Pay-Per Click Advertising Campaigns
What is Pay-Per Click? Simply put Pay-Per Click, is an online marketing/advertising strategy. There are around 300 million searches at major search engines everyday which accounts for about 80% of internet traffic. Placing your websites on these search engines is very important in reaching as many potential customers as possible. But in order to be seen and clicked most frequently, your website should be viewed at the top most of the search list. Many internet surfers only glance down to the bottom of page 1 so the lower your rank, the lesser the chance you will be clicked. In “Pay-Per Click” advertising, you pay to always be visible on the internet. You select keywords or key phrases about your website, and basically the higher the bid, the higher the ranking. There is no upfront cost and you only pay after a visitor clicks your link. This is why it is called “Pay-Per Click”.
Everyday millions of people around the world click on Pay-Per Click Advertising Campaigns. With the booming internet industry and the ever growing online business, an ad of virtually anything you can imagine can be seen on the internet anywhere in the world.
The “Pay-Per Click” advertising campaign is the premier growth area in online marketing. Every year hundreds of millions are spent on “Pay-Per Click” advertising. The usual search engine optimization can take weeks or even months to produce results, but “Pay-Per Click” advertising can attract customers at an instant. Why? Because, this cutting edge ad campaign can be placed on any website and can be viewed by potential online customers, anywhere, anytime and all the time. The only challenge is placing the ads on proper websites that will attract possible customers for a specific product or services.
“Pay-Per Click” advertising campaigns attract the right consumers at the shortest possible time. You can also monitor the customers who visit your site, what they are looking for and what they are buying. With the right creativity on using the right search-phrases, we can direct the right people who are willing to do business with us. “Pay-Per Click” advertising can easily be managed 24 hours per day and 7 days a week through the internet. This allows you improve the campaign strategy by effectively responding to the activities of both customers and competitors.
Becki Noles
Virtual Assistant Revolution - Co-Founder
Virtual Accuracy Companies
Virtual Assistant Training
Online collaboration tool
I made a post about my new favorite program in my own personal blog, but thought I would share it here with all of my fellow VAs.
It’s called Client Spot. It’s an online collaboration tool for virtual assistants to use with their clients. I just love it. It does cost some money, but I can add my team members and clients as well as projects and files. Each project is it’s own little area, and all tasks and files associated with the project is in the same place…which was lacking from another tool I’d tried.
It’s extremely easy to use, and there is a calendar which is saving my life. I can see at a glance what items are do for which client, so I’m improving my over all efficiency.
Between Client Spot and the fact that I’ve recently acquired a VA to handle my own incoming email, I feel like a brand new woman!
I don’t know why I haven’t done this sooner.
If you’re looking for a tool to help manage your work flow, check it out.
Blogging For Your Business
About this time last year, a client asked me to investigate setting up a blog for her business. She’d read about it in a business marketing newsletter and thought it might be worth looking into.
On first look I wasn’t sure that this was the way to go, however, to fully understand what’s involved, I set one up for myself and learnt how to tweak the template, using www.blogger.com, registered it with blog search engines and explored blogging communities.
This didn’t happen overnight – it really took me months to get into it, but slowly I started to see what the benefits could be, if I put some time into it. I chose to write about things that had happened during the week in my own particular industry.
Today I own several blogs but only 3 are business related, the rest are personal interest blogs. All get traffic that is growing and I find that when someone visits one, they also visit the others too, and periodically leave comments when they find something that relates to them. I also get people emailing me saying “I didn’t know that…” – it’s given those who are interested, a window into my life, so to speak.
So, if you’ve been thinking about a blog for yourself, where should you start?
1. You need a topic of interest that you can contribute to on a regular basis – at least weekly. If it’s infrequent your audience will lose interest. There’s a whole community (actually several) out there who spend spare time surfing blogs – stats seem to indicate people also surf blogs whilst at their workplace. Of course, if your blog is business-related, that makes sense.
2. Next, have a look at the free blog services available to you – there are a choice of templates and their system is a simple to use, like a word-processor, so it’s easy to get started. I use both www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com and recently installed wordpress on my own server.
3. Choose a name for your blog – if you run a business you’ll want something that relates to your business name or industry. Mind you, if have a hobby you’re passionate about, you could set one up for that too.
4. Create your account and enter your first post. It only takes 5-10 minutes to set up and you’re on your way! Easy.
5. Take time to explore the system, make sure you switch on the search engine services so it gets listed quickly with Google and other search engines. The listings seem to show up much quicker than regular websites. Seek out other blog search engines to list with.
6. Make notes in your diary to post again on a regular basis, so it becomes a habit.
7. Place a link on your blog back to your business website and vice versa.
8. Spend time surfing other blogs (in Wordpress and Blogger you just have to click on ‘next blog’ in the navigation bar at the top right hand corner) and learn from others.
9. There was mention of an a-list being developed of the top Australian blogs and there is a very noticeable lack of women bloggers on that list – so far. See the article at http://duncanriley.com/2006/03/20/the-a-list-of-australian-bloggers.
Happy blogging!
****
Kathie M. Thomas, AFAIOP, MVA, ASO is the founder of “A Clayton’s Secretary”, a Virtual Assistant Network with members in many countries. Dedicated to teaching others about operating business over the Internet, Kathie is a multiple award winner as both a Secretary and Virtual Business Operator, and has over 30 years’ experience in the secretarial/administrative field. She registered her business in March 1994 and is one of the senior VAs who launched the industry globally. http://www.vadirectory.net.
A fool and his money are soon parted!
That’s one of the platitudes I learned while growing up. So, ingrained as it is, it usually takes me forever to decide to purchase something. Whether I really need it or even it’s something I want on a lark. Note, I said “usually”, and that’s most of the time!
So that’s why I didn’t have any means to receive or send a fax until this past summer. Never mind that if I needed to fax something my drive to Staples was a good 10 miles round trip, and it cost me $1.25 for the first page and $1.00 each additional page. Even though deep down I just knew I single-handedly put the three kids of the Staples sales person through college with my trips back and forth to send faxes to appease my insurance carrier.
Between the fourth trip to Staples and the telephone call from one particular client who wanted something faxed to her for her meeting in California that evening, it finally became clear to me I really needed to cut the craziness in my thinking and get a fax machine. Like now! (I really had been thinking about doing so, but I just wasn’t quite ready to part with the money.)
Nevertheless, I began to look around the Internet in an effort to consider the options that might be available. I also read lots of pros and cons in posts on many of the message boards about various fax machines and online fax centers.
In the end, I chose a somewhat obscure (spelled “n.e.w” to me) online fax service; in fact, I hadn’t read any comments about it by anyone I knew. So far, I’ve been very, very satisfied with trustfax.com.
Briefly, the www.trustfax.com Web site outlines the following features in their products:
- Plans Start at Under $5 a Month
- No Fax Machine or Phone Line Required
- No Activation or Setup Fees
- Get Your Fax Number Immediately
- Toll-Free and Local Fax Numbers
- Easy Set Up - No downloading, No software, No hardware
- Sending and receiving faxes - anywhere, anytime - is easy
- 24/7 Email support
They have at least eight different plans; with some, if you choose to pay a yearly fee rather than monthly, you pay an additional 5 cents for each page sent/received over a certain number of fax pages. In my case, the yearly fee included up to 150 fax pages free. Anything faxed/received after that, costs 5 cents a page. When a fax is sent to you, it comes to your email box as a PDF attachment, or you can read it online at your secure fax email box.
So while Staples is missing me immensely (nope, they can’t convince me that next kid needs a college education with my money), I’m content to continue to use my online fax. I’ve discovered I also save time by not driving off to Staples into the sunset!
And in the end, isn’t that what we VAs are all about!
Mapping Out Your Day
How do you get anywhere new without utilizing a map or asking for directions? Do you just pile the kids in the car and hope that by driving around aimlessly for hours you will eventually find the place? If you didn’t have such things as the address and a general vicinity it would make your job even harder. Similarly how can you have a successful day without mapping out where you need to go?
Like the map which provides directions, so too does a daily task list (or to do list, if you rather) provide you a direction for your day. The tasks that you list are small tools that help you to make sure that you stay on the road to success. I guarantee you that if you take the time to write out your list daily of all the things you need to accomplish you will be on the track to having a successful and thriving business.
Better yet, why not prepare your task list the night before? That’s right … This is when you are likely best to remember all the things you need to do the next day that were not accomplished in a particular day. Then it is easier for you in the morning to just jump right in and get a great start to your day.
For myself and my business, I take the time each and every night to map out what I need to accomplish the next day so that nothing is ever forgotten. I have found for myself because I do have a busy business, that by setting this out each day I am more productive and I no longer feel lost!!
Good luck!!
Are you following your passion?
Why did you start your business? Was it because you were fed up with corporate America? Was it because you wanted more freedom and flexibility? Was it because you wanted to be home with your children? Was it because you wanted to make a difference? Was it because you wanted to choose who you worked with?
Stop and think about that for just a moment. Why did you start your business?
Now reflect upon if you’re fulfilling the reason that you began your business in the first place.
If you answered so that you could spend more time with your family, are you?
If you answered to make a difference, are you?
If you wanted to work with those that you wanted to, are you?
Are you doing what you set out to do?
If you are, congratulations! You’ve accomplished something that many struggle with.
If you aren’t, that’s okay, but what are you going to do to move in the direction of your original goal?
Until next time…
Heather
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