Month: August 2013

Over the years as my business has grown I have continuously needed to upgrade the software and services that I use.

These mainly fall into three categories.

1. Website hosting
2. email auto responder service
3. shopping cart software

Probably one of the hardest things to upgrade is your email auto responder service and shopping cart software. It’s a huge logistical nightmare of a job to move to a new shopping cart simply because you need to move all of your content and affiliate’s and links over to the new service.

Last month I made the decision to move to a new service called Infusionsoft. This is a big move for me as it involves a lot of work moving all my content over to the new service but also quite a lot of training to learn how to use this incredibly powerful new piece of software .

Basically infusionsoft is a shopping cart, auto responder and tracking device all built into one.
You can set up all sorts of ”if this, then…” rules based on what people have clicked on and what purchases they have made.

The thing I really like about infusionsoft is they are not a fly-by-night sort of company and have recently had a huge amount of investment to support their large and growing user base. In the past I’ve signed up to software platforms that have been underinvested and although they have not gone out of business they did not update with the times.

Infusionsoft  seems to have updates every couple of weeks and there are all sorts of third-party plug-ins and add-ons  created by third-party developers. They even have their own annual seminar called infusioncon!!!

Currently I am using the shopping cart system called Nanacast.com – although Nanacast does have good functionality they have not updated the software in the last two years and the user interface is looking incredibly dated.

They also have a huge amount of server downtime. There is nothing worse than sending an email out advertising a new product and no one can purchase because your shopping carts servers are down!!!

Last year I decided to move from Nanacast to Office Autopilot as some of you may have noticed. However I was only ever able to move my auto-responder over as Office Autopilot did not support UK merchant accounts – mainly worldpay??

So I ended up with a very expensive auto-responder and a separate shopping cart system.

So my intention with Infusionsoft is to move everything over and have everything in one place. This will also save me around half the amount of money that I’m currently spending with Office Autopilot and Nanacast.

Now before you all email me asking if you should be signing up to Infusionsoft…

Personally I think Infusionsoft is an overkill for most people. The only reason I’m using Infusionsoft is because I am a product vendor. If you have your own products and an email list then Infusionsoft is definitely worth investing in.

However if you just want to have an email list and don’t intend to sell your products then just stick with a regular auto responder service like AWebber or GetResponse.

Anyway I’ll let you know how I get on with switching over to Infusionsoft in the next couple of weeks.

 

Last Friday my father passed away,  after a long battle with a brain tumour. My father achieved a huge amount during his life.

Robert was a violinist in the Covent Garden Royal Opera house. He then studied in Russia to become a conductor.

Like many of you, this was quite a major career change and more than a few people thought he was crazy for doing it, but he stuck with it and built quite a successful career at it.

His moment of genius though came when he identified a gap in the market for really good books that music teachers could use to teach children to play the violin – properly. And also in such a way that kids could actually enjoy themselves and see (hear!) themselves making progress.

He wrote the books, got the graphics done, wrote the practice pieces and so forth.. and then self published them. The books were an immediate success and sold out!!! And have been re-printed many times.…

And that’s quite a legacy to leave behind, generations of children playing the violin well, and enjoying it.

And I think there’s a moral there… If you really believe in something… DO IT !!

One of the tools I’ve used in my business for a number of years has been something called Optimizepress

It’s a plug-in for WordPress that makes creating squeeze pages and sales pages an absolute breeze. It’s one of those tools I could never live without and as an Internet marketer it’s definitely something to have in your toolkit.

A few weeks back Optimizepress 2 was released. This is a massive upgrade to the original WordPress plug-in. I immediately upgraded and was completely blown away. It’s so much easier to use and as well as creating sales pages and squeeze pages you can now create full-blown membership sites using this incredible software.

Go check out yourself,

https://sarahstaar.com/Optimize-Press-2

And don’t forget I am offering an incredible bonus to anyone who purchases Optimizepress 2

https://sarahstaar.com/how-i-made-my-first-100-a-day

 

Talk soon,

 

Sarah