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I wouldn’t believe this if I hadn’t just grabbed it for myself.

Years ago (like in the late 90s) I was in the video editing & animation industry, and owned/operated a Post Production company. I wasn’t a 3D animator myself (I hired people for that) but I liked to dabble in my spare time. One program I played with a lot was Bryce – an absolutely amazing and unique environment & landscape design & animation system. It was absolutely amazing and there was nothing like it.

Bryce has been sold I think a few times since then to different companies, and the company who owns it now is GIVING it away along with some other software, and all you have to do is agree to receive their email newsletter.

WAY too good a deal to pass up… and I’m passing it along to you now. Enjoy!

For the First Time Ever, DAZ Presents

DAZ Studio Pro, Bryce Pro,

& Hexagon for FREE!

…source…

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Wow… just saw this and was a bit shocked:

According to affiliates and various insider forums, Epic Media Group’s Affiliate Division, formerly known as Azoogle, has not been paying their bills to affiliate publishers. The rumors of theseissues have been popping up since last summer, with some affiliates on message boards pointing out that in their opinions that there has been excuse after excuse on why they haven’t been paid. As one of the top networks in the industry, any financial problems that they are facing, could be a bad sign for the industry as a whole and have a significant impact on the financial stability of companies that depend on their payments.

via Is Epic the Next COPEAC? Non-Payment Stories Grow..

I personally never did a lot with azoogle even “back in the day” as the big stuff was ringtones and rebills and I couldn’t stand promoting either. But I certainly knew a lot of people who did a lot of business with them and they seemed like one of the bigger, better, more reliable companies out there. Definitely sounds like things have changed. What a shame, and what does that portend for CPA marketing in a broader sense, I can’t help but wonder?

Jonathan

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Last year I was looking to get a Marketing Theme for use with WordPress, for easy creation of sales letters, maybe membership sites, secure download pages, and all that fun stuff.  I hadn’t realized at the time that there were actually quite a few of these types of themes out there.

After much web surfing and comparing of features, it came down to a choice between two themes – OptimizePress, and ProfitsTheme.  Both were very impressive, with all kinds of features I wanted (and some I hadn’t really even considered!)  They were the same price, and generally had the same capabilities.  Finally I had to pull the trigger, and PT came out the winner.

Why?  Well for me what truly clinched it was the drag & drop layout capabilities for structuring the content of the page.  I just love how easy it is to move elements around from the left side, to the right side, or the top or bottom, or to add custom headers, graphics, buttons – whatever.  I’ve even used it to create complete members-only sites and in fact PT is now the basis for all of my “product download & licensing” areas.  I even used it for the sales page I put up for WPGen, for my VanCluteSolution.com membership site, and it’s typically my go-to theme for general testing of WordPress.

One feature I use quite a lot is the custom script meta-boxes.  These are present on every page and allow you to easily insert your own code into the header or footer of the page.  Now that might not seem like a big deal, but this isn’t just for HTML or Javascript.  I can actually stick PHP directly in these boxes too and it JUST WORKS.  I can detect a cookie, do something based on that, set another cookie, do redirections, or whatever I need to do.  This is super handy if you do more technical types of marketing.

It can also handle membership sites with drip-fed content, will integrate to Paypal, Clickbank, and some other payment systems, and is extremely well supported by Welly Mulia and his team.  I hadn’t heard of Welly before buying ProfitsTheme but have since become a big fan of his products, and his way of doing business.  He responds promptly to emails, and always forwards things to the appropriate technical people if any question is not something he can personally address.  All around 5 stars for Welly and his products.

So if you don’t already have a solution for making these kinds of pages & sites in WP and you could use one, PT can’t get a higher recommendation from me.

Now to sweeten the deal… he’s doing a 1-day special deal for today, Valentine’s day, Feb. 14th.  Why Valentine’s day?  Apparently this is the 1 year anniversary of PT’s release, so Welly has decided to celebrate!  It will take $30 off the price, making it just $67 but ONLY for this 1 day.  So until midnight Eastern time on Feb 14th, you can save a few bucks and get yourself an extremely powerful and useful WP marketing theme.

You must use this code at checkout, to get your discount:

pt1year

Already got ProfitsTheme?  How do you like it?  Got any tricks you’d care to share?  Comment below!

Jonathan

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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

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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

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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

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see when working a domain to a different web host, or when having just bought a domain, you aren’t absolutely sure if the DNS is totally ready yet (known as “propagated”) and want to actually know.

I was sent a link to this site recently, which is a fast way to find out your DNS status from different locations around the world.  So, never be uncertain again… don’t guess that your website may or may not be ready – KNOW for sure!

Jonathan

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Have a look at this.

A friend of mine and fellow marketer, is putting together an “opportunity listing site” and wants to get some feedback on the general concept, before he dives into the deep end on developing it.

I think it’s a pretty cool idea… I know quite often I’ve considered renting a mailing list, or otherwise wanting to gain exposure for something, but I’m not crazy about networks & brokers as they never know the whole story on the real sources of the data, etc.  I want to talk DIRECTLY to list owners, site owners, etc.  The REAL movers & shakers!

Opptly would give me the ability to do exactly that.  I personally think it’s a great idea and would certainly use it… what do you think?

JVC

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I can’t tell you how often people ask me about (or relay horror stories to me about) technical things that have gone wrong on their server, that they need help with.  Depending on who your host is, they might already have awesome support… for example I have servers with both LiquidWeb and Rackspace and both have tremendous 24/7 telephone support.  I’ve called both many times at 3am my time and gotten immediate help with whatever was wrong.

But in some cases, I need separate server management.  For instance with Rackspace’s Cloud Servers, they are totally unmanaged and you’re “on your own” for everything from initial server setup, to server security, configuring Apache, PHP, and EVERYTHING else!  I’m no Linux/server whiz, so I turn elsewhere for this kind of thing.

For years now I’ve used a company that frankly is SO cheap for what you get, I think any serious online marketer is doing themselves a big dis-service not subscribing to their services.  They’re called Platinum Server Management and they are a HUGE help when I need them.

Their services are a whopping $30/month with no contract.  I even recommend (and so do they actually) signing up for them just for one-off help when you need it.  Can always sign up, get help, cancel, and sign up again if you need them again.  But personally I choose just to subscribe and stay subscribed.

If they make just one little tweak of some obscure server setting for me in any given month, it was worth $30.  Let alone the occasions a few times a year when I throw some really BIG problem at them, that requires research and lots of experimenting on their part.  Sometimes my issues have taken many hours spread over several days and yet I still only paid $30.  CAN’T beat it!

The only catch of sorts is that they strictly support servers with “root” access (typically VPS and dedicated only) and are configured with WHM/CPanel.  But if that describes you, these guys can be a lifesaver.

One other thing to point out – technically they are NOT “emergency support” i.e. they promise responses within 24 hours I believe.  I can’t think of a ticket that has EVER taken them 24 hours to respond to, but that’s what they guarantee.  You can list a problem as an emergency and it will get priority status, but they won’t promise to drop everything right then and jump on your issue.  For that, you really have to hire a full-time sysadmin and a good one is not gonna come cheap, even though you’ll only need them once in a while.

I hope this helps some people out.  Again this won’t do anything for you if you’re on a cheap Hostgator or Godaddy shared plan, but if you’re at the level of having your own VPS or dedicated server and you’ve got WHM/CPanel, absolutely check them out.

Jonathan

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OK so is it just me or is the new Firefox 7 seriously screwed up?

I’ve had loads of issues with Firefox for years, in particular around memory usage.  I’m an admitted “tab whore” and so I’ll easily have 4 or 5 windows open each with 10 to 20 tabs in them at any given time.  But my machine is running 64bit Windows and has 4 cores with 6gigs of RAM so I don’t really see that as too much to ask.  Yet FF has constant problems once the memory usage climbs over the 1gig mark (which doesn’t take long).

But Firefox 7 takes this to a whole new level of suck.  At least twice per day, sometimes more, it will just completely freeze.  Nothing will load, and you’ll never even get a 404 or any other timeout type error message.  It just locks up and the CPU usage for it climbs to 15 to 20% and stays there indefinitely.  You can select tabs and do anything you want with the program, you just can’t reach any websites.  IE and Chrome are just fine.

The only remedy seems to be quitting & restarting the browser, but then it just happens again after a few hours.  Total madness!

For the moment I’ve gone back to Firefox 6 as I found other complaints of this issue and they said downgrading was the only solution.  I can’t switch to Chrome as my primary browser because of all the development related adons I use in FF.  I do tend to use Chrome a lot more now though for general web surfing.

Firefox team – I understand you’re on a new kick with this “major version number updates every few weeks” thing, but they’d better be STABLE!

JVC