So nice to be back!

Yes, things are settling down. I took a day more or less off from unpacking because I was getting very uncomfortable, and being this far pregnant, I really don’t want to strain things.

I am getting ready to launch two newsletters for my Aspects of Home Business website. One for home business tips, one for new tools and opportunities. I just have to get them added to the website, but I have set up the autoresponders. Hopefully I’ll have them really going within two weeks or less.

I really hope to have a lot of things running well by the time this baby is born. If I can stop doing medical transcription and just work online, it will make my life much, much easier, since this kind of work is more easily interrupted. I’d rather be able to keep my focus strongly on caring for my family than on meeting quotas. Meeting newsletter deadlines just isn’t too hard for me most of the time, so I don’t mind that one so much. My online income is better than my transcription income was for a long time, so it shouldn’t be much longer, provided it remains consistent. Of course, I always wanted to earn more transcribing, but haven’t always been the best at keeping my hours up, so I don’t think I’ll quit just yet.

I’ve started work on the promised information on coping with the changes in AdWords. You can see it in the new pay-per-click section of my Aspects of Home Business website. I’d already started some of that content; this gave me a new perspective and new urgency to get it out there.

I hope to add more information as new tactics become clear. Right now, everyone is so busy figuring out how to cope, which mostly means creating their own websites, I suspect, that there is little solid information to share. Remember, the best way to make a successful website is with the right tools. Depending on your skills that may mean cheap hosting and domain names, or it may mean the powerhouse of tools that SiteBuildIt offers.

Have you started a website for your affiliate programs yet? This has been a chronic practice for me, so it isn’t too big a deal. Couple of minor AdWords ads that I’ll probably have to change once I see who isn’t getting any impressions, that’s about it.

Building websites…hmm, sounds like a great new category to work in.

Looks like folks are already trying to find ways to take advantage of Google’s change in advertising policy. I’ve already had two emails on this, promoting a teleseminar on coping.

It looks like the basic tactic is exactly what I expected it to be… create your own website on the product. This solution allows you to sell whatever you like without worrying about whether someone will replace you in Google for the same product and opens you up for free search engine traffic as well. It really is the most sensible way to go.

Yes, for many affiliates this will be a painful change. AdWords has been an easy source of income, but so many products have dozens of affiliates placing ads for them, so that AdWords is not the resource it ought to be.

If you aren’t comfortable creating your own website, consider getting some form of help for it. It can be anything from hiring a website designer to learning HTML to buying SiteBuildIt to help you. The important thing is to find a way to keep promoting your products rather than losing all your sales to this new rule.

Now is not the time to be lazy. Improve the way you promote online and keep your income, or better yet, build it higher. It may mean learning new skills or paying for better tools, but it will be worth it in the long run. You may have done well with AdWords in the past, just selling directly through the affiliate website, but think of the possibilities if you pass the sales through your own website, giving you the opportunity to build loyalty, a newsletter subscriber base, search engine rankings… the possibilities are tremendous if you’ll just put in the effort.

I’m going to do some work focusing on this in my Aspects of Home Business website to help people to understand how much they can still do even with this new rule. It’s not the disaster some may be worried about. It’s a new opportunity.

I did it!

I finished off my Valentine’s Day gift suggestions page for my jewelry website. It wasn’t easy, as I’ve made some improvements since I did the same for Christmas. I added images for a lot of my suggestions, since that should help sales tremendously. I can still think of a lot I could do with them, but with the impending move and need to get some transcription done, I don’t think it will happen this time. Maybe for Mother’s Day… which I need to get started on soon too to get it properly into the search engines. This really is last minute for this kind of thing, despite Valentine’s Day being more than a month away yet.

Of course, I want to finish several other things first from my business to-do list. I’m so glad I took notes like that, it has been a real help. I really recommend writing down the things you would like to do for your business, even if you can’t get to them immediately, just so you don’t forget. I don’t want to think about how many ideas I’ve probably forgotten because I didn’t keep track.

Big AdWords change for affiliates.

It should be a good move. To me, it encourages a greater range of ads for each result, and encourages affiliates to get more creative with their advertising. Nice thing is that you no longer have to identify yourself as an affiliate in your ad.

Essentially, they’re only going to allow one ad per URL per search query for affiliates and parent companies. This does make sense, even if it will make things a bit harder for affiliates. It ensures that searchers do not just come up with identical ads for the same thing all the time.

This is going to make a huge difference in results. How many searches come up with a stack of ads for the same website? That really is not helpful to searchers.

So how do you cope? Well, first thing is to decide if it’s worth being that #1 bidder in order to get the term. You’ll also need to get more creative with your search terms. Time to use Wordtracker more and read up on AdWords tactics. I’d recommend starting with any or all of Google Cash, AdWords 123 or Perry Marshalls’ The Definitive Guide To Google AdWords. This is going to make things a little more interesting for affiliates and searchers alike.

Another tactic is the standby of creating a website about the products. That means you can promote anything and not worry about having an identical URL. Now, the trick is that you are probably increasing the number of clicks your visitors will have to make in order to make a purchase. I have some websites that do this, however, and it seems to work reasonably well. Just make sure you have good copy.

Of course, creating a website is a lot of work. If you don’t think you can do it, and that you’d have to hire a website designer for you, think again. You can create your own website and it isn’t even that hard. In the long run, SiteBuildIt will probably cost you less than it would to hire someone to do the work for you, and you’ll have complete control rather than rely on someone else’s schedule.

I wonder how this will impact advertisers of the most popular programs. Think about how many results for eBay come up on some searches. If the advertiser isn’t coming up with a unique page on eBay for their results, this could have a drastic impact on them. Now, I think a lot of them are good enough to point to individual searches, although that’s not anything I’ve tried myself, so I don’t know. I’ll have to run a few searches myself when I get a little more time on my hands.