is real… and for anyone who is reading this, and therefore obviously uses the internet, I think you better know about it.

http://pol.moveon.org/nointernetcensorship/

I’ve signed the petition (something I never EVER do!), if you live in the US won’t you sign it as well?  Actually, I’m assuming it’s limited to US residents but I don’t know that for a fact… although it does require a zipcode.

Oh also please note that unlike many absurd attempts to change things by gathering internet petitions (which are always doomed to failure by design!), this is not expecting the petition to change anyone’s minds.  It’s an attempt to gather hopefully millions of names, so that they can be read in succession for however long it takes, in order to fillibuster this bill on the Senate floor and keep it from ever passing.

I think that’s rather creative, and I sure hope it works!

Here’s a wikipedia article on the matter at hand (known as SOPA).  I strongly urge you to read it and do what you can to stop this thing in its tracks!

Jonathan