This week:
1. Surveying your website visitors
2. Results of Polls & WordPress Tutorial News
3. KRA Pro
4. Web Hosting woes, and some saved m0ney
5. Other News
Hi again
Hope you’ve had a good week. In this week’s newsletter I’ll tell you about a great fr.ee survey script I found, plus give you more details on both the WordPress Tutorial series and the imminent release of KRA Pro.
Let’s get on…
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1. Surveying your website visitors
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One of the best ways to find out what your website visitors (or newsletter subscribers) want, is to survey them.
One form or survey is a simple poll (like you saw last week in this newsletter). They can be added to websites very easily, and visitors get live results. The script I use is a fr.ee one called Advanced Polls, and you can get a copy here.
Another type of survey can be requests for your visitors/subscribers to email you with the answers to various questions. I have never had much success with this type of survey, and so don’t really recommend it.
During the last week, I have been looking for a script that will allow me to create more advanced surveys. I know there is a service called Survey Monkey that offers a fr.ee account, but there are some strict limitations on the fr.ee version, and I don’t want to be paying a monthly subscription for something I’ll only use occasionally.
I wanted to find a script I could install on my server, and use as and when I needed it. I looked into 4 scripts altogether. The first one had an online demo that didn’t work, and after two emails to their “we reply within 12 hours” support, I didn’t hear anything (and that is now over a week ago), though I notice they have now fixed their online demo. Not good enough!
The other three had demos I downloaded and installed. I couldn’t get a single one to work properly!
Finally, instead of searching for commercial survey scripts at Google, I decided to see if there were any fr.ee scripts, and Bingo!!! I found one that met all of my needs, and didn’t c0st a penny. Its called Lime Survey, and if you are interested, you can get it here:
LimeSurvey has around 20 different question types, and was straight forward to setup (involves setting up a MySQL database, FTP and changing a few file permissions).
I must admit that the interface was a little confusing to begin with, but after learning how it all works, I can put a survey together in a few minutes. The results of the survey are sent to a database, so collating results is automatic. I used Lime Survey to create the WordPress Tutorial survey a little later in this newsletter. If you are interested in the WordPress Tutorial I mentioned last week, please take 2 minutes to complete the survey. Thanks!
If you want to try surveys, or need them for your website or newsletter, I can highly recommend Lime Survey. Not only does it have more features than the commercial ones I tried to install, but it is also fr.ee.
Remember, surveys can add valuable content to your website, and a reason for people to come back!!
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2. Results of Polls & WordPress Tutorial News
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Thanks for all of you who voted in the polls last week. It was interesting to see that 23% of you already use WordPress as your Site Builder of choice. This is encouraging, as the more I work with WordPress, the more impressed I am with what it can do.
Moving onto the second poll, 378 people have voted (as I write this newsletter), with nearly 96% expressing an interest in a WordPress Tutorial in this newsletter.
Since so many of you are interested in using WordPress as an affiliate/Adsense site builder, I’ll be starting the tutorial very soon.
I’ve setup a survey related to this WordPress Tutorial to get a better idea of your experience and what you want (and don’t want), and would appreciate it if you could head on over to:
There are only 6 questions, and it shouldn’t take you more than a couple of minutes.
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3. KRA Pro
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The release date for KRA Pro is 16th June. In preparation for this, I have setup a blog where I’ll be posting more information, videos and news relating to KRA Pro.
The blog is setup so that you can easily leave comments (no need to register to leave comments), so if you are interested in learning more about KRA Pro you can find the latest information here:
One of the videos I’ll be adding this week gives an insight into how Google ranks pages.
If you want to be notified of blog updates and the release of KRA Pro, there is a subscription form on the site. When KRA Pro is released, there will be an “early bird incentive”.
Finally, before we leave this section, if you own KRA, you will be able to buy an “upgrade” to KRA Pro THIS WEEK. Look out for an email from me explaining how to do this (if for some reason you don’t get the email, check back at the blog regularly).
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4. Web Hosting woes, and some saved m0ney
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I have been with 1&1 hosting for several years now. That’s 1&1.co.uk, NOT 1&1.com. I have been very happy with them, and fortunately haven’t had to contact their support too often (that’s one side of their business I am less than impressed with). Their up-time is second to none, and I have never had any really serious problems (other than a biggy when my credit card expired, but that’s another story).
I have been getting quite close to my 15 MySQL database limit, and want to launch another 10 “WordPress” sites. If you use WordPress, you’ll know that you need a MySQL database to run it. Well, with only two MySQL databases left, I thought about looking for another web host to put these sites on.
One I had heard a lot about from a friend was lunarpages.com
They offer unlimited databases, plus unrealistically high bandwidth limits. They are also very cheap.
As with anything I buy, I always go looking for reviews on the Internet. Well, I have to say I was shocked at what I read. Here is one page that I found shocking:
Looking at some other “reviews”, this doesn’t seem like an isolated incident (and some of the bad stuff was posted in May this year).
There are a lot of positive reviews for Lunar Pages, but you have to wonder what you can believe (since you never really know who writes the positive stuff).
I have never tried Lunar Pages myself, and wont be now.
Web hosting is one of those things that you need to get right. Get it wrong, and your Internet business is being built on quicksand.
OK, so what is my point?
Well firstly, be careful with your hosting. Don’t go for cheap just because its, well cheap. Go with someone that is recommended personally to you if possible. That someone should be someone you trust, and someone who doesn’t stand to make commission on their referral.
Secondly, always look for reviews on the Internet. Don’t just look for those sites promoting the service, look also for those sites that have an axe to grind. Really bad services will often have whole pages dedicated to them by some disgruntled customer. They are often well worth a read.
Thirdly, I would love to hear your recommendations and horror stories for web hosting. I have put together a very short survey, and I’ll happily post the results of the survey in this newsletter, to help those looking for a web host they can trust.
Here is the survey (there are only three questions):
Finally, the last point I wanted to make was that I will be staying with 1&1. Sure I am getting low on MySQL databases, but the beauty of WordPress is that I can have several WordPress installation using the same MySQL database. This is one of the things I’ll show you in the WordPress Tutorial.
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5. Other News
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There are still some copies of the May Niche Blueprint.
This blueprint is a little different from the normal blueprints in that I was specifically looking for a niche that had plenty of good infoproducts available at Clickbank. Clickbank products are great ones to promote on your site (as long as it is not in the Internet Marketing niche), and offer good commissions.
The bonus for this Blueprint is that keywords in this niche also attract Adwords bids of up to $12. That means this is really an ideal niche for both affiliate sites and Adsense sites.
To read more about this niche, go to:
.. and click on the link top right to the May 2008 Blueprint.
Well, that’s it for this issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog:
http://ezseonews.com/blog/index.php
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:
http://ezseonews.com/archives
Have a great week!
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The contents of this newsletter is copyright 2008 Andrew Williams. If you want to republish any of the articles, you must get permission from the author.
This newsletter disclaims all responsibility for the advertising copy or the product advertised. You cannot rely on the fact that the newsletter has examined the product or recommends or endorses the product, unless it clearly says that it has, when you make your decision whether or not to purchase the product or interact with the advertiser. You are advised to do your own investigation before buying. Additionally, this newsletter may accept articles that we do not write or investigate the accuracy of and for which we may receive direct or indirect benefit or compensation. We specifically disclaim any responsibility for the content of such copy.
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About Author: Andy Williams
