Bob Caine's Blog – Follow Me on the Road to Success

Leads Leap

Leads Leap is the most amazing group of marketing tools I have ever seen and its free. There is an upgrade available but it will be a long time before I exceed the free capabilities. Here are the features of Leads Leap I have discovered so far and I haven’t even used all of these yet.

Advertise within Leads Leap and you get paid to view other members ads.
The best link trackers I have ever seen. Plus using Leads Leap tracker gets your ads shown on 1000’s of web sites.
If you have a website or blog, you can the Leads Leap widget and get advertising on the websites and blogs of other members,
Search engine traffic from reviews you write which are rotated through the Social Review Directory.
A 10 level deep downline builder through a “unique, sustainable and annoyance-free communication system” .
Website/Blog popup generator that can make almost any popup you can think of to increase your conversion rate.
A cookie generator so you can customize what people see on your website or blog.
An autoresponder and list manager that can be used with the popup generator.
An OTO script so you can build sales funnel with
1. built in auto-responder
2. mass mailer
3. one-time offer system
4. payment integration
5. affiliate program

ALL this is FREE. Where can you find more marketing tools for a better price?

My only small complaint is that you cannot send email to your downline. All you can do is offer recommendations which show up on emails your downline receive. I understand Leads Leap philosophy of annoyance-free communication, but I would like to send my downline an email,

If you are serious about internet marketing and you are operating on a shoestring budget, you need Leads Leap.

Two Years of Searching Pays Off

You may have noticed it has been over 2 years since my last post. I got to the point where I had to develop a product and I could not come up with anything. Anything I could think of already existed and I can’t just rename/repackage something and sell it to people. I have spent money on too many products in the past, just to find out it was the same information as another product rearranged with a few new links. Couldn’t do it. There is enough of that going on.

So for the last 2 years I have been looking for a new opportunity. I finally found it. It is called the TripleA Plan. The TripleA Plan meets all my criteria for a program I want to promote.

Free to get started (You can build a business with no out of pocket cash, More about in a future post.)
Well written ebook to get you started.
No requirement to buy anything to use the plan.
Fantastic support
An owner who is not greedy. (Doesn’t try to sell to your downline.)
Promote anything you want with the TripleA Plan.

I will be writing more about the plan in the near future but for now do yourself a favor

Join ConversionSurf, the home of the TripleA Plan

Phase 2 – Figure Out a Product

Phase 1, My Blog, is finished. I thought creating the blog was very straight forward and easy. This is probably because I had done most of tasks before. I am currently reading Bloggers Roadmap looking for ways to improve my blog. I have already found a couple of things one of which I have implemented. I created a footer menu and moved all the mundane pages like the legal pages to that menu from the blog menu. I like those pages on the footer much better. The second thing I learned is where all the code is for the various parts of the blog in case I have to modify it. I am going to do my best to avoid changing code.

Enough about Phase 1, I am on Phase 2 now. I freely admit I am not looking forward to this Phase. I have absolutely no idea what product I want to create. Let alone a product I am capable of creating. What the heck do I know enough about to create a product. Plus I need at least one up sell and a down sell products.

At the moment, I am leaning toward an ebook for a product because I don’t have the necessary skills to program anything. But, an ebook about what? I am an expert at not succeeding on the internet. Doesn’t sound very marketable to me. Hopefully, Partnership to Success has some great methods to teach me how to solve this problem. I really need to keep a positive attitude.

Phase 1 Wrap Up

I have finished Phase 1 of Partnership to Success (building the foundation). Overall, I would say that the training and videos are very well done. I thought the tasks during the 8 weeks for Phase 1 could have been accomplished easily in 6 weeks by anyone. I finished it in 4 weeks because I had done similar things before. Thank goodness you can go faster by asking support. As I said at the end of my last post, I still don’t know what is in store for my website but I am fairly certain there is more to come.

I feel I understand and can use WordPress functionality without any major problems. I did learn when I had to search for specific functionality that people have no problem diving into the code and making changes. I don’t think I really want to know WordPress to that level; plus, I would have to learn PHP. On the other hand, I have just scratched the surface of Optimize Press functionality. The P2S videos have used just a few features of Optimize Press so far. Since I was ahead of schedule with the training, I played with some of the other OP features (elements). What I learned from my “playing” with OP and several support tickets is that I wish that OP was a theme instead of a plugin.

I say this because when OP elements are used on WordPress posts and pages they are added as shortcodes (like HTML). The elements look fine when viewing the blog but are not editable. The OP elements are only editable when using OP’s Live Editor. Using Live Editor is no harder than using WordPress but, to have “blog functionality” in OP, it has to be the theme not a plugin. As a plugin, you can create pages but no sidebar functionality. There is probably more that is missing from OP as a plugin but I haven’t found it yet.

Aweber was a pleasant surprise. If you remember, I didn’t want to join Aweber since I already had TrafficWave as an auto responder. Now, I am very impressed with Aweber. I need to learn more about Aweber since I am sure I have only scratched the surface of its capabilities. But, Aweber’s interface with Optimize Press and form creation capabilities impressed me and I will bet there is more to come.

There were 4 minor glitches during Phase 1. The first glitch was becoming a member of the P2S Facebook Group. Paula on P2S tech support was very diligent in getting this resolved. It turned out the problem was Facebook didn’t like my inbox.com email address. Changed it to a gmail account and that fixed the problem. The second glitch was the lack of “comment capability” on my blog. This most likely happened because defaults in WordPress have changed since John made his blog settings video. To fix this problem, I watched the video again. When John was scrolling past the comment settings saying nothing needed to change, I stopped the video and set my comment settings to match his. Problem solved for new posts. The existing posts all said “comments closed”. The fix for that is a check box; allow comments, on each post found under “Quick Edit”.

The third and fourth glitches were associated with the creation and testing of the optin form that slides when you come to the blog. When John created the optin form on the videos, the button fit perfectly on the form. When I did the same things, the button was too big and spilled over the edge of the form. This problem gave me the opportunity to learn more of Aweber’s capabilities. I learned I could change the font size, move the titles, move the location of the optin form. Finally, whitelisting on ClickBank is required to get credit for signups to P2S that came from my blog. There was some problem on ClickBank’s side which delayed me getting whitelisted for 5 days. John eventually found out about the problem and fixed it the same day.

The final video of Phase 1 proved to me John is a man after my own heart. The final video is “Test, Test, Test”. John is a strong advocate of EVERYTHING must be tested. I could not agree more. Internet applications have so many pieces, it is easy for something not to work the way intended. So I agree – TEST, TEST, TEST!

In summary, I give the training 4.5 out of 5 stars. The .5 star deduction is for the length of the phase, not the minor glitches. I believe that anyone regardless of technical knowledge can complete Phase 1 and have a good-looking blog up and running.

Week 8 – List Building

Week 8 is the end of Partnership to Success Phase 1. Phase 1 was all about getting my blog all set up. I will freely admit I am glad Phase 1 is ending. I think my blog is acceptable, not great but better than some I have seen. I also have to admit that I still don’t fully understand what the purpose of the blog is. I am sure that will become apparent eventually.

This week added a couple more features to the blog. First, I added a product called Link Supercharger. Link Supercharger allows me to change affiliate links to customized links. For example, the following link

http://a9fd24k-8ggj07mws3jg74o2t.hop,clickbank.net/?tis=XXXX

can be changed to

http://bobcaine.com/recommends/P2S

I think the new link is more likely to be clicked. Installation of Link Supercharger could not be simpler. Download to your computer; add a directory (‘recommends’ in my case) to the site; ftp a file to the new directory; enter the file location in your browser; enter a user name, password, and email; and you are done. To produce the example above, copy the affiliate link in the space provided, enter the desired name, P2S, and click the create button. That’s it. The new link can be cloaked or uncloaked. A cloaked link remains the same on the link’s web page. An uncloaked link changes back to the original link. Some vendors, like ClickBank, do not allow cloaking so make sure you check. Link Supercharger has other functionality as well but I haven’t used any of those yet.

The finishing touch to the blog was the opt-in form that greets a visitor upon arrival at the blog. The opt-in form was created with Aweber. I sure couldn’t create that form with TrafficWave. John walking through the creation was a necessity. First, I would not have even known the capability to create a form that complex existed. Secondly, the positioning of the actual form on the background was at the pixel level and would have required a lot of trial and error. Aweber allows the setting of the delay, how it appears and how frequently it appears. I was definitely impressed. I need to take time and learn all the Aweber functionality. I am sure there is a lot more there.

Week 7 – Essential Techniques

Week 7 is about getting my blog ready for the world. The first part of this is to add “legal stuff” to the blog. Guess what? There is a plugin for the legal pages. The plugin is WP InstaLegalPages. It contains the following nine legal pages.

Affiliate Disclosure
Amazon Affiliate Disclaimer (multiple countries available)
Anti-Spam Policy
Contact Us
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice
Earnings Disclaimer
Medical Disclaimer
Privacy Policy
Terms of Use

When activating the plugin, creates all nine pages as drafts. The pages are fully editable as needed and published when ready. I used all the pages except the Amazon Affiliate Disclaimer and the Medical Disclaimer. Once published, seven new, boring pages appear on my menu. Not the best result for a good-looking blog. The solution is to create and publish a page called “Legal Stuff” or whatever you prefer. The “Legal Stuff” page is the main page for all the legal pages. Making the legal pages sub-pages to “Legal Stuff” is done through Appearance, Menu. The Menu page allows you to drag and drop, up and down, your pages to create the sequence you want. To make the legal pages sub-items to “Legal Stuff”, you drag them to the right. Click save, view the blog. Now, you see “Legal Stuff” with a down arrow on the main menu. When the cursor is on “Legal Stuff”, the list of the legal pages displays. Clicking on one of the legal pages displays that page.

Week 7 also taught how to add images and videos to a post. I have added images to several posts but still have several that need images. I am hoping to find a site to get decent free images. No luck so far. I haven’t added a video yet but I will just for the experience. I may even get adventuresome and create a video.

How to schedule publishing a post and emailing broadcasts to your lists at a future date and time is the last topic of the week. This functionality is useful if you are unavailable when you want the post published or the broadcast sent. This is definitely a handy feature for both WordPress and Aweber. I am starting to see why Aweber costs a little more than other autoresponders. It has more functionality.

Please leave comments to help me improve and return soon.

Week 6 – Monetizing the Blog

I just finished week 6 about monetizing the blog. Monetizing my blog certainly sounded exciting but this week was very dull. You might remember that last week I registered, updated in my case, at Google Adsense. You have to wait for Google to accept your application. I did get an acceptance after several days. First, you receive provisional acceptance and told to put some Google ads on the site to receive full acceptance.

DON’T CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADSENSE ADS

There is a plugin to facilitate using Adsense. The plugin is GARD. GARD is an acronym for Google Adsense for Responsive Design. I installed and activated GARD. Once activated, GARD connects to Adsense using my account ID. Adsense and GARD have two modes – basic and advanced. Basic mode displays small ads with minimal text. Advanced mode lets you choose from a variety of ad shapes and sizes. The two modes are mutually exclusive. You can use basic or advanced but not both.

DON’T CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADSENSE ADS

John emphasized over and over to not click on your own Adsense ads. Google will know and delete your account. I am not sure using blog space for Adsense ads is really worth it. You get paid each time someone clicks on one of the ads. That is a good thing. But you don’t actually get paid until you reach $100. If you don’t have a high traffic blog, reaching the $100 minimum could take a very long time. I can always remove the ads.

DON’T CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADSENSE ADS

The second method for monetizing the blog is to include ads for products that pay commissions. The training video demonstrates this method using a ClickBank product called Simple Traffic Solutions. This is a product developed by John. There is no requirement to advertise this product. It is just the product used in the video training. I used STS for now but I will search for a different product soon.

There are several websites that have commission based products. To sell the products, you have to join, find a product you would like to sell, and promote it. Some products require that your approval by the developer. Commission percentage varies with each product but is usually at least 50%. Here are a few affiliate networks and marketplaces you can check out.

Commission Junction
ClickBank
JV Zoo
Deal Guardian

Week 6 concludes with instruction on how to ad advertising banners to the blog two ways. First method is adding banners in code view. This method requires retrieving the HTML code containing the graphic image link and your affiliate link. Copy the code and place it in a text widget. That’s it. Drag the widget where you want the ad and you are done. You may have to tweak the HTML code if it doesn’t behave the way you want; e.g., center it or open in a new window. This method works great for blog locations where widgets are allowed. Other locations require the second method. The second method is using media functionality. This method requires you to find the graphic you want. use “save as” to save the graphic on your computer, upload it to the media library. Once there the graphic is available for use with the OptimizePress, modules, advertising functionality. This method provides many more locations for the ads. I think this topic needs a separate post in the future.

Remember

DON’T CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADSENSE ADS

Week 5 – Networking

There was almost nothing new this week from a learning prospective. Download a widget, install a widget, activate and set up the widget. I have done this several times before. So what was important this week is the use of the new widget.

The widget is Widlink. This is not a widget anyone can find by searching widgets. A friend of John’s wrote this widget for use in the Partnership to Success program. Widlink goes in the sidebar and provides links to other P2S members’ blogs. Once Widlink is installed and activated, setup entails telling the widget how many members to display and giving the list a title. After this is done, the list will appear in the sidebar. A great feature of Widlink is that it is dynamic and random. The list has a different list of names each time someone accesses my blog.

Are you asking, ”Why is Widlink important?” Widlink provides a network of P2S blogs. It is important to have links pointing to my blog from other websites and vice-a-versa. This helps the various internet “crawlers” find my blog. The more references to my blog found, the higher its ranking.

Another task assigned was to go to the blogs of other members and leave comments. This also helps the “crawlers”. When I leave a comment, part of the information I provide is my website. Once again, this creates a link back to me blog. Plus, some of the blogs use a plugin called CommentLuv. This plugin provides a link back to the commenter’s most recent post. If their blog uses that plugin or an equivalent, I get double the back links. I need to install CommentLuv.

Two other small tasks for this week were adjust the width of the sidebar and signup for Google Adsense. Adjusting the width of the sidebar is easy if you know where to do it. The sidebar width is set by going to OptimizePress, Blog Settings, Layout Structure, Sidebar Column Preferences and entering the desired width. (I hate to think how long it would take me to find that on my own.) The default setting was 309 pixels which I changed to 375. The reason for signing up for Google Adsense this week is because it takes time to get it approved. I already had an Adsense account but deleting old sites and adding a new one is just like signing up for the first time. Google has to approve everything.

More about Adsense next week.

Week 4 – Social Media

This week is about adding social media links to the blog and a couple of clean up tasks. I already had Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin accounts so there wasn’t really anything for me to do from the first video. I did think that I could use Skype as well but not so. I spent about an hour trying to learn how to link to Skype. It turns out you don’t really “link” to Skype. You can have the icon call or chat with an individual but that is it. I couldn’t find a way for them to leave a message. Maybe that is a chat. I didn’t think this was something I wanted so I didn’t include Skype with the other social media.

A zip file with the social media icons was provided. This file had to be downloaded and unzipped for use. Once unzipped, the icons are uploaded to the blog using “add media”. When the icons are in the blog media folder they are ready for use. Next, a small file of HTML code that John calls the ”top sidebar code” is downloaded. The purpose of this code is to link the social media icons to the profile pages. This is done using the href and image HTML commands. IMAGE is used to provide a link to the image that will be shown. When the image is clicked, HREF provides the link where the user is sent. The complete HTML command looks like this

<a href=”LINK TO TWITTER” target=”_blank”><img alt=”Twitter” src=”LINK TO TWITTER BUTTON”></a>

After being modified for my blog it looks like this

<a href=”https://twitter.com/rcaine” target=”_blank”><img alt=”Twitter” src=”http://bobcaine.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/twitter.png”></a>

(The target=”_blank” is a command that causes the destination site open in a new window or tab.
The img alt= command contains the text that will be displayed if the image is not available.)

OK, enough coding detail. I am not qualified to teach HTML. I just know a little bit and I know how to look up more detail when I need it.

When I had modified the code for all three social media icon on my PC, I copied it into a text widget which I put on the sidebar. WALLA! The Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin icons linked to my profile pages appear on the sidebar. Like any widget on the sidebar, you can drag it around to place it where you want. I placed the icons just below the opt in form.

The last lesson for week 4 contained a couple of clean up items. Redirecting the blog’s home directory to the blog and correcting settings to allow comments. What is funny is that I had actually already fixed both of these. I thought I was fixing the redirection based on personal preference. Guess not. There may actually be a good reason to do it to help the blog get evaluated by the internet gremlins. The lack of comments was an oversight on John’s part because of changes in OptimizePress. I had already discovered the fix for this by watching an earlier lesson. On my blog the default settings to get comments were wrong. I had to stop the video and copy what was on the screen. John didn’t need to change his setting. If others have the same defaults as me, they will have a problem as well.

After I got comments appearing on new posts, I had to tackle the problem of all my existing posts saying “Closed to Comments”. It turns out this is easy to fix once you know the trick. You “quick edit” each post that has closed comments and checking the allow comments box. POOF! Comments box appears.

Wow, I didn’t think I had much to say about week 4 and this has turned into one of my longest posts.

On to week 5.

[GARD align=”center”]

Week 3 – Opt In Form

[images style=”3″ image=”http%3A%2F%2Fbobcaine.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F10%2Fblogging-e1444590701316.jpg” width=”320″ caption=”Sign%20Up%20Please” align=”center” top_margin=”0″ full_width=”Y”]

This week is about adding an opt in form to my blog. Unfortunately, this means I need to join Aweber. I say unfortunately because I already subscribe to TrafficWave. I don’t think I really need 2 autoresonders. I have 2 paid lead campaigns running with TrafficWave that I would have to throw away if I left. Also, if I want to continue to pursue Team Atlantis, I need to stay with TrafficWave. Aweber is integrated with products that are used with program. I won’t have to struggle as much and will be able to do everything if I just join Aweber. I guess I will just have to have 2 autoresponders for now.

I registered with Aweber through my affiliate ID. Maybe I can get a commission but probably not. Aweber walks you through creating the first list which follows the videos. I customized the confirmation message but am sure I will tweak it at least once more. I also added a follow-up email thanking the person for signing up in the email series but that is the only email in the series for now.

Creating the sign up form was straight forward. Again, Aweber pretty much walked me through it which matched the video. I am really not sure if creating a form in Aweber was necessary or not. I say that because OptimizerPress interfaces with Aweber and I designed another form in OptimizerPress. I just went back and watched the video again. The HTML code for the Aweber form is copied into OptimizePress but some of it must be changed since the final form is designed and edited in my blog. This is one of those details I just have to accept because I am sure I will never know exactly how it works. It just works.

The week 3 checklist concludes with

“add an optin form to your blog, you will then be ready to start building a mailing list.”

That is true but we still need to drive traffic to the blog.

On to week 4