Adwords Launched and Website Running

As you may have seen from my last post, my site is finally up and running! Still improving it and working on some parts but it is FUNCTIONAL! —–>   TOPKNOTCHKNOBS.COM   Its really exciting, I feel accomplished! The most exciting part about this week was seeing my Analytics actually be useful since there was some traffic to my site. it was also cool to see the stats on my Adwords campaign jump because I finally activated it and now my site shows up on Google! Launching Adwords was fairly easy once I got all my keywords in that I wanted and I learned how to write ads. Honestly I felt that I had good ads to start off with and I will be making more to practice and improve that skill. I think I learned the most this week with building my site and taking care of little details there. I had to do a ton of work on the site to get it going so that I could run my ads. I didn’t want to have a crappy site advertised on Google and have people be not impressed. They probably still aren’t haha because its an amateur site but it needed to be working. So i learned ab lot about working on a Wix site and visited many help pages! I learned how to implement Square and PayPal into my shopping carts, I learned how to implement an app that blocks people from right clicking on your images and saving them without your permission (I don’t have a ton of high quality work or anything but my photos of my products are mine and I don’t want others taking them). I learned so many things this week, from class and much more on my own. Lots going on and lots of new developments!

Google Analytics

Learning about Analytics this week was really great! I saw how powerful this tool can be. Not just for my site but also as a businessperson in general, if you know Analytics you can get certified and become a great asset wherever you go. I haven’t had too much traffic to my site so it was hard to comprehend exactly how valuable the program is but I know it’s very detailed, even more so than WordPress statistics which I monitor pretty often for my site here. Analytics was really easy to set up for Wix, my host site. I didn’t have to copy and paste and possibly mess up the code, I just typed in the short digit code from Analytics and it was ready to go. I also linked my Adwords account too, we will see how that goes when I get my ads going. All together it was a really great learning experience and I’m excited to learn more about it. 

Google Advertising

Learned a lot about using Google Adwords and creating advertisements to show on Google. Its such a. Simple thing to create but it is challenging to fit your whole company or product into 3 or 4 lines and make an impact on potential buyers! Every word has to be precise and clean and the phrases have to flow. Your condensed message really has to grab attention but also reflect what you are selling well enough for people to stay interested. Starting out, I found it the most easy to grab attention with a sale headline of 15% off. I couldn’t think of much else and I feel like people wouldn’t be interested in my new site unless I had something to offer and differentiate from already established sites and companies. As I publish more ads I will see what works and what doesn’t. It was cool to experiment with this important part of running an online business. 

Site Builders and Hosting

This week I explored the wonderful complications of choosing a site builder for my online business and a host for the site. There were so many options and things to consider! I felt a little lost at first. I learned a lot though. I knew that I needed a place to build my site. I did not know where to find that though. I also thought that hosting was built in or like the same thing. BUT THEY ARE NOT. They can be separate and they are different. I looked at iPage, HostGator, Weebly, and Word press for hosting and I am still looking for a good solution. I was impressed by WordPress the most for price and service. My problem is that I only need a website for 3 months and not many places want to host that, or the price starts getting steep. For site building, I liked Weebly and WordPress. Weebly is for anyone really. I think WordPress is for people whoa re already experienced in WordPress, which I am, so it takes some time to get used to and I don’t recommend it to everyone. Many hosting sites offered Adwords and search engine SEO credit, which was a huge perk to signing with some servers. Overall, I am going to do some more research to pick a  final site but I know I want to stick with WordPress if I can. Those are my thoughts from this week!

Embarking On An Unknown Quest

It ‘s been a long time since I have posted on my school WordPress, but I have returned! My 20 month break is at an end and I am back to posting about my thoughts and progress in my education in Communications and Business. This semester I was SO excited to have been able to get into a small online class called Web Business Creation. I knew I wanted to take this class because running an online business is one of my dreams! I think it would be just so great. I knew I had to get a spot if possible. I’m two weeks into the class now and its been an eye opening experience. My parents own their own business and I have been pretty involved with it throughout my whole life and I have seen the struggles and complications. But now a similar opportunity is before me. I know that if I actually learn something from this class, this will not be my one and only online business, and I know my piece of entrepreneurship is a lot smaller than my parents business, but its a start and I identify with it well. There is just so much detail involved! I am grateful I’m taking a class to figure it all out even though its a little complicated. I think the main lesson I am taking away this week is that I have a lot to learn still, but I have to jump in and jut go for it right away! I cant make up for what I don’t know so I might as well get to work. Its been enlightening to learn about the different types of business models out there and the different approaches people take to create a need for a product or service. Ideas are endless and there are so many ways to approach making money online. I am excited to continue t learn more and I will keep you updated. Until next week…