These are a brand new concept for marketers. How will you use them?

This update includes:
- one click updates for future domain updates
- domain problem scanning and alerts
- scarcity links
- new options for multiple links
- various other enhancements and bug fixes

(Note: We are no longer selling the installed version.)

The new features will be disabled until you upgrade all your domains.

Scarcity Links:
We’ve added limited-time links, which expire at the date and time you specify. Once expired, they redirect to a second link. Example: Send out an e-mail about a teleseminar, and once it is over, the link is preset to start redirecting to a second offer.

Similarly, we added limited-quantity links, where you set how many people can click. Once reached, they redirect to a second link. Example: Get your list used to opening up your e-mails and clicking quickly, with links that only the first n people who click get a bonus. Let us know how that works if you try it.

Random, Sequence, and Cycle Links
When you add multiple links into the “to url”, up until now, it distributed visitors to each link evenly, in order to split-test affiliate links. We have now added several other options to select from, including sending visitors to a random link, sending them to the first link on the first visit, the second one on the next visit, etc, and then either repeating the last one of the sequence or starting the cycle again.

Why? I don’t know, but we had lots of requests for these and it fit in with what we were doing with the scarcity links, so we added them now. How will you use them?

Updates to the interface:
We have removed the “options” tab and a couple of things in there that were holdovers from the previous version and really did not have any purpose. We replaced it with the “Scarcity” tab for the time-limited and quantity limited links.

We also moved a number of other things around in the “basic” tab, to make important stuff easier to access.

We also added tooltips throughout, so you can figure out what to do with it all.

That’s it for now. I’m working on a new newsletter and a series of videos to show people how it all works.

John.

In the May issue, I discuss:
- Why it’s such a long beta
- New version: Bug fixes, domain checking/alerts, one-click updates
- Upgrade frequency for the next while
- Request for feedback
- Need programmers? I’ll hook you up.

Press play below if you haven’t seen it yet. Comments are most welcome.

THE PROBLEMS:

1) Rare bugs
Over the majority of the beta period, we have been working on various issues that affect less that one percent of users – various server incompatibilities that created serious problems for just a handful of servers each. This is a big source of support for us, slowing down more interesting progress everyone benefits from.

2) Upgrade frequency
Some clients install on dozens or hundreds of domains. Even with 1 minute updates, only about 50% of our clients upgrade each time we release a version. This means we have to group updates together with fewer releases and that half our clients are running versions with known issues.

THE SOLUTION:

1) Problem scanning and alerts. (done)
We have identified 15 issues that can potentially cause problems, and their solutions. These could appear due to changes in your server environment, updates to your .htaccess file, or various odd server configurations. It also checks for any corruption that has occurred for whatever reason, such as links being broken.

This new release will scan each of your domains twice a day. If a problem is found, it will e-mail an alert to you and popup a notice when you login to the dashboard. The notice will have instructions on how to fix it, with many of them fixable through SetupBOT or with just a single click.

If someone discovers a new problem, we add it to the scanning for everyone, so it gets fixed right away without a major upgrade being released.

2) Auto-updating (almost done)
Once updated to the new version, all future updates are automatic!

When installing a domain or this final upgrade, you will be given an option to choose to turn on fully-automatic background updates if your server supports it, do one click fully automatic background updates, or to use SetupBOT as you currently do.

This means we no longer have to group upgrades together, with updates many months apart. Instead, we can release each new feature as soon as it is ready!

WHEN WILL IT BE RELEASED?
We expect to be done the auto-updates in about two weeks. This is a major update that we have been working on for around five months, and has various other things in it as well. We will test it on a handful of people, create a new feature, push it out and test. Then we repeat the process with a few dozen people, and then release to everyone. So, in about a month or less it will be released to everyone, along with two new features.

Here is an article on Buzz versus Facebook I found. (It totally backs me up.)

Most of those arguments also apply to Twitter. Another big problem for marketers using Twitter is that you need short links, which is fine, except they are branded to someone else and do not have keywords in them for marketing. We recently added the ability to shrink GoTryTHIS links onto our twe.to domain so that you can use the same link there. Just like on your normal GoTryTHIS links, the short links are privately tracked live in detail, can be edited, can split-test traffic from Twitter to multiple affiliate programs, and can tell you which tweet to the same link sent the most traffic with campaigns.

However, with Buzz, you no longer have a 140 character space restriction, so you can use your regular GoTryTHIS links, branded to your domains, with your custom keywords in the links. While Twitter is not going anywhere soon, this aspect of Buzz is much better for marketers.

If you have not seen it yet, FastCompany wrote a great Buzz Tutorial.

Please refrain from doing anything to critical installations just before and during that time, just in case something requires their attention.

Happy Holidays for those of you taking them. 2010 will be the year of GoTryTHIS. The best is yet to come!

Thank you all,
John.

I am happy to announce you can now take the free upgrade from version 1 to version 2.

We are in late beta and most of the time everything goes smoothly, fully automatically. However, this is a brand new release with several recent updates to the installer and sometimes things may not go perfectly on an oddly configured server. No problem… if you read this first.

Don’t take chances:
If you are in the middle of something critical, please wait to upgrade.

How to upgrade:
Please read this entire post, go to the upgrade link at the bottom, and watch the video there for more details. Here are answers to most questions about upgrading.

Then login with your login information. If you forget your password, please use the forgot password feature on https://billing.gotrythis.com. After you login, please update your contact information and put through your order for the free upgrade. We are working on more brand new features and will give you an opportunity for 4 months of updates for $47. Please choose that option and submit your order so you do not miss out on some of the most requested features. Then the upgrade will be put into your account. To access the upgrade, login to http://my.gotrythis.com with the “Dashboard Installer” button.

There are two parts to the upgrade, the dashboard and the domain code. The “Install” button installs the dashboard, which needs a database and you only install once. It does not replace your existing installations! Then you login to your new dashboard and from there, the “Install” button will upgrade each domain in turn. This is the process even if you have only one install of GoTryTHIS 1.

All installs and upgrades are automatically done with SetupBOT.

What to do if something goes wrong:
If anything goes wrong, please easily revert back to version 1 yourself and inform us of the problem. Otherwise, if you took the free upgrade, please donate $20 to pay for the support time if you would like us to go in and complete the upgrade for you. In the unlikely event that reverting does not work, send a support ticket and we will take care of it at no charge.

When to upgrade:
The best time to upgrade late at night (EST) on weekdays, except Friday, or VERY early in the morning. Then if something goes wrong, we are more likely to get you up and running the next morning. Similarly, late mornings and afternoons are a bad time and the worst time to upgrade is Friday night or on the weekend.

WordPress compatibility:
This upgrade is the first availability of the new WordPress plugin. If a WordPress blog is detected, the installer will prompt you for permission to install the plugin, which should permanently eliminate the WordPress/GoTryTHIS link conflict issue. Please let us know how well it works.

Things missing that were in version 1:
The new version currently does not have hourly graphs. That is coming eventually. It also has had the feature of embedding rotating links removed. You can only embed one link now, within the terms and conditions of the affiliate program you are embedding a link for. We do not want GoTryTHIS to be known as a cookie stuffer and there are other tools for that.

Brand new features, you get free:
In part to make up for the long wait and in part to help get the word out about GoTryTHIS, we are including some new features in this free release. This includes the new co-branding bar, which gives you two extra chances to engage your audience, and the new twitter links feature, for twitter-friendly links that collect stats as if the clicks were on your normal GoTryTHIS links. The twitter links do not and will not support embedded links, but do support campaigns!

Training:
We have an install/upgrade guide and a usage guide and more support and training at http://www.gotrythis.com/help. There is a lot of information there and more coming. It is a work in progress that is in the process being organized better and being brought up to date with recent changes. (So some things might not be exactly the same in the software.)

Upgrade: Watch the upgrading video and upgrade here.
(Note: The video of the order options and support system are out-of-date currently.)

Why? We are stress-testing the twitter links feature, which will be included in the update. We have created a billion links, so far without a problem. Once we are done stress-testing, we will clear out all those links and release the upgrade. Then some of the documentation will need to be updated, but anyone can come in and get the upgrade while I work on updating the docs to match the software.

Thank you,
John.

We knew we needed to create a solution to give you the best of both worlds. We first considered mirroring your GoTryTHIS links on the leading link shrinking service, bit.ly, but decided not to because:

1. On bit.ly, your stats would be exposed for the Twitter links, instead of remaining private in your GoTryTHIS dashboard.
2. On bit.ly, you cannot use dash campaigns like on the normal GoTryTHIS links, so you cannot know which Twitter message initiated the click.
3. We want to later add into the GoTryTHIS dashboard stats so you will know how many clicks are coming through the Twitter versions of your link as opposed to your normal links, which we could not calculate if we used bit.ly.

So, we created our own link shrinking service exclusively for GoTryTHIS clients on our short domains twe.to (like “tweet to”) and klk.to (like “click to”). With the update coming next week, you can click a button to instantly create short, Twitter-friendly links, which redirect to your GoTryTHIS links.

You can use these new short links interchangeably with your regular GoTryTHIS link and they support all the features of your regular GoTryTHIS links except for embedding affiliate links. We made this decision because we do not want twe.to and klk.to to become known as “unsafe” domains used for embedded links, which could cause problems for all our clients down the road.

While we do not anticipate any major problems, this is a major new feature, so please note the “beta” status.