Today, we are releasing version 1.2 which contains one very useful feature that solves a time-consuming problem. It is the edit shortcut feature.

Imagine you are in an emergency to edit an error in your post, there are currently two ways to do it:

1. Type in the URL of admin dashboard => Click Pages => Click Edit on that particular post.
2. Type in the URL of that particular post page => Click Edit Post at the bottom of the page.

Depending on how fast your blog is, it will take anywhere from 6 to 15 seconds to complete the process (not including editing, just opening the edit page) from start to finish, except if you can remember the direct editing screen URL which contains an arbitrary number.

After few iterations, here was the solution I came up with:

Step 1:

Step 2:

It is very simple. If you add ?edit at the end of any post/page URL, Artsy Editor will redirect you to the corresponding editing screen right away.

This is powerful because now you can access the editing screen faster than ever before. For example, you don’t have to click through the cluttered WordPress admin panel three times nor need to remember the arbitrary number to access the editing screen. Just append ?edit and you should be able to start working on your post in 1-2 second.

Hope you are enjoying this feature we highlighted! For more information about this version or past versions, visit our changelog.

• We reached profitability even before launch.
• Our official launch on July 27 had gotten a lot of attention including the folks at The Next Web.
• We continued to receive press coverage from sites like WPMU.org and TechInch.com.
• We had a case study with WooThemes about our process building artsyeditor.com using their WooFramework.
• Someone in the Google+ team bought an Artsy Editor developer license.
• We started accepting credit cards for payment as well.
• We had a little 20% promotion sales on July 4th.
• Received a testimonial stating “I love WordPress 1,000x more with Artsy Editor.“
• WordPress released 3.2 that included a distraction editor, here is our response to WordPress.
• We released version 1.1 that added many image-related features.
• We began a campaign which you can get Artsy Editor for free if you blog about us.
• Our founder got featured on IdeaMensch.
• We organized a 90% off developer license deal with Startups.com.
• We talked about 60 post-launch strategies for startups.

Let’s see what August has to offer. We will have a post just like this at the end of August. Subscribe to keep in touch!

I am working very hard on exactly that with Artsy Editor, a really awesome WordPress WYSIWYG editor. And I want to share with you 60 strategies you can use in order to increase brand awareness and boost up sales after your startup launch.

(If you are interested in pre-launch and launch strategies, read this post on The Agni.)

Promotions

1. Promote your product through education. 37Signals and Mint are great examples.
2. Send personalized promotion to previous customers. Amazon executed it fantastically.
3. Put up a promotion sales on memorable days (holidays, birthdays, etc.).
4. Give out discounts/giveaways to news coverage about your product.
5. Do cross promotions with related, non-competing products.
6. Give free copies to those who blog about your product.
7. Put up a fun contest where potential buyers can participate to win.
8. Blog about tips and tricks that will help your customers use the product better.
9. Offer freebies regularly to customers to keep them excited.
10. Be a part of Top 10 list. #1 will be the best.

Connecting with Customers

1. Do case studies with customers about how your product had helped them.
2. Email all customers once/twice per year and ask them for feedback you can act on.
3. Put up a survey to your customers before adding a feature.
4. Ask your customers what is the one feature that helps them the most.
5. Even send them a thank-you card if you have their mailing addresses.

Advertising

1. Give away your product for free in exchange of advertisements.
2. Advertise differently on every possible feature.
3. Don’t be boring, use creative advertising.
4. Advertise on exclusive one-ad site using The Deck or Fusion Ads.
5. Use advertisement as a form of testing your market.

Social Media

1. Join communities where your customers hang out and build a strong reputation.
2. Only be present at networks that your customers are. If none use Facebook, ignore it.
3. Post up teasers on sites like Forrst & Dribbble.
4. Actively participate in relevant conversation about your product.
5. Use Twitter search to find people that is looking for the solution you provide.

Business Development

1. Personally email big names in your industry and show them benefits of your product
2. Do “shameless plug” of your product only at relevant places.
3. Try to get the most respected people of your customers to use & love your product.
4. Focus on a small niche and get as many customers there as possible before moving on.
5. Collect email leads from people who aren’t ready to buy yet, and followup regularly.

Support

1. Be as personal as you can answering support emails.
2. If you mess up something, be brutally transparent and honest about it.
3. Offer a refund/discount when you mess up.
4. Try to answer emails as soon as they arrive.
5. Live-chat with visitors using tools like Olark.

Website

1. Build landing pages for different types of audience. (My examples: Blogger & Developer).
2. Provide extra incentives on the checkout page.
3. Shorten your checkout process as much as possible.
4. Show different messages/landing pages based on where the visitor is coming from.
5. Use real statistics in prominent place, because that’s what convinces people the most.
6. Compare you to your competitors side-by-side.
7. Hide the coupon field at the checkout page.
8. Provide a fully working demo/playground.
9. Include what, when, where, how and why in the tour page.
10. More images, videos, lists, tables, numbers. Less paragraphs.

Testing and tracking

1. A/B test as much as possible so you know what works and what doesn’t.
2. Not only track pageviews, track where revenue are coming from with Clicky.
3. Spend more time increasing conversion rates than focusing on getting traffic.
4. Use advertisement as a form of testing your market.
5. Learn where your customers are exiting your site with KissMetrics.

Interviews/Guest Posts

1. Feature yourself in industry-related blogs/magazines.
2. Write a fair comparison between your product and your competitor’s.
3. Get in touch with the tools you utilize for your startup and do a guest post.
4. Have a unique voice in your interviews and blog posts.
5. Offer discount codes to as an appreciation to readers for reading your post.

Development

1. Add features only when your customers need it.
2. It’s okay to remove features if it is no longer useful.
3. Release updates often to show your product is active.
4. Have couple “Made My Day” secret features to give your customer surprises.
5. Provide extremely easy way for your customers to update.

After all, position yourself as a farmer and take your startup to a long-term success!

(This post was actually written in Artsy Editor.)

Here is how to get a Hobbyist license for free:

A. Head to http://demo.artsyeditor.com/wp-login.php, write about anything you have in mind, append “Written in Artsy Editor“, get the HTML, and publish it on your blog!

Article idea for A:

• Your opinions on WordPress 3.2
• Your tips on writing more efficiently
• Your speculations on the next Apple products

B. If you are even more awesome, write an honest review of Artsy Editor on your blog. There is absolutely no limit of what you can talk about, as long as you mention us and provide a link back.

Article idea for B:

• How can Artsy Editor help you write faster?
• Why will you recommend Artsy Editor to your clients/colleagues?
• Why is Artsy Editor better than WordPress distraction-free editor?

After you completed any of these, send me the link of your post to stephen@artsyeditor.com and I will get you set up with a free Hobbyist license!

Frequently asked questions:

1. How many sites can I use my Hobbyist license on?

Hobbyist license can be used on one site. If you want to upgrade to a Professional (5 sites) or Developer (unlimited sites) license, I can give you a discount as well.

2. How many licenses can I win in total?

You might think one is the maximum. That’s not the case – you can get two free licenses by completing all of the tasks. It is a tough challenge. But if you try, you can do it! Also if you win more than one, I encourage you to gift the extra one to your favorite bloggers or friends so they know how awesome we are! :)

3. How long will this campaign last?

It will be available until July 31st. I might extend this to a discount price (instead of free) afterward. But it won’t last long. So head to http://demo.artsyeditor.com/wp-login.php right now and get your writing spirit going!

PS: This is just our first creative marketing campaign, we have much more coming up. If you subscribe to our blog, we can keep you up to date!

In the latest version 1.1 release, we added couple very useful features into the image category. These are commonly requested features from our early customers. We not only want to make them happy, we also want our future customers to enjoy them as soon as possible too.

First up, image caption support. You can add, change and clear any image captions by clicking the image and edit the caption field. The output generated will be the exact the same as WordPress’s original:

[caption id="4314" align="alignnone" width="80" caption="Who is this?"]
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4314" title="me" 
src="http://demo.artsyeditor.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/me.png"
alt="" width="80" height="80" />
[/caption]

Second is image link support. If your image is already hyperlinked, you can now create, edit, and delete image links by clicking on the image and edit the link field. Artsy Editor will generate the image link HTML automatically.

Last one is image ratio support. When you resize images from now on, you will notice the ratio will not change any more (which might cause disproportion images). The image, whether made larger or smaller, will have the same width/height ratio. Therefore they will look perfect regardless of size.

You can update Artsy Editor by going to Plugins > Artsy Editor. Simply the Update button on the right sidebar and everything should be taken care of.

What does it mean for Artsy Editor?

For those who just came here, Artsy Editor is a premium WYSIWYG editor for WordPress. Take a look:

We indeed have a distraction-free environment, but we are much more than that.

For example, you can drag-and-drop images anywhere into the editor, they will be automatically uploaded and inserted to the post. We also have a Photoshop-style image scaling feature. You can simply drag the handle to resize to whatever dimension you want. Few more things you can do include change the color and font, add links without the overlay, etc.

You can try out Artsy Editor to get a feel of what I am talking about. For more information, we have a dedicated page about Artsy Editor vs. WordPress distraction-free editor.

If you prefer WordPress’ basic implementation, that’s great. But if you feel like you need the additional features (image & link manipulation) or you enjoy our UI more than WP’s, you can purchase a copy.

For any questions, feel free to email stephen@artsyeditor.com

(This post is written in Artsy Editor)

Drumroll please…

The offer is all three licenses (Hobbyist, for 1 site; Professional, for 5 sites; Developer, for unlimited sites) will get a 20% price drop. That means Hobbyist license will only cost $15.99, Professional license will only cost $47.99, and Developer license will only cost $159.99.

The discount code is JULY4TH.

You are not going to see promotions & public discount codes often for Artsy Editor. So don’t let this once in a lifetime opportunity slip past you! This offer will end this evening, 11:59 PM PST.

To get started, simply head to our pricing page to choose your desired license, then enter the coupon code JULY4TH at checkout.

The payment processing system we originally used was PayPal Express Checkout. Although it took less time to implement, it didn’t allow any payment from people without a PayPal account. We’ve lost few sales just because of it.

I spent couple hours yesterday working on a new integration with PayPal Website Payment Standard, which lets you pay with your credit card even if you don’t own an existing PayPal account.

A little screenshot to show where you can pay without credit card instead of PayPal balance:

Then you just enter your credit card information.

That’s it!

A thank-you goes to everyone that expressed their needs about this via email on the last couple days. I truly appreciate it. Without you, I wouldn’t even know that I lost sales because of the payment limitation.

Here is the case study =>

The topic is about building a product site (like the one we have) using their turbo-charged WooFramework. Couple of things I mentioned:

• Setting up the featured slider
• Setting up the testimonial area
• Setting up the pricing columns
• Setting up the call-to-action buttons

If you are a WordPress developer that use or plan to use one of WooThemes’ awesome themes, I encourage to read the case study. You will find something helpful over there. :-)

The Backstory

Back in March, I wanted to build a better WordPress editor. I interviewed 100+ people, and had 38 willing-to-pay customers before writing a line of code. The feedback has been astounding. So I decided to built it!

After 2 months of solid design and programming work, we are ready for you!

The Benefits

In version 1.0, we focused on the four main problems that our customers asked us to solve.

1. A clutter-free environment to write.

I used the show-up-where-you-need-it-when-you-need-it technique. The editor shows up right below your mouse cursor. So when you format a blog post, you can save the time on moving from selected word to the top of editor. Also, when nothing is selected, the editor fades away. It gives you more space to write and less distractions to worry about.

2. Ability to drag-and-drop image.

Gmail had added drag and drop attachments feature for a year, and people had been asking me if it is possible in Artsy Editor. The answer is yes. You can drag in any images from anywhere in your computer, Artsy Editor will handle the rest (uploading and inserting). So you don’t have to waste the time navigating through the file system.

3. Simplify image resizing process.

I personally think this is a feature many people will fall in love to. The screenshot on the left is how WordPress handles image resizing, the right is how we do it. There is no overlay to open, no number to enter and no percentage to choose. Just drag the little handle to the size you want.

4. A better way to add link

Do you remember yourself waiting for the link overlay to load and wish it comes on faster? In Artsy Editor, that problem is solved intelligently. Instead of an overlay (which is what standard WYSIWYG uses), we have a link field inside of the formatting box. So just highlight the text and add your link. Tick the checkbox if you want to open in new window.

It Works!

Check out what our beta testers have to say and the results of our pre-launched sales to mailing list subscribers.

The Pricing

There are three tiers.

1. Hobbyist. You can use the Hobbyist license in 1 blog. This is great if you are a hobbyist blogger who spend nights and weekends writing about what you love. It will cost $19.99.
2. Professional. You can use the Professional license in up to 5 blogs. This is great if you are a professional blogger who write/manage more than 1 blog. It will cost $59.99.
3. Developer. You can use the Developer license in unlimited blogs. This is great if you are a developer that build WordPress websites for clients. It will cost $199.99.

You can buy them right here.

Artsy Editor vs. WordPress distraction-free editor

A lot of people had been reminding me that WordPress 3.2 revamps its full-screen mode into a distraction free editor. Yes, I’ve been completely aware of it since I started building Artsy Editor. I think Artsy Editor offers more functionality than what WordPress editor allows you to do (image uploading & resizing, customization, etc.). Plus I think the way our formatting box works is better than WordPress. It disappears when you don’t need it. And it appears right at the place you need it. More on this page >

Can’t wait to try it out?!

We’ve set up a full-fledge demo for you to try out (no limitation, no signup required). Otherwise, you can take a look at our homepage with more feature information.

Oh, don’t forget to email or tweet to your friends if you think they deserve to know!