Joomla Social Ad Targeting with JomSocial & Ad Agency

We get lots of suggestions from our customers for features and Joomla enhancements that they’d like to see. We try to act on those suggestions whenever possible.

We’ve now acted on the request that we see most often.

We’ve integrated  JomSocial with Ad Agency!

This revolutionary version of Ad Agency will help you take your advertising program to the next level — guaranteed!

Why JomSocial?

Let’s face it, since JomSocial came out, other community components for Joomla have been put to shame! JomSocial is comprehensive, powerful and its developers keep adding cool new features all the time. When it comes to Joomla and Social, JomSocial is the best solution around.

Target Any Ad Based on JomSocial Profile Info

• Want to show your ads only to women?
• Want to show your ads only to people with a college degree?
• Want to show your ads only to women over 30 with a college degree?

Easy! Simple! Done.

It’s called “Social Media Targeting.”

What is Social Media Targeting ?

Social Media Targeting lets you use all of the demographic data available on social media sites to shoot your ads directly to the people most likely to buy.

From Wikipedia:

Video: Social Targeting With Jom Social and Ad Agency

Click here to view the embedded video.

If Facebook Does it, So Should You

Ever notice how well the ads on Facebook match your interests? It’s creepy… like Facebook can read your mind.

Actually, it can read your profile.

Everyone on Facebook has a profile, and that profile is packed with valuable information. It let advertisers be very specific about who sees their ads. Google has nothing that comes close. AdWords? That’s so five years ago. Social ads are what it’s all about now. It’s the secret to successful advertising and it’s what’s made Mark Zuckerberg a very rich man.

It’s Great for You Because:

When you can convince your advertisers that they can target the very best leads, you’ll find it easier to sell your space and for a lot more money!

After all, would you rather pay $100 for 5,000 useless clicks or $200 for 200 clicks that might actually convert?

Advertisers don’t have to throw their hard earned cash on people who aren’t likely to buy their products

It’s Great for Advertisers Because:

They don’t have to throw their hard earned cash on people who aren’t likely to buy their products. They can be as specific as they want with their ad and target ONLY the people who are the most likely to turn into paying customers.

For example, when I advertise iJoomla.com on Facebook, I only show my ads to people who mention “Joomla.” I don’t want to pay for people to click on my ad unless they are using Joomla and may become customers.

Ad Targeting – The Secret of Your Advertising Program Success

If you want to sell advertising packages on your website, you need to offer content-targeted advertising. It’s the only way to be sure you’re monetizing your website in the most effective way possible.

Help Advertisers Choose You, Not Your Competition

To persuade prospective advertisers to advertise on YOUR site and not on your competitors’ sites, you have to convince them that their money will be well-spent.

You have to make them believe that they will get back the maximum amount of revenue from their investment.

Here’s the advice your advertisers are likely reading online:

As you can see, advertisers are being advised NOT to advertise on any site unless it allows them to target their ads — smart advice!

You have to convince advertisers that their money will be well-spent.

You Can Charge More for Targeted Ads!

Targeted ads get more response than generic ads. We’ve seen it again and again, and that value translates into higher prices.

You can charge 2-10 times more for targeted ads! Give your advertisers the ability to target their ads and your site will be much further down the road to serious financial success.

Seamless and Effective Integration

I know. You think integrating targeted ads is going to be a lot of work and the last thing you want is more work.

I get it. As an entrepreneur myself, I know you don’t want a bigger workload. So let me assure you that adding targeted ads is the easiest and most seamless integration you could ever hope for!

How Does It work?

Select the profile questions to include in ad targeting.

Select which fields you'd like to include in the social media targeting

On the back-end, the admin can choose the ad’s targeting.

Adding Social Targeting to an ad on the backend

And on the front-end, advertisers can now choose the ad targeting, too.

Advertisers can choose how to target the ad

Do you have an online community? Will you be using this feature?

MediaPass for Joomla!

Ever since the first days of iJoomla, right back when we came out with iJoomla Magazine, people have been asking me if we had a solution to enable paid subscriptions. We didn’t. I’d always hoped that someone else would come up with something and while a few extensions were created over the years to provide a solution, I just couldn’t get excited about any of them.

A couple of months ago though, MediaPass asked me to create a Joomla integration for their product. Their home page promises to add a subscription feature, just like the big publications use, within minutes. I was impressed! So I agreed, got to work, and… two months later, we have MediaPass for Joomla — an easy subscription service for Joomla sites.

Video: what is MediaPass for Joomla?

Click here to view the embedded video.

MediaPass take on all the tricky stuff. They handle the payments through their secure server and they deal with the customer service. All you have to do is install the extension we’ve created and choose your pricing plans. You get a check each month with your profits. MediaPass keeps 35 percent of the subscription fee for doing all the processing work and you keep the remaining 65 percent. That’s a fair deal in my opinion considering all the work that they do.

I don’t know of any other solution that’s so easy to implement, especially with our MediaPass for Joomla extension. I certainly can’t think of one so full of great new features such as the ability to add MediaPass automatically to articles.

So how does it work?

Once MediaPass is activated on the page, visitors are presented with the subscription box instead of the content. If they want to keep reading, they have to purchase a subscription. Very simple and very effective.

You can show the subscription box in two ways:

In Page

The subscription box appears right inside the page (view demo)

Page Overlay

The subscription box covers the entire window (view demo)

Here are some of MediaPass’s main features:

• Add MediaPass automatically to articles of chosen categories.
• Choose which part of the article will be covered by the subscription box. You can cover the entire article or only the text that comes after the “read more” tag.
• Add the MediaPass manually to individual articles using tags.
• Set the pricing for the subscription plans through   mediapass.com .
• Customize your messaging and logo on the subscription box, also through  mediapass.com access.
• View reports on  mediapass.com .

And it even works for video too!

Create an instant teaser by showing the MediaPass subscription box after a few seconds of your video. To see the rest of the video, viewers have to pay for a subscription. Just add the MediaPass video code and decide how much of the film you need to show to land paid subscriptions. Easy!

View the video overlay demo here >>

And the best feature of all? MediaPass for Joomla is FREE!

Screen shots:

The MediaPass subscription box will replace your content

Choose which categories to include automatically

MediaPass for Joomla! Settings

iJoomla Ad Agency is always a work in progress and even though we try hard to make it user-friendly, we have received reports that some advertisers have found the front-end confusing. So we decided to do usability testing. As always, it was a very eye-opening experience — even a mortifying one. When you’re doing Web and software development you simply have to do usability testing.There is no other way to predict how users actually use your product until you see them doing it.

This is just one of many usability tests we plan to do for Ad Agency; we are committed to making it the most user-friendly Joomla extension in the world!

Giles Fabris of DieHardCustomers agreed to act as the advertiser. He went through the sign-up and ad placement process.

Usability testing video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Issues found:

The main issues were that notices were in the wrong places at the wrong times and that there was a lack of emphasis on the desired action button.

1. The “Your account pending approval” notice isn’t clear enough.
2. The “Select the ad type” notice isn’t clear enough.
3. User didn’t see the home button.
4. The notice on the adding banner page is confusing.
5. The notice on the adding campaign page is confusing.
6. The user seems stuck on an endless loop, confused by the placement of the notices.
7. The user tends to click on the Cancel button instead of the Continue button

As always, the best action to take after doing usability testing is simply to get to work and fix all the issues as quickly as possible. And so we did. It took us a a couple of days to make the changes and add a few enhancements on both Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6+ versions. Now a new and improved version is available for download.

Here’s a list of changes:

1. Changed “Your application is pending approval. Meanwhile you can add your banner/ads.” to: “Your advertising account application is pending approval. As soon as we approve your application, we will send you an email. In the meantime, you can still add banners and campaigns.”
2. Removed the notice “You have no campaigns available for this banner type/size. Please add a new campaign here.”
3. Removed the notice on campaign creation: “There are no banners available for this campaign. Banner/Ad requirements:..”
4. Placed “Add Banners” link on campaigns that have no banners.
5. Instead of using the .button class for all the buttons, we added our own classes. The Cancel button is now in light gray and the Action button in orange so that the user can easily see what to do next.
6. Changed “Select the ad type” to “Below you will find a list of the available ad types. Click on the one you’d like to add to continue”
7. Made the “Home” button smaller and added a link to “Advertiser Dashboard.”

Placed "Add Banners" link on campaigns that have no banners.

Instead of using the .button class for all the buttons, we added our own classes. The Cancel button is now in light gray and the Action button in orange so that the user can easily see what to do next.

You can download the latest version here. Enjoy the improved Ad Agency and stay tuned for more usability improvements soon.

Hey everybody,

I’ve worked out a sweet deal for you this week. From now ’til this Friday night at midnight, the next 30 customers who purchase our iJoomla SEO extension ($99) will get a free copy of the amazing new EasyBlog Blogging software for Joomla (Community Edition) by StackIdeas. That’s a $45 value…FREE!

EasyBlog is, in my opinion, the best blogging solution available for Joomla (we love it so much, we use it on our Ad Agency blog). It’s powerful, supports multiple bloggers on your website, includes built-in ratings & comments (Facebook comments, RS Comments & JomComment support); is gorgeously styled…and the best part, it’s FREE when you purchase iJoomla SEO

Do you want to be a search engine magnet? iJoomla SEO will optimize your Joomla site for search engines easily AND monitor how your keywords are doing on Google. iJoomla SEO (for Joomla 1.5, 1.6 & 1.7) will help you climb search results quickly, easily and with minimum effort. All the SEO pros are using it, shouldn’t you be?

SPECIAL OFFER: Buy iJoomla SEO, get EasyBlog extension for Joomla- FREE!
A $45 value–first 30 SEO customers!

But wait, there’s more. With your purchase of SEO, I will also send you over $25 in free discount coupons for some of the most popular 3rd party Joomla extensions out there–deals you won’t find anywhere else.

Coupon #1: Buy SEO, get a coupon good for a FREE copy of ‘corePHP’s’ popular Youtube module for Joomla.  Easily post Youtube videos on your Joomla 1.5-1.7 website in a variety of sizes & colors AND from a variety of authors, channels and playlists with this awesome module. * Your coupon will be included in the SEO installer package.

Coupon #2: Buy SEO, get a coupon good for 20% OFF hwdMediaShare’s Pro Subscription package. hwdVideoShare lets you turn your static Joomla 1.5-1.7 website into a complete video & media-sharing destination–just like Youtube & vimeo. If you want to attract and keep traffic to your Joomla website…this will extension will help you do that. * Your coupon will be included in the SEO installer package.

If you need better Google page ranking and would like free Joomla software & coupons, too, then you should grab this deal before it’s too late. This offer expires Friday night (July 29) at midnight, or whenever the 30th SEO customer has purchased (whichever comes first). Don’t delay and grab your copy of iJoomla SEO today!

iJoomla LMS is now Guru

Guru Logo

In a last minute change before the grand release, we’re giving iJoomla LMS a new name: Guru. Why Guru?  Because everybody is a guru at something. Everyone is an expert at what they do best, and everybody has knowledge that others would love to possess.

And they’ll pay for that knowledge.

Guru allows anyone to create online courses and generate revenue automatically. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Sign up to be a beta tester and get more information, including some brand new screenshots, here:

http://guru.ijoomla.com/

We expect to release Guru beta by the end of this month.

Coming soon! iJoomla Learning Center

Guru’s new Learning Center is almost ready for launch. The Center will contain quality courses about not just Joomla but also SEO, web design, business, social media and more!

We want this Learning Center to be the ultimate resource for anyone doing web development in general and working with Joomla in particular.

iJoomla Learning Center

Are you a Guru? We want YOU!

Are you a guru in any of the following topics? Apply to be a teacher on our learning center and make money from your knowledge.

We’re looking for gurus in the following topics:

• Any Joomla Extensions (JomSocial, VirtueMart, RS Forms, etc.)
• Social media
• Web design
• Marketing
• Business
• Graphic design

And any other relevant topic. Languages other than English are also welcome.

If you’d like to join our team of gurus, do send me (merav@ijoomla.com) your course tree and a link to a sample video tutorial. Only serious applications will be considered.

Be a Guest Author on our Blog

Do you specialize in a topic related to web design or business? We are looking for guest authors for the iJoomla blog. Each post on our blog gets 1000-10,000 hits, so this is a great opportunity to win exposure for your website or services. The post can be anything from tutorials and new ideas to interviews, tips, extensions reviews, news and more.

If you think you fit, please send me (merav@ijoomla.com) an original blog post that hasn’t published anywhere and a short bio of you. If your post is accepted, I’ll get right back to you.

Ad Agency for Joomla 1.6 Coming Soon

We are currently testing the Ad Agency for Joomla 1.6. It’s all going smoothly so far, and we’re hoping to release a beta version within two weeks.

iJoomla Speed Check Module

Want to know how fast your site really is? Our new Speed Check module will tell you. Just install it into your Joomla site to see your page load time. It’s a quick, simple — and free — way to find out if your Joomla website is slow.

And you do need to know your site’s speed. Google recently announced that your Joomla loading speed will be a deciding factor in calculating your page rank.

You know that a high placement on search engines is absolutely essential to your website’s success. There’s little point in having a beautiful, well-designed website if nobody can find it.

And we’re dedicated to helping you reach the top of those placements. That was why we released iJoomla SEO, a tool that helps you optimize your website for search engines and monitor your keywords on Google. It’s been a huge success, helping thousands of Joomla website owners over the last couple of years save time and win better rankings on search engines.

We’ve now decided to allocate some of the profits from iJoomla SEO to develop free SEO tools for the Joomla community. This Speed Check module is our first.

Put Your Site Speed First

Site speed is often an afterthought in the development process. It needs to be front and center. Our new module allows you to stay on top of your site’s speed, so that if it’s too slow, you can do something about it.

And there’s always something you can do about it.

In “5 Ways to speed up Joomla and Make Your Site Faster,” our SEO expert Matt King has provided some invaluable tips to help you speed up and optimize your Joomla site. It will make a huge difference in how much love Google gives you.

Designed for Your Site

You can control the colors of every element of the module, including the border color, background color, text color and “provided by” color, to make them work with your site’s design.

If you prefer that your visitors won’t see the module, you can also select “special” as the access level. You’ll have to be logged in as admin on the front end to see your speed.

You can control every color in the module

How to use iJoomla Speed Check

1. Download it here
2. Unzip the file.
3. Choose a version (Joomla 1.5 or Joomla 1.6) and unzip that file again.
4. Install the module and plugin.
5. Publish the plugin.
6. Publish the module.

Yesterday, Twitter have released their new follow button and TODAY you get a Twitter Follow Joomla module FREE from iJoomla!

We’ve all seen the twitter “follow me” buttons everywhere on the web, but previously, you had to click the button, be taken to twitter profile and then click the follow button on that page. That’s a lot of work for such a simple function. But no more!

This is how the button looks like (before and after following)

What is iJoomla Twitter Follow?

iJoomla Twitter Follow is a FREE module that puts a Twitter “follow” button on your pages. Users will be able to subscribe directly to your Twitter feeds from your websites with a single click.

This  means that users will no longer have to click twice to follow your tweets. You’ll enjoy better conversions from visitors to followers and you won’t risk losing your users to an external site.

Users can still preview profiles by clicking the username next to the Follow button.

Module parameters:

• Twitter username.
• Choose light or dark background.
• Show follower count.
• Languages: English,   French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Turkish

Joomla Twitter Follow Module Parameters

What Joomla versions does it support?

Available for Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6!

We have thousands of customers from all over the world and we love hearing about their success. Today I’m starting a new tradition on our blog: I am profiling iJoomla customers with interesting websites and businesses. I want to know how they do things, how they’ve created their success, why they chose Joomla, and more.

Paola & Ricardo

Our first profile is of Paola Navarro of DeliciousCrochet.com. Paola is from Argentina and has a successful online store selling PDF files of her crochet doll designs.

Also known as amigurumi, crochet dolls are the “Japanese art of crocheting small animals or toys.” The dolls are made in a single crochet worked as a spiral, then stuffed and sewn together. The craft might have originated in Japan but it’s now a very popular art form across the globe, which makes it perfect for an online store selling digital products.

Paola’s designs are not only masterful, they’re also funny, with plenty of references to movies, celebrities and pop culture. For example:

The Monkey Wears Prada

Freddy Krueger Tux

The Good, the Bad and the Tux

These playful and original designs put  DeliciousCrochet.com at the top of the industry and generate a welcome flow of income.

Take a look at the site and notice how well it’s put together. Paola had a little help there: she’s married to Ricardo Corai, a CMS expert who runs our forum and handles our customer support. Ricardo helped her to put the site together and she adds the products and the content.

An Interview with Paola

Tell us about what you do?

I’m an independent crochet doll designer and housewife. Currently I’m managing two online stores where I sell my designs.

When and how did it all start?

In early 2007 I wanted to have my own blog where I could show the world all my crochet work. My husband was thrilled with the idea and helped me to put together my website. I received an amazing response from the very beginning and this made us decide to transform my website in an online store.

Why did you choose Joomla as your website platform?

DeliciousCrochet.com Store Created with iJoomla DigiStore

We wanted to create a website which allows me to show my work and sell it online. My husband found on iJoomla Digistore a dependable application which allows the administrator to easily manage files and is super intuitive for buyers. So I guess iJoomla Digistore made us choose Joomla! as my website plataform.

What was the initial amount of investment you put in this business?

The initial budget was very small. We hired a basic hosting, subscribed a club template and bought an iJoomla Digistore license. Shortly after we official opened the online store we got back our initial investment and started to get profits.

Was there a point where you knew “this is a great idea and I think I can make a living doing it”? Tell us about it

Since the very beginning we thought this was going to work out. We acted positively in this project and are very pleased to see the buyers satisfied with our products. All the time we receive the kindest comments from all over the globe and knowing my designs have reached so many places still surprise us, because all started as a very small project.

What kind of customers do you have? How do they find you?

Most of my buyers are women who just love crocheting and trying new techniques, it doesn’t matter if they are beginners or super experienced crocheters.

They first buyers found us through search engines and websites related to this particular craft. And fortunately, they went satisfied and recommended us to their friends and relatives. That’s how the chain was made and nowadays we had many return customers and fans of our products.

What do you like the most about selling digital products?

The most I like about selling digital products is they allow buyers from all over the world to receive what they’ve bought in just a few seconds, without delays or complications. Moreover, if you can count on an excellent tool as iJoomla Digistore, which shows the product, completes the transactions and delivers the product automatically, you can devote your time into creative work and customer care, knowing the operational tasks are taken care efficiently.

I think you’re a great example of a business that make a good living from selling digital products. Do you have any tips for creating a successful online store?

Well, I think an excellent customer service and having dependable tools taking care of operational tasks are keys to build a successful online store. Buyers must feel there are people behind the website which are responsive to their needs and concerns. And having the proper tools will help you to administrate better your time in a constructive way.

I heard Martha Stewart wanted you on her show, what happened?

Shortly after I started on this business and because my designs were different from those are usually found in the market, I received a message from one The Martha Stewart Show´s producer saying they needed to contact me in person because they were interested in my work. But, since I don’t live in US, unfortunately this could not be realized.

What’s your most popular product? Why do you think it is?

Nowadays I have many designs and among them there are some very popular. But there is no relation among these more popular designs, so it’s hard to find out the reason to explain their success over other products.

****

Great job, Paola and Ricardo!

Do you have an interesting business or website that uses Joomla and iJoomla? Drop me an email, I would love to talk to you!

The CMS Expo, held last week, was a great conference with fascinating presentations and a perfect ending: Ad Agency was named “The Best Joomla Commerce App”!

Merav Knafo showing her CMS Expo Award for iJoomla Ad Agency

We’re thrilled to win, and we’re celebrating. We’re slashing $50 from the price of the extension.

This is going to be a three-day celebration (yes, we know how to party!) so make sure you grab your copy for just $99.9, before we come back down to Earth and realize what we’ve done. It really is a HUGE discount. (But then an award from the CMS Expo really is a big deal!)

And Ad Agency just keeps getting better and better. If you’ve been humming and hawing about whether to buy it, here’s your chance to get it at a rock-bottom price — and still with a money back guarantee.

What’s New with Ad Agency?

The latest version of Ad Agency, 2.0.9, comes with a few bug fixes and enhancements. You can upgrade it here and find the full change log here.

What About a Version for Joomla 1.6?

We’ve had a lot of question about when Ad Agency will be ready for Joomla 1.6. We did want to start and finish the conversion a few months ago but most users are still using Joomla 1.5. We have to consider them before we stop the development on 1.5 completely.

So we’ve decided to add a few much-needed features and fix a few bugs on 1.5 while Joomla users continue to make the switch. One of these features is an optimized database with compacted expired campaigns; another is a limit to the number of ads that an advertiser can add to a campaign.

We hope to finish these two features and fix a few more minor bugs within the next couple of weeks. We’ll then release the Joomla 1.5 version and move on to conversion to Joomla 1.6.

Best Regards,

Each year on my birthday, I put on a traditional birthday sale. So if you’ve been wanting to buy any of our products, here’s your chance to get it much cheaper!

• Just enter birthday2011 when you make a purchase, and you’ll receive a 20% discount on all our products!
• Order a package, and get an additional $10 off each extension included in the package.
• And if you’re a developer, you can save additional 40% when you buy bulk licenses

This promotion ends on Thursday night (hey, even my birthday can’t last forever!), so order now!

Save $30 on iJoomla Ad Agency

With this promo code, you can save $30 on iJoomla Ad Agency. If you don’t have it yet, read some of the great reviews on the Joomla Directory and find out why it’s the hottest extension around!

Learn More >>

Save $20 on iJoomla SEO

iJoomla SEO has become the “must have” extension for every Joomla website. How did we even survive without it? SEO work is so boring and mundane and iJoomla SEO makes it a breeze! And now it’s available for Joomla 1.6!

Learn More >>

Save $16 on iJoomla Surveys

Also available for Joomla 1.6, iJoomla Surveys allow you to create cool surveys right inside your Joomla site, no need to use external website, you can create forks, randomize answer, view stats and more, it’s awesome!

Learn More >>