Just a quick announcement that our new baby girl is finally here!

Name: “Sierra LaRae Galloway”
Born: 1:38 PM Central Time, Dec 22, 2007
Weight: 8 lbs 8oz
Length: 19 inches

Baby and mother are doing great — here’s a picture I took when Sierra was about 2 hours old:

I guess it’s time for me to rename my “pregnancysale.com” site! (I can’t tell you how happy LaRae is to not be pregnant anymore!)

Thanks to everyone for their support this past (long!) 9 months!

Paul

If you’ve been following some of my emails, you know the arrival of our new baby is imminent — she’s due on Dec 19, which is less than a week away!

The last two pregnancies all went over the deadline, but my wife is REALLY hoping that doesn’t happen this time. And I have to admit, I’m anxious to greet the little one too.

Okay now let’s get down to business . . .

I’ve created some “screen capture” videos before, but yesterday I created what I consider to be my first “real” video. It’s got motion and the last half even has a soundtrack! I think the first part is actually a bit cheesy, but it’s all tongue in cheek and I had a fun time making it.

Check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyfIcaBewHM

Obviously the video is promoting the “Underground” seminar, but the biggest reason I created this video was to get familiar with the process. And I learned a lot. This video took me several hours to create, but the next one should take me half the time or less.

Here’s the tools I used to create this . . .

To create the movie, I used “Adobe Premiere Elements” software. Now keep in mind that Windows XP comes with “Movie Maker” which includes lots of neat transitions (different screen wipes between scenes) — but I believe the Adobe software gives you greater control over the various elements, such as volume fading.

For the narrative during the first half of the movie, I used Audacity from Sourceforge.Net.

I simply recorded myself reading the script (which I had previously written down) and then changed the pitch of my voice to make it sound “masked”. I was then able to remove all the extraneous sounds (my breathing, sniffing my nose, etc). Audacity is great (I hadn’t used it much prior to this), and I’m once again amazed at the quality of software you can get for free these days.

For the background music (last half of the movie) I used music from “SmartSound.com” — I bought their “Theatrical Impact” CD.

Note that thesse CDs don’t contain standard audio files — you can’t play them in your CD player or even with your media player on your computer. They are in “smartsound” format and require smartsound-capable software. I believe there is a plugin for Adobe Premiere that will allow it to use SmartSound files directly, but I used the software provided by SmartSound (it was free with my CD purchase).

The nice thing about smartsound music is that each piece contain separate tracks — so if you want to change just the “drums” track, you can do that — they are designed specifically with modification in mind.

The little “encrypted message” sequence was done using some Javascript I had saved from who knows what/when — I think it was something I had planned on using for Yanik’s first “Underground” seminar. It was based on the free random text script you can get from Jeffrey Sanders.

I got the “Underground Agents” pictures from Yanik’s past sales pages (cropped them all to be the same size using Paint Shop Pro). The three video sequences (black-masked guy, moving people/landscape, and falling money) and all of the other people pictures were purchased from iStockPhoto.

Getting the content together actually took more time than anything else . . . there were a total of 54 images, plus the video clips.

Once you have all your content, it’s just a matter of dragging/dropping things on a timeline and adding the text elements — not hard, but it does take time to get everything lined up (especially when you’re trying to sync pictures to a music beat).

It was actually a lot of fun . . .

Take a look at the video and let me know what you think!

Paul

P.S. And by all means — if you’re thinking about going to the Underground Online Seminar, use my affiliate link at http://www.covertmoneysecrets.com/ !!!

I don’t have anything too meaty for you today, but here are a half-dozen internet resources I’ve collected since publishing my “Internet Marketer’s Little Black Book” . . . I bet you find at least one of them to be useful in your own business!

Here they are:

BlackList Monitor – RepCheck — I’ve been behind the scenes in a lot of the “famous” internet marketing product “launches”. One common concern is whether or not your site has been blacklisted by the various spam-monitoring services. I recently ran across this “RepCheck” service that not only monitors blacklists for your server IP addresses, but also for your domain name(s).

Instant Messaging Manager – Meebo — Okay, this has been around awhile, but it’s surprising how many people don’t know about it! Not only does Meebo allow you to access the most popular Instant Messaging systems online (no software download necessary!), but it merges the “buddies” from several of your IM services into one list. Definitely a “must-see” for any of you IM junkies out there!

Voice broadcasting – VoiceShot — Record your outgoing message and upload your customer/prospect phone list, click, click and you’re off! It’s amazing how the internet has simplified communications these days! This service includes automated “do not call” list management and way too many features to list here, so go check it out. The cost for US calls is $0.12 per completed call (60 seconds or less). To the UK is $0.15, Australia, $0.16 . . . amazingly powerful service.

Visual Website Visitor Analytics – Crazy Egg — Cool stuff — gives you a “heatmap” of where your visitors are clicking on your site. Also allows you to break the clicks down relevant to other visitor information, such as their referring URL, search terms used, etc. This will definitely give you insight regarding the effectiveness of your web page.

HTML Scrambler — Hey, sometimes you just want to keep the honest people honest. It’s not going to help protect state secrets, but this HTML scrambler can be used for obfuscating email addresses, links, payment form code, etc.

CD/DVD Duplication/Fulfillment – Kunaki — I believe I read something about this outfit awhile back, but just recently checked them out. Nice service — not only can do they duplicate and deliver CDs and DVDs, but if you want they can take the orders for you (using THEIR credit card merchant account) as well.

I also found out about a script called “DVD Automator” that’s designed to dovetail with the Kunaki service — you take orders via PayPal and the customer data is automatically sent to Kunaki for fulfillment. They claim to make the selling/fulfilling of CDs and DVDs as simple as selling downloadable products, and I think they’re onto something . . .

Now I have a request for you — it’s simple . . . just leave a comment here and let me know what kinds of things you’d like to see me write about here. What kinds of solutions are you looking for? What “how to” knowledge would you like me to share here? Thanks!

Paul

If you’ve been in the “Internet Marketing” circles for any length of time, you’ve no doubt been exposed to sales pages which include some verbage similar to this:

This discount price only good until Midnight, October 8, 2007!

Or maybe they say something like this:

Because you’re ordering today, October 8, 2007, you also get these bonuses!

If you leave the page and come back the next day, you will see the deadline has magically moved. It’s a simple Javascript trick that’s been used for years to create a “sense of urgency” in the reader. The problem is, it’s an old trick, and most IM-savvy people know the “deadline” is a moving target.

I don’t know about you, but when I see something like that, my first reaction is “Yeah, right!” — and the credibility of the author is immediately put in the “questionable” category in my mind.

However, as I’ve worked behind the scenes for other marketers, I’ve seen the power of a REAL deadline — it’s quite fascinating to watch a slew of orders squeak in just prior to an advertised deadline!

Deadlines have power. In fact, many old-school direct marketers don’t consider an advertisement to be complete unless it includes a deadline, and they include an expiration date on all their “offline” advertising.

The problem with a fixed expiration date on your website, though, is that it’s so easy for your visitor to say, “Oh, I’ve got until Friday — I’ll think about it and come back . . .” — and once they’re gone, there’s a good chance they won’t be back.

So we try to get them to opt in to a list, so we can keep nudging them and reminding them about the deadline that’s looming . . . but we usually only get a minority of our visitors on the list.

So what to do?

How about a much shorter (but still REAL) deadline to force them to make a decision NOW rather than “thinking about it for awhile”? And we will reinforce that deadline with a running countdown.

I’ve actually seen these before, but in some cases all you have to do to restart the countdown is refresh the page. That’s no good. Sometimes the countdown timer will run to 0:00 and the offer remains the same — not good either. The page/offer MUST change when the timer runs out, or we lose all credibility with the reader.

You can see a simple example of this here (opens in new window):

Sample Countdown Timer

If you load that page and wait two minutes, the page will redirect to another site. In your case, you’d set the redirect URL to another page on your site with a modified offer (higher price, fewer bonuses, etc.)

If someone reloads the page, the countdown timer doesn’t start over — it maintains its “state” and continues to count down. The countdown “cookie” is maintained for a year, so if the visitor comes back anytime after the 2-minute deadline, they will be immediately redirected to the 2nd offer.

Now sure, if someone wants to reset their cookies, the timer will start back at the beginning. But let’s face it, anyone who’s really determined to cheat the system can open up a different browser or go to a friend’s computer and visit your site from there — so it’s not worth our time to try and create a cheat-proof system.

(If you really want to make it cheat-proof, you’ll have to go back to using a specific date as your deadline and change the offer when that deadline is reached.)

To use this script on your own page, just open up the source code on the example page (do it before the 2 minutes timer expires!) and follow these three steps:

1. Copy the Javascript from the HEAD section of the page into the head section of your page.

2. Just before the closing body (“</body>”) tag, add this Javascript:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
<!–
WindowLoad();
//–>
</script>

(Make sure the “WindowLoad();” command is on a line by itself . . .)

3. Where you want the countdown timer to appear, insert this line:

<span id=”CountDownPanel” style=”color:red; font-size:20.0pt; font-weight:bold”></span>

(You can of course change the style attributes . . .)

Obviously the 2 minute timer used in this example is too short — you’ll want to change the “seconds” variable to some higher value (right now it’s set to 120 seconds — 1800 seconds would be 30 minutes . . .)

And you’ll also need to change the “redirect_url” to your “2nd offer” URL

If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty (or hiring someone else to), you can do all kinds of fun things when the timer runs out. For instance, instead of having the whole page redirect to a different page, you could dynamically change the content on your page (see my previous article, “Dynamically Personalized HTML“). The change(s) could include the prices, bonus section, order links, etc.

Or you could get really fancy and have a pop-over window that says something like “Sorry, you missed the deadline; the price is now $X.XX and bonus #1 is no longer available. The price will go up to $Y.YY in 20 minutes. ” and start the timer again . . . that would REALLY add credibility to your deadline, in my opinion.

Questions? Comments? Let me know what you think!

Paul

After my last post some people observed that if the opt-in form were submitted with incomplete or invalid information, the “thank you” message would still be displayed, and the only way to get the form back would be to reload the page.

Good observations.

Now, comprehensive “form checking” Javascript code is beyond the scope of this blog, but I did create a simple example of how it could be done on the form I showed you last week.

To see the new version, click here to open the page in a new window. Then open up the source code and follow along as I explain the changes I have made

First, not the opening FORM tag — it now includes “name” and “id” attributes, both set to “aform”. There’s nothing special about “aform”, any value would work, such as “theform”, “coolform”, “irock” or even “whatever”. But you’ll see where we reference the form name in a minute.

Now, look at the end of the page (source code), just before the closing BODY tag. You’ll see this little line of Javascript code:

formcode = document.getElementById(‘formdiv’).innerHTML;

With this code, I’m just saving the “original” HTML code in the formcode DIV, so I can restore it after it’s been changed by the rmform() (“remove form”) function.

The rmform() function has changed slightly — the HTML code that I assign to the formdiv DIV’s innerHTML now includes this code:

<font size=-1><center>(<A href=”javascript:void” onClick=”document.getElementById(\’formdiv\’).innerHTML = formcode;”>Resubmit Form</a>)</center></font>

So if someone does get a bad value through, and they realize that and want to change it (resubmit the form with a good value), then they just have to click on the “Resubmit Form” link to bring back the original form HTML code.

Now, to minimize the likelihood of a bad value getting through, I added some form field input checking to the “wait” routine. Originally, these were the only two lines there:

string=”rmform();”;
setTimeout(string,delay);

But if you look at the source code, you’ll see there’s a bit more to it now . . .

And lastly, I changed the form “onSubmit” attribute from this:

onSubmit=”wait(3000);”

to this:

onSubmit=”return wait(3000);”

This makes it so the form is only submitted to Aweber IF the “wait” function returns a “true” value. Which won’t happen unless the name and email fields pass the input checking I added.

So there you are . . . if someone submits obviously bad data (blank fields or invalid email format), they will get an error message from their browser. If they submit what looks like legitimate information, but get an error from the Aweber service, the form fields MAY still be replaced with the thankyou message, but they can click on the link to get the form back.

Best,

Paul

P.S. Yanik has a couple more content videos on that site now — check them out here:

5 Hooks Videos

Wow, almost a month since my last post. That’s partly because I’ve been out of town visiting family for the last 3 weeks. But it’s also because I am not going to post something here just for the sake of posting something here! I want my posts to be worth your time to read them.

Now let’s get to it . . .

Back in June I published a little post titled “Tiny Scripts for “Stealth” Form Submissions“. Then last month I talked about dynamically personalized HTML — which talked about making your web page change according to some user input such as a radio button selection.

Today I’m going to show you how I combined those two ideas for a client . . .

The thing about web forms is they usually take you to a new page when you submit them. But using the “nonewpage.php” file discussed in the “Tiny Scripts . . .” post, we can prevent that from happening.

But we still want people to know their submission was successful. One way of doing this (as shown previously) is to set the “onClick” attribute on the submit button so a little Javascript “alert” pops up when the form is submitted.

This works okay, but the alert box doesn’t allow for any formatting, and it’s kind of intrusive. Plus, it comes with an audio alert, which can be somewhat irritating in my opinion. So what’s one to do? We just use the same principles outlined in the “Dynamically Personalized HTML” post and “replace” the input form with a nice HTML thank you message!

The client I did this for was Yanik Silver, and I don’t think he’ll mind my linking to the page in question. Here it is:

InfoPlayers WorkshopVideo

Once the page has loaded for you, take a look at the source code for the form — notice the <div id=”formdiv”>and </div> tags that surround the input fields. These mark the HTML code that will be changed when someone clicks on the submit button.

Now look at the opening FORM tag — you’ll notice it has an attribute, onSubmit=”wait(3000);” — this refers to the Javascript “wait” function that’s in the HEAD section of this page. The “wait” function just waits for 3 seconds (that’s what the 3000 is for — it means 3000 milliseconds, which is 3 seconds). Then after 3 seconds, it executes the “rmform” function. I’ve copied both of these functions here:

function rmform()
{
document.getElementById(‘formdiv’).innerHTML = ‘<center>Thank You!</center>’;
}

function wait(delay)
{
string=”rmform();”;
setTimeout(string,delay);
}

I actually shortened the HTML message being displayed by rmform() for brevity, but if you look at the source code can see the whole thing.

Why not call rmform directly instead of calling on “wait” to wait 3 seconds first? Well, that’s what I did at first, but it appears that the input field information is lost when you replace the input fields with something else — so I have to give the browser time to submit the data to the target script before replacing the form contents with other HTML code.

One last critical thing — notice how I set the hidden “redirect” form field to point to a “nonewpage.php” page — this is so the browser window won’t redirect to another page when the form is submitted (again, this was discussed in June’s post).

So now you have everything you need to keep people on your sales page after they opt in to your newsletter (or to get your free report, or whatever). And you can give them feedback letting them know their submission was successful, without using an annoying Javascript alert.

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s pretty slick . . .

Best,

Paul

P.S. Tell me what you think!

P.P.S. Also, you ought to check out Yanik’s page I’ve linked to above. I’ve seen this course, and it IS impressive.

Lately I’ve been playing around with what I refer to as dynamically personalized content.

Basically this means the visitor enters some piece of information and one or more things on the page changes as a result. For instance, they select from 3 radio buttons describing their current employment situation, and the text of the page changes according to that selection.

The idea is almost as old as the original Mosaic web brower, BUT in this case I’m talking about having it all done by Javascript and not using any server-side computing power or CGI processes.

I have created a simple utility to illustrate how easy it can be to have your sales letter change depending on a user selection (specifically, a radio button selection).

Click here to create your own dynamically personlized sales copy

Now, this utility will allow you to do dynamic personalization in the simplest way — you can expand on this idea to the nth degree. For instance, check out this “Affiliate Tools” page I did for the ClickBank version of “The Internet Marketer’s Little Black Book”:

Affiliate Tools Page

Observe the little box with the “Generate Link” button next to it. When someone enters their ClickBank nickname (affiliate ID) in the box and clicks the button, all the hop links on the page change so that they include the affiliate ID.

Some of the instructional text also changes (no more need to tell people to “replace xxxxx with their Clickbank ID”) . . .

A year or two ago there was somebody selling some software that allowed you to have dynamically personalized salesletters — I’m pretty sure this is the way they were accomplishing that.

It’s a powerful concept because it allows you to customize your sales copy (to some degree) to the individual needs of each of your visitors.

Try out the tool and let me know what you think!

Paul

If you’re on the same email lists I am, then you’ve probably received a lot of emails about the “Speed PPC System” . . .

I haven’t said anything before now because I wanted to try it out for myself first. I am NOT a PPC (pay per click advertising) authority by any means, but I have “dabbled” in it for awhile. So I think I was a pretty good test subject . . .

I downloaded the software tonight, viewed the instructional videos, and tried it for myself . . .

The “short of it” is that I was able to create 50 ad groups containing 8700 keyword phrases, and 300 keyword-loaded text ads in about 30 minutes (hey, I know the site claims to do a lot more in just 12 minutes, but I’m still getting familiar with this software!)

But that’s just the beginning of what this software will do . . .

I recorded a short “Overview” video you can watch to get my take on the whole thing . . . just click here to view . . .

Best,

Paul

P.S. Or just read about it by clicking here . . .

Hmmm, “meanderings” — an interesting word. While I intended it to refer to my own meandering, I suppose it could also be interpreted as “those who meander”, just like “earthlings” are those who are from the earth.

Anyway . . . I’ve always liked that word.

Last week I told you about a new AdWords tool, “SiteSniper Pro” — as you may recall, I had only about a 0.2% clickthrough rate on those ads, and I assumed it was because of the poor quality of my image ads.

However, after going back to my AdWords account, I found that almost 100% of my ad impressions were text ads — and 95% were from the home page of the same site. AND when I looked at that site, I discovered that the text ad was clear down at the bottom of the page. So very few even saw it.

So I consider myself just plain lucky for getting that first $297 sale. But I’ll take it.

Squidoo Offers

Earlier this month, I also purchased a 4-week “Squid Offer” as a test. The idea is that you have your “offer” in a given category, and people “vote up” the ads. If my ad is one of the top 5 ads, then it appears on ALL Squidoo lenses that display Squid Offers for that category.

It’s an interesting concept, and I figured I’d just give it a go to see what happened . . .

Mine was in the “Computers, Gadgets & Tech” category . . . I was offering software resale rights (the “Pregnancy Sale“, I believe I’ve referred to previously), and I figured this category might be viewed by people who put together websites. This product would be a natural for professional webmasters, in my opinion.

Well, my month is almost up. I checked today and my ad IS in the top 5 (with only 10 points!). BUT, so far this month I’ve received a whopping 43 visitors from the ad (at a cost of $100).

Now here’s the problem . . . I have no way of knowing the reasons behind this low visitor count. It could be any of the following:

1. It’s a poorly targeted ad — put in the wrong category
2. The ad itself is poor
3. The ad is getting very little exposure

I have no idea what kind of exposure the ad is getting, because Squidoo doesn’t offer much of anything in the way of ad stats . . .

So keep this in mind . . . you may want to try Squid Offers yourself, but when you’re done all you’ll be able to give is a “pass/fail” grade based on your visitor and/or sales counts — there’s no way of determining impression or clickthrough stats. Still, for only $100, it may be worth testing with your own offer.

BTW, Squidoo is okay with you promoting your Squid offers and soliciting people to “vote” for your ads. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see some “Squid Offer Clubs” popping up, where you would get everyone in the “club” to “vote up” your Squid offer. If I had more time, I’d form one myself!

As long as we’re on the topic of advertising . . .

ClickBank Marketplace Ads

I just found out that ClickBank is going to be adding more paid advertising to their site, starting August 1.

If you have a product you sell via Clickbank, this could be a golden opportunity for you. There are only 8 ad spots available for each of the 9 Clickbank marketplace categories, and the current pricelist shows they’ll sell for $300-$700/month . . . go to the ClickBank “Advertise” page for details (you’ll have to send an email to the address listed on that page).

Have a great week!

Paul

Just a couple of items real quick . . .

There may be times when you want a submit button to NOT look like a submit button, but rather look like the blue underlined link text everyone is programmed to click on. Here’s an example (this is actually a submit button):

All you have to do is use a bit of CSS code on the submit button, like so:

<input type=”submit” name=”submit”
style=’font-size:12.0pt; border:0; background:white; color:blue; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:underline; cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;’ value=”Click Here To Order Now!”>

(Note: You can copy/paste the above code, but will need to make sure the quotes are the right characters — Wordpress is converting the double- and single-quote marks to some other character set…)

This CSS code (the “style” settings) does the following:

1. Makes the button background white
2. Gets rid of the border button border
3. Makes the button text blue and underlined (like a link)
4. Makes it so the cursor changes to a “hand” as you would expect to happen when you put your cursor over a link

That’s it — pretty simple, but it can be very nice to have when you need it.

I recently recommended the “Adword180” book. The really interesting part of that publication was its treatment of site-targeted Adwords ads. The problem with site targeting is that it takes a long time to build up a good list of URLS to target — there’s just a lot of manual research required.

Well, no more — enter “Site Sniper Pro“. I wish I had an affiliate link for this puppy, but no matter.

Basically this tool does all the hard work for you, and identifies all the pages that come up in the search engines “natural search results” (and are relevant to your keywords) that have adwords ads on them.

I used it to target several “resale-rights” web pages to promote my “Software Resale Rights” package — it took me about an hour to get everything setup in Google Adwords. After two days I’ve had about 11,000 impressions and 20 clickthroughs.

Doesn’t seem that great, I know. The clickthrough conversion is about 0.2% — I attribute this to my AWFUL image ads — they’re basically just text banners. Very plain. No creativity or imagination whatsoever. Ugly. My bad.

BUT, I’ve only spent about $22 (average CPM of about $2, average cost per click of just over $1.00) and have already had a $297 sale. I know it’s not statistically valid, but it’s definitely a good start.

I’m going to work on my image ads (actually, I’ll pay someone else to — I don’t DO graphics!) and we’ll see what happens. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, check out SiteSniper and if you didn’t check out Adwords180 before, get that too — I DO get an affiliate commission on that one

Paul