Online Marketing & More

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I had the privilege to speak for some wonderful servicemen and servicewomen at the Fleet and Family Support Center on the Coronado Naval Base. Here is the SlideShare from my  presentation “Online Marketing & More” with notes listed below.

Presentation Online Marketing & More Overview

Contents from the slide:

  1. Online Marketing & More
    Ways to make money from the internet
    Where to register and host
    Content Management Systems (CMS)
    Blogging Will Get You More Traffic
    Leverage Technology and Time
    Niche Markets
    Marketing Funnels
    Marketing Avenues
    Keyword Volume
    Landing Pages
    Conversions
    Synopsis
    Q and A
  2. Introduction
    Phelan Riessen – Digithrive
    Previous business – Planet Apparel for 17 years
    Greek Fonts & Drop Shipping sites, Startups
    On the web since ’97, Prodigy ’91, BB’s before
    Twitter: @imagium
  3. Who’s selling what?
    • Who already has a business?
    • Who has a website for it?
    • Are you getting the results you want?
  4. Ways to Make Money Online
    • MLM’s
    • Drop ship
    • Products and services
    • Affiliate marketing
    • Digital downloads
    • E-commerce
    • Membership sites
  5. Places to Register and Host

    Email VS Gmail/Yahoo/AOL etc.
    Register one place
    Host another

  6. Content Management Systems
    Make use of technology and automation
    WordPress
    Drupal
    Joomla
    Uses a Framework
    Low cost, open source
    Plugins, Extensions
    Customizable
    Minimal use of HTML code
    Plenty of developers
  7. Blogging Gets Higher Traffic
    Optimize Your Automation with WordPress
    - Fresh Content
  8. Leverage Yourself
    E-lance, The 4-Hour Workweek and other ways to leverage time
    oDesk.com
    Elance.com
    Guru.com
    ScriptLance.com
    Freelancer.com
    GetACoder.com
    VirtualEmployee.com
    Affordable Programmers.com
    PeoplePerHour.com
    AmazonTurk.com
    Fiverr.com
    7Richer.com
    TenBux.com
    Gigbucks.com
    FiftyTown.com
    UpHype.com
    Zeerk.com
  9. Find a Niche Market
    Find a pain in the market and fix it
    Become the Authority
    Customers come to you
    Opportunities for articles – inbound links
    Able to attack and resolve their pains
    How to implement:
    Multiple websites
    Landing pages
    Check it over with your existing clients
    Test
    Utilize both Online and Offline advertising
    Strategies
    Speaking their language
    Benefits over features
    SEO opportunities
  10. Marketing Funnel
    X Visitors = X interests = X requests = X conversions
  11. Marketing Avenues
    Social media and networks – Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter, Stumble Upon
    PPC – sponsored ads
    Building traffic – SEO, link building
  12. Finding Keywords

    https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

  13. Landing Pages
    Social media and networks – Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter, Stumble Upon
    PPC – sponsored ads
    Building traffic – SEO, link building
  14. Leverage Social Networks
    Fish where the fish are feeding
    Be the authority
  15. Website Conversions
    Pay Per Click Sponsored Ads
    Lead Captures or Give-a-way
    Conversions
    Do’s and Don’ts
  16. Start to Finish
    Find a Niche
    Build a Website
    Create a Campaign
    Conversion
    Test and Refine
    Rinse and Repeat
  17. Q & A

Customizing WordPress Themes

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I recently presented “Customizing WordPress Themes” at the local San Diego Word Press user group run by Glenn Bradley.

The talk was on how to include jQuery into your own WordPress themes. The slideshare presentation probably makes great reference notes for those in attendance but not so much for those who are viewing it as a standalone document.

Here are my notes to go along with the slides…

Customizing word press themes for San Diego WordPress user group

Slide 1: Really simple, WordPress is awesome for blogs, basic sites, and brochure type sites. They are able to be themed and implemented relatively quickly. I like them much more than static HTML sites. No more wondering which version of content is the latest.

Slide 2: We’ve all spent way too much time looking through free themes on WordPress. There never exactly what you need or they cost too much. Template Monster is nice but frankly, when I’m working on my own theme I don’t want to spend a dime so I just wrangles WP’s twenty ten theme into my own custom themes as needed.

Slide 3: Most people using WordPress should know, changing the theme within WordPress admin is under Appearance > Themes section. In hosting the WordPress theme is under domain.com/wp-content/themes/name of them folder. Simply upload the theme into the directory and choose it within the admin themes section.

Slide 4: One really cool thing about WordPress themes is you can create multiple page templates and select which theme you want to use within your WordPress page.

Slide 5: A few examples of WordPress themes using jQuery image sliders were used in this presentation. Three of the four sites are live at the time of this blog post. Pro Restaurant Design is a recent site I launched targeting owners of restaurants. This WordPress theme is uses the Anything Slider. San Diego Sport and Spine uses Auto Image Rotator and Mindful Design uses Avia Slider.

Slide 6: There are a ton of sliders out there, including WordPress plugins using jQuery, MooTools, and Script.aculo.us. Finding one that fits you or your client’s needs isn’t easy as it seems. Searching for terms like jQuery Image Slider usually yields decent results.

Slide 7: If you’re not sure on how to implement JavaScript on a site, Kevin Miller put together a great how to example on his new site P51 Labs. Make sure the scripts you’re trying to implement work on static HTML sites before adding them to the WP themes. This will help alleviate you the pain whether it works at all or in the WordPress theme itself.

Slide 8: When customizing your own theme, start from the basics. Make sure you know where your blocks of content go before you start CSS’ing and DIV’ing them out. Wireframe your site layout first.

Slide 9: As you fill in details, keep in mind where your JavaScript files are going to reside. Typically within the header.php file but not always.

Slide 10: There are several files you need to consider when themeing WordPress templates. They are index.php, page.php, and single.php are the main ones, then archive, search etc. are also needed to be themed. Get your main pages in order first then you can update the others later.

Slide 11: The standard index.php file from the Twenty Ten theme uses the get_header () ;  call.

Slide 12: Change get_header () ; to get_header (home) ; and it will call the header-home.php file instead. In this file (header-home.php) you can modify the contents within the <head> area and add your specific .js files accordingly.

Slide 13: On any other page templates, all you’ll need to do is grab the dynamic content and wrap the CSS around it.

Slide 14: Customizing Widgets is easy. Just add this first set of code wherever you want the widget to show up on your site. Open up the functions.php file. Copy and paste the existing widget code, rename every instance of primary-widget-area and respective text to something you’ll recognize later and you should have a function custom named widget in your admin > appearance > widgets section as well as you page template.

Slide 15: Going back to the header file(s), simply add the code from your jQuery script. Best way is to grab it from the demo, strip out all unnecessary code and make sure it works on a static file, then migrate it over to your WordPress theme. Makes sure to comment code out everything as best as possible.

Slide 16: Using one of the HiFi, Page.ly Multi-edit, or More Fields plugins are a great way to get content on a page. Specifically HiFi will allow for scripts, CSS and other code to be injected into the header or footer files. Multi-edit and More Fields almost act like widgets. You can add content through the page admin area. You’ll have to find the correct snippet of code into the template though otherwise they won’t work at all. HeadCleaner helps clean up some of the code in case something breaks. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

Slide 17: Use Firebug! What else can I say. Learn it, use it, love it.

Slide 18: As a digital content provider, I frown when my content gets plagiarized or stolen so I don’t like using this code. However when a client really really needs something to be cleaned up, CSS display none can work wonders: footerdiv {display:none;}

Slide 19: Conclusion…know CSS otherwise custom themeing won’t be fun. Test all pages like the search page, archives page and 404 pages and make sure to cross browser check your CSS including making sure you’re w3 compliant.

 

How to stop AT&T from sending mailers and advertisements

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AT&T has been sending me relentless amounts of AT&T U-verse letters in the mail without any opt-out addresses to respond to. After a quick search on the Interwebs, I found this post on how to opt out of AT&T’s mailers.

Although the post had some great information I still don’t think it should be this hard to opt-out.

Please comment below if you know a better way to opt out. In the meantime here’s a few different methods from their post if you are a current AT&T customer:

  • Contact Information to address concerns- clicked on contact us- NO PHONE NUMBER. -but buried in text is a list of phone numbers -Contact
  • Email-Please e-mail us at  privacypolicy@ATT.com or write to AT&T Privacy Policy Manager, 208 South Akard, 27th Floor, Room 2750.04, Dallas, TX 75202 to address any concerns you may have about our privacy practices and policies.

If you are a not a AT&T customer:

Determined to be opt out, I emailed AT&T at their privacy policy email asking them how would be the best way to remove an address from their ad campaign. Surprisingly, I received a quick response from them in about 25 minutes. Their email said:

Thank you for writing the AT&T Privacy Policy Mailbox. Please provide your wireless telephone number and mailing address and we will process your request.

While we will strive to honor your request, you may receive an occasional mailing. To the extent that you receive unwanted U.S. Mail from any source, it is hoped you can make it available to a paper recycling program.

Sincerely,

AT&T Privacy Policy Inbox Manager

I promptly replied back with the respective information and received another email the next day confirming the removal:

Thank you for providing the requested information. Your request for Do-Not-Mail has been submitted for AT&T. Please allow up to 30 business days for the process to complete.

Sincerely,

AT&T Privacy Policy Inbox Manager

Kudos to AT&T for having a process to get names and addresses removed from their mail list, but seriously it shouldn’t be this difficult. In this day and age of automation this process should be much much easier.

Gawker hack and Hint.io?

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As most people already know, Gawker’s commenting accounts were compromised recently resulting in some Twitter accounts to be hacked with tweets to acai spam websites. Fun times for those that got hacked, the developers who get to work overtime fixing everything and everyone else that has to deal with changing their passwords and the rest of the hassle.

In addition to all this, I received an email from hint.io with a similar message. Not knowing if I even have a gawker account or for that matter now, a hint.io account I had to search for what the heck hint.io is too. Fortunately, Ruth Suehle did the legwork and posted her thoughts on hint.io’s email blast.

Although hint.io’s email may be legit, it’s definitely not cool to be opportunistic in light of such events. Here’s two things I would have done differently:
1) Don’t use tracking links in your email for this purpose. I can’t tell what the true link is and looks very spammy.
2) Explain yourself better. We get enough phishers and spammers in addition to all the other emails we get everyday. You only compound the issue.

Hopefully they’ll get it right next time (by not emailing).

Outlook Calendar Recurrence Problem

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Creating events in Outlook calendar works fine on my Dell laptop. Editing the event after posting it the first time creates a huge bug which I blamed MS Outlook for the last couple of years. Basically Outlook automatically posts the same event recurring every day for an infinite amount of time. THIS DROVE ME NUTS! But apparently not enough to simply Google it and find the solution. I finally found it and apparently it was Dell all along to blame. Grrrr…

Here’s the solution posted on Egghead Cafe. If you own a Dell and have Outlook 2003, you probably have this problem. Simply uninstall “outlookaddinsetup” from your programs list and you’re good to go.  Special thanks to Google Suggest which provides key terms you may not ordinarily think of and Graeme who took the time and found a fix for Outlook’s recurrence problem.