Duplicate content and minisite design

By AlexCercel · Comments (0)
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Is duplicate content a real problem in minisite design?

Ok, I see a lot of people talking about duplicate content.

First of all lets talk about what actually duplicate content is and most importantly what duplicate content is NOT.

Easier to put “duplicate content that is NOT similar content on two or more different websites”. Content is considered duplicated when the same content is found on the same site on two different pages.

In this blog post I will talk about duplicate content which is NOT on the same site, but on different sites

Just to support that I will give you an example: I created a blog, installed wordpress and set it to autoblog. Was basically a content minisite with no other form of content BUT duplicate content. Believe it or not, it was ranking HIGHER than the blogs/mini sites/websites it was dripping the content from. I even had blog owners asking me to remove the content from it (not because it was duplicate content < which was not, but because I was outranking them). Which I did as that minisite was created just for testing purposes.

 

That actual mini site had no links pointing to it nor any kind of marketing done to it.

Dumb luck?

Might be, but I don’t think so… I HAD to try it again. This time I did it with youtube videos. Yes, autoblogging again, on a different domain. Not sure about rankings BUT I do know the content gets indexed like crazy! Out of 89 posts so far, there’re 69 indexed already. That’s pretty good in my opinion…

 

Now, go think about the news sites, that all use the same text (include here even the websites that drip content from newspaper/magazines websites). Also think about content that’s syndicated. Is that duplicate content? I think not.

Minisite design - BlingCovers.com on WooRankA short story

So, why am I telling you about duplicate content and my experience with it?…

 

Well, I was checking out my blingcovers.com on WooRank. Was really happy I got a bigger score on that website, after doing some changes to my own minisite. By the way, this website is also good to check if you have duplicate content on your site but it only works for your meta tags (title, description, etc)

 

While being there I decided to go browse a bit on the “masters” so I can see what they do/did. Well…

 

Now, here’s an interesting fact about duplicate content

We all try to have original content on each and every page we have on our mini sites. But while browsing I got to WooRank.com Google’s page. Believe it or not mighty Google has duplicate content! In the meta tags!

Here’s a screenshot:

Google has duplicate content too!

 

Now, how come Google uses duplicate content and is ok and we all are so afraid of it?…

Here’s another interesting and funny fact:

Yeah, I know Google doesn’t have to rank or anything but still…

 

They use no meta tags of any kind and google doesn’t rank in top 10 (wasn’t curious to check more than 10 results) IN google for “search engine”. Isn’t THAT poor SEO? hahahaaha

HOWEVER, altho it uses duplicate content, the Google maps page ranks really well in google (search for “maps”). How come?…

 

So do YOU think duplicate content is THAT bad after all?

Hope you found some value in this post and please don’t be shy! Let me know your take on the subject of duplicate content.

 

Thanks,

Alex
“The Visual Individual”

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Categories : Minisite Design
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Designing a Minisite That Sells

By AlexCercel · Comments (0)
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

If you want to sell a product on the internet or build your list you may want to consider a minisite. A minisite is a type of website that is really designed to get people to do one action. That action may be buying your product or even opting into your mailing list.

Made To Sell Visitors Into Buyers

These sites are designed in a way to take the buyer directly from the top of the page to the buy now button in one steady flow.

With a normal website there are a lot of places to visit. There may be many choices of content to view. With a minisite the idea is to clear out the distractions and make it easier for the person to convert to an action. There is a specific way you should design you minisite to get the best conversions.

 

Important Factors Of A Great Minisite

Minisite Design

The first important thing about building a high converting minisite is creating the right imagery. Good minisite graphics can go a long way in making your site look more professional and giving the user an aesthetically pleasing experience. Minisites can contain simple or flashy graphics depending on your style. You should also consider adding a few graphics to the body of the content to break up the text a little bit.

Minisites usually also contain graphic headlines. These are headlines created with images and more eye catching text and effects. They are usually across the top of the site and designed to catch the reader’s attention right away. Many times your headline will ask a question of the reader or point out a problem they may have. This headline usually accounts for the 5 seconds you have to grab someone’s attention when they show up on your site.

Sales Copy

The Problem

Once you have decided on graphics and a basic design scheme for the site the next step is writing great text to convince the reader to buy your product or opt into your list. The text should first start by identifying a problem that the customer may have. So for example if you are selling an ebook on weight loss you would talk about overeating or the fact that someone doesn’t look the way they want to.

Solution And The Benefits Of Your Product

Once you have identified the problem with your sales letter the next step is to give the benefits of doing your action for the visitor. When you think about the benefits remember to relate back to the problem that you identified. This will give the reader the reassurance they need that your product will solve their problem.

Call To Action

Once you have done those things you need a strong call to action followed by a buy now button or opt in box. A minisite is very specifically designed to take the reader in one easy flow from the top of the page right to the action. Your text will be a very important part of making sure this happens like it is supposed to.

Video – Optional But Not Quite…

Some minisites also include a video. Although a video is not necessary it can be a very nice touch and really help you drive sales. Studies show that having a video on your minisite can improve your conversion rate so you may want to consider including one in your site. If you do include a video don’t set it to autoplay, this can startle people or be a problem for people browsing the internet at work. Let the user decide if they want to watch your video.

 

Another tip to create a higher conversion rate is to have multiple calls to actions on the page. Some people are sold more quickly than others. So have one call to action at the bottom of the page and one somewhere in the middle where it makes sense with your content.

Testing

Once your minisite is in designed and up it is time to start testing. After you have traffic that is coming in you can start to measure what little tweaks improve conversions. This can mean re-writing text, switching out graphics or the placement of your call to action.

 

A minisite in and of itself is designed to create high conversions all you have to do is drive traffic to it. They work great for digital products, physical products and list building.

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Categories : Minisite Design, Minisite Graphics
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Yoast – Best SEO Plugin?…

By AlexCercel · Comments (0)
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

No gonna write a lot about this, but after using All in One SEO, Platinum SEO, Builder SEO Plugin etc etc etc, I’ve come across Yoast’s SEO Plugin.

I highly recommend it especially because:

- can handle all the SEO for you (much like any other plugin)

- can rewrite titles PER PAGE (not many can do that)

- creates sitemaps! < important as it also saves you from using a different plugin just for that so it makes sense, atleast for me.

- edit .htaccess page from inside the admin area of the plugin

AND SOOOO MUCH MORE!!!!

Check it out: http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

 

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Backup Buddy

By AlexCercel · Comments (0)
Monday, January 9th, 2012

Backup Buddy – Do You Need It?

Wouldn’t it just suck waking up in the morning and finding out that your website has been hacked?  As you might already know it’s not a case of if you will ever get hacked but rather when.  It’s too easy to be complacent when it comes to this as web security isn’t always talked about and is often overlooked.  This is where the iThemes WordPress plugin Backup Buddy comes into role.

 

Backup Buddy

 

Not only is Backup Buddy a great plugin for peace of mind, but it’s also extremely easy to install and setup.  One great feature about Backup Buddy is that you can set it up to do automatic backups for you and these can be done hourly, daily, weekly, twice monthly or monthly.  Too often we know we should be taking backups of our site but all too often we just never make the time to actually do it.  As we add content to our sites, new plugins as well as customizing our theme, it’s too easy to forget about how much work has actually gone into getting your site to the place it is now.  Now, imagine losing it all?

Is Backup Buddy easy to use?

When creating a backup you can either do a database only backup or a full backup including all your files.  The database will include all your content such as pages and blog posts.  Including the files will include your theme and plugins.  Once this has been set you can decide where to send the backup, either to an email address, ftp to your hosting account or to your Amazon S3 account.

 

Just a note, in order for the automatic backup to work, you need to visit the site, which will prompt the backup buddy plugin to do the backup.

 

Often it’s not the backing up that can cause problems.  Those that do carry out backups, how many actually test to see how easy it is to reinstall the backups incase something goes wrong?  If you leave it until you have to reinstall a backup, instead of testing ahead of time, you have just wasted both time and effort.  Backup Buddy however makes it extremely easy to reinstall and is not just for tech geeks, they make it simple for anyone to create a back up and reinstall it.  If you do have any problems, iThemes, the brains behind Backup Buddy offer unrivalled support for all their customers, which is great for peace of mind.

Backup Buddy for Personal and Pro Users Alike

This plugin is also a huge bonus for WordPress web designers and those who flip websites as there is also a developers license.  It makes it so easy for you to completely move the entire site to your customers hosting very quickly and easily.  Not only that your customer now can use Backup Buddy to create their ongoing backups, adding extra value to your service.

 

Backup Buddy ReviewAs you can see Backup Buddy is definitely one to add to your list of must have WordPress plugins.  It’s worth the small investment just for having peace of mind, just incase anything goes wrong with your website.  If it ever does, Backup Buddy will have you back in business in no time, with very little time and money lost – Can’t beat that for value!

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Minisite Design On Wikipedia :: Part 1

By AlexCercel · Comments (1)
Sunday, January 8th, 2012

Minisite DesignThe short story

A while back I was surfing Wikipedia for minisite design and I came across a very slim page. It was about minisite design and layouts. SO I thought I should start adding to it as it was far from a good resource

Here’s the original article: Wiki About Minisites by Alex Cercel

Minisite Design.

Marketing minisites – layout and a bit of theory

Ok, so we’re going to talk a little about this whole idea of good mini site design, why and where is one of these needed.

 

First of all, let’s try a definition

A minisite (mini site) is a website targeted on a certain niche, narrowed down to promoting a single product, solution or opportunity that has a high commercial intent.

Ok, so from the above definition we can draw a few conclusions:

  • the name “minisite” is actually formed from “mini” and “site“. This says it all about the actual size of such a website. Small website, with content geared towards selling a product and not much information
  • it is targeted on certain markets. This allows for a better market research and it helps narrowing down on the actual buyers. Because of that you can always have better design and you can use targeted images and colors.
  • you would usually use a minisite for selling a product, a solution or an opportunity. That’s why this type of website came to life anyway, but today the minisite design stands more for minisite “kind of layout” rather than actual minisite design

The usual marketing minisite has a very short to medium lifespan but if marketed right it shall produce income for his owner. The level of income really depends on MANY aspects starting from niche research to actual traffic generating and up keeping (updates, relaunches, etc).

Minisites are for making money!

 

On such a mini site usually there are sold information products and software. In this category you will usually find sites that are one column layouts. In early ages of the internet they were usually only using text, but as marketing evolved they got more media friendly, using graphics, video and audio, such as:

  • graphical headlines. These can be images or css based. The main reason in using these is getting the attention of the visitor faster by building a better minisite design with more professional, friendlier or even funkier elements
  • audio messages to welcome the user. These are used to get a more interactive website, that welcomes the visitors. However an audio intro has always to be tested as sometimes it helps conversions sometimes it hurts them. Also you should also test if autoplay works better than “user click play”
  • video to present product features and more. Video sales letters, as they are also called, are something relatively new. They are used as video intro, so in combination with a text sales letter or by their own with only an order button bellow.
  • timed elements such as order buttons and PopUps

Ofcourse, a minisite has a bit different rules than usual websites have and that’s why minisite design also different from web design in general.

Minisite design is more geared on making sells and reaching marketing goals rather than spreading information or content.

Click Here to read about Minisite Design Layouts

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Categories : Minisite Design
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Elements Of Minisite Design

By AlexCercel · Comments (0)
Sunday, January 8th, 2012

If you sell products on the internet you have probably heard the term minisite. A minisite is designed to sell one specific product. The idea is that it is a natural flow from the first line right to the buy it now button. Designing a good minisite can seriously increase your revenue but only if you understand what elements a good minisite must have.

Is A Minisite Right For You?

The first criterion is making sure a minisite is the right approach for your marketing.

These sites work best for companies selling digital and physical products and those getting people to opt into a mailing list. You should only be selling one product on your minisite because the whole idea behind this style of site is to get them focused on and buying one product with no other distractions like a regular site would have.

 

Even if you have a large product line minisites can be a great way to promote individual products. Minisites are almost always used when it comes to selling digital products and ebooks. So once you are sure you are a good candidate for a minisite there are a few things you have to get right to really get the conversions you are looking for.

Minisite Design 101

The first is a good design. Usually a minisite is designed with a shell that has the content which includes your sales letter and call to action in the middle. In addition your designer will match up colors and fonts of the site so that it all looks good together. What your site looks like is the first impression that viewers will have of you. So spend some time building a minisite that looks good.

Minisite Design – Who’s to do it?

You will probably want to hire a minisite designer to design and build your site for you.

Unless you have strong graphic design and html skills you will probably get a better product by working with a professional. They can also help you determine what the best practices are to be sure you end up with a page that is as high converting as possible. This is one area where getting someone with experience can make the process much easier.

Content

Another extremely important element of your minisite is your content or text. The content of a minisite has to be very compelling. Your goal is after someone reads it they will be ready to purchase from your site. So like any good sales technique you will start by identifying the problem that your product solves.

 

Once you have identified the problem for the visitor show them how your product or service gives them all the tools they need to solve the problem. Listing your benefits in bullet points give your readers small manageable chunks of information to process at one time.

 

Once you have identified the problem and shown them how your product will help it is time to tell them to buy. Your call to action should be strong and tell them exactly what you want them to do. Use a specific command such as “Click the Button Below to Buy X Product.”

Keep Your Minisite Design Simple

You should add as few distractions as possible to your minisite. Distractions would be anything that could sidetrack them from the main goal of completing your action. If you are going to include links to blogs and social media sites do it at the bottom of the page to make sure they don’t lose focus on purchasing the product for sale. After you have made a sale you will get an opportunity to get people to opt into your list or fan you on Facebook through your order thank you page.

 

If you include all of these elements in your minisite design you are sure to end up with a page that converts like crazy once you start sending traffic to it. There is a reason that the minisite is the favorite amongst internet marketers that reason is because they are extremely effective sales tools. Getting a high quality minsite set up can really boost sales especially for digital products and downloads. Just remember to think of all the elements as just as important as the others. If you have a great design and terrible content or vice versa you will not find as much success with your site.

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Categories : Minisite Design, Minisite Graphics
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Wishlist Member

By AlexCercel · Comments (0)
Friday, January 6th, 2012

Wishlist Member is often the WordPress membership site plugin that comes to mind when being advised of the best plugin to use when setting up your membership site in WordPress.  This is for very good reason.  Wishlist has built itself a very good reputation for providing a robust and versatile membership software that can be used to build a multitude of membership models.

 

You may feel a little bit overwhelmed about the choice of membership sites you can build as well as with the wide variety of options available with WishList Member.  However, you can easily get started just by using the basic features.  Get used to using the software and discovering what it can do, then as you get more confident with it, add more features to your membership site and your members will love you for it!

 

One of the reasons building a membership site, or sites, is so popular is to create more regular income streams for your business.  Wishlist Member allows you to integrate a variety of popular shopping carts to take the payment for you, or you can use the integrated payment options which includes PayPal.

 

Wishlist Member has you covered!

Whether you want to provide a continuous membership site or a fixed continuity program, then Wishlist has it covered.  A fixed continuity program is usually between 3 to 6 months long.  The advantage of a fixed continuity program is that you create the content once and you don’t have to update or create continuous content after this period is over, although I’m sure your members would be extremely grateful if you did.  With a continuous model, you have to keep adding regular, fresh content.  This however, can easily be outsourced once your membership site is making money.  WishList Member gives you the opportunity to drip feed content at regular intervals, giving the impression that fresh content is being regularly added.

 

WishList Member – A Box Of Great Options

Another great feature of WishList Member is that you can to offer pay per view content.  This option can be great if you provide coaching, training or “how to” videos.  Also, another similar tactic is to offer teaser content, in that your visitor will only be able to see so much of the content and to read more they must become a member.  You can set their access up to give them a daily pass or any other type of membership in order to see the full content.  Leaving your visitors with a potential cliff hanger where they can only find out more by becoming a member is a great marketing technique.  Just make sure that you deliver quality information that will justify their decision to become a member.

 

WishList Member – Is it Worth It?

As you can see WishList Member is a great membership plugin that can help you get your membership site up in a day or two, depending on whether or not you have the content already created.  It’s a great way to get extra mileage out of your existing content.  They have nearly 23,000 customers already, so they must be doing something right so why not join them?

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WordPress Affiliate Platform

By AlexCercel · Comments (0)
Thursday, January 5th, 2012

One of the best ways to grow your online business is to create an affiliate program for your products.  Tips and Tricks HQ have come up with just the solution which is both easy to install and set up, as well as has the ability to be integrated with a number of different shopping carts, as well as their own.

WordPress Affiliate Platform allows you a variety of options on how to actually set up your affiliate program to fit your particular business model.  You have the option of paying an affiliate per lead or per sale at either a fixed amount or fixed percentage.  The per lead payment is often know as cpa (cost per action) and is very popular with affiliates as it’s easier to get paid this way.  You can also go into an individual affiliate account and manually adjust the settings.  This can be useful when doing joint ventures with other people as you may wish to give them a higher affiliate commission than everyone else.

Another option is to create a 2 tier affiliate program, this means that you can encourage your affiliates to recruit new affiliates into your affiliate program and growing your affiliate numbers faster.

No matter how you set up your affiliate program, it is extremely important to take care of your affiliates needs.  Make sure that you keep in regular contact with them, give them encouragement, as well as all the tools they need to maximise their earnings.  Afterall the more they earn, the more you earn!

One way to take care of their needs is to provide a full affiliate resources center for them.  There are two different types of affiliate resources you can provide for your affiliates within the WordPress Affiliate Platform, they are banners and content.  For the banners, they can be of any size, although the standard banner sizes work best, and plain text ads that can be directed to any of your sales pages.  For the content resources, you can add email copy, an autoresponder series, as well as articles to be used by your affiliates in promoting your products.

With this affiliate program you will be responsible for paying your affiliates directly and will cut out any third party commissions.  The easiest way to manage the payout of affiliates is through paypal mass pay.  There are a few ways to do this, either by affiliate commission balance, by affiliate commission balance by date, by date range with no minimum balance or by affiliate.  The choice is yours but it’s best to choose one method and stick to it.  Not to mention, once you pick a day to pay your affiliates each month, you should stick to that date also.  You want to build an affiliate program where your affiliates trust you and will recommend your affiliate program to others.

Although the license that comes with this plugin allows you to use it on an unlimited number of sites, it is useful to note that you can’t use it across your different sites.  What this means is that the affiliate program can only be used on the domain that it’s installed on, even if you have 10 different estores set up they will need to have separate affiliate programs.  One way to get round this is to have a central store where you sell all your products and encourage affiliates that want to promote more than one of your sites to sign up there.

Having an affiliate program can easily double your sales in just a short time, if you follow the advice above.  Why not install your own affiliate program on your site and see what having an affiliate program can do for your business.

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WordPress eStore

By AlexCercel · Comments (0)
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

WordPress eStore Review

There are many reasons why you may want to install a shopping cart feature to your website.  The WordPress eStore plugin by Tips and Tricks HQ offers a wide variety of shopping cart options as well as integrations with other software.  In order to take payment, all you need is either a PayPal business or 2Checkout account and you are ready to go.

Security features built in WordPress eStore

Apart from the usual selling of physical products, WordPress eStore also offers a secure way to sell downloadable products by encrypting each file before automatically delivering the order by email.  Another option you may consider is selling pay per view content, such as pre-recorded webinars.  You may also want to sell subscriptions to a service such as coaching or “product of the month” service you provide, and this is also catered for, as well as offering an introductory trial period to entice people to sign up.

 

As customers buy something the plugin integrates with Aweber, GetResponse, MailChimp and InfusionSoft so they are automatically added to your mailing list.  There are 2 settings that you can use for mailing list integration, the global settings which is to your main mailing list and there is also the option if someone buys a product, they will then also be signed up to the product mailing list too.

Setting up WordPress eStore

When setting up your WordPress eStore, if you have many products to sell, it is a good idea to sort them into categories before you start.  This is because when it becomes time to build your estore, the layout works using short codes.  This means that if you create a new page, called “training products” all you would need to do is add this short code to the page and as if by magic, when the page is published, all the products that you have available under the category training products will appear.  You don’t need to enter each product one at a time, making it quicker to create your online store.

 

There is well documented installation and usage instructions that come with the download.  In addition, there is also a support forum to get any questions or technical issues you may have regarding the plugin, answered.  Questions are usually answered within 24 hours, if not sooner.  As the plugin has been around for a few years, the support forums are a wealth of knowledge that you can explore, as someone else may have had similiar problems as yourself, which is usually easily solved.

 

If you are building an estore where there is more than one seller, then WordPress eStore allows you to set it up so that each product sale can be paid to a different paypal address.  Perhaps you charge for the listing or for renting space in your eStore and then any sales go directly to your seller.  This is much more preferable for your seller, getting instant payments.

 

Other sales strategies that you can implement by using WordPress eStore is the use of coupons and discount codes.  Also just like the infamous saying “would you like fries with that?” you can add code to your thank you page and offer an upsell, adding extra profits to your business.

 

There are sales statistics built into the plugin, which will tell you how many units of each product has been sold, number of refunds and total sales made in any time period.  However if you want to take it a step further, you can easily integrate the results with Google Analytics ecommerce settings, giving you a much more indepth analysis of your customers and sales.

 

All in all the WordPress eStore plugin is one of the best shopping cart solutions for WordPress and because it integrates with an affiliate plugin and a membership plugin, you have the tools to build a really profitable business.

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Popup Domination

By AlexCercel · Comments (0)
Monday, December 26th, 2011

Popup Domination – the ultimate popup plugin

Unfortunately most visitors to your website will not go out of their way to find your opt-in box and sign up to your mailing list.  You may have created the most valuable opt-in offer possible, set up your autoresponder sequence like a pro but unless you are getting people opting in, it can all be a bit of a let down.

Popup Domination – Simply built to get attention

One way to get your visitors attention is to put your opt-in offer so it’s right in their face so that they can’t miss it.  The best way to do this is by using a popup and that’s where Popup Domination comes in. Popup Domination is a WordPress plugin that is easily installed on your WordPress website and provides you with professional looking popups that you can customize with your sites colors.  Once activated, your opt-in box then appears in a lightbox popup in the middle of the visitors screen.  A lightbox is when the screen is blurred out in the background, and only the popup is in clear view on the screen.  The only action your visitor can take it is to fill in the opt-in box or close it.  The more appealing your opt-in offer, the more chance your visitor will choose to opt-in instead of just closing the popup.

 

For some visitors, having a popup appear as soon as they land on your site is very off-putting.  With Popup Domination you can delay the timing of the popup appearing, as well as setting it to only appear after a certain number of impressions for each visitor, when you know you’ve still got their interest.  Another option you have is to only have the popup appear on certain pages or posts, instead of every single one.

 

When a visitor leaves your website, chances are they may never be back.  That’s why it’s so important to capture the email addresses of as many visitors as possible so that you can keep communicating with them.  Popup Domination gives you the opportunity to set up an exit popup, with your opt-in offer on it which appears as soon as your visitor leaves your site.  Using the last chance to get them to opt-in, will also increase your visitor conversions.

 

Capturing these extra email addresses allows you to continue to market to them with the view that they will eventually buy either, your own products and services or through an affiliate link you are promoting.  If you take care of your mailing list then they should become repeat buyers and earn you an endless stream of income for many years to come.

There’re also many bonuses packed with Popup Domination

If you are like many of the marketers who also use html squeeze pages or mini sites to build their mailing list, then you’ll be interested in one of the bonuses that comes with Popup Domination.  It’s the standalone version of Popup Domination.  What this means is that you upload this version to your hosting account, add a small line of code into your page and get the same features as the WordPress version.  Try both versions and see your opt-ins increase, just like many of the other internet marketers who have installed Popup Domination before you!

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