Unbelievable.
Virtually the whole of March has been sunny and blue skies, lots of chance for me to kick a ball around with my two year old in the garden, push her on the swing ("Faster, faster - come on, Daddy" - Daddy working up a sweat, trying not to keel over), and every so often dig a bit of ground in the pretence of making a real garden, not just a pile of old grass and tangled weeds.
And then April comes - rain, rain, rain. Oh, and cold too.
Apart from my vigorous outdoor pursuits, March has been a busy month. Software sales in Q1 2003 are up 50% on Q4 last year, way beyond expectations, so I must be doing something right.
He's a great guy, down to earth, but with a wealth of business experience, both online and off. And pretty international too, he even has business interests on the African continent (with many stories to tell on that score).
Why don't you meet him too? If you want the mysteries of the Internet and your PC explained in plain English, you need to! Go meet him.
I've got something special this month, just for you, my Takanomi family.
I've linked up with a friend of mine from NZ, Sean D'Souza of PsychoTactics, and persuaded him to let you have a $60 recording of an incredible teleconference he did earlier this year. Not sure how I managed that, but he agreed to do this exclusively for you guys - there's no charge to you at all.
Now this guy is powerful, he's vouched for by people like Joe Vitale, Jay Conrad Levinson, Kenrick E. Cleveland, and more! These people learn stuff from him, and adapt their marketing accordingly - and now you can learn the same stuff too, free of charge.
I've listened to this recording personally, and learnt a great deal - and I'll soon be putting it into practice on my web sites.
This is an exclusive deal for Takanomi's only, so please take advantage of this today - the page is only going to be up for a week or so, so even if you don't have time to listen to it right now, grab the recording while you still can and save it somewhere you remember.
And be sure to listen to the teleconference a.s.a.p. - you'll wish you heard it sooner.
[To read this article online, or to find out republishing information, just click here]
Is your web site dynamic enough to address your visitors
by name?
If not, you are missing out on a powerful personalization
strategy that could treble your sales or more.
This article gives you a simple five step process you can
follow to quickly add some personalization to your web
pages. All you need to use is a bit of PHP.
If the mere mention of PHP fills you with programming
paralysis, you have no need to fear. It's incredibly
simple, not much more difficult than HTML - if you can do
basic HTML, you can do PHP.
The vast majority of hosts, both on Windows and Unix,
support PHP - if you're unsure, just check with your host.
STEP 1: Make Your Web Page a PHP Page
Most web pages end with the extension .html or .htm. All
you need to do is change this to .php (or occasionally
something like .php3 depending on your host).
One note of caution - if you are using SSI, there may be
SSI commands on your page that will need to be converted to
PHP commands. This is outside the scope of this article.
Also, if you normally use something like FrontPage, you may
run into problems with this, so just use something like
Notepad instead.
STEP 2: Create A Box For The Name
We are going to store the visitor's name in what is
commonly called a 'variable', so that we can use it later
on your web page.
All you need to do is put the following code at the very
top of your web page:
<?php
if(!$f){
$name = "Friend";
}
else{
setcookie("name","$f",time()+315360000,"/");
$name = $f;
}
?>
Replace 'Friend' with whatever term you want to use to
address visitors if you haven't yet captured their name -
we talk about how to capture their name later in this
article.
Don't worry about what the rest of this code does. It's
just there to make sure the whole system works - if the
visitor's browser allows cookies, they'll still see their
name when they revisit your web site in the future.
STEP 3: Capture Their Name
This is the bit where you throw a rope round their name
and string it up on your web site to grab their attention!
Here's one way to do it - just add a bit extra to the
normal URL to your web page.
Take a look at this example:
http://www.yourdomain.com?f=Fred
You just add ?f=Fred (or whatever the first name of the
person is) to your URL.
Yes, I know - this is only useful if you provide a link in
something like a newsletter, and if you use a mailing
service that permits personalization. But some solo ad
publishers also permit personalization, so you can use it
there too!
Another way is to capture their name when they fill in a
form to subscribe to your ezine, for example. But this
would require more space than I have room for in this
article.
STEP 4: Speak To Them By Name
So you've got their name - now you can use it to speak to
them in person across your whole web site!
Here's how you do it.
Wherever you want to display their name, just type in the
following instead:
<? echo ($name); ?>
As long as your web page is a PHP page, as discussed in
Step 1 above, this will display the visitors name, if you
have it. Otherwise it will display the default, which in
my code above is 'Friend'.
STEP 5: Upload The Code
Upload the PHP page to your web site, and test it.
First visit the page normally, for example going direct to
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php - you should see
'Friend' wherever you wanted the first name to go to.
Now visit it by typing a URL like the following into your
browser: http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?f=Bob.
Wherever it said 'Friend' it should now say 'Bob' - you may
need to reload the page to overcome the browser cache.
There's no better way to grab your visitor's attention
than to actually address them by their first name!
Please note that we can't provide free support for the advice contained in the article above.
However we do provide professional web development services - all web-related development work is considered, across a wide range of technologies.
For more information please go to http://www.takanomi.com/development/. |
| 2. Profit-Boosting Tips and Tricks | ^Top |
This section is my scribbling pad where I let
you know about things that have caught my eye over the past
month online, and that can help to boost your profits.
The section can contain anything - for example, articles,
products, services, ideas, just general jottings from my
time online.
Sometimes they're free, sometimes they're not - but all will help your business thrive.
Here's a couple of my jottings for this month...
1. Hypnotic Blueprint
What do you do if you want to succeed online?
Follow successful people, that's what, people who are already out there where you want to be - listen to what they say, practice what they preach, read every word they write, and success will be yours.
On this line of thought, there is a brand new course (it's only just been launched) from fellow Brit, Lee Benson, and ex-trucker Frank Garon, designed to give you a complete blueprint for success on the internet.
Both of these guys are highly successful, and started out with a huge load of debts and a determination to succeed.
Before signing up to the course myself (I want to hear what these guys have to say), I'd had a few email exchanges with Frank - he's a very approachable, honest, straight up kind of guy and I liked him. And I guess that's why I took the plunge and signed up.
After following the first CD installment, I have to say I was impressed (and I'm a difficult-to-impress kind of guy). It's very professionally put together, and even the first CD contains a huge amount of info that's going to change your life if you put it into practice.
If you want to succeed online, and grab hold of the kind of life that the internet can offer to you, this course may be it. But it's not just CD-ROMs, there are regular teleconferences where you can get one to one advice from these people with ordinary backgrounds who have become big successes after a lot of hard work.
But I won't tell you all about this course, there's not room, and it's best you hear it from them. Let's just say that I strongly recommend you at least take a look.
http://takanomi.com/blueprint
(Hey, [firstname], the site even uses personalization strategies similar to what I outlined in the article above, albeit a lot more complicated)
Remember, I'm not recommending this just to make a fast buck, but because I've tried it out myself, and so far, I like what I see very much and believe it could really help all of us to succeed more online. To get where you wanna go, follow people who are already there.
2. Are Your Ads Just A Load Of Junk?
If I answered this question honestly myself a month ago, I really didn't know.
And I was getting mad that I couldn't judge the effectiveness of my ads - were they just a pile of old junk, costing me more money than what they brought in; or were certain ads more effective than others?
But if I did have this kind of information to hand I would be in a position of power with my advertising.
I could direct my advertizing budget towards ads that worked and stop throwing money away on ads that were no more effective than me opening my front door window and shouting very loudly.
So in March, I took the plunge and purchased a system to allow me to advertize more effectively and get more bang for my buck.
It was easy to install (they install it for you if you wish, no extra charge, but I'm the sort to stubbornly do it myself), and gave me all the information I needed to save money on my advertizing, and make more from the results.
- Do you know which of your PPC keywords are bringing home the bucks, and which ones are just buck black holes?
- Do you know which ads are producing sales, affiliates, opt-ins, etc?
Okay, this is beginning to sound like an ad itself - it's not, but I've tested this software, and I recommend it to you now. I needed it to take my business forward - if you answer no to the questions above, you need something like this too, so do something about it and go take a look:
http://pro-analyzer.com
If you have any feedback on this issue, please just let me know.
I'm going to take a break now, and have a nice cup of coffee and a cream cake - to be specific, a great big scone dusted with icing sugar, and filled with jam and cream. My wife's just ran out, in the April wind and rain, to get them, so I can't let her down now can I? I'm just going to have to force it down me...
And if you could, visualize some sun and blue skies for me - I've heard visualization en-masse can work wonders.
([firstname] - if you haven't yet, pick up that free teleconference I told you about now - just go to Email edition only - click here if you are not a subscriber
)
Kind regards
Steve Shaw
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