At this moment I can’t say much about it yet, but as soon as I do I’ll send an email out to the guys and girls that are subscribed to my mailing list.

Have a look at the screenshots. Looks pretty impressive does not? (Okay the colors might need a bit of adjustment, but that’s a small thing to do compare to putting the whole beast together).

Brand module.

Account settings

Email settings

Typical features of social network games are that they are multiplayer and that they are being played within a browser. It’s interesting to know that social network games are among the most popular games in the world, examples of popular social network games are Mafia Wars, The Sims Social, Farmville, etc.

Technology

Most online social games are created with Adobe Flash, PHP or JavaScript, etc.. A new “technology” that is being introduced in the social network games is HTML 5 which gives various advantages towards online gaming such as having access to an offline storage database, drag-and-drop, timed media playback, etc.

Distinct features

One of the most distinct features of social network games is the leverage of the players social network. The quest or goals the player has maybe only possible if the player of the game shares his game with friends or get his/her friends involved into the game. It’s also common in social games to give the player bonuses or rewards if he/she involves his/her social network.

In some games it is possible to purchase items with “virtual currency”, e.g. within the Sims Social game one can buy furniture, clothes, etc. In general virtual currency needs to be purchased with real-world money with the help of common payment methods such as PayPal and Credit Card.

In general social network games are developed in such a way that there is no winner declared of the game. The reason for this is that developers want players to come back often and play the game as much as possible. Most of the social network games have quests and missions for the player to accomplish. Exceptions to this are the board games such as Risk, Chess and Scrabble.

Monetization

Social network games frequently monetize based on virtual good transactions. Virtual goods can be anything from tokens to buying shares in the player’s social network. Some games earn income by having sponsored items or environments.

The painstaking part of this 3 some is the JavaScript code that is involved with jQuery and specific the debugging of this. You can take the armature approach of putting alerts into the JavaScript e.g.:

if (a==1) {
   alert(‘I am here’);
 }

However a much better and more professional approach would be to install the Firebug plugin/extension (available on Firefox and as Firebug Lite on Google Chrome). Once you have this plugin installed a world opens for you. You can access HTML and CSS tags to see if they are correctly developed, you have access to a debugging console and much more.

For JavaScript and jQuery development the debugging console is the most interesting, it gives you the possibility to output JavaScript code without using “alerts”. Just to set things straight before I continue, it’s not possible to access to console directly from an untrusted JavaScript (e.g. a script coming from a webpage). Instead you need to use the console.log() function.

An example says more than a thousand words so here we go.

The easiest way to write to the Firebug console looks like this:

console.log(“Hello world”);

This example will generate output that looks like:

You can pass as many arguments as you want and they will be joined together as a row, like console.log(2,4,6,8,”foo”, bar);

If we wrap the console function up into some nice JavaScript code it will become even more friendlier.

debug = function (log_txt) { if (window.console != undefined) { console.log(log_txt); } }

Put the above code in your JavaScript or jQuery code and call it like:

debug("foo!");

The above JavaScript code will only output to the debug consule of Firebug if the console is available thus you want have any “lost” JavaScript outputs.

You can take it one step further and develop a jQuery extension to help you debug your code:

jQuery.fn.log = function (msg) { console.log("%s: %o", msg, this); return this; };

Once you have implimented the extension you can log your jQuery expression:

$('#foo').find('li.bar > input:checkbox').log("Sources to check").removeAttr("checked");

If you want to build an online survey you have various tools and scripts to choose from, even Facebook recently started to offer a survey/poll feature. But the simplest method to create a online survey is to use Google Documents.

The first thing you need to do is to write down all your questions and make sure they are understandable and clear. If your question can have one or multiple answers make sure they are understandable and clear also.

Once you have clearly formulated your questions it’s time to login to your Google Docs using your Google Account. Within the Google Docs dashboard, find the »Create New« button and click on the drop down arrow which should present you with a menu as displayed in Image 1.

Image 1 – The »Create new« button displaying the menu with the “Form” option.

Click on the “Form” option from the drop down menu, doing so will present you with a new form window as displayed in Image 2.

Image 2 – The form editor screen.

Important functions

Within the form editor you have various functions that help you build and style the online survey.

The header menu

If we take a look at the top bar, we see various buttons and options:

Image 3 – The various buttons and options presented in the header of the form editor.

Add item – A drop down menu with various options which helps in quickly design your form.

Theme: Plain – When you click on this button you are presented with various background styles that you can use for your online survey.

Email this form – Once you’re done editing the form you might want to send it to people to fill it out. More publishing methods are described in the chapter: Publishing your survey.

See responses – A drop down menu with two options »summary« and »spreadsheet«, each option presents you with a different report about your online survey.

More actions – A drop down menu with two options »embed« and »edit confirmation«. A more detailed explanation can be found in the chapter: Publishing your survey.

Save – Saves the form you are editing so you can continue editing it on a later moment.

Form fields and designer

If you look solely at the form designer, as presented in Image 1Image 4 you see there are various fields:

Image 4 – The form editor.

FIELD: Untitled form – The field will contain the title of your form.

FIELD: You can include any test or info that will help people fill this out – Text is self-explanatory, you can use this space to enter text why the person needs to fill out the survey or poll.

Question Title – In this textbox you need to enter the question you want to ask to the person who should fill out the survey.

Help Text – If your question needs some further explanation then you can put this text into this textbox.

Question Type – Within this field you can select whether the question you are asking will use multiple choices as an answer, if the answer needs to be selected from a list, etc.

CHECKBOX: Make this a required question – If you put a mark in the checkbox then the question you’ve marked must be filled out before the form can be submitted.

BUTTON: Done – Once you’re done entering your question and you have reviewed it as well as the answers then you need to press the button “done”. This action will add the question to Google Docs.

NOTE: Clicking the button “Done” will add the question to Google Docs it will not save the entire questionnaire. To save the questionnaire you should press the SAVE button. This will ensure that if you update the question or choices, it will be reflected on the live/published questionnaire.

After clicking “Done”, you can start writing our second question. To do so click the question #2 field to activate it and start repeating the procedure as described above.

The pencil button as highlighted in Image 5 can be used to edit a question. The icon or button besides the pencil, resembling to squares, is used to duplicate the selected question. The 3^rd icon or button, resembling a bin, is used to remove the selected question from the questionnaire.

Image 5 – The pencil button.

Image 6 – The edit form after adding a few questions and possible choices.

Publishing your survey

After pressing the save button on the form editor you can see your life questionnaire by clicking the link in the bottom of the form editor as displayed in Image 7. The link looks similar to https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dElGWU80WkxnT2h0bHo1ZHpRR09HQ0E6MQ (example).

Image 7 – The link to the questionair.

Image 8 – The questionair that is available once you clicked on the link as presented in Image 7.

The next step is to publish your survey so people can start entering data. There are two ways you can publish your survey. The first way is to EMBED the survey iframe code within your website, the second way is to use direct Google Docs links (it works but the URL’s are not that user friendly).

Publishing as an iframe

If you’ve decided to embed the survey into an existing or new blog post you simply need to follow these steps:

Step 1: Press the “Save” button, this will incorporate your last changes or modifications to the survey.

Step 2: Within the form editor mode, press the button “More actions”. From the drop down menu that appears select the option “embed”.

Step 3: Copy the iframe source code that Google Docs will give you. (See Image 9).

Image 9 – The iframe embed code.

The code should look something like:

<iframe src=”https://spreadsheets.google.com/embeddedform?formkey=dElGWU80WkxnT2h0bHo1ZHpRR09HQ0E6MQ” width=”760″ height=”670″ frameborder=”0″ marginheight=”0″ marginwidth=”0″>Loading…</iframe>

You can copy and paste this code in your blog post as long as you are in “Edit HTML” mode.

Viewing the responses

To get a statistical overview of the answers that where given you need to select the option “Spreadsheet” from the “See responses” drop down menu.

When you’re selling products, it does not matter what; shoes, petrol, bread or junk food there is always a possibility to optimize your sales process. For example: if you’re going to buy a bagel then in most cases you’re not asked if your want something to drink with it. This is a missed opportunity from the sales person to make some fast extra cash.

The profit margin on a sandwich or bagel is relatively small compared to gigantic margins you can have on beverages. Add to this that most people who will buy a bagel would also buy something to drink with so it’s basically money on the street.

An example of a company that has a well optimized sales process is the food chain McDonalds. If you buy only a hamburger they ask you if you want to have fries with it. If you order a menu you’re being presented with the supersized menu. The price difference between the standard menu and the supersized menu is relatively small so most people will confirm to the supersize offer.

Conversion

It might be that in your business or with the products you sell not everybody will reply positive but there are always a percentage that does. See this as a bonus. To get a customer to buy your product you need to invest into marketing and support. Once your customer decides to purchase your product it takes almost no effort to ask this customer if they want to buy another product or have some extra premium service. Selling an additional product during the purchase of the first product will gives you the most profit since you don’t need to invest into marketing and advertisement for the second product.

Processes

Take a step aside and look where you can optimize your sales process (and if you have time, visit a McDonalds and only order a hamburger) then you’ll see how important it is to have a well optimized sales process.

Gas stations are improving their sales process also. In some gas stations after filling your fuel tank you’re asked if you want to have some chewing gum or a chocolate bar. It might be that you find this annoying as a customer but the chance is quite small that you will avoid the gas station in the future because of this. Remember customers will get an empty fuel tank once and you’re the one that can fill it up, so they won’t stay away.

Your business

Let’s take a quick look where you could apply this in your business. Let’s assume you sell electronic information products, e.g. e-books about how to make your parrot talk for $17. Once the person is put into the sales funnel you could present him another e-book e.g. how to make your own parrot food and sell this to him for $10. Most likely the person who is buying will also add this e-book to his/her cart, especially when you have it presented as a limited offer.

As you see up sell, cross-sell and down-sell if very important in the improvement of your business sales process.

Dan Raine might shoot me for this review but I could not hide this magnificent WordPress Installer tool from you.

This morning I found an email from Dan Raine from the Immediate Edge asking if I would like to beta-test his new software application a WordPress Installer. Since I have more than 150 domains that need to have WordPress installed I was glad to accept.

As soon as I came to the front page of the WordPress Installer I was impressed with the minimalistic page, no long sales letter, no video to watch and no buy button… The front page is clean with one button that stands out… a Facebook connect button. That is right, no need to remember another username and password… just press the Facebook connect button and you’re in.

Once you’re connected you are presented with a dashboard from which you can install and edit your WordPress installations and configurations. The dashboard, like the front page is also minimalistic: a table with your installed WordPress sites, an install button and 3 tabs to navigate between the WordPress dashboard, a help page and a support page.

Clicking in install button brings up a 3 step wizard asking for some basic information such as the WordPress blog username and password, location where WordPress installer should install WordPress, etc. Once you filled out all the required information a click on the finish button put the “machine” to work which give you time to install another WordPress installation on another domain.

You can see the installation process of each WordPress installation from the WordPress installer dashboard. Once the installation is successfully the WordPress installer informs you about this and you’re WordPress is ready to be used.

So no more logging into cPanel, create a database, database user, assign the database user to the database, upload WordPress via FTP to the correct folder, set the correct permission for the files, go through the installation steps.

Once you’ve entered the administration section of your freshly installed WordPress website you see there is a small “gift” from Dan Raine and the Immediate Edge team! They have installed a bunch of WordPress plug-in for you, again for free!! These plug-ins are as I would like to call them the bomb: they optimize your WordPress blog to the maximum extend so that with just a small amount of effort you could have your website ranked in Google.

Unfortunately the WordPress installer is still in beta and not publically available but Dan said that every new person that signs up on the Immediate Edge will get FREE early bird access to this amazing service. Here is the link where you can sign up to the Immediate Edge.

WordPress templates come together with such style sheets or CSS and are used to “dress up” the HTML code of your website. If you want to change something on your website, let’s say the background color you can do this by modifying the style sheet code that comes with your template. However… if the creator of the template decides to release a new version of his or her template and you upload this to your server there is a high probability that you override the modified style sheet and you need to figure out what you did to make the new template look like your “old” template again by editing the style sheet.

What you could do to solve this problem is to create a new style sheet that overrides the default style sheet by having new styles put into this new style sheet. Then link to this new style sheet from within the WordPress template but after the original style sheet else things will not work correctly. Did I lose you yet? Thought so! There is a much easier way to get to the same result with the help of a simple WordPress plug-in called Lazyest Stylesheet.

The plug-in Lazyest Stylesheet has been developed by Brimosoft from the Netherlands and gives you an extra option within the appearance menu. Though it’s not some fancy wysiwyg editor but a plane textbox but this is okay since people who want to change style sheets know how to write the changes in any editor, even in a text editor. So what you do is you make the override changes to the “parent” style sheet and put them in the text box that appears when you click on Lazyest Stylesheet from the appearance menu and that’s it. After you made all your changes you press the save button and you’re done. The correct style sheet or CSS is inserted at the correct location within the WordPress template and overrides all previous styles if needed.

Does the length of your domain registration is part of the Google algorithm? E.g. if you register a domain name for 5 years does Google classify this as a serious domain name while if you register the domain name for let’s say 1 year the domain name is seen as a throw away domain?

Editing an already indexed page

When you’ve got pages nicely indexed into Google and the information on the page seems to be obsolete and you are editing these. Google might punish you for creating pages with up-to-date correct information.

Google toolbar

Have the Google toolbar installed? Do YOU know what Google is collecting trough this? What if you’re visiting your own sites a lot with Google bar installed? Looking at the bar Google is collecting:

• Time spend on a page;
• How often does one click inside a page;
• Number of visitors going to your page;
• Does the user add or remove a bookmark to your page;

The meaning of a word

If a word gets another meaning, let’s say apple, could be a company and could be a fruit. Would Google know how to handle such changes? And do they influence your page ranking?

Spit your thoughts as a comments to this article.

With the help of various SEO techniques Internet marketers and website owners try to fight all for the first top 10 in Google for specific keywords which could result that the content presented to you if of a low quality or completely not relevant for you. True, Google has a bunch of smarts engineers that tweak their indexing algorithm every day to the maximum to present you with an as much as possible quality and relative content but it’s still a machine that decides what to show and not and these can be tricked.

But let’s keep the SEO factor out of the equation here. If you take a look at http://en.wordpress.com/stats/ you’ll see the amount of WordPress blogs posts on www.wordpress.com only. As you can be read on the WordPress statistical website this comes to about 500.000 new posts and 400.000 new comments on an average day. Mind you, this if for the blogging platform available on www.wordpress.com only so it does not include individual blogs owned by news sites, independent installed personal and corporate blogs, etc.

The former CEO of Google, Eric Smith recently said that today more content is produced within a 48 hour timeframe than had been produced from the beginning of mankind to the year 2003. Which such an overload of information you are missing out information just because you don’t have the time anymore to follow up on all channels and don’t visit the blogs that often anymore as you would like to. What is missing in this picture is the magic solution to get better organized and better quality content. Readers of content, let’s say consumers are more than willing to for such content.

To start with this type of information distribution you need to have a different type of mind set. A person who did that rather well is early adopter Dan Raine who introduced in the end of 2010 his paid monthly newsletter The Raine Report http://www.rainereports.com, for just $4.97 (includes a donation to charity) per month you get quality, filtered content about Internet Marketing, SEO, Black Hat, Building Businesses, Hacking The System and Technology.

When implementing a system that asks your followers, subscribers to pay for content you will get off course less subscribers then if you would have given the content for free but the type of subscribers you get are much more focused and interaction between you and them will be on a much higher level and much more responsive.

Apple as well as Google acknowledged that the subscription model for content is the future by implementing it within their business systems. Apple allows content owners to sell subscriptions trough its app store in return for 30% of the income while Google does the same for just 10%.

If you’re interested in how you could setup a paid content delivery system like Dan Raine did then sign up to my mailing list and in of the emails to come and I’ll show you step by step how you can become most likely the first one within your niche market delivering paid premium quality content.

Lady Gaga is not real, she is a mirage, and everything around the person Lady GaGa is pure marketing. She has masks, make up on, dressed, etc. but she is not Stefani Germanotta but LADY GAGA! The perfect example of today’s mass media. Create a normal girl and create a media empire around her.

Okay there is some talent within the artist Stefani Germanotta, proof of this are her old songs that are scattered around the Internet. But if you ask me if Lady GaGa is part of the media hype, contributing to the hype, participating with the hype then on all these questions I can answer with: Yes! In fact any girl could be used but instead they took Stefani because she understands the world of PR. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t say that Lady GaGa does not deserve the fame and money that she earns because she is playing the marketing and PR game very well but if you take the just plain Stefani, so un- Lady GaGa her then her pure musical talent would get her nowhere. Talent is in this case irrelevant; it’s the look, the PR and the marketing that put this all together so well. And this is a great example for the ones in PR and marketing.

In today’s market you have a ton of the same products, music, ideas, etc. to make your product interesting for the consumer you must stand out from these and this is what Lady Gaga did, does and will do. Standing out from the crowed is something you should do without any questions asked if you want to be a market leader within your market. Instead of coming with another “clone” of someone else their product you should come with something different on the table like Lady GaGa did.

When looking at the marketing and PR around Lady Gaga the thing that make my eyes bleed is how fake everything is around her. To me it feels like they are tricking people into the hype. In example: if someone comes screaming and yelling saying: she is the most talented person in the world, she is so good, etc. are things that bother me. So my advice to you is to create a product that has values and something extra and wrap it in a marketing campaign that stands out from you competitors.

So how could you start with Lady GaGa-nizing your market and products (without the funny clothes and masks).

Use social media to your advantage

Lady Gaga has put a lot of effort into creating a loyal base of Twitter followers and Facebook friends. At the moment I am writing this article she has more than 8 million twitter followers and more than 28 million Facebook friends. Her fans, followers she refers to as monsters or little monsters which created a direct band and connection between Lady Gaga and her friends, like they belong to the GaGa family.

So would calling your customer little monsters help your business? I doubt it! Instead what you can do is to improve your business is to create a connection with your customers, followers and friends. Creating a band of trust and keeping this in place will ease the sales of your product. What you could do is when you launch a new product you could give your twitter followers early access to the product or give them a discount. Tell your Facebook friends what you are doing and why, share photos of some private moments (e.g. you sitting on the beach, etc.).

Quality matters

Lady Gaga does not have a huge collection of songs in her repertoire instead she has just a handful of high quality songs that are well written and well produced.

Instead of having a warehouse full of cheap imported products that nobody buys try to look for a market that wants to buy for a quality product. If you look around there is a huge collection of MP3 players but there is only one vendor that dominates the market: Apple. If you look at the price difference between the iPod and other MP3 players you will notice that there is sometimes a multiplying factor of 5 between them (if not more) and people still buy the iPod. Why? Quality! Enough said.

Don’t be afraid of making money

If you look at one of Lady Gaga her video clips you will notice that they are full with products of advertisers, either it is a bottle of Vodka or some exclusive perfume you’ll find them back in her video clips and yes she get paid for this type of advertisement. So making a video clip is paid (fully or partially) by the sponsors that appear in the video clip.

Applying this to your business is easier then you think. Let’s assume you are selling washing powder, you want to show how white your powder washes compared to the other brand by showing a white shirt that had chocolate milk spilled on it. But who says this white shirt and chocolate milk cannot be of some specific brand which you’ve partnered with? First show the chocolate milk that is accidently spilled on a white shirt, where you focus on the brand of the chocolate milk. Before showing where the dirty spot was you zoom in onto the logo of the shirt manufacturer. Like this you could ask some money for putting these two brands into your advertisement spot. If you play it smart you can have your spot paid completely by others.

Have people on your side

Lady Gaga is surrounded with people that support her in her doing and behavior. Think of all the journalists, co-artists, etc. I believe that one of the most important supporters would be celebrity blogger Perez Hilton. Like Lady Gaga, Perez Hilton has a group of followers that are interested in celebrity, gossip and fashion. Having such person on your side is perfect to increase your position within the pop music market.

Look around… who could support you with your market? Which person could endorse you or your product? Which person is in a similar business as you but is no competition? Can you create some partnership? If you sell apples and your competitor sells oranges… would not it be better to come together and target the fruit stores together? As a partner you could reduce shipping costs to the fruit shop, reduce the sales costs and having a partner that completes the offer will make the fruit shop owner decide for your product instead of the competitors.

Let yourself and/or product be heard

Lady Gaga regularly gives her opinion about items she has a strong opinion about, e.g. in 2010 following the Haiti earthquake she gave a concert and donated the income of that concert as well as the revenue of her web shop to the Haiti relief fund. Lady Gaga also contributes in the fight against HIV and Aids. Also on versions topics such as the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy, the policy that used to prohibit gay men from serving within the US army to be open because of their sexuality, she has an opinion. By doing so Lady Gaga keeps herself in the public eye constantly and have media talking about her, her ideas and thought.

How can this help you? Think of being a company that is printing books. Whenever you released a book you put as much attention on the book and that it is printed on recycled paper. You point out that other book publishers should do this also to save the environment. It helps a lot when you can link your product to which you are passionate about to a positive opinion, cause, etc. you’re passionate about also.

Take care of your fans

It is known that Lady GaGa does not allow professional photographers to make photos and recordings at heir concerts but she allows her fans to make recordings and share it on YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, etc.

If you treat your customers well, e.g. give them quick support when they need to have it, give them refunds if they ask for it they will start to “adore” you and your status with them increases. You will become your market superstar.

Be different, stand out!

As soon as you see Lady Gaga in one of her outfits you will notice her, she definitely stands out from the crowed. On a music award event she did not walk the red carpet like her fellow artists; instead she was carried by fashion models in a gigantic embryo-shaped incubator over the red carpet.

To have your product standout from the mass you could do various things, in example you could have a price difference between your product and your competitors. This is possible but not wise to do because why would you lose income. Instead you can pimp your product by e.g. giving it something extra. Assume that you’re selling an iPhone software development course like there are many others around either payable or free. But to give your product extra values you add some development and design tools with it, such as some stencils that help you designing the graphic interface and some videos on how you developed your iPhone application. Additionally you could offer to send the link of an iPhone application that was developed by someone that bought your course to your mailing list. This last action will pull the people who are still deciding to buy your product over the “finish line” because they now see a product that was developed with your course and the person who made it will most likely have a few extra sales of his iPhone product.

This article was inspired by http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/10-ways-to-be-a-marketing-genius-like-lady-gaga-4894115