In this day and age we often live our lives through our phone or tablet. They are small and portable, making it the best option to not only keep all of our appointments in one place, but also to communicate through email and other methods.

But if you were to lose your phone or just put it down and it got taken, would you fear your personal information getting stolen? There are ways to secure your mobile so you don’t have to worry about what happens if your device gets into the wrong hands.

1. Use a Pin or Password

Preventing someone from being able to get into your device will stop most people from gaining access to your information. All phones have the option of a lock screen and while it might seem inconvenient to have to put in that code on your device all the time, the thought of losing all of that information or having it get into the wrong hands is too great to not lock up your phone. Use a good combination of numbers that cannot be easily guessed. It might be a good idea to change the passcode frequently as well.

2. Be Careful Which Apps You Use

You should only use trusted apps. Bad apps can be loaded with malware which get into your system and can steal your information. Using major app stores like Google Play or Apple iTunes lowers your risk of downloading a bad app. This isn’t as big of an issue for Apple or Microsoft users, but Android users should be careful to only use Google Play to download apps.

Still check the reviews before downloading something even from these trusted app stores. While it’s safer through them, there can still be malicious apps even there. So read those reviews.

3. Stop Advertisers from Tracking You

Your provider might be allowing advertisers to track you. You can go to settings on your phone and adjust this so your information is not getting in the hands of advertisers.

4. Have Remote Location and Wiping on Your Device

If your phone is lost or stolen, you can track your phone with the remote location device. You can also wipe out sensitive information from your phone or device so you don’t have to worry about it getting into the wrong hands.

5. Be Careful on Public Wi-Fi

Being careful on public Wi-Fi is a great way to not use up your data, but the main problem with public Wi-Fi is that it allows your data to be available to anyone. So try to do banking while at home or if you can’t, then use your financial institution’s app. Or you can use an encryption service.

6. Use Online Security Software

You use it on your personal computer, so why wouldn’t you use it on your mobile devices? They are after all just handheld computers. So check with your favorite security software company to see what they have to offer for mobile devices.

7. Wipe Old Gadgets Clean

When it’s time for an upgrade, make sure you personally take care of wiping your device before selling or giving it away. You need to wipe the internal memory too, because just deleting apps can be restored by someone who’s tech savvy.

Keeping your mobile device safe is just as important as protecting your home computer. None of this is hard to do and you don’t need to be computer savvy to do it. You can always speak with your mobile provider about how to set your mobile device up and keep it safe.

When it comes to planning your launch, you need to think about how and where you are going to announce your product, you need to think about the stages that will lead up to your product launch. You should now have a time-frame which will be informed by the things you need to do during your launch.We’re using ‘prep and pick-up’ remember, which means you want to work on your marketing materials before your announcement. So what precisely are these materials? And what are these key milestones?

Here are some to think about:

Strategies, Materials and Milestones to Prepare for Your Launch

Write a Press Release

Writing a press release and sending it out to multiple news outlets is right off the bat a great way to start generating a buzz for your product. News stories are great because they’re essentially free advertising for your product, and as long as your idea is interesting/of interest to their readers, then most editors will be happy to cover you. The best way to get coverage like this is to send your press release early to one big news source in your industry and none of the others.

The reason for this is that all publications love exclusives, and by doing this you will be more likely to headline. At the same time though, once you get covered there you’ll find that you start to get more coverage from the other magazines and websites that follow suit so as not to get left behind. Don’t forget to contact print sources even if you’re trying to promote an online product or service, these are a great way to reach a wide audience and often there is less competition here.

The other crucial thing to do, is to tell a story. This is the fundamental truth of a press release that is missed by a huge proportion of marketers and creators. Publications, websites and writers are not interested in helping you make money. Their job is not to provide you with marketing. Their job is to provide their audience with an exciting and interesting story so that they keep coming back and keep reading. If your story is ‘Man sells ebook for regular price’ then you’re going to get ignored. Likewise, don’t clutch at straws trying to make your boring story sound original or exciting.

I used to work at a magazine and getting clearly promotional ‘press releases’ was one of the most frustrating things I had to deal with on a daily basis. It also made the companies responsible look very amateurish and not particularly clued in. Find the human interest in your launch or your product. That might be your personal story (how you started your business), or it might be the controversial, novel or exciting part of your book. Again, this is why you need something that is inherently interesting to build buzz.

Use Crowdsourcing

Using crowdsourcing is a great way to get your product noticed and to get help in the funding or formation of ideas. With a site like Kickstarter for instance you can get funding for your project and essentially this amounts to a lot of pre-orders and a great way to test the market reception. Other companies meanwhile have used crowdsourcing for ideas and to ask their market what they want – for instance the company ‘Razer’ recently unveiled the design for a new gaming tablet on Facebook and opted only to make it if it received enough likes.

Such stunts not only raise awareness and are undoubtedly going to be picked up by various news sources, but also give the companies involved a good indicator as to whether or not their concept has a potential audience or if they’re just spinning their wheels. Social media is a massive asset for you to use and if your audience feels as though they were involved in the creation of the end product, they’re going to end up much more excited for it.

This is one more reason that crowdfunding sites work so well. You could even include the names of the people who ‘helped’ in your ‘Special Thanks’ section. This will build huge amounts of brand loyalty and they may even be moved to help you promote the product as a result.

Hold a Conference or Launch Event

Holding an event is a great way to launch any new business venture. This will automatically be a glamorous and glitzy occasion which will help to build anticipation and excitement for what you’re about to announce. At the same time, you can invite the press to your event and they will likely be excited to come seeing it as a great day away from the office but also a great opportunity for a story.

With an event you can then get everyone into a merry mood by having the alcohol and food flow and this will make the audience of course more receptive to whatever you unveil. Reality check though: your press conference is not likely to be anywhere near as exciting or as glamorous as those in big industries. You need to know your limitations and work with what you have.

If you can’t create a big event to launch your product that will get covered by big media outlets, then instead, you can launch an online event (a Webinar for example), or you could launch something small and then stream it using video streaming software. You can even just report on your launch event and show pictures and things of you and a few friends in suits. This helps to give your product more authority and prestige and makes it seem even more premium and exclusive.

Leak Information

Businesses can learn an awful lot from the marketing strategies of Hollywood when they’re launching a new film franchise – small images and teaser trailers as well as ‘leaked’ details can be a perfect way to whet the appetite of the general public/industry and if it can get some rumors and speculation circling then this will be great for building excitement and getting people ready for what you’re going to announce.

We’ve likewise already touched on the way that Apple and other OEMs will release rumors regarding the specs and details of their new hardware prior to the official announcements. Again, anything that can get people talking is a very good thing.

Stage a Viral Event

If you want to draw a lot of attention to your business, then sometimes just doing something newsworthy is the easiest way, from having people in an airport sing to passengers as they arrive to filling a portion of a city with bubbles and seeing how people react. The more you can get people to cover it the better, and if it goes viral then that’s even better.

Create a Brand

Creating a brand is a very important part of any marketing process. Your brand is what’s going to make your product seem like more than the sum of its parts and it’s what is going to bring everything together. It’s important that your website or blog has a strong brand too. This is what will allow you to build a big following of genuine fans rather than merely customers. To go back to Apple, think how important that brand loyalty is for the success of the business and specifically the hype and buzz they’re able to generate.

But you can also have a brand for the product itself. Think of this like the difference between Microsoft and Xbox. Microsoft is one brand and Xbox is another. Imagine if they had just sold the Xbox as a gaming PC – would it have been anywhere near as successful or big? Design a logo, build your brand and make sure you have something that people can get excited for.

Sponsorship or Influencer Marketing

Sponsoring a big event or a sports team when it’s getting a lot of media focus is a great way to bring in some attention and to ride on the success of whatever the occasion or brand you are sponsoring is. Try to use this method to create positive associations as well as to get more eyes on your product. For most online marketers though, sponsorship is going to mean working through influencer marketers.

If you can get someone to talk about your book to their huge YouTube following then this can gain you an amazing amount of buzz.Why not identify some of the key influencers in your niche on YouTube or Instagram and then give them a free beta-copy of your ebook or course to get a review? Or – to go the more traditional sponsorship route – just pay for

Competitions and Giveaways

People love getting stuff for free, and the media loves reporting on these opportunities. By offering discounts and free gifts you can get a lot of attention on you when you need it and get millions of people wanting your prize and then being disappointed if they don’t win.

That disappointment is a good thing though because now they’ll have all the more motivation to go out and buy your exciting new product the old-fashioned way! If this isn’t your first product launch, then you can give away previous products as a way to demonstrate the quality and value you’re able to provide and to get people wanting more.

Beta Tests

Letting some people use something and not others is a brilliant way to increase desirability because we all want what we can’t have. Make your service or product exclusive, at least to begin with, and word will rapidly spread. This works particularly well for apps and software but you can equally provide sneak peaks for books, courses and more.

Staggered Launch

Another way to generate excitement and to get people talking is to stagger your launch. For example, you could give away the first chapter of your ebook after the first week. Or you can keep your launch running long into the future by releasing limited slots or downloads every few months.

Building a Mailing List

Building your mailing list is a very important part of the process and this should happen pre-launch and even pre-pre-launch.

Like the sounds of selling a digital product but don’t like the sounds of building a landing page and advertising? Then Kindle publishing might be for you! Or how about creating your own mobile app?

Introducing Kindle Publishing

The Kindle is of course the gadget from Amazon that allows people to download ePub format books and then read them on the go. It uses an e-ink display to minimize eyestrain and has a permanent, free connection to Amazon. The great news is that anyone can create a book and start selling it on Kindle. The even better news is that you can do this simply by taking your PDF or Word Doc and uploading it. It costs nothing and it requires absolutely no technical skill.

What Kindle provides though is a platform for selling your products and a way to reach a massive captive audience. People will be browsing Amazon’s store for books all the time and being in that store makes it incredibly simple for people to discover your content, buy it and download it. That means you don’t need to create your own sales page, you don’t need to create your own checkout process and you don’t need to create your own marketing plan. In this case, the Kindle Store is your route to market!

How to Make a Book That Will Sell

As with other forms of selling digital products, selling on Kindle means that you don’t have any overheads and you can sell as many books as you like without having to worry about printing costs, storage or delivery. That means this is another great ‘set and forget’ form of business – but of course you do need to invest a little time and/or money upfront in order to create the book in the first place.

To make your book, you can either write it yourself, or you can hire someone to write it for you. It does need to be good. Not only because that’s the moral thing to do, but also because readers can read excerpts of books before choosing to buy them or not. What’s more is that a good book will have lots of high star ratings and this will help it to rank higher.

Try to think of the Kindle Store/Amazon Store like a search engine. To get to the top of the search results, your book needs to choose the right niche that isn’t too crowded but that does get a lot of hits. At the same time, it needs to be designed with an outstanding cover and the name/description should have keywords in them that people are going to search for.

Think about what’s hot right now, what’s up and coming and what the world needs more of. Think about how you can anticipate an upcoming trend and make a splash with a great book before anyone else does! Again, if you make a book on ‘Building Muscle’, you are going to have an almost impossible task rising to the top of the heap. Conversely though, if you write a book on ‘Building Muscle for Students’, then it might be a little easier.

Especially if you can combine that title and niche with a great cover image, a great sales pitch in the description and some good reviews. Try dropping your price occasionally too to help your product climb up the ladder by getting plenty of downloads! The great thing is that even if you only make a few sales a week of your book, there’s nothing to stop you making hundreds of books over the course of a couple of years. A few sales of hundreds of books is going to mean a lot of money! And especially seeing as one or two of them is bound to take off.

Creating and Selling a Mobile App

Or you can create and sell a mobile app. Once again, this will allow you to create a steady income stream without any overheads and this can sustain you for a long time to come. The mistake so many people make here is to try and change the world with ‘the next Facebook’ or some other life-changing app. The most successful apps often aren’t the ones that aim to change people’s lives though but rather the throwaway games or the handy tools.

Again, it’s about knowing what’s people right now and what people will search for.Try and make an app that has a social element, or that requires the involvement of third parties, or that is highly technical and you have given yourself an almost impossible up-hill struggle.

But if you try and make an app that is simple to make and has a single purpose, you’ll be able to do it in a few weeks and start making a small amount of income.Use the ‘fail fast’ approach – that means building things quickly to see if they’re profitable, rather than spending months and years on a project that might never take off! Of course there are plenty of tolls that can help you with the code (Basic4Android, Unity) or you can hire someone to do that for you.

Making money from a mobile app is one of the most exciting passive income business models there is. With this strategy, you can sit back and watch as the money roles in as users download your app. What’s even better, is that you get the sense of satisfaction that comes from knowing it was a program you built from hand that helped you to
start earning that money! It’s possible to make a lot of money from an app too!

But you wouldn’t be the first person to have an idea for an app. The problem is that an awful lot of people don’t know how to go about capitalizing on that idea and making it into something that will actually make money. Read on and let’s take a look at some of the best methods and strategies for profiting from a mobile app.

The Challenge

The first thing to do is to make sure that your app idea is relatively simple. This is something that a lot of people get wrong: ask what their big app idea is and they’ll normally tell you it has something to do with a social network that
will change the way people do [insert everyday task here].

Often hey won’t tell you what the idea entails (in case someone steals it!) and they’ll spend months and months working on it.This is almost doomed to failure. If you have never released a successful app before then why would you make your first one something that involves so much work and that is so complex?

Keep it Simple Stupid!

A far better strategy is to release something very simple – this could be something as straightforward as an app that shares information (perhaps a collection of essays on fitness?) or maybe a very simple game.This will give you the opportunity to learn the ropes, to see what it’s like to sell an app and crucially to avoid investing huge amounts of time into something that ultimately isn’t a hit.

Use the ‘fail fast’ method by creating lots of MVPs and then developing the ones that turn out to be successful! As long as you choose the right niche, it will sell/get downloaded!

The other reason to make something simple, is that it will allow you to avoid learning to code in Java – simple apps can be built with straightforward app creation tools.

Charge!

Finally, note that the best way to make money from an app is often to charge for it.Yes, display ads can make money but only if your users click on them in huge numbers. This means you need a gigantic number of active, regular users who are engaged with your app every day to make a profit.

Conversely, if your app looks very appealing and only costs a dollar or so, you’ll find you can entice people to make a lot of impulse downloads. Get 50 downloads a day and you’re earning a decent amount extra – and remember this can be across a large number of apps!

You know what kind of travel you want to do, you have your online work set up and you have the tools and skills you need to work on the road. Are you ready to go yet? Not quite I’m afraid! You still need to sort out the legality of your travel, the finances and your travel kit! But don’t worry, I’m going to walk you through it…

The reality is that you’re going to find you have no problem a lot of the time. And that you really struggle every now and then! On my own travels, I have worked outdoors on my phone with my folding keyboard in the rain and I’ve begged receptionists in hotels to send files from my SD cards. These things happen but actually, that’s part of the fun of being a digital nomad!

And you will be very surprised some of the places you can find free WiFi! You’ll struggle in London unless you can find a library or coffee shop (try huddling in the doorway!) but up a mountain in Croatia with not a sign of life nearby? No problem! (This is not a random example but rather something I actually experienced when working in Krka national park! Beautiful waterfalls there and definitely worth checking out…)

Your Travel Kit Bag

First of all, you’ll need to bring a lot more than just items that you can use to get work done. Remember, the point of this trip is to have a good time – not just to work! So you need to bring things that will make the trip as comfortable as possible, as well.

Some important considerations include:

Your Bag

Of course the bag itself is going to be one of the most important things you can bring with you as a digital nomad! Specifically, you are going to want a backpack and this should be one that you can use to store lots of things while staying comfortable. Look for breathable meshes on the back, look for padded straps and look for waist belts. This will all help when you’re trekking up a mountain or across a dessert!

The bag should also have plenty of pockets, including concealed pockets. I personally take two bags, one of which is actually a ‘chest bag’ that is intended for use by anglers. The benefit of this is that I can keep important documents where I can see them and even fit in a small 8” computer. Yet you’ll find that airlines don’t count this as an additional item of hand-luggage win!

Towel

You’ll get wet from time to time and you’ll need to dry off. What’s more, is that your things will get wet and you’ll want to wipe rain water off of seats. For these jobs, I recommend a microfiber towel. This is a towel made from a microfiber material that can be rolled very small and even fitted into a pocket. It dries in a matter of minutes and in short, it is a LOT easier to bring with you than a full sized, sopping wet towel.

Clothes

When packing clothes, it’s important think ‘small, light and versatile’. Create a capsule wardrobe so that every item can be worn with every other item without looking awful and choose things that ideally don’t need to be ironed. It is possible to get non-iron shirts from companies like Mizzen and Main and these look brilliant even when they’ve been rolled into a ball. And rolling your shirts into a ball is a great tip – it takes up much less space that way!

Kindle

A Kindle is an incredibly useful gadget to take with you on holiday that will give you infinite reading material while taking up barely any space. The best part is that if you get a generation 1 or 2 Kindle, then you’ll also get an experimental browser with free 3G coverage all around the world! How is that for a digital nomad secret?

Documents and Practical Considerations

When you go on holiday, there are a few things you need to consider: visas, documents and travel insurance for example. So it only stands to follow that when you go travelling for an indefinite time period, there is far more to sort out. And doing this before you leave – getting all your ducks in a row – is going to help you to reduce stress and avoid problems while you’re on the road!

Follow this check-list to get everything straight:

Travel Insurance

If you’re travelling abroad, then you should always take out travel insurance. You’ll want something fairly comprehensive that will allow you to hop continents, engage in sports and other activities and cover the cost of your belongings. The good news is that it’s easy these days to get travel insurance online and on your mobile – and many of these apps will let you update your policy as you travel to adapt to your changing requirements!

Bills and Post

If you’re going to be away from your home for 3 months or more, then you need to make sure that your post isn’t going to pile up. Not only will this make it apparent that you’re away but it will also mean that you might miss an important bill. Make sure that you set up forwarding on your address and have your mail sent to a good friend or your parents.

Let them open those letters and they can update you on anything important. Meanwhile, you can ask many service providers and banks to send their statements and bills digitally. This saves paper and makes life easier for you. Of course you should also cancel magazine subscriptions, broadband, cable TV and anything else that you’re not going to need!

Legalities

If you’re spending more than a few months in any country, then you might need a visa. In fact, you’re likely to need a visa even to enter some countries. And what’s more, is that you need to check with your own local law as to whether there’s a maximum time you can remain out of the country (in which case you might need to make temporary return visits).

You’ll need to find out if you need to pay council tax in different countries, whether you’re allowed to get jobs abroad and more. All of this is important to research before you set sail. There are few things more stressful than being on a plane only to hear an announcement that you need a visa to enter the country that you don’t have!

Phone

As mentioned already, it’s important to ensure that you’ll have phone coverage abroad. Speak with your mobile provider and ask what their best options are for people who travel a lot. Data roaming and having a lot of data is particularly important so you can tether to your mobile when you need to. You may also want to forward calls to your home to your mobile!

House Care

If you’re leaving a house empty, then consider discussing with a friend or family member if they would be willing to come in and look after your plants occasionally, or perhaps turn the lights on to make it look like someone is home!
Another tip is to consider setting up a remote digital camera in your home so that you can check on it from abroad. This is a great way to get peace of mind when you’re worrying!

Your Travel Documents Pack

If you’re going abroad then there will almost always be a plethora of different documents you need to bring with you. That will not only mean your passport (which you need to ensure is up-to-date) but it will also mean your boarding pass, your hotel confirmation, any maps that you need etc.

Print all this information out, make multiple copies and then stick them in your various bags to bring with you. Print more information than you need and make sure you have hard copies as well as digital in case your phone fails you.

What is Bing?

Bing is nothing more than Microsoft’s proprietary search engine. It was formerly known as the “windows live search” service, and later as the “live search” engine. It has been integrated into windows services since the MSN days, so it is more than likely that you have used it at some point.

Bing is a search engine just like Google. Despite not being as popular as the latter, it still accounts for more than 20% of web searches currently made in the US. It is integrated into Windows operating systems, and offers a number of attractive features including:

• Advanced multimedia searches
• Sub links on search result URLs
• Mathematical calculations, rate conversions and computational calculations can be made on the Bing platform, directly from the Bing search bar
• Integration with the Oxford dictionary to make finding definitions easier

The Bing search engine also allows users to scour the web for images, videos and news, while also giving them access to Windows tools such as “Office” and “Outlook”.

Bing Benefits for Businesses

The Bing search engine has quite a good list of benefits for business, especially when it comes to helping businesses acquire a wider reach on the internet which makes their products, apps and services easier to find.

Don’t limit yourself to Google if you also want to:

• Get more web based traffic. Send your business’ website to the Bing search engine to get more visibility, more leads and more sales.
• Give more detailed data about your business to your potential clients through all types of devices.
• Reach that 30% of people that don’t use Google as their search engine of choice
• It offers a very robust advertising platform that will further help you and your business reach that elusive 30% of consumers.

Bing Shocking Facts

• Some studies have been made to compare how Bing and Google measure against each other and have found that Bing gives better and more specific results for the majority of search queries used in these studies
• It is said that the feature that launched Bing to stardom was its daily changing background, which showcases a photograph of landmark landscapes and buildings around the world
• The Bing search engine indexes over 2 billion Facebook updates and half a billion tweets on a daily basis
• The Bing search engine powers the Yahoo! search engine, which means that when you use Yahoo’s engine, you are basically using Bing
• Bing incorporates Facebook data in its algorithm as a source of social media input

What are Bing Ads All about?

Much in the same way that Bing is Microsoft’s answer to the wildly popular Google search engine, Bing Ads is the company’s answer to AdWords, the industry leading pay per click advertising platform for those wanting to advertise to people using the Google network.

This time around, ads will be served to people using Bing, and advertising material will be shown to consumers doing their searches in the Bing search network. Let’s take a deeper look at this magnificent online advertising service.

What are Bing Ads?

Bing ads are pay-per-click ads displayed in the Bing search network. These ads work under the same pay-per-click system employed by Bing’s competitor, Google AdWords. Bing ads will show a variety of ads to people according to demographic data specified by the advertiser.

The success of a Bing Ads marketing campaign will depend greatly on two factors: how much money do advertisers put on their bids, and the advertisement’s click through rate, or the number of times users being served the ads click on them. This determines how frequently ads are shown in the network.

The bid placed by advertisers is nothing more than the max amount that they are willing to pay for the placement of their ads. Ads from one advertiser will not show in certain places when another advertiser outbids them with a higher amount for the same place.

Bing Ads Benefits for Businesses

Any business looking to grow online needs to adequately run a display advertising program. Without the exposure provided by paid advertising, a business will inevitably get lost in the sea of businesses that have an established presence online.

Bing Ads offer the following benefits to businesses all around the world:

• Bing Ads can reach customers across all devices, no matter if they are looking for your products or services at home, at work or on the go!
• Bing Ads will help you go local or global by way of millions of unique searches on the Bing network. Bing provides customers specific information at the national, regional and local level
• If you are already running a successful ad campaign on Google AdWords, you can easily import it from there to your Bing Ads account without having to create it from scratch!
• Signing up to the service is free and you can start advertising with any budget
• Pay only for clicks, nothing else!

Bing Ads Shocking Facts

• Bing Ads have a reach of 6 billion monthly searches on the network
• Local, travel, shopping and health related searches account for up to 40% of search queries, which gives an advantage to businesses in those industries
• Searchers on the Bing network are likely to spend 21.5% more than the average web searcher and 0.76% more than searchers on Google
• 58% of searchers on the Bing network are female, which impacts ad campaigns differently when compared to the Google network, where 45% of searchers are female
• The demographic available to target with Bing Ads is older, has achieved a higher education and earns a higher income than the demographics than you can target on the Google network (source)

Amazon aStores are a great and easy way to manage your Amazon affiliate business, because they allow you to create an amazing ecommerce website mock-up within your own Amazon affiliate website. You don’t even need to know how to code, because you can simply create an aStore with a few clicks with your Amazon associates central account!

In this article, we will show you an easy way to integrate an aStore into a Facebook page. Why would you like to integrate an aStore into a Facebook fan page if you already have an Amazon affiliate website?

Well, here’s a list of the benefits of doing so.

• You can use your Facebook fan page to promote your affiliate website while giving Amazon customers a simpler way to buy what they want without having to leave your Facebook page
• Your visitors will be more likely to make “impulse purchases,” because all the items that you are promoting in your aStore are listed in one single block of items. Ready to buy customers can simply scroll down your inventory while adding anything they fancy to their carts, all without leaving your Facebook page!
• You’ll be able to score a lot more affiliate sales, because you’ll satisfy two immediate needs: online shopping and social media usage!

In this article, you’ll learn how to integrate your aStore into your Facebook page step by step, the easy way. Please, follow the on screen walkthrough to have yours ready in no time!

Before you get started, it is important that you have the following ready.

• A Facebook fan page for your affiliate website
• An Amazon associates account
• You’ll need the following URL copied to the clipboard and have it ready: http://apps.facebook.com/static_html_plus/

For the purposes of this article, and because you have made it this far into the training, we will assume that you already have a Facebook fan page for your affiliate website and an Amazon associate account, as well as an aStore built. We also recommend you are logged into Facebook and your Amazon associates account on separate tabs in the same browser just in case.

If you have not created an aStore for your affiliate website yet, just head to your Amazon associates account, go to the “product linking” tab and click on “aStore.” On the following screen, click on “build an aStore now” to create and personalize your own aStore with a few clicks of your mouse.

You’ll go back to your Amazon associates account in a couple of minutes after you complete the actual first step in the process. Copy the “http://apps.facebook.com/static_html_plus/” from the clipboard and paste it on the tab where you are logged into Facebook.

Next, click on the “Add static HTML to a page” button. Click on the “Facebook pages” drop down style menu to select the Facebook page, which is where you’ll be embedding your aStore. Then, click on the “add page tab” button to continue.

Right after the installation is completed, you’ll be redirected to a new “welcome” section in your fan page. This is where your integrated aStore will be featured. To start embedding it, simply click on “set up tab”.
Scroll down and delete the text in the “index.html” field, then go back to your Amazon associates account to get your aStore’s code. Go to the “product linking” tab and click on “aStore”.

Under “manage your aStores”, you’ll find an info box with your aStore’s info. Click on “edit”.  Now, click the “continue” button without actually editing anything until you reach the “finish and get link” button. In the page that loads, check the “embed my store using an inline frame” and copy the code in the box below.

Go back to the app control panel you were in before, after you copy this code to paste it into the “index.html” field. You’ll be shown a warning message. To not go into further detail, you’ll just need to make some minor changes in the code that you just pasted:

• Add an “s” to the “http” part to make it “https” in order to make it safe for security checks made by the browser
• Change the “width” value to “815px” and the “height” value to “1200px”
• Change the “scrolling” value to “yes”

Now your code has been optimized for Facebook. Scroll up and click on “save & publish”. Go back to your Facebook page and click on “welcome”. As you can see, your aStore is now embedded into your fan page. To finalize, we recommend that you personalize this tab according to your aStore set up.

To do so, simply click on the “settings” button on the upper right hand corner of your Facebook page. Look at the menu on the left and click on “apps”. Now click on “edit settings” under “Static HTML: iframe tabs”.

Here you’ll be able to edit the default tab name and to add a personalized image to it. Enter a new name for your tab and a new image, as well. When you are done, save and click “ok”. Now your Facebook aStore is up to date and ready to roll!

While there are some enormous benefits to starting an ecommerce website, there may be even more benefits to doing it with the Shopify platform. In fact, many of the risks and the potential problems mentioned in this introduction that come with having your own e-store are minimized or eliminated thanks to the Shopify platform.

Whether or not you start an ecommerce business is up to you, but if you decide you are going to, you definitely need to do it using the Shopify platform. Here are just a few reasons.

1.  Your store design costs normally would be thousands of dollars, for getting a website designer that not only has the skills to create a great looking website, but also to program all of the ecommerce functions you need including security. But with Shopify, there is no huge investment of thousands of dollars. You just pay one of four tiers of pricing and you get the perfect ecommerce website.
2. You get the benefit of the entire Shopify team. You aren’t just getting a website template with Shopify, you are getting a ready-made store that has already had all of the bugs worked out and has been re-designed and re-worked so that it functions perfectly and has just about every feature that you could possibly want.
3. The platform is so intuitive that you can start building your store right after logging in. You might have to look at the help pages to use some of the more advanced features but for adding products and customizing design as well as other basics, you can start doing it right away with almost no learning curve.
4. You have some incredible security. By law, an ecommerce website has to take certain steps to protect a customer’s financial information, but you don’t just get sufficient security with Shopify, you get some of the most highly rated security features of any ecommerce platform on the market today. You don’t have to worry about programming security protocols or making sure that your site is protected on all sides from thieves who want your customer’s credit card numbers. Shopify does all the work for you.
5. Shopify is designed to help you reach your SEO potential. If you were to pay a designer for a custom ecommerce site you would spend thousands of dollars or perhaps even tens of thousands of dollars and you wouldn’t get the features that you get with Shopify. One of those features is their search engine optimization. With Shopify, your e-store has the best chance possible to rank high in the search engines and bring you lots of organic traffic.
6. You get analytics that tell you exactly what is going on. With Shopify, you can see exactly where your customers are coming from, what keywords they are using to reach your site and where they go once they get there, not to mention how long they stay. All of this information has one primary purpose – to allow you to tweak your Shopify site and your marketing and promotion efforts to get as many people coming to your site as possible and then getting them to stay there once they arrive. You still have to offer great products, but Shopify helps you market your site much more effectively and gets customers to show up, which is half the battle when it comes to ecommerce.
7. Your site is already optimized for mobile and will continue to be optimized in the future. With Shopify, you get a responsive website that will work with any mobile device and as this quickly becomes the primary way that people shop, your ecommerce website is only going to get better, as the engineers behind the platform ensure that you always keep up with the technology.
8. You get hosting with your site. Shopify has an advantage that many ecommerce platforms do not share – your site is hosted by them, and your payment gateway and other shopping cart features are already taken care of. Not only does this save you money since you don’t have to pay for hosting, you also will always have enough bandwidth to support your traffic and of course, you get security with the hosting that is unrivaled.
9. Shopify is extremely reliable. Shopify didn’t get to their spot as the number one ecommerce platform by accident. They are so popular and so widely used because of how reliable the platform is. When your store begins to get more traffic, you will lose money for every second or minute that your site id own. Using Shopify minimizes the chances of this as much as possible.
10. Shopify has numerous apps created for your use. The Shopify app store has some talented designers creating programs that you can use to make your ecommerce store even better. You can customize the appearance of your site and do a great deal with Shopify but with the app store you can create an unstoppable force in the world of ecommerce.