Wow I didn’t notice that my last blog post was on the 6th, time is flying bye!

First off, congrats to Wes for the acquisition of tracking202 to bloosky (I think its pronounces blue sky). Read techcrunch article here. Wes was one of the first people to help teach me php, he focuses on the security part of php more then anyone else I know. Congrats to him and I cant wait to see what he will be working on next

Now second… I have been working a ton. This month I added WordPress blog and squidoo lens creation to Developer Hut. A few weeks back we also added our All-In-One packages which seem to be a hit. And I am currently working on a product called “Forum Marketing” at which my writers will go into niche related forums and leave your websites in the body of forum threads somehow. We have been working on that product for months now, hopefully we will get it launched this week. Getting all the testing and instructions writing is what takes the most time, and with that product we have been testing new ways to get pasted mods and spam filters. Which is a pain in the ass.

The part that is taking the most time with adding those products is integrating it into the backend, such as making it work with the all-in-one plans and our recurring plans. For every product I add I need to create a backend for the particular product so the customer can view and update their orders, and also a backend for the writers to view the orders. It also has to be integrated to work with the recurring and all-in-one plans. I also need to create a paypal ipn and also update the credit card and google checkout apis for every product I add. I also need to write up the instructions for the writers to follow, and add information about the products so customers can get info about the products. And thats not all, after all that is done I still have to do all the testing, which takes time.

After we launch the forum marketing product then I will be done creating and adding new products to the website, I am tired of all that work (getting burnt out). I will now be focused on updating existing products, making the backend more efficient, hiring sales and customer support people, and also focusing on the marketing part of the business. I will be waiting to see how these products work out before I start adding new ones.

I have also been very busy finishing up the resellers accounts. It is all done expect for the approving orders part and some images for the reseller accounts page. As soon as the writer gets done with the sales letter we will be launching it, at this point I am thinking it will be 100% live on Tues. We will be sending an email out when it is, if you would like to subscribe to the newsletter then use the free seo tool on the sidebar (the email will prob be sent after the holidays)

I still need to start and finish a order washing system to make it so I have to manually review all international orders, to help reduce on the fraud orders. I will also be updating the list of country’s I sell to, I will now only be selling to country’s that are approved by ebay/paypal (on their list). That should not take to long, maybe a few hours of work. I will probably be going that tonight if COD 6 doesn’t take up my time haha.

It is also the holidays months, this is the best time of the year for most people. Just this month I can tell business has picked up a ton (Im talkin a 10% increase from last month baby), I cant wait until black Friday! A few of the websites I built over the summer are starting to turn a profit, last months the websites I made probably only made 200$ total for the whole month, now this month some of the websites are pulling 60$ a day. The websites all target smaller items that are great for little presents, and I market them that way, and they seem to be doing good. I will probably make more for next year to, the only problem is that during the non-holiday months their income is shitty.

I don’t really have to much to blog about today, I wanted to throw something up because I haven’t blogged in a long ass time. I hope everyone has a fun holiday season, and if your on COD6 add me on xbox live its “jonwaraas” you cant miss it haha.

As some of you might know I was having problems with some hackers getting pasted my current API’s and somehow making orders for pennies (just last week someone made a $200 order for $0.01, of course I refunded and canceled the order, but its still a pain). So the other day I coded up a simple validation script, all the script does is check to see if the product_id was filled out and if so then it will check which product_id got submitted and then grab the price from that.

The code:

}elseif($_POST['product_id'] == ‘PRODUCTID’) {

if($size >= 1 && $size <= 3) {
$price_pre = '19.99';
}elseif($size >= 4) {
$price_pre = ’18.99′;
}else{
$price_pre = ’0′;
}

$product = ‘Product Name Here’;
$product_id = ‘PRODUCTID’;

}

Like I said before, the code is simple. But it is A LOT more secure then before. I will also be updating the code even more to make it even more secure. The code above simply checks which product_id is being purchased, and then it will grab the variables such as the price, product name, and even the real product_id from it.

Paypal also has a feature that lets you check if it is actually paypals server sending you the variables, the coder I outsource to is working on this and also looking to see if there is anything like this for my other 2 merchants. Which would be very helpful.

Fraud is a huge pain in the ass (even though I only ship the the customers billing address, I am still not sure how they get pass that). Just yesterday I got a charge back for an order which was fraud. I sent it to Belarus, so it was 100% my fault for not checking the order. So this weekend I have to code up a “sale washing” system which will help me validate my sales before my drop shippers send them out.

I am now getting about 1 fraud order a day, just today I got another fraud order for $140 to some Russian satellite country, I obviously will be refund it and taking the order out the system, its just a pain in the ass because I have to notify my drop shipper for the particular order before its sent off, or else I loose the cost for the product, the money from the order, and then they also tack on a $30 chargeback fee haha (which I can get removed for fraud orders).

Oh and for everyone that does not know, merchants do chargebacks to recoup the customers money for fraud orders. So anyways, I have a busy weekend, I have to finish the product_id validation script along with start on a sales washing script to help me with all the fraud orders. You know I am down for any criticism on the above code, if you see something wrong in my code let me know I wont feel bad haha.

Ok you all, since last month was my best month in the last year I feel like sharing a great marketing tip that I currently use and it converts like a mofo. Its not really a secret either, but a lot of people either dont know about it or are to lazy to do it, so here we go.

Now when I say “review site”, I mean a website that is set up to review certain products, companys, or services within a particular niche. Review sites convert like mofo’s because people assume that the review sites are unbiased… haha. The trick with the review website is to make it look as unbiased as you can.

What I usually do is have my writer make up 7-10x 500 word articles about the particular product I am promoting. Lets say “directory submissions” to make things easier. If I wanted to promote my directory submissions then I would buy a domain like directorysubsreviews.com or something similar. I would then throw on a free wordpress site using a premade wordpress template… keep things simple.

On your wordpress review website you will want to focus your attention 150% on grabbing peoples email address. You heard me right… you need to focus on that email address, that is what makes the sales. I usually have 2 lead generation forms above the fold of the website, usually one within the content and another on the sidebar.

You do not want to add your affiliate/store links on the website just yet. You need to get your website ranked before you start promoting your shit, do not be greedy, remeber we need to make the site look as unbiased as we can. You can make a site look unbiased with a bunch of affiliate links.

So after you get done building your website and adding your quality content you will need to build the backlinks for the website to rank it for the SEO terms you are shooting for. With the example I have, I would take the directory submission review website and rank it for all the terms that would be searched for by someone looking to buy directory submissions. The review website would be full of reviews of other directory submission companys, or articles about different ways to do directory submissions, or anything else that would be relevant content, you get the idea.

What you are trying to do is grab peoples email addresses, and then set up a system to market niche related products to them. With the lead generation form you will want to offer people something in return for there email address (just asking people for there email address is so 1998 and does not work these days). You can offer people information such as ebooks or video tutorials (or something similar), or offer some sort of tool (like developerhut.com free seo tool), or use your creativeness. Remember asking people for there email address will not work, you need to offer them something such as information or free shit, that is what will get you the most email addresses.

Ok now you have a simple wordpress site with 10 quality review articles, you are also grabbing prospects email addresses, now focus your attention in ranking the website for the SEO terms that would convert for you. You may also use adwords to pay to be ranked for the same terms (I do). I actually use adwords before I start my SEO link building campaigns, with adwords I can track which keywords are converting the best, and then I can focus my attention on ranking for the best converting terms. With adwords your website will be promoted instantly, with SEO it will take time, so that is the benefit for using adwords first, just make sure that you research your keywords before you start spending money.

After you have your websites marketing down, such as the seo link campaign, adwords marketing, forum marketing, etc you will want to start converting those emails. The best way to do this is to use aweber and set up a email marketing campaign that will email each customer a particular offer after a number of predetermined days.

I have my own custom made email backend, as soon as someone ads there email they will be sent a auto reply email with niche related products. Then after about 7 days another email will be sent out, and then after another 7 days another email will be sent out, this will happen until they either make a purchase or unsubscribe from the list. Just make it so that your email marketing campaign does not annoy the prospect, you must walk a thin line with that.

Ok so you now have a wordpress site set up grabbing email address for prospects interested in your niche. You must use SEO, adwords, forum marketing, or any other marketing method to gain as many email address as you can. Then you market to the email addresses rather then marketing directly on the website, this makes the website look unbiased, thus gaining you targeted email prospects. It usually takes me 3 months to build a website, have the content produced, and then rank it for the SEO terms I am after. I am producing a few of these types of sites for all the niches I am in, and they are converting like mofos I tell you what. So go out and try this yourself, and if you come up with any new ideas then you must contact me and tell me some of your secrets for telling you this one

For the last 4-5 days now I have been working on a reseller account system on Developer Hut. I have had the reseller account idea for years now, but just until recently I was waiting on making sure my current system is dialed in so I wont be working on too much stuff at once. Now since I have the rest of the backend complete I can now focus my attention onto the reseller account section and other stuff related to it that seems to pop up.

The backend for the reseller part is completed I am just working on finishing the add credit part and a bunch of small updates. It was pretty easy to code up the part that adds the orders into the system, the hard part was making my code secure so no one can screw with it. I have never spent so much time researching ways to secure scripts and coding extra long scripts to make sure everything is secure and no one will be screwing with anything.

The backend is pretty simple, if you have a reseller account then you will see a link that shows how much credit you have in your account (which all accounts will soon have) and also a link to the add orders page which a screen shot is below. People with reseller accounts will get 25% off all products but you must spend at least $300 a month and must be approved by me. To add orders the person will have to go to the add order page and fill a few things out and then simply pay for the orders using credit. All orders that are added will be added to the account like normal orders, they will just need to be manually approved by me first, which should not take that long.

(The above is the page the resellers enter all the info)

Tthe above is the page the resellers confirm there order details and then pay for there order)

The reseller account part of the business will be a huge part of Developer Huts future business. Instead of marketing to only individuals I can now target both individuals and target small business owners. The majority of the people using the reseller account will be people with lots of websites or web design/seo company’s looking to out source work. I do not think I will have to many actual “resellers”, but all are welcome.

The resellers account part will be officially launched on next monday, however this monday will will start beta testing which will only last for a week or so. If you are interested in an account please contact me here.

Anyways there is real no point to this blog post, just a rant about the new service that I have been working on for the last 5 days. I am welcome to any and all suggestions about this, just leave a comment

I have so many goals it is hard to keep track of them all, but below are a few goals that I constantly focus on:

1. 3 page views per visit
One of my silly goals is to get 3 page views from every person (average) that visits a website of mine. I use get clicky to track all my stats (I highly suggest them for e-commerce people). The reason why I focus a lot of attention to that is because if the visitor viewed more then 2 pages then that means that they like your website and are interested in what you have, if they leave after 1-2 page views then you know there is something wrong, and you must improve it.

There are a lot of ways to track your visitors and see there actions. I use get clicky because they have a feature on there that google analytics does not… you can view what each visitor does by seeing each page that each IP addy views. I use that information and see what the visitors like and dont like on those pages, and then I can make tweaks to improve my page views.

2. 70% profit margin
A lot of people tell me to not focus on the profit margin, but I do anyways… and I focus on it pretty hardcore. The bottom line is the number right? I wont be able to stay in business if my outgoing funds surpass my incoming funds right? So there must be a formula to keep track of all of this right? This is were my profit margin goal comes in…

I actually have 3 goals tied to this one:
1. 70% profit margin for each site
2. 20% profit margin for the main company
3. Daily revenue goal of $XXX per day

So with the “70% profit margin for each product” goal I must make 70% off each site in my company. Right now I run about 5 e-commerce websites that I am tracking this with, and my goal is to make 70% profit margin before expenses with each site… and its a lot harder then it sounds

With those 5 sites at 70% profit margin I do not include expenses, marketing, or taxes. The number only reflects the cost of the certain product and that is it. I add all of the expenses, marketing, taxes, and fee’s after I add up all of the 5 websites revenues (my backend does this automatically however) and then that is were I get the 20% profit margin from.

So my final goal is to make 20% profit margin on my company after all expenses. Those expenses include all marketing, business taxes, business related expenses, and fee’s. The 20% would be pure profit and would be my own personal income. An example is that if my business makes $10,000 a month, then I will make $2000 profit after everything (for e-commerce 20% profit margin is really good).

My profit margin goal seems to be working, I keep tweaking stuff that keeps improving the profit margin. With one of my websites I am pulling like a 120% profit margin, and in March it was at 56%, so all of the tweaks I did are paying off for that site

I feel if I monitor the 2 profit margins, daily revenue, and page views per unique visit then I can keep sucessful track of my business improvements and marketing campaigns. It seems to be working thus far, but we will see how it goes in the future.

3. Daily Goals
I have a shit ton of daily goals. I always have 1-2 to-do lists laying on my desk and I always have my whiteboard with lots of not-done crap on it. I also write down my other goals (the ones I listed above) so that I dont forget those. I make about 2-3 new to-do lists a week, and I probably update my whiteboard about once every 2 weeks.

So I am curious on how you track your businesses goals? Let me know in the comments

I have a lot going on right now. Ever since the recession hit it seems like everyone has been hustlin and trying to find ways to make money, which is good for me because everyone comes to me when they want something pushed hehe. I have realized that networking is a huge part of any business, so I always try to network with new people, and this has given me huge advantages when trying to find new products to push.

This month alone about 5-6 different people have came up to me asking them to help push there product (not cpm offer I dont do those). I turn a lot of people down, but I did find 5 products altogether which are great… and I will be pushing them.

I also have a new roommate, Tanner Waid, he has been doing some html and design work and now he is looking to get involved with the money making part of the business. Tanner and I will be creating 2-3 websites before Christmas together, he will be in charge of adding products, managing orders, support work, and the websites tweaks. I will be doing the marketing, managing orders, coding work, and helping out on the support work.

The system we will be using is set up a lot like hayneedles, however we will not be disclosing our other niches like they do. But we will be using wordpress for the CMS, and then a upgraded and tweaked e-com plugin from instinct. I already have the design being worked on by a designer named Eli, he is making it a cross between the hayneedle website and developer-hut.com design, I find that developer hut’s design is really good for e-commerce websites. With e-com stores you must keep it as simple as possible.

All of those products will be drop shipped, and we will be working hard on getting them all set up before November 15th.

I am also working on another e-com store with another buddy of mine, he already has the inventory and we will be using the same layout and system as the other websites. The main reason why we are using wordpress and that plugin instead of using my own custom made backend (which I prefer) is because we need to hurry up and get these websites up.

I am pretty excited to finally get working on a network of e-commerce stores. I have been working my ass off on my backend (which is pretty much done now) and creating developer hut so I can use those marketing services. Now I have a great platform to create more online real estate and manage all of it efficiently. I now don’t have to focus on those 2 projects, I can now focus my attention mostly to the marketing and creating parts instead of the “creating the foundation” part.

I still have a lot on my plate this month, below is some of the stuff I will be working on this month:

1. Bringing 2 products in-house instead of drop shipping (a lot harder the it sounds, I have most of the research done however)

2. 5 or so new e-com stores

3. Creating a automated email marketing system. It will work like aweber, were after X amount of days an email will be sent to the person in the list. Email marketing is a huge part of my business now, so this is a must before the holiday season.

4. Creating a ticket system for the wordpress e-com stores. I will be creating (probably paying someone actually) to make a contact plugin that will update a database with the support tickets. The the support tickets from all of my stores will be pilled into one place, so I can make a ticket system with users that will be able to view particular stores tickets. I already made a custom ticket system for developer hut, so It wont take to long to tweak a new one for all of these stores. I want to make sure that I have an efficient way to take care of support tickets, because I know how important those are.

Well that is all for tonight, I can talk all night about this stuff, take it easy.

So if you remeber this month I have been focuses on getting ready to start storing my own products. Well the month is almost over and I am very happy with what has been done this month. I currently have very little errors in my php logs, all of my websites are working fine, i finnally got all my sites PCI compliant, the developerhut.com backend is all updated and I can now do everything I need to with that backend, and now its on to the fun part…

I decided that I don’t want to move that fast with this, I want to do some research and see what the best way to receive orders then ship them off. One of my friends mentioned using Endicia, but I am more looking into coding my own system with USPS’s api. I need to research that and then deicde on a solution soon. Anyone have any suggestions or feedback about that?

I am still looking for a place to rent, I need a place that has either 1 big room and an office or a few rooms because of the amount of shit I have to store and the sizes of the products. I also decided that I will be waiting at least another 2-3 before I start leasing a place, I actually wanted to get everything set up in my house for a few months so I can test everything out and get the system down.

For the first month or two I will be storing my smaller products at my casa, I am turning the bedroom next to my office into the “warehouse part”, it will consist of 2 BIN shelving and then 1-2 regular shelving, and then a big table to do all the packaging on.

I have been looking around for the best deals on shelving, and I think I found the best deal on ebay for what I need, I did a lot of research and I am pretty sure that the below shelving is what I will be purchasing this week:

2x BIN: Click here

1x big racking

1x small for office supplies

(These are actually just for one of the small products I have, I wont be able to store all of my products because of the space)

Well that is all I have today, its sunday and I’m gonna be relaxing today

If you haven’t noticed I added a SEO Tool lead form on the right hand side of this blog. I also added the same exact lead form on most of the landing pages on developer-hut.com. I paid someone $15 to get it designed, and then I paid another $20 or so to get it coded. After I got it designed and coded I updated my code to actually track were the leads are coming from and some other statistics.

Since all of those updates to the lead form I have pretty much tripled the amount of leads I get from that form. The tool is set up to ping your website to 15 or so ping websites (later on I will be adding a social bookmarking feature to it) and if your email isn’t already in the system then the script adds it to my newsletter list, and then I send about 2 or 3 newsletters a month to all of those email address which of course increases my sales.

I made it so that the results will be emailed to the person using the lead form, so they must enter there email address, this way is a lot better then just asking for peoples emails. I highly suggest to anyone that runs a website of any kind to try and get them email address, they convert so well if you market niche-related products.

So I spent $35 to triple my daily leads for that website… and I am very confident that the update will pay for itself a few times over the next time I send out a newsletter Take it from me, grab them emails!

These last months I have been working pretty hard trying to get my company’s going and getting everything done that I have planned. Last week I put in a lot of work and got a lot of work done, at this point I am very very very happy with what I have archived and the statuses of my company’s, but I want more.

Last week I was starting to get burnt out, last thurs-friday-sat I didn’t feel like doing shit, not one thing… so I pretty much took those days off haha. I got back to work on sunday and today and will be working all this week (like normal). Its not fun getting burnt out, you dont feel like doing anything at all.

But anyways, as I mentioned in this blog post, I have big plans and I hope to get my backend done and ready for Oct 1st, and I am actually on track for that.

Below are a few things I need to complete:
1. I need to get that null script done, its not giving me an errors but its not 100% done yet
2. developer-hut.com backend needs the view order pages updated, same with the add orders
3. I need to add 4 ssl certificates to some websites
4. I have maybe 4-5 errors throughout my whole network I still need to fix, but that amount is so much lower then say a month ago.

The above list isn’t very big at all, that amount of work will take 1-2 days to complete, so I get to take it kind of easy for the rest of the month. I have completed so much work this month that I wont even try to list all the updates, this month I have worked my ass off and its starting to pay off, all the company’s are running pretty smoothly and semiautomated. Besides the support and marketing they pretty much take care of themselves, which was my overall goal.

I actually haven’t been marketing to much, I have been more focused on building up the backend aspect of the business and I kind of let the marketing part down a little. I mostly focus on repeat customers and word of mouth, but I know as soon as I get the marketing up full blast then I should be bling blingin’. And to be completely honest, having that thought in the back of my mind really really motivates me to work even harder (imagine if you company was doing good and you were not even marketing to much), so I have been working extra hard to get the backend parts done so I can work on the fun stuff… marketing.

I dont think I will be able to start stocking my own products this month, I still haven’t started doing my research into the USPS api (which looks totally awesome!). I looked at it a little and it seems to be a basic api, the 2 tools I will be using is the shipping label printing one and then the one that you can ping USPS so they will come to your business or home and pick up your packages. If I could incorporate those 2 tools into my business so everything works automated then I should be sitting pretty good.

I still need to do my research into that however, but I have a question for you readers, what is your input on:

Should I use USPS api or are there better options out there?

One of my buddies did link me to a website were you can lease or rent a professional shipping label printer and some of the gear plus the software for a fee, I am not 100% sure on what the benefits for using that compared to programming my own USPS api tool? My long term goal is to make everything in the business networked together to create a efficient business structure, I am in favor for the USPS api tool, but I would like to know your input

I hope you guys don’t mind the new blogging style, I don’t have time to sit down for 4 hours and write helpful blog posts. This is my blog and I feel it should be more like a journal then a make money online site, so that is what you will probably be getting from now on haha.

So in my last blog post I mentioned that I have been busy working on the backend part of my network to make everything work fine before Oct. 1st, well I am still on plan and still working hard on getting my 2 backends up-to-date and not needing myphpadmin anymore.

Here is a break down of what I have been up to the last 5 days:

Developer Hut’s Backend:

My main focus has been making the code secure and updating the backend to be more efficient, secure, simple, and so I dont need to use myphpadmin at all. And right now I am very very happy with what has been accomplished with that site so far, the backend is making everything run so smooth. The real only thing I have left to do is make a page so I can edit the user accounts, tweak some view order pages, create a better system to automatically update article submission orders when the content writers finish the article submission article, and make sure my code is secure.

Since the last blog post I have done a lot of work on this backend, I only have a few more days worth of work then that site should be done, then I will move my attention more to the other backend.

Main backend:

This guy is the fun one, but he needs lots more work. Right now the site doesn’t even have a template system, and that makes the site a mess. I need to create a template system so I can easily update pages. I also need to finish updating the code to make it more secure, along with adding a ssh certificate (better be on the safe side).

And I also need link my personal expenses db with the business one, my plan is to make another password protected page within the backend so I can view my personal expenses, and then compare that number to how much profit I made etc. So I will know at all times how I am doing. If you remeber I added a tracking system to track my expenses, and so far the effort I put into that project has paid off.. its nice to be able to see what exactly needs to be changed and what exactly I need to work on, I highly suggest setting something like this up.

But anyways, before I add the personal expenses part onto the backend I need to make sure my code is secure, add the ssh, finish the template system, and then double check my code. After I complete all that work then the backend should be close to done.

Tonight I spent like 4 hours so far updating the drop shippers part of the code, I made it very easy for them to view orders, I also added my own function to make it so that state and country abbreviation will show the full name.

Hopefully that backend will be 100% updated before Oct 1st, but the developer hut one is the main one Im worried about.

Other projects:

I asked for help on a script to filter NULL’s out, check it out its pretty interesting, and works great I added it tonight.

I also am working on 2 content websites, I will make them public but they aren’t done yet, I will let you all know what they are when they are completed.

I have so many people working on other projects of mine, right now I have 2 designers working, a css guy busy, 2 php programmers working on scripts, and tonight I will be sending my content writer another weeks worth of work. So not only do I work my ass off for developerhut.com, but I also have other people always working on stuff to. That is how I am able to get soooo much work done.

I also have to add like 8 more new products this week, and finish up a new site. Busy busy month :-s

Well its almost 7 am, im going to bed, take care.