I’ve been Twittering away lately. Ever since I found out about Twhirl -a free desktop client that allows you to post messages to Twitter without having to visit and log in to the Twitter site - I’ve been able to see the fun & benefits of being an active ‘Tweeter’.

To me, Twitter has become more than just a way to promote my blogs & biz: it has proven to be an excellent resource for valuable info & sites, a great way to build relationships with other marketers ánd - last but not least - a channel to get a quick  answer to any questions I have. I found many of my fellow tweeters to be very friendly and always willing to help.

I’m still far from being a Twitter pro: there are millions of things about Twitter and how to optimize my tweets I still need to discover, but I’m learning new stuff every day.

Yesterday morning, when I visited my JV giveaways site, I found a couple of big, scary eyes on a black background staring at me. Above them, a piece of text telling me the site had been hacked…

Since I never had experienced a hack before, I didn’t really know what to do. To be honest, I always considered hacks to be something that only happened to other people. I instantly realized this was the price to pay for being so shortsighted.

Fortunately, it wasn’t that bad. It appeared someone had renamed my index-files in several folders and put his own index.htm file in place. I was able to solve the problem by deleting all new files and re-uploading my original files. You can’t imagine how happy I was that I had learned my lesson from all those previous server problems, and kept a backup of all my online files on my hard drive…

Generally, I get the creeps whenever I hear the word ‘guru’, but this little game is the exception to the rule!
Check it out, it’s hilarious! (Not to mention a very cool marketing tool!)

I must warn you… it’s pretty addictive 

How many Guru’s can you kill?

My top score:32 - Can You Beat It?
(Post a comment to let me know)

I’m almost ready to launch SmartButtonPro. The sales page still needs work (I’m a terrible copywriter, but right now I can’t afford $200 (or more) to hire someone to do it for me), and I haven’t finished the user guide yet, but the script generator itself is as good to go.

To run one more test, and to gather results and user comments to use on my sales page, I’ve decided to run a special sale and implement the script I generated with SBP in the affiliate program.

(Now that I think of it, I didn’t reveal the main purpose of SmartButtonPro yet, did I? - Well, SBP generates a script code that allows you to use 2 payment processors on your sales page, while your affiliates are being credited for their referred sales - every time.
For a more detailed explanation, you’ll need to wait just a little longer. )

Just a short note to let you know I’ve found enough beta-testers for my new script.

Bill Brooks
Rainer Ostojic
TJ Short
Deborah Cribbs
Candace Sinclair
Buzz Reed
Paul Klein
Ron Passaro

If your name is in the list below, check your mailbox for my message.

If it’s not, thanks for applying - maybe some other time?

Anyway, stay tuned - (pre-)release will be here soon!

I’ve just created a new script generator and now I’m looking for a couple of beta-testers.

I won’t reveal too much yet, but basically the script provides you with an easy way to add more than one payment button to your sales page, while keeping your affiliate program(s) intact.

The script is as good as finished; as a beta-tester, you will only be doing a last check to see if everything works properly and if the user guide is easy-to-follow.

To see if you qualify to become a beta-tester and - if you do - to apply, go here:

http://www.smartbuttonpro.com/beta

(Of course there will be something in it for you too! )

Miguel Alvarez is putting on a gigantic contest on his blog: The Blog Boost Giveaway.

On September 20th, one lucky winner (plus 3 additonal winners) will receive 1000s of dollars worth of the most coveted prizes a blogger could possibly desire. The list of prizes is way too long to add it to his post, but you can everything that’s included here.

Entering this contest is easy and free. All you need to do to earn a ticket is subscribe to Miguel’s email list. You can earn additional tickets by:

• blogging about the contest
• adding Miguel as a friend and following him on Twitter
• Dig, Stumble, Twitter, … Miguel’s post about the contest
• [Read More]

Good luck!

Here’s the link once more:

http://www.marketingfactor.com/blogmarketing/blog-boost/

Today, I signed up for a new JV giveaway event and I was shocked to see the upgraded membership being sold for only $7. This upgraded membership allows people to get all the gifts without having to sign up for any list besides the main JV Giveaway member list. So with every member that upgrades his or her account, the JV partners lose a potential subscriber.

For The Niche Giveaway 2,  I decided not to offer upgraded memberships. On the giveaway blog, I posted this message to inform my JV Partners:

In my opinion, the whole idea of giving people direct access to the downloads is not really fair to the partners - after all, it means less signups for them…

I’m spending way too much time in front of my computer…

Tonight, we rented a movie - Untraceable - about some psycho who’s torturing people live on the web. The more hits the site gets, the faster his victim dies. While I was watching, I found myself thinking ‘Wow, what if he had put an ad or two on his site… He would not just be a psycho, he would be a rich psycho…‘

I really need to take some time off…

Anyway, the story illustrated one of the basic laws in marketing: All you need to attract people to your site is an idea that is appealing to many…  It doesn’t have to be a good idea - as long as it’s something people WANT to see.

After one of my webhosting companies decided to change its plans (and raise its price), and the fact that they didn’t respond to my messages, I had purchased a hosting account from another company, recommended to me by a fellow marketer.  The transfer itself happened smoother than ever - I should have known it was too good to be true…

24 hours later, my pages were gone… This morning -  after 3 days of not knowing what had happened - there was a message in my mailbox telling me that the server had crashed and that everything was gone (including their own data).

–
If you search this blog, you will find I’ve had my share of hosting trouble. In three years time, I’ve experienced 4 or 5 server crashes, I’ve had 2 hosting accounts that simply disappeared (???), my account has been unrightfully suspended at least 5 times and at one time, my IP got blocked by the server firewall (or something like that) and it took my webhost 2 months to figure out what the problem was…