How To Setup A Custom Facebook Page For Your Product Or Service

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As I was going to setup a new Facebook page for my new product “Domain Digger Pro”, I realised I had totally forgot how to do it. I setup my last page with the static fbml application and used the hidden content fb tag to require users to like my page before they could see the hidden content. It’s a great way to get more “Likes” on your page, but I had to research everything about how to do it all over again.

I have made a quick screencam video so that if you’re looking to setup a new Facebook page, this will make things a walk in the park for you, and also for me next time I setup a new page.

Hope this helps you out.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikjcpU_K2zw

I have included the actual html content I used in the static fbml box below so you can copy this layout for yourself. You’ll notice I have linked to some external images on my own domain. If you want to use these generic images, that’s cool, just please upload them to your own server first. Don’t leach off my server. Thanks!

<style type="text/css">
<!--
	.signup-box {
		background:#fbf6de;
		border:solid 1px #d9ce9a;
		border-radius:10px;
		-moz-border-radius:10px;
		-webkit-border-radius:10px;
		padding:20px;

		width:350px;
	}

	.border-box {
		border: dashed;
		padding:10px;
	}

	label {
	color:#0060c2;
	display:block;
	font-weight:bold;
	margin-bottom:5px;
	text-align:center;
	font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
	}
-->
</style>
<h1 align="center"><strong><font color="#CC0000" size="+3" face="impact">&quot;Like&quot; This Page</font><font size="+3" face="impact"> - And Download Domain Digger Pro Free Trial Below </font></strong></h1>
<h1 align="center">&nbsp;</h1>
<h1 align="center"><font size="+2" face="Courier New, Courier, monospace">Just click the &quot;Like&quot; button at the top of this page and you will instantly see the hidden download links for Domain Digger Pro Free Trial Below. </font></h1>
<table align="center" width="360px">
        <tr>
          <td>
            <div align="center" style="margin-bottom:-20px"><img src="http://www.easiestaffiliatewebsite.com/images/arrows.gif" /></div>
            <div class="signup-box" align="center">
              <fb:visible-to-connection>
  <div align="center">
    <h3 align="center"><a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/pokckeeaaghdocnkhilldllmdboikimp?hl=ene"><strong>Google Chrome</strong><br>
                <br>
                <img src="http://www.domaindiggerpro.com/images/googlechromelogo.png"  border="0"></a>                </h3>

    <p></p>
			  </div>
			  </fb:visible-to-connection>
           <label>Click The Like Button <br>
           To See The Hidden Download Links Above</label>
           </div>
		  </td>
        </tr>
</table>
	  <p>&nbsp;</p>
	  <table width="95%" border="1" align="center">
	    <tr><td>

	  <div class="border-box">
        <h3 align="center"><strong>
        About Domain Digger Pro:</strong></font></h3>

        <p align="center">Domain Digger Pro is perfect for you if you are interested in buying a keyword targeted domain for your new website. If you are looking to build your portfolio of domain names or simply just doing keyword research on your market then you are going to love Domain Digger Pro.

</p>
        <h3 align="center"><img src="http://www.domaindiggerpro.com/images/chromextensionscreenshot2.jpg" width="400" height="275"></h3>
        <p align="left">This extension takes any input keyword phrase and searches the top keyword research sites to find relevant related keywords. It then checks to see if those keywords are available to purchase as domain names. You can quickly check 100 high volume keyword phrases relating to your target keyword phrase in less than 3 minutes.

          </p>
        <p align="left">You can also do further research on your keyword phrase by switching back to the tabs Domain Digger Pro automatically opened to gather related keywords. Their is a wealth of information that you can source using this software, but that's not all.

       </p>
        <p align="left">Domain Digger Pro automatically collates the highest volume keywords into a table so you can see exactly which keyword phrases get the most searches each month, and you can also see if those phrases are available for purchase all in one place.</p>
        <h3 align="center"><img src="http://www.domaindiggerpro.com/images/chromextensionscreenshot.jpg" width="400" height="275"></h3>
	  </div>

</td></tr>

</table>

Did this help you out? Let me know in the comments?

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How To Setup and Manage a Profitable Outsourced Team – Interview with James Schramko

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Have you noticed the number of people in the internet marketing community talking about outsourcing?

I wouldn’t exactly call it the latest buzz word, because it’s something that has been widely adopted as “leveraging your time” for quite a few years now, but the concept is definitely becoming more and more talked about.

It seems as though everybody knows about it, and a lot of people have tried it, but very few are successful at it. I think this is primarily because a lot of “internet marketers” haven’t come from a high end management job or position that required them to manage a team so they lack a lot of fundamental skills needed to actually manage other people effectively.

One person that has successfully put together a highly productive team of outsourcers is James Schramko. James came from a high end management position at Mercedes Benz where he was required to manage up to 100 people at one time. He has excellent management skills which has obviously helped him grow his online business to a 7 figure per year income in just 2 years.

I’ve been picking up on a few of the things James has said about the way his team works and his approach is very different to the way the internet marketing community has taught how to outsource in the past.

James was kind enough to let me interview him on exactly how he has managed to grow his team, establish a great camaraderie between his workers, and basically put together an effective system where he only needs to chat with his team for 5 minutes each day. It’s truly amazing what he has accomplished and I get new inspiration and knowledge from James every time we chat.

I hope you enjoy the interview below… and let me know if this interview was helpful to you by leaving your comments.



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The Simplest Time Management Technique

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I thought I would start off with a uniquely simple time management tip that has helped me get a surprising amount of work done in a short period of time. I’ve come to hear of this technique from 2 different sources over the last 3 months. I first was introduced to it by Ed Dale in his mentoring program. He calls this CFT or Critical Focus Time. I was also told about this technique just last week from Nic Lucas, a good friend of mine who was talking about the Pomodoro technique. They are basically the same thing. The Pomodoro technique was coined by Francesco Cirillo in 1992. I’m not sure when Ed coined the CFT.

Here’s how it works:

The idea is to time yourself in 30 minute intervals. 25 minutes of Critical Focus Time and 5 minutes break. Ed explains that he knows this technique is used by some of the top internet marketers and business people in the world. Critical Focus Time is specific though. You have to be doing something in that time that directly grows your business. This could be writing a blog post, contacting JV partners, developing a product, or anything that will directly grow your business now or in the future. It doesn’t include things like reading a book, learning about social media, chatting to friends on Skype, or browsing on the net. The idea is to do one CFT or Pomodoro per day, or if you can’t manage that, do one per week. The main focus is consistency and committing to it.

It takes a little while to get used to this technique. Ed stresses the importance of taking a break for 5 minutes. For me, I use this technique for writing blog posts. I set the timer on my iPhone to 25 minutes. I do find it hard to stop at 25 minutes though. I usually just take 10 seconds to write an entry in my CFT document and then start the timer again. Being a coder, I’m used to working in 2-4 hour blocks focused on completing a particular feature or entire program but I find just the task of timing myself gives me a goal and I know that I’m going to complete a blog post without interruption. I will usually do 3 CFT sessions per day back to back. That’s usually how long it takes me to write a blog post, but I’m noticing that I’m getting quicker at it, which I wouldn’t know if I wasn’t timing myself.

I think Ed specified one CFT per day to accommodate most people doing his Challenge who might have a full time job and can only put aside 30 minutes per day. I believe he also sets a benchmark of 5 CFT sessions to get out 1 blog post. So, that’s one blog post per week. For me, I aim to get out a new blog post every day. I think once a week is not enough, but it’s a good benchmark to aim for if you haven’t done anything like this before.

I find doing 3 CFT’s and getting out one new blog post before I start working on other things is a good way to get a sense of accomplishment for the day. I’m usually in a better mood for the rest of the day when I feel like I’ve definitely achieved something. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve been working all day on programming, site design, and sales copy but still haven’t achieved much. This technique helps to give me a sense of achievement.

What do you think of this technique? Are you using it already? What sort of things do you plan for your CFT sessions?

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Are you managing your business… or is your business managing you?

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Something I’m going to focus on this year is building effective management skills. Predominantly people management, but also time management, idea management, process management, and systems management. I think this is something that a lot of people in the internet marketing community lack, because you don’t need a business degree or any formal training to jump into internet marketing and call yourself a business owner. It’s so low cost to start a website and call your website an online business, but do we really have the skills to effectively manage this online business and take it to great heights.

This post stems from my previous post about The New Era of Internet Marketing.

Certainly in the offline world, you wouldn’t consider starting a business if you knew you had no management skills, but an internet marketing business is treated entirely different because the barrier to entry is low.

I’m looking at James Schramko’s business and noticing one of his great strengths is management. This is something he learnt in the offline world, and has transferred into his own online business. The way he has built a successful team of “ninjapinos” as he calls them, is nothing short of amazing and no trivial thing to achieve. A lot of us have trouble managing just one freelancer, let alone 16 of them! I’m waiting for him to release a course on outsourcer management, but until then, I’m going to be researching the web, reading books, and posting about the strategies and tips I find that work for me.

With such a big emphasis on leverage in the online community we are all looking to outsource, but when we go to hire outsourcers we often fall flat on our face because we don’t have the skills to effectively communicate to them, motivate them, and manage them.

Myself, like many others nowadays being younger and launching my internet marketing career at a young age before I really had a high paying, prominent job, and stature in the offline world, I need to work on some of these fundamentals.

I have been making a full time income from internet marketing for 2 years now and I’ve had my share of successes and failures. My initial success was purely due to persistance. I didn’t start off with any mentor or friends in the industry that I could talk to or learn from.

Now that I have both, I’m noticing some key fundamentals about what it takes to not just make a 6 figure income, but 7 figures and beyond.

What’s your thoughts?

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Making Money Through Google Chrome Extensions

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One of the best things about Google Chrome extensions is that they are so easy to develop. All you need to include in your build is an easy to configure manifest file that details how the extension should operate. Then you simply use the chrome browser to pack your extension into a .xpi file and you’re good to go.

You can either serve the extension from your own server or you can distribute it through the Chrome marketplace.

Google has not yet implemented a solution to sell extensions. The only reference to being able to sell extensions is through a thread found on the Chrome help forum.

One person “Blair” who seems to be a Google employee, has commented on that thread saying that “Google is very interested in enabling web developers to earn income from developing extensions, but they’re still investigating the best way to make this happen”. The last post from Blair was the 8th of May, 2010, so it doesn’t seem to be a top priority for Google to make this happen at the moment.

At present, only free extensions are included in the Chrome marketplace, but is there still opportunity to create an income from creating a free chrome extension?

You will have no doubt caught on to the fact that the “free” online business model can be quite profitable. Just take a look at sites like facebook or even google. If you can get the eyeballs, you can get a lot of advertising deals and the online world opens up to you.

So, let’s look at some of the most popular extensions in the marketplace and their stats. AdBlock, which is currently the most popular extension shows stats of 1,799,503 current users and 143,952 new weekly installs. These are pretty phenomenal numbers but what’s interesting is the developer says in his product description that he is relying on paypal donations to generate an income from this app. This suggest either that Google is not allowing monetization, or that users are going for apps without monetization ads, or simply that the developer has no idea how to monetize his extension.

What’s encouraging is the developer is obviously just a single person and not a huge company, which suggests there is room for the little guy in this marketplace and he must obviously be getting a decent amount in paypal donations as he says he has quit his full time job just to focus on it.

The question is, how much traction can a new app get on the marketplace?

It would seem there is some delay in google’s stats because I am finding quite a few apps with reviews and comments but no indication of number of users or download stats. I’ve found over 20 new extensions released just today in the “Most Recent” category and some of them have up to 15 ratings which indicates that there is some good activity possible for newly released extensions and quite a few new extensions being created everyday for Chrome.

I’m going to be looking further into Google Chrome extensions in the next few blog posts, so keep your eyes peeled for updates as I explore if it’s possible to make a decent income from Google Chrome extensions.

If you want to chime in about anything I have discussed or just to express your interest, please feel free to leave a comment below.

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Here’s How Autoblogging Software Could Be Better

It seems that auto blogging software is in huge demand. I’ve had it mentioned to me that WP Mage did around 5 million dollars in sales last year, which was a total shock to me. I had no idea that a wordpress plugin could generate that kind of moolah.

I’m a little behind in the wordpress scene. I used it a few years back but got sick of comment spam, managing multiple installations and upgrades, and then having my sites hacked. It really turned me off using wordpress but… I’m coming back around, especially now with multisite support (which is awesome!).

The idea of automating something with software appeals to me big time because I’m a techie. Now, I need to be careful where I go with this, because my last post was all about building a real sustainable business etc. and autoblogging kinda flies in the face of that.

It’s not something that Google encourages at all, but I can’t deny the techie side of me is fascinated at the thought of easily being able to push out hundreds of sites that make easy money through adsense etc. especially now since there is such a big emphasis in the community on domaining and flipping. I’ve been listening to Kenny Goodman and James Schramko talk about building a portfolio of domains.

I think ideally, you want a blog that encourages user feedback and builds a natural community. That’s a site that Google values and will not de-index. Autoblogging typically doesn’t do that. I’m thinking a good way to use autoblogging software is to have a real person (freelancer/outsourcer) make edits and add real content to existing auto generated text, images, and videos. Content that encourages user feedback.

Here’s a big improvement I see that could be made to autoblogging software…

You’ll notice that every autoblogging software (everyone that I’ve seen anyway) is setup to gather a bunch of information right now and populate your blog with future dated posts.

Here’s a novel idea. What if your blog created new posts on the fly, in real time, as visitors interacted with your site?

So, your site grows naturally as you get more visitors browsing and clicking stuff. You don’t have to manually pick and choose content. You start with one page, and one keyword. The content on that page is generated through rss feeds based around your specified keyword. Youtube videos, flickr images, google news updates, amazon products, etc.

New pages are created from the front-end as opposed to the back-end, and as people click content, a new page is created with more content they can click on.

So, instead of populating your site with pre-defined content that is old by the time it’s posted, have your site created naturally over time by your site visitors.

I did develop a custom cms that does this, but I’m now developing it as a plugin for wordpress.

I think this could be a good solution for creating content on domains you are buying, because that was my biggest question when hearing about domaining… What content do you put on all these domains. Buying 100 domains is one thing, but putting content on those 100 sites is such a bigger deal.

I’m interested to know your thoughts on this approach to autoblogging and content creation?

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The New Era Of Internet Marketing

Are we dawning on a new era of internet marketing? Is everything we have come to learn about how to make money online about to become obsolete?

Think about the typical internet marketing “style” we have all been taught over the years. Squeeze pages, long form sales letters, testimonials, pre-sells, “free” and “instant access” buttons. These things have made a lot of people a lot of money, but are they going to last forever?

I’m certainly not saying these things are bad or no longer useful, but as far as landing pages, customer acquisition, and the typical internet marketing business model… Are you noticing the crackdown like I am on the way we do things?

I have been thinking a lot about where I want to take my internet marketing business in 2011 and over the christmas break I have been going through a bit of a mindset change mostly due to the mentoring and advice I have been receiving from James Schramko and Ed Dale.

It seems that the era of quick tricks, loopholes and workarounds may be coming to an end. If you have been involved in internet marketing for more than 2 years you will have noticed some big changes.

You will have noticed that the Big G… Google, is not favoring the way we do things. They are slapping our ad campaigns and de-indexing our sites because they see our typical internet marketing tactics as deceiving, and of little value to the rest of the world.

You will have witnessed the FTC crackdown on testimonials and how we now need abundant disclaimers in our ad copy and affiliate recommendations.

If big corporations are cracking down on the way we do things, Is it time to wake up and change our approach?

when I look at successful people making not just 6 figures a year, but 7 figures, I notice they have a more real world corporate oriented approach.

Take a look at James Schramko and Mike Filsaime. Interestingly they both have a similar backgrounds as General Managers in executive car dealerships. Mercedes Benz and BMW. They have been required to manage large teams of people, run a real offline business, and turn a profit at the end of the day.

They have an incredible set of real world business and management skills that they have applied to online marketing, and have absolutely crushed it quadrupling their previous income in no time.

It seems to me that the smart money is moving away from what we know as “internet marketing” and developing sites that look more like the rest of the world. Real businesses.

I mean, if almighty Google doesn’t like what we’re doing… doesn’t that say something?

What do you think?

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Developing Cross Platform Applications

Gone are the days when you could whack together a quick windows app and call the job done. Back when Microsoft had over 85% market share on the home desktop pc you didn’t really need to worry about mac OSX, or linux. It was only the hardcore programmers that would play around with grep and regex etc. commands on linux.

Nowadays, the situation is quite different. Almost everyone I know is moving to an iMac or Macbook. One of the main reasons I moved over was because I could still run windows on a macbook. That made the decision so easy. Such a smart move on apple’s part to integrate Intel processors into their systems. Now I run Windows and OSX at the same time using vmware fusion and it works great.

Linux still doesn’t seem to be a major player in the desktop operating system scene, but there’s always rumours of linux making big moves to compete in this space. Generally I find that most cross platform development applications that support mac and windows will also support linux so there’s usually no need to setup a linux box to create and test applications. I only ever bother testing on mac and windows. That’s probably not a die hard developers ideal point of view… but it gets me by.

You can still develop windows apps, and do quite good sales volume. I have noticed that quite a few internet marketers are still developing windows only apps, but I think those marketers will need to adapt to cross platform apps very soon as more and more people are using OSX and are demanding a compatible solution. Specifically I’m thinking of Alex Goad’s Rank Builder app which I bought when it was released. A very good app and lucky for me I could run it on windows using vmware fusion. It looks like it’s built as a windows form application in Visual Studio. Quite a complicated application using multiple dll library files and xml files for data storage. I would be interested to know the stats on how well that application sold and what the support requests we’re like. I am thinking he may have had a lot of people refund because they couldn’t get it to work on their mac.

So, what’s the options when creating applications for end users?

Well, not only do you have to think about multiple operating systems but you also have to think about whether the app is going to be web based or a hybrid desktop/web application. Adobe’s AIR environment is quite a good option as it is cross platform and there are a lot of tools around to develop AIR applications. The popular Market Samurai software uses AIR.

I was right into Adobe flex builder a few years ago before I got more involved in business and marketing. That was when Adobe just released AIR. I remember getting quite bogged down with MVC design architecture and cairngorm but I managed to develop some simple applications including a graphical analytics application that I still use today to check my traffic stats across all my sites. That app uses Adobe charts and Midnight Coders Weborb for php to connect to my mysql database using AMF remoting. I haven’t touched AIR in quite a while but my current programmer is developing an application for me that utilizes AIR, and he’s developing it in javascript using Aptana IDE. A totally different approach to how I was inclined to developing AIR apps.

The other option is leveraging existing tools that are already cross platform. It seems every major software has support for plugins and addons developed by third party users nowadays. A good example of this is my most recent tool, Domain Digger Pro which leverages a web browser to gather and compile data from different sites. Initially I created this as a windows software just like Alex’s Rank Builder. I was being very “old school” and created a simple vbs script that opened internet explorer (as that is the only option when developing with Microsoft) and used the DOM model to collect data from pages, and javascript injection to fill and submit forms. I then created a wrapper with Visual Studio so I could have a simple UI where the user could input data and click a button to run the vbs script. Worked great on my windows xp vm, but when I released it to the public I had heaps of people experiencing problems with Internet Explorer, errors on Windows 7, etc. which overall meant it wasn’t a good solution for a basic user. Not to mention that I was ignoring half the market who run OSX. After consulting a few of my techie friends, the obvious solution was to make it a Google Chrome extension. Chrome is already cross platform, and I could simply modify my app to have a simple html UI that opened when the icon was clicked in the toolbar. Perfect!

The other option for cross platform desktop apps is java, but I haven’t played with that yet. At the moment I’m satisfied with AIR for desktop applications or hybrid web/desktop apps, and developing extensions or addons for widespread applications like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and possibly in the future mobile devices like the iPhone.

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