Week 13 Reflection

I cannot believe it is week 13.  Every week it seems there is so much to learn and it is fascinating all that there is still to know and find out behind a web business.  This week as we dived further into Google Analytics, I was excited to get to understand more behind the data.  I had looked into my own account over the past few weeks, but had not gotten to understand very much.  So this week I was very appreciative of this assignment. 
The first part of the week as we logged onto WooRank to see our scores, I was excited to see my score in the 50's and only a handful of red marks to work on improving.  Now for the work on each of those items to increase my WooRank score before next week. 
This class has really increased my knowledge and understanding of running an online business.  It is definitely more work than I had originally thought.  However, it also can be quite fun.  And I loved learning more and more each week to help me be a better business owner.  Or even just a blog owner without making money, I know many of the things I learned this semester will be put to great use. 

Week 12 Reflection

As the semester is dwindling down, the learning continues.  This week I continued to track my progression through Google Ads.  I was amazed at the increase in impressions, clicks and click through rates due to small changes I would make.  Pausing or deleting a bunch of my keywords that were rating poorly, proved to be a smart move. 
We studied about social media networking this week.  Although I am not ready to start my own real business at this time, I feel better prepared to network it online when the time comes.  As an "oldie", I am a user of Facebook.  I find that this platform is a great tool for a business owner.  Not only Facebook, but Instagram, Twitter and others.  I know when the times comes for me to start my business, I will want to seek the most popular platforms for my ideal customer, and market my business on those. 

Week 11 Reflection

This week was all about optimization.  Making sure that my landing pages for my ads were appropriate for each ad and would help increase my conversion rates.  Also about how I can increase my SEO optimization.  I really have come to love the tools within Google Ads.  Viewing reports about all of my keywords has helped me see which ones are doing well and which ones I should delete or edit.  Since viewing the reports, I have deleted or paused many keywords that were either receiving zero impressions or very few.  I have been excited to see my conversions, clicks and conversions rise.  Having a low budget, I did not think I would receive very much on this, but I have received over 3,000 impressions and I am very excited about that.  This makes me want to try to do a real website business in some frame once I am done with school.  It takes a lot more time than just this class, and I want to put in my full effort.  I am grateful for each of the things I have learned and I know that this course has helped me learn a lot for the technology that continues to grow in leaps and bounds every day. 

Week 10 Reflections

This week as we learned about ROI and optimizing ad performance, I was thoroughly excited about my website and ads performance.  I am not making any money, but I do have a lot of impressions and clicks.  So this got me realizing that I can increase my conversion rates if I continue trying to improve my keywords and ads.  I do realize that as an Amazon Affiliate, I can make money and have high conversions if I work to gain traction and constantly post on my blog.  I think if I try and maintain the site on a daily basis, I could make this work as a business and eventually make some money.  I just do not know if I have the drive to post a new recipe and a link to a product every single day.  As I continue to watch and track the performance of my ads and keywords, I will be able to understand more and improve the stats.  What I loved most was when I found where I could see what all of my traffic was actually searching for.  There is where I can figure out if there are any words I should create as negative keywords.  So I can prevent traffic that should not see my ad from seeing it and wasting my money. 

Week 9 Reflections

This week was all about Google Analytics and connecting it to our Google Ads account.  I am still unsure of how this is all going to work with my blog and being an Amazon affiliate.  But I am excited to learn the two products as we go through the remaining weeks of the semester. 
As I created my website on GoDaddy's site, there was a setting in there to connect Google Analytics.  So, this actually made it really easy for me to do that part.  Now understanding the whole process and the reports will be a whole other ordeal.  But it will be interesting to see where in the world I get traffic from and what pages on my website are more popular than the others.  I think this next week as we activate our Ad Campaigns in Google Ads, it will be interesting and frightening to see how it all ends up working out. 

Week 8 Reflections

Just another week of B250.  Yet, this week was something different.  This week we learned a lot more about Google Ad Words.  I know there is still so much more of this to learn and understand.  For now, I have a semi-good ad created, with many keywords and phrases to drive traffic to my site.  I am not too sure how well an ad to a blog will actually work, but I am hopeful that it will drive a few visitors at least. 
I am enjoying learning how the keywords work within the ad and pages of my site.  I had not thought about my readers clicking on my ad and what page they would be led to.  So I am glad that the load page was discussed this week.  I know have my ad leading visitors straight to my blog page.  I know that is much better than leading them to the main page where they then have to click to get to the recipe of the day/week/month. 
I also have realized that in order to guide more traffic to me, I should probably enter in a lot more recipes.  That is a lot longer of a process than I thought it would take.  I wish I had entered in my recipes onto a Word document years ago. 
I wonder if most blogs actually buy ads for their blogs?  I know that there are many bloggers out there in the world who have been able to make a living from this hobby.  It just sounds so out there, that I can't imagine it being possible.  This experience is starting to show me the ways that it can be possible with time and effort. 

Week 7 Reflections

Google Ad Words, I had no clue what this was until this semester.  This week I definitely learned a lot more about it.  Yet, I still have a lot to learn as I do not fully understand it all.  I realize that I will learn more about it over the next couple of weeks. 
This week I created an Ad Campaign for my recipe blog.  I had to contemplate good keywords to use for the campaign.  What words or phrases would allow searchers to click on my website?  What is not too broad or too specific for my site?  As a blog of different kinds of recipes, I realize that I can include many words and phrases to return results for many searches.  If I was a user and trying to look for new recipes, I would search for many terms like, "dinner recipes", "family recipes", or "chicken breast recipes".  Those are not too specific or too broad that they would be results for many people who are looking for what I am offering.  I hope to be able to learn more about how to understand the aspects within Google AdWords soon too, as there are many parts that confused me as I was looking within the AdWords site of my campaign. 

Week 6 Reflections

This week I worked hard on my website daily.  It has been fun to work on yet rather annoying as I struggle to figure small things out.  I now know that there is so much more to a website than we actually see from the consumer side. 
The assignments and materials this week were about legal taxes, fees, licenses, permits, etc. that would be required for our specific business.  As I read up on national, state, city, and county government policies, I realized there are sometimes more questions beneath the surface in order to find these answers.  Do I have a physical location?  Am I selling a tangible product?  Thankfully, I am just going with an affiliate model for now.  So, being the middle man makes it easier on me.  Amazon will send me a tax form if I meet those requirements to file taxes.  As a sole proprietorship, I can use my name instead of a business name.  I am not selling anything, so I do not need a sales tax license. 
Now, if I continue this business model and decide to start selling meal plans and shopping lists, then there will be additional licenses required since I am selling something.  So I will keep the links I have searched for reference when I want to start my own business after I complete school next year.

Week 5 - Reflections

This week there is much to think about.  I looked over some recipe/food blogs and compared Our Best Bites and Pinch of Yum.  When looking these over, I started reconsidering my choices for site builders and hosts.  Since this will be my first website, do I take the easier route with the premade templates on Wix, or do I try to spend more time and learn WordPress which will help me more out in the real professional world?  With a full load of 6 courses and an internship, along with the family responsibilities with my husband, children, home and church, I have to consider what is best for me.  I think at this time, I can comfortably go with Wix, and then if I see this developing into a true thing, I can decide to attack it with WordPress eventually.  That looks like something I would like to learn more about anyways.  So as I compared these two websites, I looked at things I would like to put onto my own site to make it stand out as a recipe blog.  I need bold and bright colors and pictures.  I need an about me page as well as an image of myself.  I need a large variety of recipes.  Eventually I would like to connect the blog to social media accounts.  I also would like to have a shop to showcase products used within my recipes.  So this may work for an affiliate model for myself. 
I then learned how to make a PayPal button to accept credit card payments.  Though I do not think this will pertain to me at this point in time, it may eventually when I want to sell meal plan options.  So this was good to learn, but still more research needs to be done on the tax amount I would put in as well as setting up the correct bank account to connect the commerce PayPal to.  It is very interesting and great to learn about all of these things now.  I think this course is really helping me to think about my future business in ways I never imagined and I am grateful for that.

Week 4 Reflections

This week as I researched website builders and host companies, I realized that my husband has definitely done a lot more in the background of our websites than I ever knew. Having had a website for many years until recently, I took his work for granted. I now know that I can help take on the load of creating and maintaining a site after I learn and grow from this class.
I enjoyed actually comparing and learning about the different builders and hosts. I really had no idea that there were so many options out there. As I compared the site builders of WordPress, Weebly and Wix, I was torn between wanting to choose something that would be a time saver for me, but still allow me to learn and grow in this new experience. I ultimately chose to go with Wix because of its ease for beginners and its support service, which I think I will definitely need at times through the process.
I then looked into host companies and compared iPage, Bluehost, and Wix. Wix would of course make the most sense if I was going with them as the site builder also since they go hand in hand. I looked at the costs, whether the host worked well with Wix or WordPress (my second-choice builder), and the support and maintenance offered. Wix actually won in all 3 categories for me, so that helped solidify my choice for the builder and the host.
I realize that if I choose to at a later period in time build a website business, I can make different choices based on the experiences I have this semester in this course. But hopefully, I will make choices that will allow this semester be a great learning experience with very few bumps and bruises along the way.

Week 3 Reflections

This week we studied about finding distributors and suppliers, as well as using an affiliate program or a drop shipper.  These are things that I had never thought of.  But having not really ever considered being in a business of selling products, I had not encountered these ideas. 
As I looked into the different wholesalers, I was quite intrigued at how many there are out of the country.  Why are there so few within the states?  And why do we continue to buy more from overseas if we want to help contribute to the economy in our own country?  As I looked at the few companies I found that were produced in the USA, I found the prices to be extremely more than the companies based in Asia.  What I would  consider next would be the integrity of the product.  Are they made with the same materials and in the same manner?  Is one stronger than the other?  Is there significant returns or damage from one or the other? 
The next thing we looked into was going with an affiliate program or a drop shipper.  I had never heard of these before, so it was interesting to read about.  I think that the affiliate program sounds like an easier idea to follow than having to choose a drop shipper and follow through with that company with all orders.  Being an affiliate would mean a lot less work, but also a lot less in commission since they are doing all of the work and you are just directing traffic to them.  In the scenario that we are looking at, I would say that this team should chose the affiliate program since they are continuing to work their daily jobs while trying to get this going and understand this business to help their current careers.  In order to truly stay on their current jobs 100%, I would think that they would not want to distract themselves from that too much so they keep on good terms with their current companies. 

Post #1 - Week 2 Reflections

This week I found it very interesting to learn about all the different types of business models.  Some I had head of and others I had not even thought of.  I have considered business ideas within the models of merchant, affiliate, subscription and even infomediary.  I mostly enjoyed learning about the methods of finding business ideas.  There are so many problems we all encounter daily in our lives that if we took note of every single one, we would have too many business ideas to ever do anything with.  The method of problem and solution makes the most sense to me because you are trying to solve an actual problem that people have.  Therefore, you know there is already a market and demand for it.  It is just the research of how much demand and how high the competition is. 
When I think about running my own online business, I am still undecided in what way to go.  I do not want to sell any actual products.  I have thought of doing the affiliate model or even the advertising.  I like to write about cooking, baking and recipes, so I could go that way.  Or I have also considered a website about meal planning and grocery list making where users would pay a premium subscription rate in order to obtain the monthly meal plans and grocery lists.  That area does have some competition though, I just have found some things I would like to change in all the websites I have encountered that offer that.