Self Employed Success

Tom Peters has written a quick-read e-book, 111 Ridiculoulsly Obvious Thoughts on Selling. It’s worth the download.

I began beta-testing MSN AdCenter last week. The interface is easy to use, and a great mix of Google and Yahoo tools. If you’re using Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing, you’ll have a very easy time figuring out how to use MSN AdCenter.

Unlike Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter and Google give you BOTH the impressions and clicks on the same chart. This is so important for determining if there’s enough traffic for a search phrase to warrant even keeping it on your advertising list. (Yahoo, are you listening??)

The prices for bids are pretty good on MSN, but then again, there aren’t a lot of people advertising through MSN AdCenter yet. Google Adwords bid pricings are getting very high and climbing, and I wonder if there will be a time when small business owners simply can’t afford the cost of pay-per-click advertising at all.

I’ve been advertising for a week with MSN AdCenter and haven’t gotten ANY clicks, and very few impressions. I’ll have to do some research into how much they’re rolling this out in their search engine. It may be that they’re still serving the old ads that came through Yahoo Search Marketing and gradually moving over to their own AdCenter ads as time goes by.

What I like about having all three pay-per-click schemes available to me is that I can customize what keyword phrases I want to bid for on each search engine. If I rank well in the organic listings for one search engine, then I don’t pay to advertise for that same phrase on that engine. If I rank poorly for a phrase on one engine, and well for the same phrase on a different search engine, I can put my money where it will do the most good.

For example, I have a great ranking for “small business coach” on MSN Search, and an average ranking for “small business coach” on Yahoo. So I’ll put my money into Yahoo advertising for that phrase and not invest at all in MSN advertising for the same phrase.

I’ll keep you informed of my results after a month of testing…

According to a recently study, women-owned businesses without employees grew TWICE as fast (18%) as all small businesses without employees. You can see the study findings here:

http://www.womensbusinessresearch.org/mediacenter/2-2-2006.htm

Way to go!

Also, the SBA has created a website just for women entrepreneurs:

http://www.sba.gov/women/

According to this post on MarketingVOX, nearly 21 percent of email is not being delivered. This can have huge impacts on your email marketing campaigns and ezine distribution. Even worse, it could mean that direct, individual emails to customers and prospects might not be getting through. Make sure you collect phone numbers so that if you don’t hear back from someone, you can call to see if they received your email.

I’m like a kid in a candy shop!

I’ve been invited to beta test MSN’s AdCenter, the pay-per-click equivilant of Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing.

I’ll let you know how the setup goes and how my results compare to the other two services.