Three weeks ago we have announced the Style Switchers Design Contest where we’ve presented some ideas for style switchers design and encouraged our readers to create a style switcher for their own web-sites. One of the participants was to be awarded with an Apple Cinema 20 Flat Panel Display. Over 60 designers participated and — as in all of our earlier contests — the results are indeed pretty smashing. Now it’s time to review some of the best designs and, of course, announce the winner.

This contest has proved one thing: there are a number of possibilities for creative use of style switchers in your designs. They don’t have to be boring and can combine functionality with a beautiful and engaging design. Style switchers are back now; and we are glad that so many designers have participated in our contest learning how to use them and apply them to their designs.

The winner of the contest is Florian Pichler, the designer of the iamBlog’s style switcher. Congratulations, Florian, we are happy to smash you with an Apple Cinema 20 Flat Panel Display! We’ll contact you via e-mail over the next 24 hours.

And now let’s take a look at 60 excellent examples of style switcher designs created by the participants of our contest. Please notice that only those designers have participated in the contest who followed exactly the rules we’ve published in our announcement post.

Iamblog

Iamblog.de has put a lot of effort in designing an advanced style switcher. Hit the button “Hintergrund ändern” in the upper left of the page to open up the styleswitcher and choose a background you like. Previews, backgrounds and the switcher itself are loaded with Ajax, the list of available backgrounds is generated dynamically so every writer of the blog can easily add their own background. Currently 10 different styles are available. The Ajaxified style-switcher can be dragged across the site layout.

Komodo Media

Sometimes style switchers can also be extremely creative. Rogie King has designed a sliding foliage-o-meter. Visitors can select the intensity of the foliage in the design (from sparse to dense). The leaves appear not only in the header, but also in navigation options, bullets and headings. Beautiful design, excellent style switcher.

pure structure

Nigel O Toole offers an advanced and dynamic style switcher. At one, the presentation of items in Nigel’s portfolio can be adapted to user’s needs. Apart from that the background image of the site can be changed as well. The style switcher itself has two levels: the first level takes care of the structure. To access the second level you need to click on the visual at the right.

Engage

On Engage interactive you can change the theme via the button in the top right — there are 4 to choose from. All themes are completely different. Each one changes the site holder and also a few bits in the portfolio. Graphics are replaced as well.

Gnomdesign

Gnomdesign has three themes with different background images and blog headers.

Schillmania

Schillmania has an advanced mood switcher: visitors can adjust the brightness of the displayed header image and add a snow effect

Small Stone

Smallstone allows its visitors to “swap out the shelf” — exchange the header, visuals and links. The style switcher is placed right under the header and is also designed in a unique and professional way.

Kulturbanause

Kulturbanause has a quite unusual blog design with two artistic themes — Daylight and Sunset. As the designer says, you can “play god” with the themes. The style switcher is placed in the sidebar. When the theme is switched both graphics and visuals are changed.

Nofrks

Nofrks has a day and a night style. In both cases only background image is replaced.

Luke Larsen

Luke Larsen allows visitors to switch between the blue sky view and the goldfish tank view. The site layout is quite wide: when the style is switched, a number of design elements such as background and used images change as well. In the blue sky view dove is used, in the fish tank view a golden fish. The style switcher is placed in the navigation at the top of the page. The site didn’t have the text “Smashing Magazine” which is why it hasn’t been considered when selecting the winner.

Planatopija

Planetopija enables users to change the color of the header illustration. The style switcher itself is nicely designed (see the image below, the switcher is hidden behind “colour your world, oboji svoj svijet“).

Westin Melbourne Hotel

Westin Melbourne Hotel has an advanced mood switcher: visitors can adjust the brightness of the displayed header image and add a snow effect

Olidax

Since Olidax has a space theme, it allows its visitors to change the theme using a, well, space switcher. You can switch the styles while choosing a planet (you can find it on top of the right column). Earth, Saturn and Mars themes are currently available.

Lee Munroe

Lee Munroe has a style switcher that changes depending on the time of day. Visitors can also pick their desired style if they prefer. The style switcher is placed at the upper right corner of the content area. The shadows in the footer change with the changed theme as well.

Sam Gerdt

Sam Gerdt allows visitors to select one of three background patterns for the header. The styleswitcher appears when the button at the right upper corner is clicked.

Diego Valobra

Diego Valobra has two different antique designs. The background image is replaced. The style switcher is placed in the right bar of the layout.

Maikel Neris

Maikel Neris replaces background images: the style switcher provides visitors with an access to three blog themes.

John Scott

John Scott has a style switcher with 4 available skins. In each case the background image and the header are changed.

Thomas J Bradley

Thomas J. Bradley has a style switcher which is controlled by the Flash banner at the top of the page. When you click on the pink star you will be presented with a slider to glide through the different styles for the site. Each of the styles correspond to a time of day, and are displayed during that time period. As designer says, he wanted to have a fun hidden aspect so he provided this easter egg to slide through all the time periods / styles. 5 styles are available. However, the style switcher is not really easy to find.

GBot

Gbot has four different background images: earth, paper, tree and sky. Created using Mootools 1.2 Beta 2. The style switcher is placed in the footer of the layout.

Sitesquared

Sitesquared with a day- and night-theme of the design. The designers of the site love Smashing Magazine, we love your designs too!

Further solutions

Pegd’s style switcher is very minimalistic; it uses transparent png’s and background-color to save on loading different logos for each selected color. When the style is changed logo color and link color are changed. The style switcher is placed in the sidebar and is represented by colorful rectangles.

Peter Bucher has five style sheets, a styleshow which automatically changes the style and a font-size switcher. The style switcher itself is quite wide.

Timbix Media uses three color variations as well as a font size switcher in the left sidebar. Since the layout is elastic, not only text size is increased, but the layout increases as well.

Roy Quilor allows his visitors to switch from default text style to Serif fonts and to a “creme colour” design.

This switcher allows its visitors to change the width of the layout to fit an 800×600 or 1024×768 screen. It also has a font-increase functionality that also changes the size of the home and print icons on the side. The style switcher is placed in the sidebar. The icons are simple and easy to understand.

Viatrax has an automatic style switcher. The user can’t do anything here; instead Wordpress loads a random style automatically when the page is loaded.

Lucia Vega has four color styles for his headers and the layout.

Minimal.ca present three versions for your best color contrast. The style switcher is placed in the sidebar.

Ledger pad has a sticky style switcher which has a fixed position at the right corner at the bottom of the page and remains there even when the page is being scrolled. Blue and black-white-styles are available.

On 2ndzenith.com three style themes re hidden behind the “Customize” button. When the button is clicked, the theme picker is sliding. With a changed style links, background and text colors are changed.

Flanisoft can switch between a dark and a light background.

Jimmyweb offers some color variations of the layout color and link colors.

VMP-Finanz offers a basic font-size style switcher in the sidebar.

Weiqi.nl with a dynamic style switcher which offers 5 different themes. When the theme is changed, links, header and background image are replaced.

Da Scritch has a black toolbar in the header of the page with font-size switcher (”dézoomer” and “zoomer”) and dark/light-switcher (”éclairer”). The visitors can also activate/deactivate fancy animations (”sans anim” and “déplier”).

Freeneedle offers 7 color variations for the site design, background images and link colors.

MSDevstudio offers 3 different stylesheets with a dfiferent color variations of the layout.

Color and background variations

Ganato Design

Spaksu

Firex-bg

Cnow Designs

deam0n

Chris Taulborg

Chris Taulborg has a weather-based style switcher — there are a clear, cloudy, snowy, stormy and night themes available.

Visual 28

Visual28 goes smashing. The site offers a Smashing-style design layout as alternative style.

rex

rex offers 5 themes — color and design variations — with font-size-switchers.

Liverpool Youth Service

Liverpool Youth Service with a text size switcher, high contrast version, text only version and a reset button.

Chimou

Ryan Harris

Ryan Harris’s styleswitcher is a little bit too complex: to activate the theme switcher users need to click on “change background” link: after that the theme of the design can be selected.

Salt Solutions

Web Gallery Plus

Anni 80

90seven Design

90Seven offers its visitors two different designs.

Card Pac

Card Pac with a style switcher placed right in the content. Such style switcher is hard to find and hard to use as the color is selected via a not-so-user-friendly pop-up.

Now-Streaming

now-streaming with a tiny four colours-box under the logo — each of the colors stands for the corresponding design layout.

Hans Engel

Hans Engel has a tiny icon that allows users to expand the layout. The style switcher is placed at the top left corner of the layout.

Codesignville

Codesignville has 2 styles switchers, one for Text Size and other to change the theme (Day, Afternoon and Night).

due chiacchiere

due chiacchiere has a style switcher aimed at accessibility. Visitors can increase/decrease the font size, text alignment, layout and remove/add details.

Your site is valid

Your site is valid can switch from a dark layout to a light one.

Your Web Pro Template Gallery

How about a site that has fifty style sheets to choose from? YourWebPro offers 50 color schemes (authoritative, dependable, enchanting, energetic and unique) — the changes affect both the layout and the color of the links. Hint: energetic color schemes not only look energetic. Don’t try this at home.

Yuyu

A tiny layout switcher on Yutheme.cn changes the position of sidebar in the layout. The style switcher may be hard to find, though.

DinPattern

DinPattern uses a style switcher to display the tiled pattern to the user when the “preview” link is clicked below any pattern. It simply changes the body class to display the correct pattern tile.

We express sincere gratitude to all participants for a number of creative, beautiful and truly smashing style switchers. We hope to see you next time!

Failure is a word that carries a lot of weight. In fact, it can have so much power that it will stop a man from succeeding because of the assimilations associated with the word. According to WordNet, failure has several meanings, but despite those we often see failure as a lack of achievement in whatever we do.

I did too.

I was wrong. And I will tell you why.

See, for most of us, failure is missing out on; that academic recognition, the promotion at work, the riches in our business or the sports medal we couldn’t win.

What failure isn’t:

The word failure has a sour by-taste. It makes us crawl into a tight space. We are ashamed. We cry. We rant. We become angry and bitter.

And while most people eventually move on with their lives and achieve something, some never will and those are the true failures. Because failure is NOT - your missed promotion at work. Failure is also NOT - your lack of success in your first business venture, unless of course you… (scroll down to the definition for the answer).

All those are mistakes we can learn from. Some are massive mistakes, some are small and others yet are downright stupid. I used to be afraid of making mistakes, of making a fool of myself as I called it. I was ashamed of doing something wrong and as a result of this fear I missed out on a lot of opportunities.

It took me many years to learn that I shouldn’t be afraid of mistakes. Quite the opposite really. Once I learned that mistakes help me to grow, both as a person and in business, I learned to embrace them and treat them for what they are…

… namely a vehicle to move ahead another step.

The sad thing is that we are only too ready to label somebody a failure. Doing this doesn’t help the other person. In fact, we would be better off to encourage others, no matter how small a battle we think they fight. For them it could be a mountain.

Let me show you a typical example:

I received the following email the other day. This person is obviously desperate and has taken the time to email me, asking me for help.

pls i am very good at writing most especially christian article, how can i make my money with this. i want a very good details in an aesier way.

thanks,

I will be honest. My first impulse was to delete the email, since I clearly saw that his English wasn’t up to par, but then I hesitated, because I didn’t know this person, his background, his circumstances.

Who am I to turn him down, just because his English isn’t up to par from what I see in the email? He might have been stressed, or crying for fear of not being able to pay the bills, or he might be a great writer in another language.

If I am the only person he might trust with his hopes to help nudge him in the right direction, then turning him down by ignoring his email would be devastating.

While I’m a firm believer that only we as individuals can make a difference in our lives, I also believe that we need to help encourage each other. We need to nurture our spirits by empowering others. Especially if they reach out to us.

So while we class making mistakes as failing, true failure is something else and I tell you what in a second.

True failure is…

Giving up!

If you are being rejected, experience setbacks, feel disappointment or are unsuccessful in trying something, you are not a failure.

Real failure is when you stay down after you tripped or stumbled. Failure is when you shut down and simply check out. Failure is when you give up!

As long as you persist and try, you cannot be a failure, you are a winner, regardless of the outcome and that is why I say I run a successful home business.

I might not make the millions I dream about (just yet), I also might not earn $20,000/month (just yet), but I do work from home, following my dream and am making enough money to pay my bills - even though I failed in MLM. I failed because I gave up MLM. But I didn’t fail my home business, all I did was change tactics and it worked.

What can you learn from this?

I hope that this changes your beliefs in regards to failure if they were somewhat tangled up. Remember to help encourage others when they come to seek your help, regardless of what you think. Wonders never cease to happen and as you already know, the human mind is an amazing and very powerful weapon against defeat.

Fight on. Keep on going. Battle away. And never give up. Unless you really want to. By the way, it is ok to fail too, after all why bother pushing on in the wrong direction when it clearly isn’t the right path for us.

You also might find this story very thought provoking.

Since the 2.x release of WordPress, the blogging platform has more and more been praised because of its versatility. Obviously, WordPress is mostly known as a blog platform, but depending on your creativity, you can do much more with the very flexible platform.

No limits are set and over the next weeks we will dig a little deeper into some of the ways WordPress can be used, helping you with the (coding) basics to use WP as more than a blogging platform. For now I will list the different options WP can be used for. This list is not limited.

Blogging Platform

Blogging obviously is the main usage of WordPress.

Photoblog

Because it is very simple to upload images with WordPress soon users started to regularly post photos, using WordPress as a photoblog. Until the release of WP2.5 photobloggers had to use the custom fields to upload thumbnails for the archive or to create a filmstrip in the footer. With the new media uploader in WP2.5 this is not longer needed. WP now automatically generates a medium sized and a small thumbnail. Thumbnail sizes can be specified in the settings and used for the archives display or a filmstrip.

There aren’t many photolog themes for Wp and even less generate the photolog feeling with only one picture on the mainpage and a click on the picture goes to the previous entry. With the arrival of the Monotone Photolog Theme for WordPress theming in this area soon make become more popular. AFAIK Monotone officially is only released for WordPress.com, but can be retrieved from the SVN Directory.

Tumblelog

Tumblr is a popular platform, perfect for quick blogging items people stumble upon. I mentioned in my previous entry that Chyrp a great self-hosted platform is for your own tumblog (?!), but also WordPress can be used as tumble-engine.

Using WordPress as a tumblelog is not difficult: there are several themes to make your Wp blog more tumblr-alike and there’s even a Quick Post plugin for WordPress, providing the blogger with bookmarklets to easily submit content to their WordPress powered tumblelog.

Start tumbling with WP in the true self-hosted spirit!

Magazine

Since several months there has been a rise in the number of premium themes for WordPress, many of them focusing on providing a newspaper, magazine alike look for WordPress

Revolution by Brian Gardner was one of the first really popular ones, together with Mimbo, which initially was released under the GPL and later evolved into a second, Pro version, with custom image uploader.

Magazine themes for WordPress rely heavily on the usage of Custom Fields and Conditional Tags.
Most magazine themes have featured posts, use many thumbnail images on the main page and display recent entries from different categories. The success of a magazine theme IMHO heavily relies on the quality of the top navigation bar.

Online Shop

The real success of WordPress isn’t just the blog platform software, but the whole community around. And the great plugins. WP-eCommerce is one of the more extensive plugins, powering a complete online store front-end, based on WordPress. The competition in the eCommerce area is heavy with options such as the hosted Shopify platform or the well-known open-source osCommerce software., but when it comes to ease of use and features the WP-eCommerce plugin can compete with all of them and according to the plugin homepage even powers more shops than osCommerce does.

Contact Manager and Customer Relation Management

Both Design Intelliction’s WP-Contact Manager and Slipfire’s WP-CRM plugins prove that there really aren’t any limits to WordPress’s versatility.

WP-Contact Manager is a theme for WordPress using several plugins, Wp-CRM is a full-blown plugin, inspired by WP-Contact Contact Manager and 37Signals’s Highrise.

With both options it is easy to maintain, publish your contact list online.

Twitter Platform

The excellent Prologue theme for WP offer every blogger a Twitter alike platform:… without the 140 characters limitation.

Use it for your company, with your friends or just for fun!
The theme is slick, fast loading and depending on what you tweet… fun! Prologue even allows comments. I reckon FriendFeed Comments is the perfect addition to this theme.

Other Usage Options

As shown so far, there really are no limits set to the way Wp can be used. I use this blogging platform as a personal wiki, tumbling interesting topics. Other bloggers, developers use WordPress as a CMS, although it isn’t entirely clear to me what Content Management System really means in this matter. Smarter navigaition? *Nuke alike left sidebar or is every blog per se a CMS?

I am sure with time more and more ways to use WordPress will appear.

Update: As Andreas notes in the comments, WordPress can also be used as job board with the help of the RecruitPress plugin.

If you are using an ad broker, Adsense, or just about any other method to create advertising income from your site, chances are you aren’t making as much as you could be.

• Most people believe that Google is taking a 50% cut of Adsense earnings.
• Text-Link-Ads takes a 50% cut of link revenue
• ReviewMe takes a 50% cut of review sales

While I honestly could care less about ‘trends’ in the make money online world (Why would I? Most of them are ridiculous), there’s one that you can’t ignore. People that are selling their own ads are making a lot more money than people who aren’t.

In this lesson, I will cover 5 steps to selling your own ads:

1. Make room for your ads and get some up before you try to make sales
2. Contact your competitors.
3. Set your prices.
4. Create a solid advertising page.
5. Contact potential advertisers.

Step 1 - Make room for your ads and get them up.

You will have a hard time selling ads if you don’t already have ads sitting there. This means you need to create a section for the ads now.

A very popular and effective format for selling ads is the 125×125 ad banners in the sidebar. I use this ad placement and it has worked out very nicely for me. Your sidebar will need to be at least 260 pixels wide to use the 2-column placement that I have. If your sidebar isn’t wide enough, you could use a single column.

In order to make sales, your ad section will need to appear as high as possible in the sidebar. I took a look at some of the big sites in my industry and tried to match their placement.

In order to be able to charge the same amount to all of the advertisers, I knew that I would need the banners to rotate. To make them rotate, I used a plugin called Got Banners. The page I got it from no longer exists so I guess I’ll just post it here: Got Banners Download. You basically install a little piece of code in the sidebar and then manage the banners by going to Options>>Got Banners (Settings>>Got Banners in WP 2.5+) in your WordPress admin.

Some of you may want to sell advertising on niche or keyword sniping sites. This could be very effective if you do it right. Create a section where you can put the banners now, and we’ll discuss making the sale later on in this lesson. If I had a bunch of keyword sniping or niche sites, I would probably create the section in a theme that I could use on all or most of my sites. Your enemy with that approach is wasted time, and using the same theme will save tons of time.

Another very common ad placement is the 728×60 banner like the one they use at SparkPlugging.com. They don’t sell their own ads as far as I can tell, but the placement is what we’re looking at. Again, you have to create the placement before you can make the sale.

What banners do you put in until you can make sales? I would use affiliate banners from sites like NeverBlueAds and AzoogleAds. They have all different sizes of banners that should fit in nicely on almost every site. You can also use banners that point to other sites that you are trying to establish.

Perception is everything when it comes to making these sales and you have to put your best foot forward. Trying to sell banners when you don’t have any banners in your section will be a HUGE waste of time.

Step 2 - Contact your competitors.

At this point of the process, you are NOT trying to sell advertising to your competitors. You are simply going to contact them to determine the rates they sell advertising for. Many of your competitors will have the rates published somewhere on their sites, others will have to be contacted via email or telephone. You should ask how much they charge, and how many impressions (total hits on pages the ad is on) you could expect to get per month if you were to purchase an ad spot.

Step 3 - Set your prices.

Once you have determined how much your competitors are selling advertising for, you will be able to set your prices accordingly. You should figure out exactly how much your competitors are charging per impression.

If your competitor can deliver more impressions than you each month, you will want to lower the amount you charge per impression by a slight amount, something like 10%. If you can deliver more impressions than your competitor, I would increase the amount you charge per impression by 10%. After you start selling ads it will become easier to determine whether you can sell your ads for more or not - this formula is here only to get you started.

Example: Your competitor is charging $500 per month for an ad spot and can deliver 500,000 impressions to that ad each month. That means he/she is charging $0.001 per impression. That’s 1/10th of a cent.

If you can deliver 50,000 impressions to an ad, charging the same amount per impression would give you a price of $50 per month. Lowering your rate by 10% would give you a monthly price of $45. This gives a slightly better value than your competitor, which is a trade off for not being able to deliver as many impressions.

Step 4 - Create a solid advertising page.

9 out every 10 banners I sell are sold directly from my ‘Advertise‘ page. In order to sell advertising, you will need to put your best foot forward - talk about your strengths as a site.

Possible Strengths:

• High amount of traffic
• Valuable traffic - maybe you don’t have that much but you have people that are looking to spend a few thousand dollars on a cosmetic surgery or something.
• Targeted traffic
• Solid organic traffic - Organic traffic has a longer attention span than social traffic.
• Good rankings for solid keywords
• Loyal traffic

I use PayPal subscription buttons to make the sales on my advertising page. That way, all of my ads are sold on subscription. During the first few months I sold my own advertising, I created a HUGE hassle for myself by not selling on subscription. I had to invoice each advertiser every month and that ended up being a major pain. Switching to the subscription method made my life a lot easier.

These subscription buttons can easily be made from your PayPal account. You simply go to ‘Merchant Services’ and then click the ’subscribe’ link in the ‘Create Buttons’ section. It will have a simple form that you will use to create the button, and will then give you code that you will paste in on your advertising page.

Step 5 - Contact potential advertisers.

At this point you basically have two options. Firstly, you could wait around hoping that you can make advertising sales from the traffic you currently have. I’m doing this now, and am selling out my advertising almost every month. However, in the beginning I was a lot more aggressive, because I needed to be.

After I created my ad sections and set my pricing, I contacted all of the companies that were advertising on my competitors’ sites. This resulted in some sales during the first week. I didn’t have an awesome sales rate, but was able to get a few because I contacted so many people. I want to say I contacted about 30 and sold maybe 3.

When I emailed these companies about the possibility of advertising on my site, I let them know that I was offering advertising at a better rate than other sites they were advertising on.

It’s very wise to contact some sites in the beginning, because once you have some legit advertisers, it becomes a lot easier to sell to more.

One trick that I considered using (in the end I didn’t have to) was selling a few spots at a huge discount. For example, you could contact a premium advertiser in your industry and offer them an ad spot for $1 per month. That gets a high-end advertiser in your ad section and that looks great to potential advertisers. As an alternate method, you could tell them that you would like to give them free advertising for a few months. That way, you get a premium advertiser in your ad section and might be able to sell to them after the free period ends.

Conclusion

Selling your own advertising can result in a lot more profit for your online business. Making that sale will require creating a good perception and providing a little more value than your competitors. This value can be provided by either providing more impressions or a better rate per impression.

In my previous post about Starbucks reputation management we looked at how a few good customer service systems can be used as a marketing strategy to encourage word of mouth and result in a competitive advantage.

In the case of people like me and many of you, my readers, we operate Internet businesses that largely are a product of our own personal brand. We are entrepreneurs, bloggers, consultants, contractors or freelancers, and much of the customer service responsibility rests on our shoulders.

Being an independent operator or small business owner does not mean you can let the ball drop on good customer service. In this case reputation management is just as important since your business lives and dies on your ability to deliver what you promise and leave a lasting impression.

For a small business with a limited marketing budget, good customer service resulting in an above average reputation in the market, can result in acquiring new customers through existing client referrals - a “free” form of marketing.

During the start-up phase you have limited funds and one of the best strategies to survive this period of business growth is to use your existing clients as a marketing tool to bring in new clients (actually - this is a good strategy at any stage of business growth).

The cornerstone of achieving that outcome is good customer service, since your existing clients will not be willing to help you, nor will they feel compelled to talk about you and refer you to others, if they are not significantly impressed by - and benefit from - their interaction with your business.

Good customer service combined with a superior product can evoke a sense of reciprocity from your customers. They genuinely want your business to succeed, so much so that they go out of their way to endorse you. People like to spread things they consider valuable because in turn they enjoy the perception of being valuable as well. Most humans desire recognition from other humans - it’s a core human drive - and if you can loop your business into this motivation you have tapped the secret of word of mouth marketing.

Growing Pains As A Solo Business Owner or Blogger

I’ve worked independently all my life. Most of the first five years of my business experience were completely solo because I had the mentality that I needed to do things myself in order to save money.

(more…)

Get your bonus copy of my book
“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
Download Here

I was traveling around Queen Street West in downtown Toronto this week and as always I popped into a Chapters bookshop (like a Borders). In Canada most bookshops have either a Starbucks or a Second Cup coffee shop. Many of the posts in this blog were created in cafes inside bookshops around the world.

I ordered a tea and an oat brownie from Starbucks. The brownie was delivered instantly, but the tea wasn’t, so I walked over to the delivery end of the cafe and waited.

The customers just before me received their order and I expected mine next. The customers who ordered after me then walked up and collected their coffees. Then the next customer. Clearly my tea wasn’t coming.

I walked back around to the cashier section and spoke to the barista who took my order. He immediately realized that he had forgotten about the tea and in two seconds flat, made my tea and then blurted out something about a free tea and handed me a piece of cardboard that looked like this -

In case you can’t read the print, here’s the bit that matters…

Besides the funky design of this free beverage voucher, there’s nothing too groundbreaking about offering something for free when you don’t get good service, but let’s look at this a little deeper.

I waited about an extra minute longer for my tea than I should have. That is definitely not long enough for me to get angry and I was served very quickly once I notified them that my tea was missing.

Yet, despite this, the Starbucks policy is to offer a complimentary beverage even if their system is slightly out of whack. I walked away impressed that I scored a free beverage voucher, but not really because of the beverage itself, I was impressed with the customer service policy I just witnessed (hence I’m writing a blog post about it!).

Starbucks did not diminish in my eyes as a result of this incident. In fact they impressed me, so much so that I’m now writing a blog post that will be read by thousands of people proclaiming good things about Starbucks service (that’s some good word of mouth). Of course not every Starbucks customer has a blog they can rave to when something happens, but every person has friends and people they talk to, and this one policy of Starbucks will encourage word of mouth through normal social interaction too.

Standing Out In A Crowded Marketplace

(more…)

Get your bonus copy of my book
“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
Download Here

I have a couple of quick updates for you today as I have to run away from the house with the cleaning lady here.

Help! My Business Sucks!

Andrew Lock who I refer to as the eBay expert with the cool British accent, has recently started producing a web based television show called Help! My Business Sucks!.

The show focuses on entrepreneurship and Internet marketing, with Andrew as the host. If you are looking for another example of a new way to use Video online to spread your message, educate and entertain, take a look at what Andrew is up to.

The show can be found at - http://helpmybusiness.com/

Perry Marshall AdWords Update

Next, some important advice from Perry Marshall - the only AdWords expert I follow. I’ve been on his newsletter for years now, it was one of the very first I subscribed to and one of the only ones I remain a subscriber.

Perry sends out actual advice to his newsletter and rarely promotes any other products than his own. I’ve never seen him participate in an Internet marketing product launch, so if you are sick of “launch emails” and you are looking for a great newsletter covering Google AdWords, general Internet business, lead generation and conversion advice, you can’t go wrong with Perry’s Newsletter.

You can join his free AdWords e-course, which is great, and that will get you on to his newsletter too.

Google AdWords New Feature: Automatic Matching

Perry recently sent through something I thought was critical for anyone currently running a Google AdWords campaign, regarding a new feature called Automatic Matching. Perry presented a warning regarding this feature, so if you have never heard of Automatic Matching, here’s some advice you need to read…

Google is phasing a MAJOR feature into the AdWords
program. If you log into your account you’ll see a notice
that says,

“New! Automatic matching has been enabled in your
account. Your ads will now show for additional relevant
search queries based on the keywords, ad text, and landing
pages in your ad groups. You can opt out by visiting a
keyword-targeted campaign, and then clicking on edit
campaign settings.”

If you edit your campaign settings, you’ll see a check box
that says:

“Automatic matching: Show ads on more search queries
without adding keywords.”

And in your ad groups at the bottom of your keyword list,
you’ll see a new column labeled “Automatic matching total.”

What this means is, if you’re bidding on a keyword like
“dog grooming”, Google may show your ad for a keyword
like “pet grooming brush” even though you’re not bidding
on it at all.

The question is, do you want this?

First of all, there’s no way to know for sure unless you’re
using conversion tracking.

In fact, you should disable this feature immediately unless
you have conversion tracking enabled and hold Google
accountable for the quality of traffic they’re sending you.

***DO NOT USE THIS FEATURE UNLESS YOU TRACK
THE CONVERSIONS FROM ‘AUTOMATIC MATCHING’
TRAFFIC.***

Automatic Matching traffic will seldom be better traffic,
except maybe for people who simply do not know what
they’re doing in AdWords.

AdWords advertisers who learn this game from me are
always control freaks. They don’t want to just take what Google
gives ‘em. (Hey, that’s how you gain an advantage that Google
doesn’t have.) The ideal way to do this would be to use
the bootstrapping technique I’ve taught for years, which is:

-Campaign 1 has bids set at, say, $1.00 with Automatic Matching OFF
-Campaign 2 has bids set at, say, $0.75, with Automatic Matching ON

This will shift all the Automatic Matching traffic into Campaign
2 and you’ll have complete control of it.

Source: Perry Marshall Newsletter

Perry went into more detail than the above excerpt, but I don’t feel right publishing his entire newsletter here (although I almost did!).

Unfortunately I’m not sure if you can get back-issues of Perry’s newsletter, but if you want more info along the lines of the above, take his free e-course and you will never miss another newsletter.

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& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
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This is video number four in my live product launch case study. I recorded this yesterday, a day that was quite tiring but a ton of fun because I got to speak to six people who had all taken part in Blog Mastermind and listen to them recount their experiences in my program.

It was wonderful to meet everyone in a more personal format and thanks to all who I talked to (you know who you are).

Each of the conversations were recorded and as long as they come out okay from a technical standpoint, I will be using them on the Blog Mastermind coaching page as testimonials when the program re-launches.

In this video I explain why testimonials are important and then provide a visual tutorial on how I record video interview testimonials using Skype, Call Recorder for mac or Pamela for windows.

As you will hear in the video, it’s critical when conducting a product launch that you have people who can offer genuine feedback after using your product, especially from “normal” people that others can relate to.

It’s great to have expert recommendations that can raise your credibility in the market, however it’s also important to have feedback from someone who just came “off the street”, who tries your product, enjoys the experience and is willing to talk about it.

In today’s world we are more likely to trust someone “just like us” rather than someone claiming expert status, so the average person testimonial has become critical, which is why I’m so grateful to the people who volunteered to do the video testimonials.

In case you missed the previous videos in this case study, here they are…

• How To Recruit Affiliates
• What System Should Run Your Affiliate Program?
• The Sales Page

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“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
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Gobala Krishnan, one of my favorite Asian Internet marketers and one of my top selling affiliates for Blog Mastermind (I’ve sent him several hundred dollars worth of commissions every month for a year now) just released a brand new course Super Affiliate Blogger.

I have to admit I’m a bit ticked off that he’s done this because I have it on the cards to release my own training course for people wanting to use blogs for affiliate marketing, however since my program is probably at least six months away I’m okay with Gobala getting the jump on me. He uses a different system to what I do anyway, so it’s worth checking out his methods.

Here’s what Gobala’s new program is about -

Super Affiliate Blogger is more than just an e-book; it’s a complete system for affiliate marketing with blogs. It comes with a special link tracking system, special list building system and most importantly the customized Super Affiliate Pro WordPress themes. The theme is the most important factor here, as without this theme you will not be able to follow the instructions in the guide.

Click here for more details…

Gobala uses Pay Per Click (PPC) to drive traffic to his strategically crafted WordPress blog themes that focus on pre-selling an affiliate product. This is something I do not do - I’m not using PPC at all - I rely only on organic traffic and direct repeat visitors when I sell affiliate products from my blog.

Gobala’s system works with other forms of traffic too, however the great thing about PPC is that the traffic is instant - you switch it on and it flows and you can be making money in a matter of hours. Of course you have to pay money with PPC, so this is not something you want to get wrong for too long or you will lose money, you need to tweak things until you get a positive return on investment, which is what Gobala teaches.

The idea with Gobala’s system is to use a WordPress blog as a “landing page” that is themed and has content designed to pre-sell the visitor on an affiliate product. Obviously the plan is for as many visitors as possible to click the affiliate link on that blog post and then purchase the product, which is how the revenue is generated.

Gobala also makes use of targeted email lists he builds using his affiliate blogs, which is something I can wholeheartedly agree with (I’m all about email list building). His package actually comes with a plug-in called “opt-in forms manager system” that makes the technical part of adding an email list opt-in form to your blog easy. This is something I have to check out myself because I’ve wanted to get a service like this to my students too. If you purchase Super Affiliate Blogger from Gobala you get the plug-in.

Gobala provides a workbook that teaches the system, camtasia videos, a quickstart guide and a bunch of other stuff you can check out on the sales page. One of the best inclusions I think is custom designed WordPress themes you can put to use immediately to implement his system. They are crafted to sell certain types of affiliate products and are set up to use the tracking methods that Gobala teaches.

Testing and tracking is not something most bloggers do when it comes to affiliate marketing and it’s great to see a product that includes this topic and even provides blog themes to make the process easier. Props to Gobala for coming out with such a great feature.

Does This System Work?

(more…)

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“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
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This is part three of the ongoing product launch case study taking you behind the scenes of the Blog Mastermind relaunch using video.

Once again if you want instant updates of new videos and other related content, please follow me on Twitter (twitter.com/yarostarak).

This video continues from where we left off last video reviewing affiliate technology, but this time we look at how to recruit affiliates to promote your product.

Websites Mentioned

Blog Mastermind Affiliate Program

Get your bonus copy of my book
“How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online”
Download Here