Lisa’s SEO Ramblings

As promised, it is time to share some of my pics from the AdWords workshop this weekend. Of course I blanked out and forgot to ask someone to take pics of me while I presented. If anyone has some pics of me, I would love to have a copy of one.

Here are some pics and I look oh so lovely…

This past weekend was an amazing experience meeting everyone and hope to have many more.

This past weekend was an amazing experience meeting everyone and hope to have many more.

This weekend I attended Simon Leung’s AdWords workshop in San Jose, Cali and it ROCKED! Simon Rocked and all the guest speakers were awesome!

Matt, Kevin, Rod, Johnnie, Huey Lee, Mark Widawer, Leo, Coach Deb, John Guanzon, Tracy Repchuk, Alejandro, The Twins; everyone rocked!

I presented about “How Optimized Copy Can Help Your Website,” and I felt it went alright. Of course when I was finished, all the things I had planned to speak about during the presentation came back to me but for my first time presenting at a workshop, I did a decent job.

For the one’s who know me from the classroom, you know I gave out candy for correct answers. I wasn’t allowed to throw it around to the participants, so I did a tamer alternatively and passed the bag around the room. I never leave home without candy!

I met some amazing Internet Marketers and they were real life people! Who knew??? John was awesome and spent a lot of time with me running through the basics of Internet Marketing and even let me watch how he develops a landing page. He shared with me ideas of how to get started and I can’t wait to begin this week on my first project to see if I can get it up and running.

On a personal note, I brought dresses to wear for the weekend and ended up being extremely cold the entire time. I guess not being in cooler weather for a few years did thin my blood because I never thought 50-60 degrees would literally make me shiver and it did. I only brought a few things to wear and kept layering them each day. I felt like I looked like a bag lady! So unprofessional but it is a lesson I learned for future travels.

The entire weekend and experience was amazing and I would like to thank Si for accepting me as an apprentice AND letting me present at his AdWords workshop. Si, you are a wonderful Mentor and a great person.

P.S. Pictures will be posted soon

Since I was accepted into Simon Leung’s apprentice program, I have been waiting to be assigned a project to work on. I received an email Sunday night about starting to do some copywriting for one of his newest ideas and then yesterday, received an IM from Simon inviting me to his AdWords workshop.

After a whole minute of thought, I was on the phone booking my flight and hotel room to San Jose, Cali. I have been studying on my own about AdSense and AdWords but it is different attending a 3-day workshop from one of the Google Masters!

The workshop is November 9 - 11 and I will be flying up on November 8 and returning Sunday evening. Now all I have to do is get that song out of my head, “lalalallala on my way to San Jose dahdahdaaaa.”

(I don’t even know the words but the tune has not left my brain yet.)

I began this week with a surprise trip from my husband to Kauai, Hawaii. Our sixth wedding anniversary was this past Sunday and after not taking a vacation for 3 years, my husband decided it was time to get away.

With both of our working schedules, we both could only take off for a few days and he chose Hawaii. Long flight for a short few day trip but def. worth seeing. We stayed on the GREEN island as they call it. 500 inches of rain a year since most of the island is a rain forest and we did see some sun. The beaches are gorgeous of course!

Flew home on the red eye Monday night on US Airways on the most uncomfortable plane seats that ever existed! Neither one of us slept and I did have a few outburst as people kept pushing my chair and waking me up since somehow I ended up sitting on the aisle seat.

Finally got back to normal Tuesday night after taking a few hours to sleep and get back to work!

Oddity client’s interview posted in the New York Times so wonderful news for them! Congrats!

Writers got wonderful compliments! Thank you and Woohoo!

Jewish holidays coming to an end soon.

With all the excitement and traveling this week, I feel the week is over. But obviously it is Thursday and The Week Isn’t Over Yet! Oy Vey!

I just received exciting news that one of my clients, a software development company, was interviewed by the New York Times. The interview will appear in the paper and online the last week of September.

Now for even more exciting news! My client, who is very cool, asked if I could write an article that the hard link from the New York Times interview will be directed to. He felt rather than sending interested parties directly to his home page, having the traffic go to another page with more information about the topic would be ideal.

So the article I wrote will be linked to my client’s NYT interview!!! OK, it’s not an article in the NYT but at least its close…

This week has brought news from many different directions. Besides the phone ringing off the hook and lots of collaboration with Nicole Nash on three versions of Ad copy for a client, this week has brought rewrite projects. It seems to go in cycles where clients begin developing more subdomain names and want the sites to say the same thing but not with the same copy due to the penalties that Google will enforce.

I am getting a contract to write a new book; which details will follow once the contract is signed and its a definite go.

Then I got exciting news today that I was accepted into Simon Leung’s apprentice program so I am very excited to begin this journey of Internet Marketing and learn from the Google guru himself.

I accepted a position as a “Marketing Manager” for a new site called Little Pen Pal which is a great idea that brings the  joy of receiving a letter from a pen pal, back into the world.

A few new projects with possibilities of long term contracts and lots of marketing! (Can never stop in this business.)

Developed a MySpace account for PearlyWrites (Want to be my friend?) and making the last minute fixings on the new Website for PearlyWrites.com. The plan to launch is next week and hopefully it will be ready to go.

Wait but today is only Thursday and I still have tomorrow to get through…

As I battle back and forth every week about life, included in this battle is how to grow my business. When I began my full time freelance journey two years ago, I never imagined that freelancing would develop into having my own marketing and writing service.

I figured after three years, I would be able to sub-contract out some of the extra work I received but not within six months of starting at this full time! So this was my first accomplishment that took me by surprise. After business began growing, I needed to develop a new plan which included a business name, branding and a plan of action. PearlyWrites, LLC was born on Jan. 3, 2006 but Lisa Weinberger, the freelancer, started in the late 90’s. (Oy vey, I’m so old.)

Full time freelancing from June of 2005, I just celebrated my two year accomplishment of still pushing forward and growing. Two years ago, I would have never thought that I would have provided copy or instructional design to PBS or NAF but I have! I never thought that a large amount of Web copy would be ghostwritten over the Internet, but it’s out there. AND I never thought I would become a “blogger” sharing my thoughts over the Internet for anyone in the world to read.

Online marketing and SEO has been a blessing in disguise. Although I use the basic techniques like keyword research, meta tags, press release distribution, article submissions and changing Web copy, it has opened many doors for me as a business owner as well as many of the writers I collaborate with on projects.

So what is the time for change? Well every year I try to redesign my Website for a fresh new look. One client I provide copy to has been working on my new PearlyWrites site and hoping in the next month it should be ready to go live. (Bartering is awesome!) It is a very professional looking site with still my “creative” edge and I think many of you will be impressed with the Web designers work.

Once the new site is up and running, the plan is to push forward with a strong marketing campaign to see what results I will get. To keep consistent work throughout the year, marketing and sending out bids on projects and making long term client connections is VERY important in the freelance business.

This morning I check my e-mail to find an e-mail from someone I have never met. At first I thought it was spam and then after reviewing it several times, I decided to respond. I have copied and pasted below the entire e-mail conversation as I would LOVE to get other’s opinion about what this mystery person said/wrote to me. Was she right or just being rude?

claudia marks wrote:
I was interested in hiring you and read your web site. I was appalled when I came to the following paragraph in the Dishonesty section. How a writer who professes such credentials could allow something this sloppy is beyond me.

I will be taking legal action against this client. What have I learned? No matter how long you have been in business, their are always dishonest people who are always trying to screw you over and get something for free.

Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:29:05 -0700
From:

To: claudiamarks921@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: your web site

Where is this written on my Website? Please show me as I have checked and this is not on my site.

Thank you,
Lisa

claudia marks wrote: It’s on the side bar entitled Dishonesty, where you go into detail about being ripped off by a company …

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Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:58:23 -0700
From: Lisa@
To: claudiamarks921@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: your web site

I found it! It was under a blog of mine. OK I fixed the word. Thank you for pointing the mistake out. When I wrote this entry, I was very angry and should have gone back to review it once I cooled off to check my spelling.

I just returned from the east coast where I had to attend my grandmother’s funeral and sit Shiva. Receiving your email this morning, after being away was not the most pleasant thing. I am sorry that this incident has made you decide not to hire PW for your project.

Good luck,
Lisa Weinberger
PearlyWrites, LLC
602-288-8992

Well, I’m very sorry about your grandmother’s death, but you just displayed further your lack of professionalism saying how angry you were in one instance, then having to whine about getting my email and the reasons. Obviously, there is more at issue than a mistake you didn’t catch. Don’t write me again.

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So with the above e-mail, was I wrong and unprofessional? This Claudia Marks woman who claims I was unprofessional, not once did she address me by my name or left a signature. She misspelled the words Website and e-mail and was just plain nasty. To me a misspelling of “there” and ‘their” on a WORDPRESS blog is nothing when an e-mail is written and sent this way.

What do you think?

What happens when you are a business and let one slip up cause you sleepless nights? In the writing service business, many clients do not want to pay an upfront fee due to the reputation freelance writers have gotten. For new clients, I usually require an percentage of the entire project as a down payment or the entire payment before starting a project.

For some reason, I did not require an upfront payment for a recent project and after delivery of the work, the client has disappeared. I am located in the US and he is located in the UK. I have tried to contact the client but have had no luck. This client has claimed he was sending the 22 vegetable articles we provided to be printed in a magazine in the UK so I contacted the magazine. They are reviewing the submissions to see if this client sent the articles to them. The writers of these articles were Jessica Mousseau of JM Writing and Editing Services and Renee Mallet.

The client also asked for a 5000 word article about Patio Gardening which PearlyWrites and Renee Mallett provided. The client continued to say he desired to turn it into an e-book. Since the client still has not responded and it has been over a week, I have decided to publish the 5000 word article and all the articles we provided onto my sister blog site.

The company name is Seeds For Success and the owner claims his name is Peter Smith. If anyone has dealt with this company or plans to, please be wary. If the client pays and contacts me, I will delete his name but till I receive a response, I will spread the negative word throughout the SEO and Writer forums and post his contact info. As far as the client is concerned, PearlyWrites and the writers owns the copy and the authors who wrote the articles can do what they want with their writings they worked hard on.

After no response, I will be taking legal action against this client. What have I learned? No matter how long you have been in business, there are always dishonest people who are always trying to screw you over and get something for free.