Lisa’s Virtual Ramblings

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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.)

If you watched The Daily Show with Job Stewart last night, then you saw Stephen Colbert make a guest appearance on his old stompping grounds. He came out ridden on a tricycle by Uncle Sam, played by Justin from Stewart’s staff.

The two sat down for an “interview” where Colbert gave Stewart a card to read prompting him and poking fun at the way the presidential candidates announced their decision to run.

Colbert announced he is considering running in his home state of South Carolina BUT will announce his decision on a more prestigious show.

The Colbert Report aired after The Daily Show and Colbert announced that he will be running for President in the state of South Carolina. Should be interesting to see the outcome of his announcement.

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!

Today I finally dedicated the entire day to working on my new book. I conducted research and began my outline of how I want the book set up.

It will be about Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona with many photographs and not too much writing. Yes, a second passion of mine is photography so when I was asked if I would be interested in a book where the majority of the book will be pictures, I jumped at the opportunity, as well as bought a new camera.

Of course I told a few local people about the book already and they made some snobby comments like, “Um, well hasn’t that been done already?” Instead of responding back nastily, I just smiled and said, “Yes, probably but aren’t there tons of books with the same story published and different character names?”

OK maybe that was a little snobby response back…but what is a new author to do? Be insulted before the book has been completed?

I did go to Barnes and Noble to check out my competition and there wasn’t too many books. The concept of the publisher is a very unique one so I am hoping this will help with interest and book sales. I am also trying to feature places that other touring books have not covered.

Spoke to my publisher today as well to get a few questions answered like do I need signed releases and I never received the book building guide.

Two hours before the work week is over, or is it?

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.