eBook & Internet Publishing News
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We try to respond to emails as quickly as we can, and generally do so within a couple of business days. But, every so often we get a series of emails (or a phone call) from a customer or person who has been trying to contact us, and who says they are not getting a response. Typically, and understandably, the person is annoyed and frustrated because all they want is an answer to their question. The most difficult thing is that in these cases, we already have responded to their emails, but the person is not receiving our replies.

So what happened?

The most common cause is anti-spam software or filters. Anti-spam tools can be very helpful, but many of them, occasionally will place legitimate email into a spam folder. So check your spam folders!.

Another common problem is that the person has some sort of problem with their email that they are unaware of. Either their outgoing emails are not actually being sent but are disappearing into a black hole, or they are not receiving some or all incoming emails. A good (but not complete) check is to try exchanging email messages (sending and receiving) with a friend who uses a different ISP or email provider. It’s also a good idea to include alternate contact details in your emails if possible, and if you really think you are not getting replies to all your emails, trying signing up for a free account at Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail, and send another message from there.

Lastly, although we don’t use spam-filters, it is possible for us to miss a legitimate incoming email, or very rarely for technical problems to occur with email. So please always use an appropriate subject line in your emails, and if you don’t receive a reply to an email to us, please don’t be afraid to resend it.

We’ve summarized these and related issues in a box on this page, and we will be adding similar information to all our product web sites.

We have released a new version of CBRocket, our PHP script for facilitating the display of ClickBank affiliate links on your web site.

The new version is required because of some change’s in ClickBank’s site - the old version will not download the full marketplace. If you have the old version, a link to download the new version will appear in the admin log-in screen - or contact us if you have questions or need help.

We use the email addresses webmaster@ebookcompiler.com and webmaster@ans2000.com for incoming emails. In the last couple of days however, I noticed the volume of incoming email from customers has dropped off. At first I put it down to the good Summer weather, but today I started to wonder.

I did some tests this morning. All the test email that I sent to webmaster@ans2000.com seemed to arrive fine. However, email sent to webmaster@ebookcompiler.com seemed to be only intermittently arriving - or at least seemed to be delayed in arriving (I’m posting this only 1 hour after completing the tests, so I don’t know if the missing messages might arrive later — Update: 2 of the missing ones just did).

Now both these addresses are run from the same hosting company (admittedly on different servers), and both are actually email forwards. So the problem could be with the address, with the forward - or there may even be no problem at all except for a delay on the messages.

Anyway, after further investigation, I decided to change the forwarding location. And this seemed to resolve the problem for subsequent mesages.

Anyway, the upshot of this, is as follows: I’m not sure if we did miss/misplace any incoming email - but it’s possible that we might have missed some. If you sent us an email in the last few days and haven’t received a response, could you please resent it. Apologies for this.

CBRocket is our program that allows you to put a ClickBank search engine, as well as targeted ClickBank text ads on your web site.

We have just released CBRocket version 2.20. This upgrade fixes a minor bug (the display of the number of items retrieved from ClickBank was incorrect in the admin screen), and is also necessary because of some changes in ClickBank’s web site that were causing problems with retrieving items at all.

The upgrade is free for existing customers. Contact us if you need help.

Please Note: Although we have released an entire new version, if you want to upgrade from 2.10 quickly, you can simply replace the cfadmin.php and cfutil.inc.php files with the new versions of these files.

Piranha Feed is our script for Amazon.com associates (affiliates) who wish to quickly integrate many automatically updating product links in their sites. Among other things, it allows visitors to search Amazon without leaving your site, and also allows to put product links (which update automatically) into your web pages, by specifying a product category (e.g. “books” or “software”) and a keyword. An example of the latter would be if you said “books” and “sudoku”, your page could always include the latest Sudoku books… always up to date… of course you could pick appropriate search words/phrases not just for 1 page, but for lots and lots of different web pages (dozens, hundreds, thousands, or more).

As mentioned previously, Amazon have made some changes that have necessitated an upgrade to Piranha too. Fortunately upgrading to the new version is very quick and simple for you (we’ve done the heavy lifting), and you also get new functionality - like the ability to search on a whole load of additional product types such as unboxed videos, sporting goods, and jewelry.

For Piranha Feed, we normally provide free access to upgrades for 90 days from the date of purchase. If you fall into this category, you can get the upgrade at http://www.scriptrocket.com/piranha/upgrade.php.

We have also decided to provide free access to the latest version of Piranha Feed, to any customer who purchased on or after 1st September 2007 - provided you contact us before 1 July 2008. To request the upgrade please write to webmaster@ebookcompiler.com including both your Amazon Associate ID, and your ClickBank receipt number.

As regular readers know, Piranha Feed is our PHP script intended for webmasters who are members of Amazon.com’s associate (affiliate) program. The script allows visitors to search Amazon without leaving your site, and also for webmasters to incorporate automatically updating lists of Amazon products within their sites. Check out the demo and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what it does.

One of the nice things about Piranha Feed is that it only interfaces to Amazon using their documented programming interfaces (”APIs”) and thus doesn’t break when Amazon upgrade their site. Of course, if Amazon change their programming interfaces, an upgrade to Piranha Feed is necessary. This doesn’t happen frequently, but it can happen from time to time.

Just this situation has now arisen: Amazon have announced that they are phasing out ECS 3.0 (their older API) on March 31st 2008. This means that in order to continue to work, ECS 3.0 applications (including Piranha Feed) need to be modified to use the newer ECS 4.0 API.

We will shortly being releasing a new version of Piranha Feed that is compatible with ECS 4.0. I will make another post to this blog when it’s ready for download. And, I’m pleased to announce there will be some cool new features too!

Normally purchases of Piranha Feed include free access to any upgrades that we release for 90 days after the date of purchase. For this new version of Piranha Feed we will extend this - anybody who has purchased after September 1st 2007, will be able to get free upgrades to new versions through until the end of April 2008.

One other thing, the current price of Piranha Feed is US $39.95 (+VAT if you are in a European Union country). Even though we are adding some powerful and cool new features, I’m pleased to also announce that we’ll maintain that pricing for new customers at least for the immediate future (if and when we decide to raise the price, we will announce our plans on this blog, before they come into effect).

So look out for another blog posting coming soon, including

1. Migration instructions for the Piranha Feed upgrade
2. Details of new features in the Piranha Feed upgrade
3. How to get the best price for the new version

Derek Gehl of the Internet Marketing Center is giving away “Internet Millionaire’s Protege Bootcamp” DVDs, apparently normally priced at $297, for free (you only pay for shipping). The DVDs include 7 hours of professional business training.

As part of the deal, you also get free 30-day membership to his “Internet Entrepreneur Club” (if you continue with this after the 30 day trial you’ll be billed $97 per month). This includes includes a ‘live’ 60-minute tele-seminar with Derek each month, access to a private discussion forum where I’ll network with hundreds of other motivated online entrepreneurs, and the opportunity to ask unlimited questions of Derek’s personal team of Internet marketing specialists.

And, for an extra $2.95 (first month, it’s $17 per month if you decide to continue with it), you have the option to also get a subscription to “Secrets To Their Success” monthly online newsletter. If you choose this option, every month, you’ll get access to two detailed interviews with real people who are making $100,000… $250,000… $500,000… $1 million (or more!) with their own successful Internet businesses.

Hurry though, at the time of writing there are only 121 DVD packages left - and they’re expected to go fast!

Click here for more information

We have completed our price review of the products at ScriptRocket.com - our web site which offers a range of flexible PHP scripts for webmasters. Some changes have already been implemented, but others will be going through shortly:-

• Polls - Create your own web polls - is now priced at US $24.95^*
• Click/Counter Tracker - Invisibly count visitors to web pages or clicks on your advertising links - is now priced at US $24.95^*
• Feedback Form - Email form to get feedback from your visitors - is now priced at US $14.95^*
• CBRocket - our flexible search engine and text link advertising solution for ClickBank affiliates, is still available at the old price for now - US $34.95^* - but the price will be rising on approximately the 23rd January. Pleas e purchase on January 23rd if you wish to get it at the current price!
• All other prices, are unchanged for now, though of course we do reserve the right to make further changes. It’s worth pointing out that the Essential Scripts - collection of scripts which includes containing Top Site, Polls, Click/Counter Tracker and Feedback Form is now even better value than ever.

^* These prices don’t include VAT (Value Added Tax) which applies for European Union residents at their national rate.

ScriptRocket.com is our web site where we offer a number of powerful PHP scripts that you can use on your web site(s). These include:

• Piranha Feed - A script for quickly integrated automatically updated content from Amazon.com to your web pages. It also allows visitors to search Amazon without leaving your site. And all product links are tagged with your Amazon associate ID, allowing you to earn commissions from sales of these products.
• CBRocket - A ClickBank search engine for your site - it can also display context sensitive advertising links. With this script, the links are coded with your ClickBank nickname, allowing you to earn commissions from them.
• Top Site - start your own top sites list (other webmasters will send you traffic for free).
• Polls - Create your own web polls.
• Click/Counter Tracker - an invisible page counter and advertising tracking script.
• Feedback Form - Get feedback from your visitors
• Essential Scripts - A collection of scripts, at reduced price, containing Top Site, Polls, Click/Counter Tracker and Feedback Form.

Anyway, while don’t often raise our prices, consider this post as advanced warning that we do intend to make some price rises on most, perhaps all, of the ScriptRocket products in the very near future. The new prices will should come into effect some time on Tuesday January 15th 2008^*. In short, if you want to purchase any of these products at the current (cheaper) prices, please do so on or before Monday January 14th 2008.

^* Although this is the planned day for the price changes, there are a few technical issues that we need to deal with… it’s there is a very small outside chance that the implementation of the changes may take slightly longer than we expect. Don’t bank on it though!

According to the stats page in their resource area, we’ve been a member of the Internet Marketing Center’s affiliate program since February of 2000. Really.

I can’t say we’ve earned a fortune with them - but we have had a few commission checks. To be fair, the limited earnings that we have had are all our own fault^* - we’ve focused on other things, and not really been active in promoting them - just the odd banner ad on some of our company’s lower traffic web sites.

In any case, we’ve now posted a review of the Internet Marketing Center affiliate program for anybody’s who’s interested.

^* I should mention that there is a certain person that I know, who unlike us has generated a nice regular income using the Internet Marketing Center’s affiliate program. This person buys the products, writes reviews of the products, and then promotes those reviews at every conceivable opportunity. It wouldn’t be right for me to reveal the person’s name or website, but I can say that most of this person’s commissions are apparently earned from sales of the Internet Marketing Center’s flagship product, "The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet".