© 2002-2008, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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Installing Plug-ins You’ve Downloaded to Your Hard Drive

The WordPress plug-in directory is not the only place you can find great WordPress plug-ins, so when you run across one you’re interested in trying out, go ahead and download it to your hard drive (I suggest creating a folder just for Plugins and saving it there so you can easily find it later.)

Login to your Dashboard and click on ‘Add New’ in the plugins menu at the left. You’ll want to upload the .zip file you saved to your computer, and then WordPress will take care of the rest. So, browse to the plugin zip file you downloaded and then click the Install Now button.

WordPress will tell you that it successfully installed the plug-in and ask you what action you want to take next: Activate Plug-in | Return to Plug-ins Page. You want to Activate Plug-in. WordPress will activate the plug-in for you and return you to the plug-ins page. You should now see the plug-in in your list.

Installing a Plug-in From the WordPress Plug-in Directory

Installing plug-ins found in the WordPress plug-in directory is even simpler! Login to your Dashboard and click on ‘Add New’ in the plugins menu at the left.

Click on ‘Featured’, ‘Popular’, ‘Newest’ or ‘Recently Updated’ from across the top of the page, click a tag in the ‘Popular tags’ tag cloud at the bottom of the page, or enter a search and click the ‘Search’ button. All of these actions will result in a list of available plug-ins being displayed to you.

Choose the one you want and click the ‘Install’ link at the right side of it’s listing, to the right of its description. A pop-up window will appear with information about the plug-in you’ve chosen. Click the ‘Install Now’ button and WordPress takes care of the rest!

See? Spectacularly simple!

© 2002-2008, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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All these years later, I’ve let reading time be overtaken by the demands of my life and work, and I really miss it. (This is one of the ducks I recently identified I was missing in my life.) See that bookcase in the picture? That’s one of three bookcases here in my office, and many, many of those titles are, as yet, unread. That’s going to change.

Are you with me?

One Book a Week - Ambitious But Possible

I can’t see myself making the time to read 300 books this year, even though I have that many right here waiting, but I can see myself making time for one a week, so that’s my plan. Here are the titles I’ve picked for January:

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Review From Publishers Weekly: Unabashedly inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling The Tipping Point, the brothers Heath—Chip a professor at Stanford’s business school, Dan a teacher and textbook publisher—offer an entertaining, practical guide to effective communication. Drawing extensively on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion and motivation, their study is couched in terms of “stickiness”—that is, the art of making ideas unforgettable. [...] Fun to read and solidly researched, this book deserves a wide readership.

The Power of an Hour: Business and Life Mastery in One Hour a Week by Dave Lakhani
From the Inside Flap: The Power of an Hour gives you the blueprint for making changes one at a time that add up to a big difference. Most books that promise to help you improve yourself and your business are too formulaic and too focused on one particular aspect of life to really work. But this book is different. It’s a holistic guide to the practical, everyday actions you can use to supercharge your personal and business development.

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama
Despite my self-imposed book buying ban (because, as you can see, I have enough to keep me busy for the year and then some), this is a book I’ve wanted to buy since it was published. I’m happy to report I’m going to be able to read this book without breaking my ban, because one of my wonderful friends bought this for me because she loves me (or maybe because she was sick of hearing me whine about wanting it…lol) Either way, I get to read it this month! Woo-hoo! I’ve slated it for week 3 in honor of Barack’s Innauguration as President and President’s Day. Can’t wait!

The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls and David Weinberger
Review from Business Week: “For every retail or consumer-products company wondering why its Internet marketing doesn’t seem to be working, The Cluetrain Manifesto…offers fresh and sound advice, expressed in entertaining prose. Its oft-repeated premise - that markets are conversations - should be pounded into the collective brain of corporate executives.”

My Rules, a Surprise and My Hidden Agenda

One of the rules I’ve set for myself is not to limit myself to just the books on my shelves. I’ve got at least that many, if not more in e-book form here on my hard drive. They count. (And they don’t count against my book buying ban, mostly because I’ve got way more hard drive space than bookshelf space.) Which means I’ve already got one book under my belt: Todoodlist. You’ve already got my review of it.

Here’s the surprise: If you buy Todoodlist through this link by Midnight Monday, January 5th and forward a copy of your purchase receipt email to me at Suzanne at vAssistant Services dot com, I’ll enter you in a drawing to be held Tuesday morning where the winner will be reimbursed their $14 personally by me! Those of you who’ve already purchased Todoodlist through my link will be entered in the drawing, too, if you send me your receipt. (I know 4 of you have, but I don’t know who you are.) So, if you’ve been on the fence, go on and get it, forward me your receipt and you could get your first book of 2009 on me! (My self-imposed book buying ban does not include buying books for others, by the way. Besides, it’s an e-book, so it’s really safe!)

So, what’s my hidden agenda, you ask? It’s three-fold, actually:

• to promote reading books of all kinds. Reading is FUNdamental, remember? And it’s good to get off the computer every now and then. (Gasp!)
• to find out about great books. You’re going to leave me a comment and tell me what books have made a difference for you, right? (Don’t worry - I’ll add your recommendation to my Amazon wish list or get it from the library, if I can’t wait.)
• to hold myself accountable for my reading goals by blogging about the books I read. See? I’ve gone and shot off my big mouth and told y’all I’m gonna do this. So, expect to see a post each week, probably on Sundays, (oh God, am I really typing this?!?!) about the book I’ve read.

So, you’re going to read how many books this year? Leave me a comment…

© 2002-2008, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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As with every other area of life, make sure you only compare yourself with yourself. Anything else is not fair to you and counter-productive. (By all means, look at other blogs/sites and learn from them and use them to help you set goals, but don’t be using them as your yardstick, k? Ok.)

Introducing the Blog Metrics plug-in by Joost de Valk. This is a handy little plugin that plays by my rules - meaning it compares you to you…period. It is based on the blog metrics Avinash Kaushik proposed in this post (which I strongly recommend you read, btw.)

This plug-in helps you compare how you’re doing now with how you’ve done in the past. And really, that’s the only measurement that’s useful to you, that you can do something with, right? (RIGHT…!) So, if you see progress being made in your 30 day numbers as compared to your overall numbers, then celebrate! And if not, then hey - you know what you need to work on.

Remember: PROGRESS (NOT PERFECTION!) is the goal.

© 2002-2008, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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Uhh….no.

I don’t text on my cell phone, or surf the web. In fact, if you have the nerve to text my phone, I will delete it without reading it and I tell that to everyone who gets my number. I gave up Instant Messengers about 3 years ago and haven’t missed them a bit. I use electronic devices when they solve a problem for me or make my life simpler somehow. Case in point: my DVR. God bless that little mammy-jammy. If not for it, I would never watch any TV.

While I’m fairly immune to cell phones, PDAs and the like, I will admit to being lured into at least trying the latest, greatest online app, but few make the cut and keep my attention for long. Mostly because they’re all a near fit, not a great fit for me and how I work. Trust me, the Internet is riddled with accounts I’ve set up for this tool or that and then abandoned - the great exception being my Google Calendars. But for project management and productivity planning, I keep reverting back to paper.

Paper systems have their issues, though: I can’t prioritize and categorize on paper like I can on the computer. And I’m the first to admit, with my ADD brain - I need the ability to prioritize and categorize! (Please don’t ask me how many hundreds of dollars I’ve wasted on Palm Pilots, Franklin Planners and DayRunners, only to revert back to a $.70 spiral notebook from WalMart time and time again. It’s shameful, and makes me sick.) But on paper, I can do things my way, which is the biggest issue I have with 99.9% of the electronic/online apps out there, Google Calendars being the only exception.

Then, I happened upon Todoodlist. $14 bucks and an hour later, my biggest bitch about my paper system has been resolved - totally.

Think those 4 bullet points over there are empty promises? Think again. Todoodlist is the missing ingredient I needed for my personal paper system that allows me to truly shun the lure of online apps and gadgets once and for all.

Now, those of you paying attention may think I’m totally contradicting myself, given my stated abhorrence for printing things out. (See Eco-Safe in my sidebar, or the end of any post.) Let me say again: I use electronic devices when they solve a problem for me or make my life simpler somehow. When I went without electricity for 9 days and without Internet service for 19 days during the Ice Storm of December of 2007, you can bet your sweet bippy I was lovin’ my $.70 WalMart spiral notebook in a fashion bordering on the ridiculous. If I ever have to endure such madness again, I will now be even more prepared and productive.

So, go on - check out Todoodlist - I dare ya. Who knew to-do lists could be so much fun?!

© 2002-2008, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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It’s New Year’s Day and a good chunk of the world is making resolutions. I don’t do that. Making New Year’s Resolutions is far too linear an activity for me.

Instead, I do a duck inventory. I don’t worry too much about getting or keeping them in a row. (My ducks are too much like me for that.)

My Duck Inventory

First, you should know that most of my ducks have ducks of their own. So, I guess you could say I have families of ducks. And some of the ducks belong to multiple families, so you can see right away that getting my ducks in a row is an activity I can’t just jump into. I have:

First, I see if there have been any new ducks born or if any of my old ducks have died in the last year. (It’s completely normal to get new ducks and lose old ducks. Circle of life, ya know. Sometimes ducks appear to be still alive, but they’re really dead, so you might have to poke at ‘em a little to be sure.)

Second, I check the health of all my ducks…and not just their health, but my own with respect to their presence in my life. (This is sometimes the most difficult part for me. It’s pretty easy to determine if they’re doing ok. A little more challenging, sometimes, to determine if they’re good for me.)

Third, I check to see if I need to get rid of any of my ducks. (I did a LOT of duck firing and letting go last year. Sometimes just recognizing they need to go seems to make them leave on their own. Like it when that happens. I’ve finally learned, though, that the new, good ducks you want can’t come to you ’til you make room for them.)

Fourth, I look for which ducks I might be missing or new ducks I might want to add. (I have also learned that getting new, good ducks in my life is a process of allowing them to come to me. I’ve been really good at giving for long, long time. These last few years have been about learning how to get really good at receiving. I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.)

This is about as lined up as my ducks ever get, and I’m ok with that, because when I’m done with my duck inventory I’m ready for the new year. And that’s the point, right?

How do you get ready for the new year? Do you make resolutions? If so, how do you go about it? If not, do you do something else instead? Leave a comment below and tell me. I’m really interested to know.

© 2002-2008, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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Ready? Let’s do it!

Configure Your PayPal Button

You’re going to need a PayPal button so people can pay you for your teleclass, but we’re not actually going to use the button. Instead, we’re going to use the email link created in the process of creating the button.

Login to your PayPal account and click the Merchant tab and the Buy Now Button link:

Choose Services from the ‘Accept payments for’ dropdown box:

Check the radio button next to No; create a “Buy Now” button and type in the name of your Teleclass in the ‘Item Name’ box, and enter the price of your teleclass in the ‘Price’ box:

Leave the rest of the options in Step 1 as they are and click the Step 3 bar to open the Step 3 section up. (Yes, we’re skipping Step 2 - there’s nothing for us to do there.)

Now, you need the URL of your hidden Thank You page. If you didn’t write it down in Step 2, then open a new browser window, log into your site, click the Pages menu in the Dashboard and click Edit to open your hidden Thank You page:

Check the little checkboxes and enter your site’s main URL (mine would be http://www.vassistantservices.com) in the first box. (In case they bail out of the process they’ll be taken back to your site.) Then enter your hidden Thank You page’s URL in the second box (this is PayPal’s success URL, and is how you can direct people to a specific page back at your site after a successful payment. Cool, huh?):

Click ‘Create Button’ at the bottom of the page. Then, click the Email tab and copy the URL you find there:

This is the URL that makes most of the magic happen for us, and is the URL we’re going to use for the Success URL at our contact management system.

If you use aWeber, paste this baby in the ‘Thank You Page’ box on your opt-in form and save it:

And, while you’re at it, go over to your Verified Opt-in confirmation email page and enter your Thank You page URL in the ‘Confirmation Success Page’ box and save it:

If you use iContact, paste the URL of your hidden Thank You page in the ‘Success URL’ box and save it:

Publish Your Teleclass Post

Back in Step 2, you created your post that introduced your teleclass, but did not publish it. Now, it’s time to publish it, AFTER you verify all the information you have in it, most importantly, the link to your hidden registration page.

NOTE: if the URL you copied down for your hidden registration page in Step 2 looks like this:
http://www.vassistantservices.com/teleclass-thank-you/?preview=true&preview_id=291&preview_nonce=63b02ec8c8 it’s wrong, and I led you astray. Sorry about that - didn’t do it on purpose. You’ll notice your URL starts out like the permalink you copied above, but it has ?preview=true&preview_id=291&preview_nonce=63b02ec8c8 attached to the end of the URL. Remove everything from the question mark to the end and the URL will work properly (and match what you copied above.)

Check Your Process

1. Your post is published and contains the proper link to your hidden registration page.

2. Your hidden registration page is published, the Exclude Pages from Navigation checkbox is UNchecked, and contains your opt-in form. Test your opt-in form and make sure that when you click the button to submit your name and email address, you’re taken directly to a PayPal screen which displays the name of your teleclass and its correct price. This is the MOST important step in the entire process, so make SURE it works!

You won’t be able to test your PayPal payment process using your own PayPal account (PayPal doesn’t let you pay yourself) so you can either ask someone to test it for you and refund their payment if they don’t want to take your teleclass or you can just verify that the initial PayPal page is showing the correct information. If it does, there’s a 99.9% chance everything else in the PayPal process will be just fine.

3. Check your email and make sure you received the confirmation email containing the confirmation link you need to click to confirm your subscription to the special teleclass mailing list. Click the link to confirm to make sure you also receive the Welcome email with the telelclass dial-in information. (If your process uses aWeber, you should be automatically taken to your hidden Thank You page when you click the confirmation link in the confirmation email. If you’re using iContact, you won’t see the hidden Thank You page, unless you were able to test the PayPal payment process all the way through.)

So, there you have it. You’re ready to accept registrations and payments for your teleclass!

© 2002-2008, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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I spent part of my Christmas afternoon out at my ex-mother-in-law’s place learning how to shoot. My oldest son’s father was my instructor. First time I’d ever held a gun in my hands and not only did I not hurt myself or anyone else, I hit the target….multiple times!

Before the afternoon was over, I’d shot a .22 handgun, a 9mm automatic and a 30/30 rifle. I did the best with the .22, not surprisingly. It was much smaller and easier to handle than the other two, though still new to me.

I had many realizations as I fired off each shot:

Fear can be overcome with information, preparation and support. I won’t say I’ve been afraid of guns all these years…maybe it was more that I was afraid of that kind of power. Ironic, given that I think that’s what’s been my lesson in 2008: overcoming my fear of my own power.

Support comes from unexpected corners. Allow it. Never in a million years would I have believed that one day my first husband would be teaching me how to shoot. (There was a time that would not have been the smartest of moves on his part.) But that’s exactly who did and there’s a part of me that is both surprised and humbled by the idea that he genuinely wanted to share a skill he has to help me feel safer, more assured and protected. Twenty years later, that man still has my back. Who’d a-thunk it?

Nothing happens until you pull the trigger. I have many goals for the coming year, but the most important one is to consistently practice taking aim and firing at my target(s). In other words…taking action.

© 2002-2008, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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A Note about iContact

If you use iContact to manage your mailing lists, you have just a tad less functionality available to you which will slightly alter your process from the one I’ve defined in our flowchart. However, you can still get the job done, so not to worry.

In iContact, you have only one Success URL at your disposal, instead of two like in aWeber, but the good news is that it takes your user to the specified URL as soon as they enter their name and email address and click submit to subscribe, and that’s exactly what we need. (In aWeber, you can also define a URL for them to be taken to when they click the link to confirm their subscription from the confirmation email they will receive. This isn’t a problem for iContact users, because of the redundancy built in to our process - you can do that from the Success URL in PayPal.)

Set up Your Mailing List

Whether you use iContact, aWeber or another contact management system, these are the steps you need to follow to get your special mailing list setup and ready to receive teleclass registrations (replace the [text in brackets] with your information):

1. Create a new mailing list.Since there are many sub-steps involved within this step, I’ve made two short little videos to show you how to do this step:
   • View the iContact video (opens a new window.)
   • View the aWeber - Part 1 and aWeber - Part 2 videos (open a new window.)
2. Create a welcome email. This is the email your new registrants will receive immediately upon successfully confirming their subscription to this list. I suggest it say something similar to the following (replace [the text in brackets] with your information):
   

   Hi {!firstname},

   Welcome to the [Your Teleclass Name] Teleclass! (I suggest you use this as the email subject line, too.)

   Let me give you the dial-in information you’ll need to join us each week.

   The workshop begins:

   [day of the week], [month] [day], [year]
   [time] [am or pm] Eastern ([time] [am or pm] Central, [time] [am or pm] Mountain, [time] [am or pm] Pacific)

   [number to dial] [pin #]

   
   We’ll meet each [day of the week] at the same time on the same number for [#]

   weeks, with our last session being held on [day of the week], [month] [day], [year].

   Each week, you’ll have access to a recording of the call, as well
   as some “homework” complete with exercises to help you
   implement what you’ve learned.

   That’s it!   …for now. 

   Thanks again for registering, and I look forward to talking with you
   in the teleclass!

   Warmly,

   {!signature}

    

   • View the aWeber video (opens a new window.)
3. Create reminder emails and schedule on specific dates. Face it, we’re all busy, or at the very least, distracted. Do your teleclass participants a favor and remind them of your call(s).

   Your reminder email can be as simple as:

   Hi {!firstname},

   Reminder to attend the [Your Teleclass Name] Teleclass! (I suggest you use this as the email subject line, too.)

   Again, here is the dial-in information:

   [day of the week], [month] [day], [year]
   [time] [am or pm] Eastern ([time] [am or pm] Central, [time] [am or pm] Mountain, [time] [am or pm] Pacific)

   [number to dial] [pin #]

   Thanks again for registering, and I look forward to talking with you
   in the teleclass!

   Warmly,

   {!signature}

    

   Once again, there are several steps to setting up reminder emails, so I’ve made another set of short little videos to illustrate the process:

   • View the iContact video (opens a new window.)
   • View the aWeber video (opens a new window.)

   If your teleclass is a 4-week teleclass, send a reminder email each week, either the morning of, or the day before. If your teleclass is just one session, then send a reminder a few days beforehand, and then another one either the morning of, or the day before. You’re not “bugging” your registrants - you’re helping them. Life has a tendency to interrupt even those of us with the best of intentions, so sending a reminder will actually be welcomed!

Teleclass Handouts and Followups

If you have materials you want to distribute to the participants of your teleclass after each call, repeat the reminder email setup process to set up emails that send them that material after each call.

Finally, schedule an email to go out the day after the last call to thank them for their participation, list additional resources they might find relevant, and invite them to share their questions and comments about your teleclass at your blog post that announced the teleclass! If your teleclass taught them a new skill or marketing method, for example, you might even want to schedule an email to go out a week afterward to follow up with them and make sure they’re not having any problems.

Connecting the Dots

Now we have everything in place except the PayPal piece and tying all these piece together into one streamlined process. Those will be the topics of the next (and final) post in this series. As always, if you have any questions, leave a comment below or contact me via email.

If you’re looking at all this and thinking, “Yeah, ok, I see how this works and it’s nice to know how to do it, but it’s really not the best use of my time,” and would like me to do it for you, just let me know.

© 2002-2008, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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At the very thought, I’m transported back in time to the most horrific temp job I ever had: locked away in a window-less room full of filing cabinets tasked with filing purchase orders 8 hours a day. I lasted 2 days.

Fast forward 20 years later, I store everything I possibly can digitally. (I currently do not even have paper loaded in my printer.) No amount of hard drive space is safe near me, as a result. Here in my office, I have only a two-drawer filing cabinet which holds the papers I absolutely HAVE to print out and file and I still have room in it! This works for me.

Imagine my delight when a new Twitter friend @RobertaHill tweeted about the Eco-Safe Merit Badge, a really cool way to save or share blog content without printing! I checked it out immediately. About 3 minutes later, I had it installed here.

Try it out! You can email this post to yourself or a friend, you can email a PDF of this post to yourself or a friend or you can download a PDF of this post. If I had a magic wand, every blog I read would have the Eco-Safe plugin installed.

© 2002-2008, Suzanne Bird-Harris. vAssistant Services

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