here’s a gem of a broken situation from Ipower in regards to registering a new domain.

I recently tried to register a domain from Ipower under an existing account.

Why you might ask?  Because I’m an idiot that likes punishment.

Instead of getting a message stating that my domain had been registered, I get a message stating that I do not have enough credits to process a registration.

I did NOT try to pay for the registration with ‘credits’.  I did try and pay for it with a working credit card, which prompted the follow up question, “WTF IPower?”

Then, I tried to buy the domain a second time and got the same message, but notice at the top of the message it shows that I have 2 Outstanding Domain Credits.

Then I checked my email and I had 2 transaction confirmations for registration but they did not list the domain name I had ordered.

Ergo IPOWER took my money and didn’t register the domain!

So it looks like I have a IPower hold situation in my future. 

Tip to the wise, don’t do business with IPower.

Since November of 2008, PC User’s have benefited from the WordPress Theme Generator called Artisteer and now that WordPress Generator desktop application is available for Apple / Mac users.  The initial Mac beta was just released and people that purchase/have purchased a PC license will also have the ability to use the license on a Mac or vice versa on a PC.

I have been giving demonstrations of WordPress as a Content Management System for several months which includes a demo of Artisteer and the first question that is always asked is, “Does Artisteer work on a Mac?”

Now the answer is YES!  Artisteer does work on Macs.

Better yet, existing Artisteer users already know that when you purchase a license, that license will receive free upgrades for a year.  I have personally created almost 100 WordPress themes since purchasing Artisteer last fall, and I have significantly benefited from many many upgrades to the software.  This latest upgrade ads more Avatar support for WordPress, ads support for Dot Net Nuke and past upgrades provided support for Joomla & Drupal templates and much much more.

here’s the latest news release from Artisteer about the Mex Mac Capability

Artisteer for Mac (Beta) has arrived!
Artisteer 2.2 for Mac (Beta) is now available by clicking here. Couple interesting facts:

• Artisteer for Mac joins the family of products based on cross-platform .NET framework known as Mono.
• Artisteer might be the first product for Mac OS utilizing the ribbon interface first introduced in Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows.

Technical notes and known issues for beta testers:

• Artisteer for Mac runs on Intel based hardware with OS X version 10.5 (Leopard).
• Artisteer for Mac requires X11 which is usually installed by default on OS X 10.5.
• Artisteer may require approx 1 minute to start the first time after installation.
• The "Open" and "Save" dialogs display Windows style folder structure and may require additional navigation to desired Mac folders.
• The top Mac menu bar does not offer an option to quit Artisteer. Use the Artisteer menu, keyboard shortcut ‘Command’+'Q’, or the red window close button to quit.
• Keyboard shortcuts stop working after clicking anywhere within the web design preview area.
• Certain amount of instability and limitations (as above) are expected due to limitations of the current Mono framework 2.4.
• There is a slight chance that your Mac computer may freeze when using Artisteer (this happened once in our tests). Please save all your work often in case you need to reboot your computer.

Customers who purchased an Artisteer license can use it on both PC and Mac computers (one each) during the beta period. An official release date of the Mac version will be planned after receiving detailed  issue reports from our beta testers and determining how much work is needed to resolve those issues.
Please send feedback and report reproducible issues to our support via the Contact Us page.

Artisteer version 2.2 update
We are releasing a new update to Artisteer 2.2 to resolve a few recent issues reported in the previous version 2.2 Beta.

• Artisteer: Added "Options" button in the export dialog.
• Artisteer: Added DotNetNuke Skin export announced below.
• Artisteer: Fixed a bug with the font size being altered by changing Articles -> Line Height.
• WordPress: Improved compatibility with Avatar List plugin.
• Joomla: Resolved custom footer not showing up.
• Joomla: Resolved centered menus not shown correctly.
• Joomla: Resolved a problem with the text "’30′, ‘height’ => ‘30′ near h2" showing on some pages.
• Joomla: Fixed incorrect path to spacer.gif in script.js file in Joomla templates.
• Drupal: Fixed an issue with broken image appearing instead of a logo uploaded in Drupal.

The new version 2.2.0.17297 can be obtained by clicking here and may become the officially released version 2.2 after additional testing.

Note: Cross posted from The LiveWriterz.

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Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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This week we are kicking off two more Labs on the Lake.  This week we will hold two labs.  One today, Monday(5-18 at 2pm est), covering the topic of Blog Monetization, walking through some blog revenue sources, adding some new ones to the list and giving some advice on how to navigate these options which can be murky on a good day. [Meetup RSVP link] 

This like many of our topics will be covered several times.  Blog Monetization is definitely not something that can be covered in a single day, let alone a single lab.  Many people are looking for ways to earn extra money, raise revenue to market their companies more, or even start their own business.  We will help people get started with the process of making money with a blog (a blog is required to follow along with this lab in person or on our live show at Mogulus.com/wificove ).

Then on Thursday(5/21 2 pm est) we are going to cover the topic of building traffic through networking.  [Meetup RSVP link]

Again this is a very deep topic and one we will revisit many times in the future, but you can tune into either lab at 2 PM est or if you are in the Charlotte area, RSVP through our Meetup group (cost $5 to attend) and spend an afternoon on the lake learning some great web skills that will make you money.

We are following up on our first Lab on the Lake last week, which covered WordPress Installation, WordPress Configuration, & WordPress Theme design with our favorite WordPress Theme Generator-Artisteer.  The video from this event (our first live broadcast) didn’t take to well, but we got the bugs worked out the next night when we held our weekly WordPress Meetup in Charlotte and do expect this weeks events to go off without a hitch.

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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In our previous articles we have talked a bit about some video examples that really don’t help the consultant, expert or specialist on the other side convert people to pay them to teach or do things.

This video below is a little bit better.  The audio quality for the first half is better (not great, but better).

The presenter keeps things nice and simple by capturing a PowerPoint presentation in this web video and it seems fairly professional.

Unfortunately the video (and this does date back to 2007, so you have to take age into consideration) loses all the ground it created when it goes into its ‘demo’ as it offers up very bad electronic 80’s music, but worse yet shows how to edit a rather extra basic looking landing page.

This video is definitely due to be removed or archived, and if you are reading this article and there is no video here any more, then hopefully the owner of the video has done themselves the favor of removing the video. 

It certainly isn’t going to help people learn how to convert sales for adware or spyware products and couldn’t touch more mainstream topics like pushing people to an electronics blog, converting people on a political poll, or enticing people to leave lead information.

The main thing about this video is that it is really mis-named.  It should not be called the Landing Page Secret Video.  A better title might actually help to set the expectations at a more appropriate level.

As we continue down the rabbit hole of exploring conversion on a website, I wanted to share with you a video that is rather . . . um . . exceptional.  I mean that in a nice way.  The actual copy of the video that is being spoken all makes perfect sense.  It is not incorrect.

However, the demonstration or example provided by the video serves to prove that the site sponsoring the video is less than credible.  They are trying to convince people that putting video on a landing page can help convert people. 

On the surface that is true.

They are also trying to convince people that you need not have to pay an exorbitant amount for video and audio production to convert people on a website.

Again, on the surface that is true.

Unfortunately, the video example is not likely to convert anyone to do anything and in so failing as a video itself, it actually serves to convince people not to trust the website it is pitching!

In fact, I challenge you to watch the entire video and still feel inclined to even go check out the website at the other end.

This video does not perform well and is likely harming the site on the other end more than it is helping.  It certainly isn’t going to help a person learn how to develop higher performing affiliate pages regardless of what they are trying no matter if it is genko extract, hydra-anything, or even discount PS3’s.  The video just doesn’t work.  It proves that if you are going to be in the business of teaching people how to convert, you better no how to execute the strategy yourself. 

I just wanted to say a quick Merry Christmas to my favorite Hosting Company.  They have made me biased towards their services by providing very good service and especially customer support.

Many people across the web have rapidly become something of an ‘automated expert’ when it comes to search engine optimization.  There are many many web design solutions that can help a person, even a novice create a website designed to pull people into their site from a search engine search.

SEO is not the only answer.

What are you going to do with those people once you land them on your site?

Its at this point where things like landing page optimization comes in to play, but even that is not the ‘BIG’ picture.  The video above gives kind of an amateur or novice perspective on what the big picture is, but the video itself also serves to demonstrate that there is more to conversion rate optimization.  If you want to achieve website optimization, then you have to execute on all of these levels: landing page, PPC campaigns, SEO, E-commerce, but also on internet presence, PR and buzz.

The video below gives a quick but slightly dated example of just how easy it is to publish a basic web page to the internet or to an account on a hosting plan.   A hosting plan is essentially the collection of files on the internet where you can upload web pages or files for other people to see through a browser.

This particular video is slightly dated.  Mozilla no longer supports the program referred to in the video called Composer.  This has pretty much been replaced by a new program that includes and html editor known collectively as The SeaMonkey® Project. 

Filezilla is also referenced and this program is still available and widely used by many web designers.

Whether you want to build complex websites or something simple for your mother, or maybe something that will earn you a few bucks offering information on diet pills.  These are some of the first tools of the trade that you will need to become familiar with.  Keep in mind there are many different tools that will help you achieve the same result.  These are just two free and very common tools to help get you started before you consider possibly spending some money for a more complex tool, which may or may not really be necessary depending on what you intend to do with it.

Here is another video in a developing collection of youtube videos that features tutorials and useful explanations of web site hosting.  In this video, TheInternetEducator talks about how website hosting works, how much it costs, and some of the issues that can come up (and have to be dealt with).

Now, if you grew up in an era before the internet, you might be predisposed to hit a book store or even Amazon books and attempt to learn about website hosting from a book or a text book.

On this topic, that is actually not a good idea.  Many bookstores will often feature books that are several years out of date (especially discounted books).  If you try and learn the fundamentals of website hosting from a book, you are very likely going to learn some outdated information that may not be very useful today at all.

At a very minimum, I recommend that you do your initial research on the internet, and once you have learned some of the basics, if you still must walk through a book to learn more, you will hopefully at least be able to recognize an old outdated book from an up to date book. 

Here’s a very informative 4 minute video from AskMisterWizard that walks through the fundamentals of hosting servers on the internet yourself.  If you are looking for information to walk you through the basics of setting up your own server whether it is to host web pages, or host a printing server or email server etc, this video and the discussion it covers will help get you started in the right direction.

The video does cover the following three principals

1. Assign a static (unchanging) local IP address to each server host
2. Use “Port Forwarding” to prepare your router for incoming traffic
3. Advertise the public IP address of your router

Again this is just a fundamental over view,but the graphics and the dialogue can help you determine if you are barking up the right tree whether you are trying to configure a hosting server at home or for your school website or even if you are trying to run a site advertising fat burner or other commercial products available at a micro level.

Last spring I started chronicling the change in policy at IPower that resulted in thousands of customers getting slammed into domain name renewals at a total cost that was more than twice what they originally signed up for.

They did this by taking a previously free service and charging as much for it as they did for the core service of domain name renewal.

Today, I ran into an incident with my own preferred domain hosting company, InMotion Hosting.

I recently ordered a new domain at something-about-harry.com.  About 3 days after ordering, I received a bill and automatic debit from my credit card from InMotion for Domain Privacy protection, for a charge of $5 ($4 less than IPower).

Unlike IPower, which made this a policy and a more expensive policy at that.  InMotion had simply made a billing mistake.

They not only removed the service at my request (something IPOWER will not do after the fact if you are right or wong), but they credited my card for $5 for the service I did not buy (again something IPower will not do under any circumstance after the charge).  Plus, InMotion even offered to give me a free month on my plan (which I declined as it was not really needed for a domain name registration).

The point is that all of these things that IPower makes part of their policy where the customer is penalized, even when the customer is right, InMotion does not make it policy and fixes their mistakes such that the customer is made whole or better!

Now, given the fact that we are heading into a recession and possibly a depression, you have to wonder if a business that is running on unsound policies and practices, can actually survive.  Its not like they are bloated with useless fat and services, looking to cut the extra expenses like a chronic dieter picking up Anoretix from Oprah, but they actually have self destructive policies and marketing strategies that is sabotaging their core customers from go.

Something ultimately has to give, and it is probably going to be weaker companies that fail to execute like IPower….

It was less than a year ago that I was walking the floors of the AOL booth at the Consumer Electronics Show.  I felt almost embarrassed to be impressed by some of the cool options and features that AOL had created back then.  They were doing a number of things very well on the innovation front, and I speculated that AOL just might become a real player on the internet again.

maybe

Apparently, cool and cutting edge does not fit the AOL business model.  They announced this month that they are exiting the user generated video market.  They say that they will still offer professionally generated video, in the wake of advances from YouTube that will not only offer TV shows, but full feature movies.

Somehow, I suspect that going back to generic for AOL may not work out too well.  You can only harvest an old business model for so long before there is nothing left to harvest.  I suspect that the only viewers they might be picking up with this new shell of a service will be the rare person that is bird watching with Nikon binoculars and just happens to scan across a computer screen playing an AOL video by mistake.