So, I called Apple Support to find out if they had any additional things that I could try.  After waiting on hold for about 5 minutes a very friendly rep came on the phone.  I described my issue and all that I did to fix it (rebooting it, restoring it, etc.) and he put me on hold for a little over a minute to see if he could find any other information.  He did not.

Then he told me that my iPod Touch was still under warranty…for the next 13 days!  Phew!  He said I should visit my nearest Apple store (thankfully a mile away) and even set up a Genius Bar appointment for me.  I arrived at the store at my appointment time and explained my issues and my tech support call.  Within minutes the Genius in the store went to the back and brought out a replacement iPod.

That was it!  I was very happy with Apple customer service and support today and thought I would just take a minute to brag on them.  Thank you very much Apple!  I am setting up my replacement iPod Touch as we speak.

Starting last May 2008 my small business started to see signs of a slowing in business due to macro economic conditions across the country and, especially, the industry of our primary customers. Up until this point, the business grew at phenomenal rates…sometimes over 100% per year! During that heady period all decisions were made with an objective of just keeping up with sales growth.

By Summer 2008 and the drop in sales, it soon became very, very clear that our expenses were way out of whack with our new sales volumes. It was a wake up call! We needed to take a real, hard look at our expenses, and start reducing them as soon as possible…or else. It also became crystal clear that reviewing our expenses was something that we should have been doing all along. I told myself, and the business, we would not make that mistake again.

Well, it is now Februrary 2010 and I can tell you that we have been very successful in our expense reductions. In fact, even though 2009 had a drop in sales compared to 2008 we actually made much, much more money (profit!) in 2009. My small business is stronger, financially, then it has ever been. Once the economy starts growing again, and signs seem to be pointing to a recovery already under way, we will be reaping the benefits of our hard work in 2008 and 2009 reducing our expenses. Here is how we did it…

1)  Moved to a hosted VoIP phone system

Up until the Great Recession we owned our own Voiceover IP (VoIP) phone system. While our phones worked quite well for us, after examining their costs it became very apparent they were more expensive, with less features, then we could get elsewhere.

• Each phone cost over $500 to purchase.

• Annual maintenance with our support vendor was over $1,400 per year.

• The “brains” of the system meant a single-point of failure for the company. A power outage or internet outage at one place negatively impacted all of us and our ability to service our customers.

• Our phone system required six Verizon landlines for outgoing and incoming calls. The monthly fees for these six lines plus our per-minute 800 calls created a higher than necessary monthly phone bill.

• Finally, since we had six landlines, we had a limit to the number of phone calls we could receive or make. While six lines used to be enough, with the growth of the company over the past few years it was no longer.

Moving to a hosted VoIP phone system saved us up to $500 per month and provided us with additional features.

• Each extension has a flat monthly fee regardless of the number of long distance phone calls made.

• Monthly flat rate for all of our 800 calls

• New phones are $120

• A distributed system with no single-point of failure and the phone system is now hosted in a massive data center managed 24/7 with a redundant power and communication network.

• Voicemail to email

• Direct phone numbers for each extension

• Internet-based dashboard to easily manage the phone system. Previously any changes that we wanted to make required a phone call to our vendor.

• An automated attendant when all of our lines our busy with an on-hold queue system.

• Unlimited incoming and outgoing phone calls

2) Reduced our shipping expenses

Being an online retailer, shipping is our second biggest expense behind payroll. Obviously, reducing shipping expenses creates a nice bump to the bottom line. We were able to reduce our shipping expenses by doing three things:

• Reached out to our UPS account representative to renegotiate our UPS discounts. I am sure letting our account rep know that we were starting to talk with FedEx help us a little.

• Had our drop shippers start to ship on our UPS account. This significantly increased our UPS spend and provided us with even greater discounts on UPS standard rates.

• Started to ship some of our smaller weight items (three pounds and less) USPS Priority Mail instead of UPS Ground.

3) Reduced our credit card transaction fees

Credit card transaction fees are the thorn in every retailers side. I was able to cut ours in half by renegotiating our processing fees with our current processing company and moving some of our processing to PayPal.

Before I renegotiated with my current processing company I needed to gain some leverage. So, I started to shop around. I was able to find one company that offered me interchange plus pricing. Basically, this company offered to charge me a couple of basis points over the credit card companies published interchange rates. I then took this offer to my current credit card processing company and based upon my monthly sales volume they agreed to match the pricing.

Finally, I moved our American Express credit card processing to PayPal. My monthly PayPal payments (customers who use PayPal to make online purchases on our website) plus my American Express charges were at a high enough volume to provide me with a very attractive flat rate processing fee from PayPal; much cheaper than American Express which was above 3% per transaction.

4) Ripped up our technology platform

For a long time we just bought new technology and hardware when we needed and tried to plug it in to the existing technology infrastructure. By 2007 our technical infrastructure had become much bigger and more complex then it needed to be for a company our size.

We had become a technology company instead of online retailer focused on selling our products. A massive amount of our time was being spent just on keeping our technology running, and unfortunately, we were not doing that good of a job. Our website was going down every 6-8 weeks and our custom e-commerce platform was needing to be patched and updated very frequently. So, we ripped up our technology architecture and rebuilt it on standard programs that were more stable and feature-rich than our own custom software. Making this very difficult decision has saved us tens of thousands of dollars per year in reduced technology costs.

We moved our e-commerce website to a hosted e-commerce platform. This allowed us to retire three Linux servers and all of the costs and headaches associated with managing and hosting these servers at a data center.

I installed a new order management program that also included better customer and inventory management than we had before. Prior to our new system we had a custom software program that imported customer and order information into our Quickbooks accounting program for order processing. Our new order management program increased our order processing productivity by over 200%! Before, we were manually entering UPS tracking information into each order and manually creating payment receipts. With our new system, this was all automatic with the click of a couple of buttons and we were able to better manage our inventory which is a clear money saving opportunity.

I standardized all of our desktop computers with a standard profile (the operating system plus software installed) and removed Administrative access for all of our employees. This provided us with two solid benefits. It 1) reduced our computer support expenses since there were no unnecessary installed programs and each computer was the same as the other; and 2) increased our employee productivity since they were no longer dealing with buggy computer systems and viruses.

We moved our remaining three Windows servers from a data center to our warehouse location saving us over $20,000 per year! While our warehouse does not have a redundant power and communications network like a data center, the data center expense far out-weighed the possible impact to our business for random power or internet outages impacting our servers. Plus, by moving our most mission critical technology off our own servers and to hosted platforms (our website, phone system, and email) I have been able to significantly reduce any negative impacts to our business if our servers go down due to power or internet outages, or a hardware problem.

Finally, I just recently moved our email system off our Exchange server to Google Apps. This should save us up to $1,000 per year because we will no longer need an anti-virus and anti-spam solution for our Exchange server and this move reduces our server maintenance needs.

I access this email without any problems on my BlackBerry Tour, and in fact, BlackBerry just released an enhanced Gmail plugin that provides a bunch of additional features for managing your Gmail email on a BlackBerry. These enhancements include adding and removing labels and stars on messages, archiving email, viewing related emails in a threaded view, and performing local and remote searches. So, if you are a small business that uses Gmail like me, you now have even more email management features for the BlackBerry using this new plugin. The one negative to this plugin is that OTA synchronization only happens from your phone to your Gmail account. Changes made in your Gmail account will not sync to your phone.

BlackBerry Tour Review for Small Business, DaddyExecutive.com

After writing that post I began using the new, enhanced Gmail plugin by BlackBerry. As of today, I stopped using it. The biggest issue for me was the fact that when I made changes on the Gmail side, those changes were not updated on the BlackBerry side (one-way synchronization). Basically, it became irritating having to update both Gmail and my BlackBerry.

So, I re-visited the Gmail plugin provided by Google and downloaded that application to my BlackBerry. I just began using this Gmail plugin about 10 minutes ago but I here are my initial impressions:

• I LIKE that my entire Gmail inbox was visible right away. When I setup my Gmail email using the BlackBerry’s settings I only saw those emails from my inbox that I had received after the setup.
• I LIKE two-way synchronization! This is huge, at least for me. I much prefer only handling an email once instead of two times.
• I LIKE that I can search all of my contacts stored in Google Apps directly within the Gmail application. I also use the Google Sync application provided by Google that syncs my calendar and contacts directly in the BlackBerry.
• I LIKE that, like the enhanced Gmail plugin by BlackBerry, I can add and remove labels and stars on messages (except this is two-way sync unlike the BlackBerry plugin), archive email, report spam, view related emails in a threaded view, and search email.
• I AM STRUGGLING with the best way to compose an email using my Contact list. This is definitely much easier using the native BlackBerry messaging programs. When composing an email using the native programs, as you type in the To box, the BlackBerry automatically searches your BlackBerry Contact list. It seems that when composing an email in the Gmail application it only searches your most used contacts from Gmail instead of ALL of your contacts.

In short, I much prefer the two-way synchronization of the Gmail plugin by Google over the one by BlackBerry. However, I am missing the automatic Contact list lookup of all of my contacts.

I had used Windows Mobile primarily because my small business uses Microsoft Exchange, and Windows Mobile has built-in over the air (OTA) synchronization of email, calendar, tasks, and contacts using Microsoft’s Active Sync. OTA synchronization is awesome and just hours after purchasing a Palm Treo with Windows Mobile a couple of years ago I could no longer remember how I got through life without it.

While the BlackBerry also offers OTA synchronization, if you have your own email server, you must put BlackBerry software on your server to have full OTA synchronization of your contacts, calendar, notes, and tasks. While a BlackBerry does offer out-of-the-box OTA access to multiple email addresses through BlackBerry Internet Service, including support for Exchange using your Outlook Web Access credentials, it is not full two-way synchronization. Full two-way synchronization, including support for multiple email folders, only comes with using BlackBerry server software. For small to medium-sized businesses, this server software is called BlackBerry Professional Software. BlackBerry Professional Software allows for up to 30 smartphone users within your business and the first user is free. This allows you to download and install the software on your email server and try it out with one employee. If you like it, then five users cost $499 and ten users $849.

In my small business we have one employee who has a BlackBerry Storm. I installed and setup the BlackBerry Professional Software for this one user on our Windows Small Business Server, which includes Exchange. Since I was only going to offer full OTA synchronization for one user, this software did not cost anything. However, installing this software on the server required many steps and I needed to place a call to BlackBerry technical support for assistance. I was pleased with the support that I received, and when installing the software you receive one free technical support call. In addition to providing synchronization of email, contacts, calendar, etc., the software allows you to remotely manage a BlackBerry phone. This includes turning on or off certain features (like the camera), security protocols, and the ability to remotely erase a phone if it is lost. Pretty cool stuff.

When I switched to the BlackBerry Tour, I decided to hold off on purchasing a five license pack for $499. Instead, I went with the out-of-the-box BlackBerry Internet Service with access to my Exhange email server using my Outlook Web Access credentials. For synchronization of my contacts and appointments, I am using BlackBerry’s desktop synchronization software PocketMac for BlackBerry (since I have an Apple MacBook Pro). It is not a bad setup and while I may forget to manually sync my phone on a daily basis, I am able to send and receive email just fine which is much more important to me. I think I am going to stay with this free setup for myself instead of moving up to the BlackBerry Professional Software. In September 2009, BlackBerry will be releasing a new desktop synchronization program for the Apple OS that looks like a huge improvement over the current program. I am looking forward to this upgrade.

In addition to my business’s Exchange email, I also have a Google Mail account for DaddyExecutive.com. I access this email without any problems on my BlackBerry Tour, and in fact, BlackBerry just released an enhanced Gmail plugin that provides a bunch of additional features for managing your Gmail email on a BlackBerry. These enhancements include adding and removing labels and stars on messages, archiving email, viewing related emails in a threaded view, and performing local and remote searches. So, if you are a small business that uses Gmail like me, you now have even more email management features for the BlackBerry using this new plugin. The one negative to this plugin is that OTA synchronization only happens from your phone to your Gmail account. Changes made in your Gmail account will not sync to your phone.

A final plus that I am finding with my new BlackBerry Tour over my previous Windows Mobile devices is that it seems there are many more third-party applications available for the BlackBerry. While the BlackBerry does not have nearly the number of apps that the Apple iPhone has, there are still a lot of apps. Plus, the list is growing now that BlackBerry has its App World.

I think a smartphone is an almost must-have for any small business executive. Having a smartphone with instant access to email allows me to feel comfortable leaving my office during the day because I know that I am not going to miss any important communication. This, in turn, means that I can do things with my family that may happen during business hours, which helps me to achieve my work | life balance.

For more information visit:

Verizon BlackBerry Tour Review – Engadget Mobile

BlackBerry Tour Review – infoSync World

Enhanced Gmail Plugin for BlackBerry Now Available – Crackberry.com

After Julia was born, we read all of the articles about how important it was to get your child on a schedule. Perhaps it was because we had the time to read those articles. Whatever it was, we worked very hard to get Julia, and us, on a schedule and Julia just followed right along. During her early infant months she would nurse, play a little, sleep about 30 minutes, wake up and start the cycle again. Then, as she got older, she moved on to two naps a day. Man, were they great naps. She would sleep one and a half to two hours. It was great! When she dropped her morning nap, her afternoon nap went to three hours…FANTASTIC!

For some reason, with all of the chaos of a fourth member of our family being added, we seemed to forget about routines and schedules. It is only within the last month that we are finally remembering how important a schedule is to a baby. Plus, and I cannot stress this enough, how important a schedule is to you, the parent.

For me, the worst thing about Tyler’s first six months is how unpredictable he was. Was he hungry? Was he tired? Looking back, Julia was easy. We just knew that every three hours it was time for her to be nursed. No such luck with Tyler. The schedule was missing, and this was making him unpredictable, and our lives much more stressful. When he did sleep, it was small, little cat naps throughout the day. There was no set time for him to sleep. Basically, we worked, and worked, to put him to sleep when it seemed that he was very tired; which usually meant he was screaming by this time.

Now, I would like to also add that it seems it was not just our forgetfulness of schedules that caused the sleepless nights and stressful days with Tyler these past few months. He has also been diagnosed with reflux. For about six weeks prior to his six-month doctor appointment, Tyler became increasingly agitated while nursing or eating his solid foods. At times he would just start screaming in the middle of a feeding. Plus, he slept poorly and not nearly enough. At his six-month doctor appointment he was diagnosed with reflux and put on omeprazole (Prilosec). The medicine has definitely helped. However, Tyler’s lack of a schedule was the final missing piece.

At a follow-up visit with our pediatrician after his six-month appointment, she reminded us of the need for a schedule. She stressed the following items:

1. Three meals of solid food a day in between nursings;
2. Set nap times (plus or minus 30 minutes);
3. A regular nap and bedtime routine;
4. And, absolutely no rocking to sleep. He needed to start learning how to soothe himself to sleep.

It was like, of course, a schedule! How could we have forgotten that a routine was a very important part of his natural development? We just did. Either way, I am happy to report that things are getting a lot better with Tyler. He now sits down in his feeding seat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sometimes he eats well and sometimes he doesn’t. However, he at least knows what to expect. Nap time is around 9:30 am and then again around 2:30 pm. We are no longer rocking him to sleep. Instead, we are rocking him as part of his routine but putting him down in his crib before he falls asleep. We have definitely had to hear some screaming when we leave the room, and at times it feels like his screaming goes on for eternity. However, we have tried to be good about letting him “cry it out,” and within the last couple of days his crying time has reduced to sometimes not crying at all. He does seem to be learning how to put himself to sleep. Plus, his nap times are increasing to one hour plus, and sometimes up to two hours.

The best part of all of this is that Tyler is also sleeping better at night. He is now only waking up one time instead of two to three times during the night. It seems that the saying “good sleep produces more good sleep” might be true. As an aside, I am truly jealous of parents who have children that start sleeping through the night at four months. Julia did not finally sleep through the night until a little past her one-year birthday, and I guess Tyler is going down that same path. It seems that schedules and routines cannot fix everything, but they sure do fix a lot of things.

Additional Information:

Seven Keys to Creating A Successful Baby Sleep, Feeding, and Play Schedule | BabyCenter
Sample Baby Sleep, Feeding, and Play Schedules for Your Child’s First Year | BabyCenter

Ads for awareness – I think that Facebook has built one of the better ad targeting tools going. You can target ads to Facebook members on all kinds of criteria and run pretty low cost campaigns. The trick though is to run campaigns that are compelling and promote your FaceBook Fan Page instead of trying to sell something. Promote your white paper, events, and educational content – create awareness about your great content and you will get the chance to earn the trust it takes to actually sell something to someone. Here’s where you go to find more info about Facebook Ads. And, I wrote about using Facebook ads to create awareness here.ducttapemarketing.com, Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing, Aug 2009

I agree. Facebook has built a great ad targeting tool. About two months ago I started to use Facebook (and Twitter, which I think is another great social media platform for small businesses, but that is another post) to extend my small business’s online reach. I created our company’s Facebook Fan Page, asked some of my friends and family to fan it, and put a Facebook badge on our company’s website with text about becoming a fan and a link back to our Fan Page. Then, I spent a little time getting comfortable with the Fan Page and the ins and outs of how I was going to use it for my small business.

Shortly thereafter I realized that as a recently new GoDaddy hosting customer, I had a $50 Facebook ad credit. I figured what the heck, I will use the $50, try out Facebook advertising, and see if I can build up my fan base a little. Well, I am now a true believer in Facebook advertising. My Facebook ad is driving new fans to my Fan Page every day!  I am able to target my ad so that only people of a certain age, live in the United States, and have certain words that are relevant to my product mix in their profile see my ad. I feel that I am showing my company brand to people that are very relevant to my business, and I am gaining Facebook fans that prior to clicking on my ad probably never even knew my company existed.

If you have not already, create a Facebook Fan Page for your small business and make sure to ask your website visitors to fan you by adding a link in your header or footer of your website. Then, get comfortable with how you will use your Fan Page for your small business. Finally, try out Facebook advertising. Set a small daily budget so you can easily manage your costs, but definitely try it out.

Make sure to read the blog post 5 Tips For Getting More From Facebook (quoted above) from Duct Tape Marketing to get even more tips for your new Facebook Fan Page.  Good luck!

1. How easy it is for any small business to get their own email address (the hardest part may be choosing your domain name since your company name with a dot com at the end may already be taken);
2. That it is very inexpensive;
3. How to implement the rather simple technical details and to gain an understanding of things called DNS settings and MX records;
4. How to choose an email provider that will host your email for you. There are numerous free options available.

Now, many of you may say, I don’t have a website, why do I need a domain name? Or, maybe you will say I don’t have a website so I cannot get a domain name. Both of these are false. You do not need to have a website to have your own domain name. Although, I do think that every business should have at least a one-page website describing its business and communicating its unique value proposition. But, that is another post for another day.

Right now, I am focused on just your email address. Owning a domain name for your small business means that you will have a much more professional looking email. For small businesses trying to compete in the market against larger competitors and other small businesses, looking professional is a must. Thus, I would say, having your own domain name is just part of the price of admission to the game. Plus, it is not very expensive to own your own domain name. In fact, it is rather inexpensive. Depending upon your domain name registrar (companies like Network Solutions and GoDaddy), the cost can range anywhere from $10 to $35 per year.

Step 1: Purchase your domain name.

Go to GoDaddy.com, NetworkSolutions.com or the myriad of other domain registrars and purchase your domain name. Every registrar’s website has a domain name lookup that includes all of the many extensions that come after the dot (e.g., com, net, org, info, edu, us, etc.) Currently, GoDaddy.com is selling dot com domains starting at $10.69 per year or lower, and other extensions at even lower prices. So, getting a domain name is an inexpensive proposition. What registrar you choose is completely up to you. I have personally used GoDaddy and Network Solutions. Network Solutions is more expensive and to be honest, I am not quite sure what the extra money buys me. But, that is just my personal opinion. I have been happy with both my GoDaddy and Network Solutions experiences and the tools available to me to manage my domain name.

Step 2: Choose your email provider.

There are many email provider choices available to small businesses that allow you to create email addresses using your newly purchased domain name. In addition, some of the choices provide much more than just email. They include a calendar, contacts database, the ability to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations, mobile synchronization, and to create a website for your small business. Perhaps the most well-known is Google Apps which includes Google’s Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Docs, and Sites. However, there is also Microsoft’s Office Live Small Business and Zoho Business. All of these email providers have free and paid options. In addition, all three provide options for accessing your email beyond just a web browser (i.e., using a desktop email program and accessing your email on a smart phone like a Blackberry, iPhone, or Windows Mobile device). Personally, I use Google Apps and really like it. However, I have started to use some services from Zoho and I am impressed with their features as well. I don’t think that you could go wrong with any of these three choices.

Once you choose your email provider and set up an account for your small business, you will probably need to verify with that email provider that you are the domain owner. For example, when I opened my Google Apps account I need to create a CNAME record in my DNS settings to prove I was the owner of my domain name (see Step 3 for additional information about DNS settings).

Step 3: Change your MX records to send your email to your email provider.

Login in to your domain name registrar’s account and go to your domain name’s DNS settings. DNS stands for Domain Name System. Basically, your domain’s DNS settings map domain names to IP addresses and tells everyone where your domain name is located on the internet. There are different types of DNS settings that manage different parts of domain name resolution. A records translate names to IP addresses. NS records designate the name servers that store the information for a specific domain. CNAME records are used to create additional host names for hosts in a domain. MX records (Mail Exchange records) define the mail delivery location.¹ Your domain’s MX records are what you need to change to send your email to your email provider.

While still logged into your DNS settings, also log in to your new email provider account. Go through your email provider’s settings to find your new MX records. Copy those MX records into your DNS settings. If you are using Google Apps, Google provides very clear directions about how to update your MX records for your particular domain hosting company. It may take up to 48 hours for these new MX records to propagate to all of the domain name servers on the internet. However, it can also happen faster. For instance, whenever I have made these changes they are effective within 2-4 hours; sometimes as soon as 20-30 minutes.

The internet “levels the playing field.” Small businesses can compete alongside multi-billion dollar businesses. A professional looking website, with a professional looking email address, helps to increase the perceived size of your business for potential customers. Let’s face it, customers want to feel comfortable that they are dealing with a company that has been around, and one that will not go out of business tomorrow. Having your own domain name is a big part of giving your customers that feeling of comfort.

Now, start giving out that new, much more professional looking email for your small business right now, and replace that @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, @gmail.com or whatever free email you had set up before.

To help others that may come across this post please post in the comments; what email provider did you end up choosing? Why did you choose that provider? Anything that I missed in my steps that should have been included? Thanks so much for your feedback!

Resources

1. The Importance of DNS Settings from NTC Hosting – http://www.ntchosting.com/dns/settings.html
2. Domain Name System from Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System

“Pay per click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content sites, such as blogs, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked.”

Traditionally, our small business has not spent a lot of money on pay per click advertising. There are a couple of reasons.

1. Financial resources. We just don’t have thousands of dollars to throw at pay per click ads.
2. All in all we have pretty good organic search rankings. Over 70% of our website traffic comes from organic search. Since this is free traffic, we have not felt all that compelled to spend a lot of money on paid traffic.
3. Time. I just don’t have enough time in my working day to effectively manage many pay per click advertising campaigns.

However, we do, what I would call “dabble,” in pay per click. Even though over 70% of our traffic is from organic search, this type of traffic is much less qualified. Simply, while our organic search visitors make up the bulk of our traffic, the visits to sale ratio (conversion rate) of this type of traffic is much less than our website average. So, it is less qualified traffic. I am finding that with the right pay per click advertising strategies, I am able to bring more qualified visitors to my website, which increases conversion rate, which obviously increases sales.

At this time, we are not spending much money on pay per click ads. But what we do spend, we are getting very, very good returns. Basically, we are earning up to 10 times what we spend. However, we did not start out this way. We started out with our pay per click campaigns breaking even or losing money, and we were spending eight times more per month than what we spend today.

Last year I made the following changes to our pay per click campaigns based on advice from a search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) company that we use. Immediately we began getting much better return on our investment.

• Exact keyword matching. While exact keyword matching will bring you much less traffic, I am finding that this traffic is much better qualified. Better qualified traffic means higher conversion rates.
• Changed my display URL to drop the “www” in front of my domain. Thus, my display URL would be “DaddyExecutive.com” instead of “www.DaddyExecutive.com.” This makes my ad stand out a little more since many ads use the “www” in their display URL.
• When I use multiple ads, instead of having the search engine optimize the displaying of those ads, I choose to have the ads show evenly over time. This way I can analyze the click through rates, conversion rates, and paid search positioning myself, and remove the ads that do not perform.

But they are not the only strategies that I use. I also use the following:

• Paid keywords for my company name. Even though our website is first in organic search when someone searches on our company name, I buy the keywords too. I feel that this helps me to protect our brand. In addition, some people just click on those first results and those first two results are paid. I don’t want someone going to another website when doing a search for my company. These keywords do not cost me too much money per month and they generate huge returns. So, they are definitely paying for themselves.
• I make sure that I am in paid search results position one or two. I either increase my pay per click bid or work to increase the quality of my ads to ensure that I am in those positions. If I cannot get in those top two positions then I drop the paid keywords. I have found that traffic from later keyword positions is much less qualified.
• My ads are very product-focused. Basically, I mention the product and not “fluff.” I have run tests where I mention promotional things (e.g., free shipping, flat-rate shipping, sale prices) and those ads always perform worse then the ads where I just mention the product someone will find when they click on the ad.
• I only show my ads to people within the United States and only during specific times of the day.

For a long while I have pretty much kept my pay per click campaigns on auto-pilot. However, within the past few weeks I started to have some ideas of how I could increase our pay per click advertising slightly, but hopefully generate much higher sales. Using a combination of web analytic data (I use Google Analytics and Yahoo Web Analytics) and data generated from an SEO tool I use from SpyFu.com, I determined which of my website landing pages have higher than average conversion rates. When a visitor lands on a particular page how often does that visit turn into a sale. Then, for those highly converting landing pages, what are the keywords that produced traffic to that page and what are the conversion rates for those keywords. Finally, for those keywords that have higher than average conversion rates where do I rank organically. If my website did not show up on the first page of organic search results than I purchased that keyword.

I have seen some success with my this new strategy and some failure. I am going to keep tweaking because I feel like this strategy should work. I will keep you posted on my results.

What strategies do you use for your pay per click advertising campaigns?

Resources

Pay per click definition from Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_per_click

SEO/SEM Tool – http://www.spyfu.com

The article discusses how the current recession is changing the amount of time dads are staying home with their children. Some dads are spending more time at home due to layoffs, while others are spending less time at home because they are working more. One of the newly full-time parenting dads in the article states that being a full-time parent is harder than working full-time at a job.

As far as I am concerned, I am spending a little bit more time at work lately and a little less time with family due to this recession. We have had to reduce our headcount, but of course, we still have the same amount of work to get done. In addition, I have been wading more into paid advertising (something that traditionally we have not done much of before) so I am spending more time researching and learning to ensure we get a positive return on our investments.

What about you other dads? Are you spending more or less time with your families during this recession?

Click here to read the full article, “Dads Reveal Struggle to Balance Work, Family” from CNN.