Wishlist Member for Wordpress

If you are just here for the coupon code, click here to be redirected to the Wishlist Member Coupon. If you have some time you can read why I like Wishlist Member for Wordpress below…

Why I’m Getting Into Wishlist Member:

I’m trying to move away from trading hours for money in my life. I just recently re-read Rich Dad Poor Dad and was reminded that assets are what it is all about.

Making subscription-based sites or sites that sell an informational product are great ways to provide value to the web and make money at the same time. A lot of info-products get a bad wrap because people oversell them or claim that they can do more than they really can. I think this is bad marketing and would never want to be involved in a business like that.

On the other hand, there are a lot of very good info products or guides out there that solve a real problem. And many times that the guide allows people to solve the problem themselves and save a LOT of money. For instance, I’ve done 3 guides in the last few years that have sold pretty well. Take a look at the cost of the guide versus the cost of hiring someone like me to do it for you…

Make A Wordpress-Powered Review Site

This guide shows how to combine The Thesis Theme and DG Review Site to make an awesome-looking site that people can review products on. When I did this for a client, it took half a day and cost about $260.

Now, $260 is actually a pretty great deal to have a website that looks great and lets you get user-generated content.

But nowadays people want to do things themselves and save money, so you can get the guide for only $9.95 and it will show you exactly how to do it yourself.

So people who want a review site can save $250 and do it themselves AND they don’t have to wait for me to have availability. That’s a win-win.

Wordpress Landing Page Guide

Another example of a win-win is this Wordpress Theme that let’s people easily make Landing Pages in Wordpress. This is another example of something that would cost 10x as much to have a coder do for your site, but you can get the guide for only $24.95.

I like to think of that as a win-win too.

How Wishlist Helps:

Wishlist Member is a great example of a win-win too. I suspect it would cost 10k-20k to have someone code Wishlist Member for you. But we can all buy a copy and get it for only $99 or so. What a deal, right?

Wishlist helps each of us to make websites that will give us passive income without much of a headache. Or at least that’s the plan…

Based on the last couple of days of research after buying my own copy of Wishlist Member, I’d like to share 5.5 really awesome things about Wishlist Member I found out…

5.5 Reasons Why Wishlist Rocks:

1: 30 Videos to Explain Everything:

This isn’t exactly a plug-n-play plugin. It does take some setting up. But instead of Wishlist Member just dropping you in, they give us all 30 videos to learn how to use it.

I know 30 sounds like a lot. And who has 3 hours to learn all this stuff? But at least it is there if you need that extra tutoring. (I suspect I’ll watch all of the videos twice)

2: Integrates with Paypal:

People like paypal. People use paypal. Now you can sell via paypal and then send people to your site and forget the hassle of accepting other payments.

3: You can make your own product an affiliate product:

Wishlist let’s you hook your site up to clickbank. With clickbank, you can tap into their market of thousands of people waiting to sell your product (for a cut of the profits, or course).

Even if you don’t want to use Wishlist Member for affiliate sales now, it’ll be nice if you decide to in the future.

4: AWeber Integration:

Keep in touch with your members via email with aweber. Wishlist Member already did all the heavy lifting, so make use of Aweber.

5: Keep people from stealing content:

From what I understand, Wishlist Member will keep track of the IPs of who signs on and with what credentials. So if someone posts their login on a forum somewhere and tons of people tryo to get in, Wishlist will stop them in their tracks.

5.5: 3 Levels of Subscription:

You can get a Wishlist Member license for only $99. Or, you can get everything for unlimited sites for only $299. So there are a lot of options. And if you don’t love the plugin, you have 30 days to get a full refund.

Interested?  Well let me tell you all about our coupon…

Now how about that Wishlist Member Rebate and Cash-Back Offer?

You heard right, if you buy Wishlist Member using this link, you get 10% cash back.

Follow These Steps To Make Sure You Get the Cash Back:

1. Go to Wishlist Member and buy the license you want. Make sure you use this link.
2. After your purchase, come back to this website and go to the Contact Page. Then choose the option for “Getting a rebate”
3. Fill out the form and you’ll get your rebate around the first of the month! It’s that Easy.

How to Make Sure You Get Your Wishlist Member Rebate:

The tracking program for Wishlist Members is very picky, and we have been having trouble getting attributed for some sales, and therefor can’t pass along the savings to you. If you follow the instructions below, it should make sure that you can collect your rebate:

1. Clear your cookies. (A step-by-step guide for every browser is here)
2. Click on this link to go to Wishlist Member

That’s it!

5.5 Awesome Things About Wishlist Member Plugin for Wordpress is a post from: Wordpress Consulting & SEO which runs Thesis Theme with Wordpress Landing Page Theme

Maybe I’m just used to Website Grader always giving me a great score, but I was bummed when I ran my website through WooRank today to get a measly 56.7 WooRank.  Even though I have no idea what constitutes a WooRank or even how good 56.7 is (is there some kind of bell curve?) well…

My 56.7% on WooRank. Click to Enlarge...

I just wanted it to be a lot closer to 100%  You know, like what Website Grader does…

Same day, same site. 97.4 on WebsiteGrader.

But then I started searching around and found out that being a long way from a WooRank of 100 (what I assume is the best) puts me in damn good company.

SEOMoz, a well-respected blog ABOUT SEO gets a 58 WooRank.

SEOMoz is a great site all about SEO and gets a 58.  Now my 56 isn’t looking so bad….

Ebay gets a 77.3 WooRank

Maybe you’ve heard of a site called ‘Ebay’?  It a great place to grab some beenie babies, or a castle or something.  Despite being one of the most popular website on the planet, they get a 77.3 WooRank.

Facebook gets an 84 WooRank

Facebook is only 16 points off of a 100 WooRank at 84.  This might seem a little low when you consider their 1.1 billion pageviews per month…

Google gets an 83.5 WooRank

And then there’s Google- the company that supplies much of the data for WooRank to calculate where all these sites rank getting an 83.5… just a notch or two below facebook.  Google may be the #1 most visited site on the web (according to Alexa) but that doesn’t keep them from being dinged by WooRank for such SEO faux paus as:

• No meta description
• Language declaration is missing
• No geotag (Where is Google anyways?)
• No dublin core (Never heard of a dublin core…)
• No gzip

So what’s the point of all of these screenshots and tongue-in-cheek remarks?  Simple:  There is nothing wrong with WooRank and certainly nothing wrong with WebsiteGrader, but use them as tools… not the holy grail.  The holy grail in most cases is how many units your site sells, or how many RSS subscribers you get, or whatever your metric of success is.  Don’t get worked up about these rank-this or rank-that.

And if you want a really good laugh, go to Woorank.com and try to get the woorank OF woorank.com.

Got an Ugly WooRank? So does Google, Ebay, and Facebook. is a post from: Wordpress Consulting & SEO which runs Thesis Theme with Wordpress Landing Page Theme

Did you know…

• People can see pages on your site that were up months ago without you knowing?
• When you delete a page from your site, it can still be seen for months?
• People can look through your site without showing up in your analytics?

Learn to stop showing your website's cache.

This is all possible through the magic of Google’s caching feature.  And although website caching on Google has some benefits, it may not be a good fit for your site.  Let me tell you why (and how) I decided to stop having a cached version of my site on Google.

I’ve been watching my traffic a lot more closely lately, especially 404 errors.  I’ve noticed a lot of very funky stuff going on, especially with people (or bots) coming from cached versions of my site.  When I get a peek at some of the search terms that these people used to get to my site, it is interesting what kinds of things you learn.

If you aren’t sure what Website Caching is (in terms of search engines), check out this explanation from Google’s site:

Google automatically takes a “snapshot” of each page it crawls and archives it. This “cached” version allows a webpage to be retrieved for your end users if the original page is ever unavailable (due to temporary failure of the page’s web server). The cached page appears to users exactly as it looked when Google last crawled it, and we display a message at the top of the page to indicate that it’s a cached version. Users can access the cached version by choosing the “Cached” link on the search results page.  (As seen here)

So the only benefit of caching as far as I can tell is that a copy of your site is available in case your server goes down.  My server doesn’t go down much, so that isn’t a big bonus.  But the downsides seem to outweigh the good.

Here a little video about Caching…

I don’t want people to be able to see cached versions of my site. The cached versions could be pages or posts you deleted, are out of date, or you removed from your site for one reason or another.  I figure: If I took the pages down already, I don’t want Google showing them to people for months (years?) to come.

I would also like to know when people are looking at my site. Usually Google Analytics will give me this data, but if people are looking at cached versions of my site, then they never get counted.  They can browse my whole site (and your whole site) without you knowing about it.

So I did some searching on how to stop Google (and the other search engines) from showing a cached version of your page.  All you have to do is add:

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOARCHIVE” />

to your header.  Supposedly it’s as easy as that.

So, I just added it today and of course Google has to come back through and re-index each of these pages to see the change, but I’m excited to see how this works.

Your Turn:

Do you have any experience with web caching you’d like to share?  Do you have questions about adding the meta to your site?  Are you aware of something that might happen without a cached version I didn’t think about?  Add it to the comments below…

PS:  If you liked what you saw about Thesis Theme, check out my Thesis Theme discount.

Why (and how) to Stop Google from Caching Your Pages is a post from: Wordpress Consulting & SEO which runs Thesis Theme with Wordpress Landing Page Theme

Well there comes a time in every designer and developers life when they have to put together a portfolio page.  I started mine tonight and put 5 new sites up.  There are many more where this came from, but you can take a look at the first 5 Wordpress Designs here.

Check them out and let me know what you think!

Thanks,

5 New Sites on the ‘ole Portfolio is a post from: Wordpress Consulting & SEO which runs Thesis Theme with Wordpress Landing Page Theme

Artwork from 37Signals' upcoming book... 'Rework'

I got a new mac mini about this time last month.  (It’s great by the way).  The new computer finally meant I could download Google’s new browser, Chrome (which is also great btw).  Having a new computer and browser means that all of my old bookmarks and such were thrown to the wind and I had the chance to start totally fresh.

After a month, I’ve put only a small handful of new ‘favorites’ in Chrome.  I thought you might find it interesting to see what they were.

So here’s my unadulerated and unedited list of favorites from my browsing over the last month…  (ps:  I encourage all of you to leave some of your favorite bookmarks in the comments section below, too!)

{Note:  Most of these bookmarks have to do with design, esp. Wordpress related.  If I’m running out of ideas for a new design, my bookmarks are the first place that get a look}

1. Peter Michaud: I saved this link because the design was really simple, I enjoyed the colors, and his writing is pretty good too.
2. Cabel.Name: This site is very cool and simple.  I saved it in my favorites, however, because for some reason they text rendered REALLY nicely on my mac.  It didn’t look quite as good on the Windows version though…
3. Panic Blog: The company that makes a ton of my favorite tools, Panic, has a new-ish blog.  Their design is absolutely first class and a hell of a unique take on what a blog should be.
4. jQuery Tutorial on Sliding Divs:  jQuery is super cool and I really want to learn more about using it.  This is a good tutorial on making a slide-out div… and if you have more interest in jQuery then by all means read up at Brian Cray’s blog.
5. User Color Picker:  Another slammin’ good design.  So simple, so elegant… just good.
6. 50 Minimalist Designs:  A list of… you guessed it… 50 minimalist designs.  I love this list and reference it a lot.
7. Good Thesis Navigation:  Not sure how I came across this Thesis Theme modification, but I absolutely love the way they handled making the navigation a 100% across the site.  Nice job!
8. Custom Pages in Thesis:  Before Thesis theme, making a custom layout for a page in Wordpress was a sinch.  Now, Thesis is just too darn complicated to do it easily.  Well, it WAS too darn complicated.  This guy has a method for making different layouts in Thesis so you can have  a 2-column design here, or a 3-column design there without having to hide something in CSS as a nasty fix.
9. 37 Signals Re-Work Sales Page:  Best use of light-text-on-dark-background I’ve seen in a long time.  But would you expect anything less from the makers of Basecamp, Campfire, etc.?

That’s it for now!  Leave some of your favorites in the comments below.

Thanks,

9 Fresh & Diverse Web Design Resources in January is a post from: Wordpress Consulting & SEO which runs Thesis Theme with Wordpress Landing Page Theme

Predictions for 2010....

2009 was a huge year in online publishing. The methods for getting traffic changed drastically from almost exclusively Search to include walled gardens like Facebook and, of course, Twitter. When a shift of this size happens, there are a lot of people trying to figure out what the next big thing is going to be and how to make the most of the new landscape. I’m like everyone else- uncertain of what’s going to happen- but I do have a few predictions.

1. Twitter & Facebook get bigger, but don’t replace Google.

Sometimes when you get online you are LOOKING for something. Maybe you need the number for a pizza joint down the street, or maybe you need a discount on a Wordpress theme. Either way, you are looking for something and you are still going to use Google to find it.

And sometimes when you get online you are just looking to be entertained. You aren’t looking for anything in particular, and Facebook and Twitter and any “portal site” can give you a wealth of interesting things to read or watch.

These are very different mindsets. Both mindsets are very important. Both groups buy stuff, have opinions, and are good audiences to be aware of when you are creating content.

Google is not going to be replaced by Twitter or Facebook, and the fact that Google reigns supreme doesn’t cheapen Twitter or Facebook. I hope that 2010 has a lot less arguement about how Google is going to be toppled by Twitter. Geez.

2. Search is still a better place to sell and connect.

When people are searching for something, they are a better ‘lead’ than if you convince them to look at something you posted on twitter or facebook. That’s why people enjoy the internet… because you can drive yourself around (seemingly) without distraction and do what you want with commercial interruptions.

I believe that search and ranking high and broadly in search is still an excellent place to put your marketing budget. Twitter and facebook are cool for sure, but there are thousands of people looking for what you sell, so let them find you instead of hitting up your friends.

3. Bing does better, but is still just Bing.

Ah, bing. Not much to talk about here.

4. 2011 Finds us almost exactly the same as we are today.

In the end, we are going to have another year of a lot of changes but we’ll find ourselves basically where we are today a year from now. Most web users aren’t overly savvy, they don’t have a twitter account, and if they use Facebook they have never purchased anything from facebook.

The fundamentals are- and will be- exactly the same. They are:

1. Create good content. (Content, content, content.)
2. Make it easy to read, use, share.
3. Have a solid plan for making money off of that content.
4. Repeat.

Of course you can always improve on any of those steps, but that’s the recipe. Get cookin!

Best,

SEO & Traffic Generation Predictions for 2010 is a post from: Wordpress Consulting & SEO which runs Thesis Theme with Wordpress Landing Page Theme

Learn to procrastinate better.

I challenge you to think of anyone who doesn’t procrastinate.

Can you think of anyone? I can’t.

Procrastination seems to me to be one of the most ubiquitous traits in human nature. We all do it. So if we can’t get rid of the tendencey to put things off, how can we become better at procrastinating. How can we stay effective at what we do but enjoy… even relish… putting things off?

As I’ve gone through the GTD method lately, I’ve had the chance to try out a lot of different ways to approach procrastination. A lot of people and books will tell you to just do whatever it is you are putting off. But sometimes it’s just not that easy.

So here are 3 tips to being a better procrastinator…

1. Break up your todo list into whatever environment you need to accomplish it in.

This sounds more complicated than it is. Basically my todo list has three different lists. They are:

1. At Computer
2. Telephone
3. Real Life

Since I work on the computer, a lot of my work stuff goes on there. The telephone can basically take place anywhere, and generally the ‘real life’ stuff has to happen outside of the office.

So I found that for myself a lot of what I considered ‘procrastination‘ was just that I wanted a change of envirnoment. I just needed to get away from the computer for a bit. So now when I feel the urge to get away from the computer I can just hit one of the other lists… either telephone or real life.

This way, I’m still getting stuff done even though I’m ‘procrastinating’ on the computer stuff.

2. Brainstorm about the steps needed to do whatever you are resistent to.

A lot of times the things I’m most resistent to are the things I ahven’t brainstormed enough. So take the time to think out whatever project you don’t want to do. A lot of times the details and ideas you come up with when you are brainstorming can give you the motivation to tackle the project.

And the best thing about brainstorming is that you can get out of the office to do it. (See tip #1 above)

3. Clean up your room/office/kitchen/car.

I need a clean space to work. If my office is dirty I keep wanting to clean it. But instead of cleaning it, I stop myself and try to get focused.

Sometimes it’s better to just stop working, take 10 minutes (or an hour) to clean up your space. Getting out of the workflow gives you perspective on your problem and can really clear your mind. In the end your project gets done and you’ve got a clean room.

So I hope these procrastination tips have helped you. If you’ve got some tips of your own, please leave them in the comments below. And if you think your twitter followers might enjoy these tips, then by all means please tweet this post!

(photo by this guy)

Thanks,

3 Tips to Better Procrastination is a post from: Wordpress Consulting & SEO which runs Thesis Theme with Wordpress Landing Page Theme

This is a public retraction in regard to a post which has since been taken down called ‘How To Catch a Cookie Stuffer’.  Thesis Theme HQ was and is in no way involved in Cookie Stuffing.

As with all of the posts on this website, that post was purely my opinion.  (Please see my website disclaimer to clear up any confusion about the liability of this site.)

At the time when the post was published, I showed a video of my research and discussed why my opinion was that Thesis Theme HQ had been cookie stuffing.  I made the statement in good faith and had reasonable belief that they were true.  However, after receiving notice that they were untrue, I immediately took down the post and the post has been unavailable since.

Once again, I want it to be very clear that Thesis Theme HQ is in no way involved in Cookie Stuffing.

Retraction is a post from: Wordpress Consulting & SEO which runs Thesis Theme with Wordpress Landing Page Theme

1. Are you looking for a coupon code for Squeeze Theme for Wordpress?
2. Do you want a Cash-Back Rebate on Squeeze Theme?
3. Are you looking to save 10% on Squeeze Theme hassle-free?

Then look no further.

I will give you $10 back in cash after you buy Squeeze Theme for Wordpress.  No gimmicks, no rain checks, no bullshit.  $10 goes into your paypal after you buy Squeeze Theme.

How Do You Get The Squeeze Theme Discount?

Easy:

1.  Clear your cookies. (This is required, otherwise I may not be able to give you the rebate.  Follow the instruction on this page to clear your cookies.  This window will open in a new page.  Make sure to come back here immediately afterward. )

2.  Click on this link to go and buy Squeeze Theme.

3.  Come back to my site and fill out your Rebate Form on my contact page.

That’s it!

At the start of the next month, you will get your $10 in cash back.

BONUS for Squeeze Theme Buyers:

Now Free with every purchase of Squeeze Theme- you get a copy of the Wordpress SEO Blueprint to make your blog rank better for more keywords.  It’s simple, works for the long term, and now free with every Squeeze Theme purchase using this link.

Thanks, and Enjoy the Squeeze Theme,

Coupon Code: Save $10 on Squeeze Theme with this Coupon Code is a post from: Wordpress Consulting & SEO which runs Thesis Theme with Wordpress Landing Page Theme

Twitter actually can be fun. That is, unless you follow 7500 spam accounts.

A few months ago I got really tired of Twitter and decided to test some stuff out on my account. I wanted to see how many followers I could get without doing any actual work. The (maybe) surprising result is that you can get just about as many followers as you want. The bad news is that none of them are doing any real work either.

Let’s take a closer look at how I completely screwed my account, and then we’ll take a look at how to fix it too.

The journey to getting tons of followers starts with the assumption that at least some of the people you follow will eventually follow you back. So the first step is:

1. Follow a ton of people.

There are scripts to help with this so you don’t actually have to do all of the pointing and clicking. I set a script up on a cron-job (sounds dirty, doesn’t it?) to follow a ton of people every night around 2am.

But at some point… I can’t remember exactly where… Twitter steps in and says you can’t follow anyone else until some people start following you back. There is a golden ratio of following-to-followers that twitter won’t let you stray too far out of because it’s obviously just spam.

So we have to…

2. Unfollow some of the people that didn’t follow us back.

Some people just aren’t going to follow you back automatically (thank God!) so you have to boot them from your follow list because you need those spots for bots that autofollow back. (Tongue squarely in cheek).

So you use a script that goes through and stops following anyone who isn’t following you back. This is a nasty thing to do, and truly what ruins your twitter experience. I mean, quite simply, NPR isn’t going to follow me- but I still really really want to see updates from them otherwise how will I know what to think or say at dinner parties? (PS: I do love NPR, but am well aware of it’s liberal bias. But reality has a well-know liberal bias.)

3. Cron Job it and forget about enjoying twitter.

So now that you have your auto-following going, and your auto-unfollow-people-who-don’t-follow-you going, you have exactly what you need to get tons of irrelevant followers and tweets. Yee haw.

I set my cron-jobs up to run the follow script, wait about 22 hours, unfollow anyone who didn’t follow my back by then, and then follow people again. Rinse, wash, repeat.

And over time your number keeps growing and growing. It’s nasty how many followers you can get.

The Problem…

…Is obvious. Twitter starts to suck. Even though you have a tonne of followers, they are all spammers. Why? Because the only twitter users who will follow you back within 20 hours are spam bots.

{Which, as a side note, it a HUGE problem on twitter and will have to be tackeled somehow ASAP. Moving on…}

Another problem is that your Direct Messages get overrun with spam too. See, you can only send a DM to someone who follows you. And if I’m the sucker that is following 7500 spammers… well guess who gets invited to “Test my IQ”. Me.

How to Fix It:

Stop following EVERYONE. And start fresh. I’m pretty sure it’s the only way.

As a side benefit, you also get this glorious moment when you are following no one and there are a ton of people following you. You are glowing with a flavor of vanity that wasn’t even available a couple of years ago…
Thank you twitter.

How I Ruined Twitter for Myself and Then Fixed it Again is a post from: Wordpress Consulting & SEO which runs Thesis Theme with Wordpress Landing Page Theme