Today I was reading a great post by Glenn Livingston on the topic of Doberman Dan and direct mail. One part of his post reminded me of my own past frustrations with internet marketing software. So I fired up a long comment which was rejected because the Captcha security code was wrong. And after correcting the Captcha, WordPress said I was commenting too quickly. So, here is my comment to Glenn on his current online business setup.
Glenn, OUCH! This part was painful to read:
For example, I’m about to launch a new membership site (“Make Them Buy” – bi-weekly live group webinars… watch for it please)…
And in order to do so, I have to coordinate ALL the following companies and software:
- WishList Member to run the membership site
- ClickBank to process the recurring billing and run the affiliate program
- Amazon S3 to serve the large files and video recordings
- LinkLok to secure the S3 locations from theives
- WordPress, so that I could run WishList Member
- Aweber, to integrate with the membership email list
- GoToWebinar to run the webinars themselves
- And of course, my domain registrar and web host
- Plus I have to know about 8 software packages and programming languages to put it all together (and supervise others)…
Glenn, please allow me to inject many years of doing this….getting frustrated…and then finding a solution.
My Rapid 2-Step Online Business Solution
- Create an HTML salespage. Infinitely better than WordPress for split testing. And the speed…oh Bouncing Batmans, the SPEED! You’ll never see a WordPress salespage out-perform a simple HTML page. Never.
- Use Nanacast to manage and host your membership, handle your recurring subscriptions, offer infinite linear or tree-based 1-Click Upsells or Downsells, securely deliver all your content via Amazon S3 files and automatically add buyers to Aweber (and automatically move them to another mailing list if they cancel).
Additional Online Business Benefits
- You can protect your affiliates by managing an inhouse affiliate program that tracks by IP and cookie and eliminates people buying from their own links.
- You can use an incredibly flexible coupon system for special deals, time-based offers or limited quantity discounts.
- You can assign nanacast coupons to affiliates. So now you can recruit a large JV Partner and assign them a unique coupon code. When their customers use the coupon, your JV Partner is guaranteed the commission. You can even specify the JV Partner’s commission rate on that coupon’s usage.
- You can create whatever offer you want without jumping through Clickbank’s approval process.
- Nanacast can post secure links to iTunes for your members. Now your members can fire up iPhone or iPod and listen to this week’s secure streaming content. Perfect for premium podcasts or audio content.
About the Affiliate Management
Yes, you’re now managing your own Affiliate program. Bummer, right? Maybe not. Yes, you’ll need to pay them regularly (15 minutes to send a Mass Pay) and collect W9 forms if they earn $600 in commissions in a year. But let’s look on the bright side. At least now you know who your best affiliates are and you can contact them to offer a private coupon codes and landing page for their customers. Also, during those 15 minute Mass Payments, you can thank them in the email and motivate them with a message or new promotion (I happen to read every one). Finally, Nanacast can even collect their home addresses so you can mail the top 1% some presents during the holidays. I’m sure Doberman Dan would be proud. 🙂
Anyways, I know this comment is pretty long…but it can really, really simplify your life. I used Wishlist Member for a while and I got really fed up with the “temp” signup problem, managing multiple WP installations on separate domains and well, WLM was really slow on my premium VPS servers. I never could get that figured out until I uninstalled it and saw a drop from 16 sec load times to 2 second load times.
Nowadays, I create an HTML or WordPress Salespage (if I’m feeling lazy). Then I finish the setup on Nanacast and plug the buy button on my salespage. Done. Much easier…and less parts that can break.
To your success,
Jesus