Web Business Creations week 8 Reflection: Ads

W08 Reflection: Ads

This week we worked more on our websites and created and refined our Google Ads and keywords for those sites. This week, I personally got even more sick.  I was not expecting that as the previous weeks have been so intense this winter. I have not been able to do any of the things a mom or wife needs to do.  My studies and the little childcare that I was able to manage was everything I was able to give, nothing held back.  I am drowning.

I began to wonder if I am in the right business, or if I should find employment outside of my home because I am meeting so many brick walls starting this online business. I know it will just be like this sometimes and I need to keep focused on my goals and working diligently to learn and do all that I need to do. 

It is just like writing the ads process.  Just because you do it once doesn’t mean you are good at something.  It takes several encounters and experiences with something to begin to feel comfortable and each time you hope to make improvements and be refined until you, or your draft of your ad, are great.

This week to prepare we read the following articles:

o    Edit Your Text Ads (Links to an external site.)

o    Write Successful Text Ads (Links to an external site.) 

o    About the Ad Approval Process (Links to an external site.) and scan the Google Ads Policies (Links to an external site.) to see if any of them would affect your ad. Adjust your ad, as necessary.

o    Short Sentences Sell: How to Make a Big Bang with Little Words (Links to an external site.)

o    Keyword Insertion (Links to an external site.)

o    7 Best Practices for Google’s NEW Expanded Text Ads (Links to an external site.)

Web Business Creation Week 7 Reflection: Google Ads and Keywords

Week 7 Reflection: Google Ads and Keywords

This week in our Web Business Creation Course we studied more about Google ads and Keywords.  We created the beginnings of our Ads campaigns.

We began by watching these videos and readings:

Get Started with Google Ads: What are Search Ads? https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=cOTMWqwUXPU&feature=emb_logo

o    How Keywords Work (Links to an external site.)

o    Get Started With Google Ads: Pick the Right Keywords (Links to an external site.)

o    How to Build the Best Keyword List (Links to an external site.)

o    Exclude Keywords from your Campaign (Links to an external site.)

We utilized the accounts we had started in week 2 of the course to create a basic Ads campaign that we will not activate until later.  We focused on using Google’s search network and studied about and entered keywords which we will refine over the next couple of weeks. We learned about geographic locations, targeted devices which influence our sites design, bidding options of manual or automatic, and budgeting.

We created tools to help us choose the best keywords for our sites, the group themes those fall under and the best match type (Broad, Phrase, Exact and Negative). Here is a Keyword Spreadsheet Example.

We learned that affiliate businesses have some special policy’s about content that must be followed see the link here:  Google's Policy on insufficient original content (Links to an external site.). If you don’t follow them, your ad campaign will be shut down. 

We were given these additional resources to study if we wanted:

o    Google Ads Help (Links to an external site.)

o    $75 Google Ads Credit (Links to an external site.)

o    Google's Policy on Bridge Pages (Links to an external site.)

I found this week very helpful to be able to use my resources of time, money and energy more wisely to help make my site have better chances of meeting our goals. I see the value in spending the time now to do the research and choose keywords for a campaign that will bring the best results for my site. 

MKT 250 Web Business Creation Week 6 Reflection Legal Structure

W06 Reflection: Legal Structure

This week we studied about licensing, legal structure and taxes. It is kind of a hard lesson to do as a group because these are all so specific to your city, county, state and country.  As this is required to be on the internet, I do not want to give specific details about what I found in my studies about my location as that would be revealing to whomever gets access to this my location. Those have already been reported in an assignment earlier in the week.  

We were given the resources on legal structure to study:  

·          http://www.hg.org/busstructure.html

·          Legal Structure and DBAs: Idahobizhelp.idaho.gov (Links to an external site.)

·         Idaho Secretary of State Business Entities (Links to an external site.)

·         eHow - Do I need a Business License for an Online Business?

We were given the following license and tax resources to help us:

• Business Wizard (Links to an external site.)
• Nolo.com Sales Tax on the Internet
• http://emp.byui.edu/lundink/250/licensestaxes.htm

It was a good refresher for me and as this is a different type of business than the ones I have owned before, it was helpful for me to go over all this again. There is so much more that I need to find out about sales tax for other states.  

We also spent the rest of the week completing our websites.

This week was especially difficult for me. Two members of my family have the influenza and everyone of the seven of us has other viruses. Caring for those with high-fevers (possible seizure inducing levels) and sick tummies resulting in so much laundry, have kept me not able to sleep. We have had more Doctor visits than I could imagine possible.  Everyone has stepped up as they have been able but we are drowning.  I am going to have to ask for an extension as I do not know how I will be able to finish in time.  Two more, the toddler and the one just older, were on the mend from their stomach illnesses, they are now coming down with the Flu.

MKT 250 Web Business Creation week 5 Reflection: Site Design

MKT 250 Web Business Creation Week 5 Reflection- Site Design

This week, we studied about site design and focused on building our sites. Some sites that we studied about site design were:

·         Essential 2017 Web Design Trends (Links to an external site.)

·         A Beginners Guide to Building an E-Commerce Website

·         Color Scheme Designer 

We discovered and discussed what pages are necessary and why as well as those that are just nice to have. We studied about flow, appearance, color scheme and themes. We discussed ways to build credibility of your site and how to keep customers engaged in your site. We discussed the importance of ease of navigation for customers and how that can impact the design of your site.

Some questions we asked were: Are you going to use the hamburger style of navigation, or not, maybe a combination of styles.  We learned more about analytics and the role it plays in site design as well as in the back end of things for your site.  Images, fonts, colors, loading speed, interactivity, etc. are all vital components that can effect the success of your site. We also learned about how to create and put payment buttons on your site. We experimented with this at the following site. Buttons for Shopping Cart Purchases.

We researched websites that were the same type of site we were wanting to build i.e. Blog, E-commerce, merchant, and so forth.  We compared those sites to each other and determined the similarities, differences and what we felt would work best for our site. 

If I were to sum up what I learned this week is the details matter.  It won’t matter how great your product is, or your marketing is if you don’t take the time to pay attention to the details that make a great site, you will be fighting an uphill battle and will probably never be as successful as you want to be.   

MKT 250 Web Business Creations

W04 Reflection: Site Builder & Hosting

This week in Web Business Creation we learned about choosing a site builder and choosing a host.  We learned we needed to make the decision based on such things as our time frames, knowledge of HTML, our business’s requirements for size, power, appearance, ease of use, etc.

We learned about hosting and read information from these pages:

·         How to Choose a Host

·         Top Host (Links to an external site.)

·         Host Promo Codes

We learned about some of the criteria to look for when choosing a host also.  Things like price, discounts, ads, domain names, ads credit-google analytics, bing, facebook and Instagram.  We had to compare things like size, power, strength, capability to integrate with 3^rd party programs.   I wish we would have had some more guidance about things to look for as far as ecommerce sites and items needed with it.  I hope my choices not only meet my business needs, but also the requirements of the class.  Some of the site builder and hosts or both were GoDaddy, Blue Host, Square, Webgator, Wix, Weebly, Shopify, Ionis, etc.

This was the first time I have ever felt that the discussions helped me understand the information better.  There was a lot of information that the students gleaned from evaluating for their sites that brought frustration because we have to make these decisions fast and without a solid understanding.  Some of these commitments are for a couple of years.  That adds up financially.  It would be helpful and less frustration for students to have had a heads up from the instructors not just luck through other students or own searching.   

MKT 250 Web Business Creation Week 3 Reflection: Sourcing the Product

This week we studied about sourcing products for our online businesses.  We specifically studied about manufacturers and wholesalers in the United States as well as many international manufacturers and wholesalers.  We studied about deciding between drop-shipping and affiliate sales and which methods would be good under which type of circumstances.  I think the case studies are a bit silly, but I also see how they are helping us to be able to apply what we are learning about in a safe way and be able to discuss it with the classmates helps us to see many different perspectives that we would be blind to otherwise.

We learned how to quantify and compare between different options to help us see what may be the best solution for us between a few options in regards to several criteria.  We learned about the following top affiliate networks: 

1. Commission Junction
2. ClickBank
3. LinkShare
4. Affiliate Window — A UK based affiliate network
5. ClickBooth
6. Amazon
7. Shareasale
8. Google Affiliate Network
9. OurFreeStuff

Some resources we were given for wholesalers are these websites:

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-to-find-a-wholesale-distributor-2531713 

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/top-online-wholesale-trade-directories-3502182

I am devastated by the amount of fraud that happens as well as seeing the amounts that you can purchase items for is so low from China that it makes me sad thinking about how there is no way that those companies are paying the workers a comparable living wage.  I want to make sure that I am choosing wise business practices that help lift all within my circle of influence and that I remember to be a wise steward.    

This week, I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to do all the things I need to do as a wife and mother plus be able to study and create the business I want without making a change.  I had to drop another one of my courses, so I only have two this semester.  I learned that I needed to focus my efforts.  My health was suffering, and I was speedily losing abilities. If I want to be able to do anything at all, I knew I had to simplify. It has helped and I hope to be able to move forward from here. 

Web Business Creation -Week 1- Reflection

I have only a few semesters before I reach my goal of getting my bachelor degree.  This semester I am taking three courses. SCM 361 Production and Operations Management, Bus 310 Launching New Ventures, and MKT 250 Web Business Creation. I was excited about these courses, but as I have gotten into them the past two weeks, I am saddened by the amount of busy work that has been thrown into them.  I value true learning not irrelevant activities that do not allow me to actually learn and prevent me from being a wise steward of my time in my sacred obligations. 

This week in Web Business Creation we have been studying about choosing a business, Business Model Generation, Demand and Competition

Some of the readings we did were:
Russell Brunson and His Secret Magic Box  Video: http://digitalenterprise.org/models/models.html
http://bizthoughts.mikelee.org/brainstorming-business-ideas.html
business models online:   http://digitalenterprise.org/models/models.html
Entrepreneur.com's 3 pointers for Choosing a Business to  Start

We were given a couple spreadsheets to help us choose between a few different ideas. they talk about: Brainstorming and Screening Web Business Ideas,Inputs,Demand,Competitive Levels,Suppliers,Start Up Cost,Time Requirements,Profit Potential, and Recommendation.

I feel like I have been drinking out of a fire hose this semester.  My confidence is shaken and at this point I hope I survive this semester.