Web Based Business Act 2

 I actually had a bit of fun trying to figure out ways to advertise my book review site on a social media page.  So much of the SEO seemed so much better for a business selling a product that I did not see much I could do for my little book review site but the social media opportunities were just coming one after another.  I could see treating my social media platforms as old time British tea rooms where people come to visit and share gossip and news. In the virtual room there could be polls that recommend the next book to be reviewed or a virtual book club with weekly updates on everyone's progress. Ads for items that are featured on the website or on partnership sites.  Giveaways and subscriber shout outs are also ways to use social media for a blog style site.  With links in all of the posts and affiliate content being highlighted a social media presence can really rocket a blog site with little to no money invested.

 Sometime I have a hard time with the lesson material because I am just not interested in the class.  This is all very good information and I try very hard to relate to is and identify how this would help a person who is looking at doing a web based business, but I have no plans on creating a web based business and so things like optimizing my pages or setting my site up for better SEO are just, I am so sorry, boring.  I do make an effort and I can see words and adjustments I can make to my little book review site.  The first is that I can see my site benefitting from social media exposure.  If my reviews were linked in other sites or people shared them on their social media accounts that would generate a lot of positive SEO as will as improving my CTR.  I am sure if I added more images to my various pages and made sure most of my key words and phrases were replicated on my site that would also lead people to stick around on my site and even perhaps buy from an affiliated link.  But in

 I started my ads campaign this week.  I am actually a little intrigued to see what will happen.  I have plans to come back often and check on the status of my campaign and see the progress.  I plan on using a lot of the suggestions given in the lesson material about optimizing my key words and ads and looking for ways to maximize my clicks and conversions.  Obviously this will only happen after I have started getting some data on the campaign, but I will be interested to see how it goes.  I need to figure out how I will best interpret the information and I figure that will not really happen until I start seeing some sort of data.  I may see that my click through rate is good or my cost per click sucks.  Since I set my daily rate at $2.50 per day I am confident my rates will not look great because my budget is set so low, but it may still be a factor to look at.  The other thing to be cognizant of, is the fact that my site is an affiliate site and so will not get great feedback for a s

 I am amazed at all the ways we have a analyzing, quantifying, and qualifying so many different types of data.  It does not seem that long ago that we had to fill out paper surveys to get even a fraction of the information that seems to be so readily available.  That same information can be used to adjust and modify responses, key words, and ads.  It is still a little confusing to me what each data point represents but I have a pretty clear understanding of the overall concepts.  I figure it will all become more clear as I start to manipulate my own data.  I hope that the concepts I have are close enough to the actual facts of how it works that it won't take me too long to catch on.  I guess we will see.

 This week's material on ads has helped clarify several things about how ads work and good ways to improve them.  I am still struggling to figure out how to maximize the ads for an affiliate and think if I had gone with something like a cooking blog or such it might have been easier.  But since I hate to cook it would have been a bust for other reasons.  I have watch the hour long ads video, provided in the previous week, three times and have saved it to my YouTube account to watch again.  I see ads differently now and am more cognizant of the cost to someone when I am casually searching versus ready to but searching. As I get more content on my site I believe I can create better ads as well.  I think my ads are adequate for the moment but will defiantly need tweaking as we go along.

 This weeks objectives were a little hard to accomplish because I had a hard time coming up with word phrases that would be good key searches.  As a book review web site I am not selling anything that can be used descriptively, like hemp dog collars, and when I did searches for book review web sites I did not have any "ad" links that came up on several of my word combinations.  I think as I work through the process I will be able to refine my list and perhaps improve on the phrases I have already but I am just not sure of my ability to see the best ones.  I may have to go at it a little analytically and research word phrases that are less directly connected to my type of site but then I run the risk of having my "ad" show up and clicked on when someone is searching for something completely different.  Funny thing is, now that I understand what those "ad" links cost someone, I am now less likely to click on them for fear of costing someone money for a searc