Month: February 2017

L8 Weekly Reflection

This week the workload has been light as it is a continuation of the previous week. My adword campaign has been approved and I am getting hits. But because I chose the home page as the landing page it means people looking for the contest have to search and I assume many do not like doing that. On the one hand asking a person to explore seems like a good idea because they then see all that is offered. But on the other hand many people want instant access to what they are looking for and do not want distractions and hassles.

I do admit I do not have a direct link to the contest page showing on the page… a person must click the menu first and then the contest link is there.Nevertheless I do not want to change my adword campaign just yet so I will make a link on my homepage  and see how that goes.

I appreciate the education through practice. Even if this endeavor does not offer any sales it will still help when I apply it to my husband’s BBQ sauce site.

For my Entrepreneur class this past week we read about a concept by Eric Ries called the Five Whys in essence one must keep asking questions until one gets to the root cause…which is generally human error. Admitting  I am wrong is tough but I know that when I do, I can then be better able to remedy the issue.

 

 

 

L7 Weekly Reflection

This week is tough. We are to get our adwords account set up. It is very sad to me that the class curriculum asks us to get our website and host found so far back and now we finally are asked to set up the adwords, but the free adwords we were offered for signing up with the host is now expired. They need to update the curriculum to either tell students to NOT activate their account yet…or to teach the adwords creation first so that students can take advantage of the $100 worth of free campaigns. *sigh*

But of course when one spends $25 they can still get $100 worth of advertising. So I had some difficulty getting my campaign to work but it is finally ready to go. So I will activate it soon.

We also discussed the importance of choosing the best words for advertising one’s site or page. It is important to be general enough to not exclude potential customers who may think you offer only one item. But at the same time not so general that people get frustrated when, for example someone is trying to find paint brushes and not hair brushes. Also we now have digital brushes for photoshop and other digital drawing programs. . . so clarity is important.

Borrowing from my other business class where we read about mastery…we learned that instruction is good but it is practice which makes the master. So here I go off to practice ad campaigns..and when success happens I will keep on practicing and never give up.

L6 Weekly Reflection

This week in my business class has been the least appealing to me. Legal entity and corporate structure and taxes. Ach! All subjects nearly equal to math in their ability to garner my attention. But in case I have readers who really want to know here is what I learned for Washington State residents.

But first for anyone, to get an EIN – Federal Tax ID Number – one needs to go here:

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/apply-for-an-employer-identification-number-ein-online

To become a legal entity in Washington one needs to fill out the appropriate form here:

https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/Forms.aspx

One also needs to register with the Department of Revenue which will allow one to also register or pay taxes for each location in the state where work is done. Including links to register with the city where business is located. Not all cities require registration so research on each business owner’s part will be needed.

http://dor.wa.gov/content/doingbusiness/registermybusiness/

From the Department of Revenue in Washington State it says that I need to collect sales tax even for digital products such as an online magazine.

http://dor.wa.gov/content/FileAndPayTaxes/BeforeIFile/Def_TxClassBandO.aspx#0004

If I ever got to the point of having employees then I would contact:  https://esd.wa.gov/employer-taxes/EAMS-SecureAccess-Washington and http://www.lni.wa.gov/  . Then I would be pretty much all set.

I am glad to have this behind me. For now. I do intend to move to one of the southern states in the next ten years or so…at which point I most likely will want to create a business there. So these skills and this list of steps to take will certainly come in handy.

 

 

 

 

L5 Weekly Reflection

This week has been good. I enjoyed refining the layout of my website Intangience . I have a tendency to allow things to become too busy so at times I may go overboard with too spare. Finding the “just right” is the trick.

In our reading I was reminded to keep things simple with two colors and not more than four. Limiting special effects is good too. A scrolling video is cool but seems more suited to photography, travel or a destination like a hotel or restaurant. My business is editing the content of books such as plot and characters. That service does not really lend itself to video or flashing content.

Being aware of how easy it is to read is something I am working on, I really like my header picture and I really like the white font, but some readers find it hard to read…that makes me sad because I really do not want to change it. I will play around with the font and other features to see what can be done to help with that issue.

Above all I need to make my content attractive. I am selling books through Amazon as well as stationary. I personally like it for myself since the things I want are already singled out. So I made a purchase through my own link – now hopefully I can drive traffic there filled with people who think the same way.

Mastery over anything we do takes time – let’s hope we enjoy the journey.