As I notice my blog circling around the Internet (thanks Z-Lister Mack Collier and ConverStations!) it’s too bad I don’t have more time to blog.

I started working from home recently. This may sound like a romantic ideal. It’s still good but there are some adjustments (like most things in life).

First the good: My commute consists of about 5 feet. I have more flexibility about how my day is structured. Things get done quickly with no red tape or bureaucracy. Office politics are minimal or non-existent.

And for the adjustments: My office and desk are too small – so I’m going to rent some office space or eventually move (doesn’t this defeat the whole point?).

My internet connection is inadequate. It’s great for home use but when it goes down, I’m paralyzed. My VoIP phone is inadequate. VoIP to cell doesn’t work very well. The quality can be stellar but then unexpectedly go bad. My cell phone bill is giving me sticker shock. Land line coming next week.

Everyone is virtual. I hear voices (no, not that kind). I talk. But I rarely see people. We Skype. We talk on the phone. I miss real people I see regularly in the course of a day. As an extrovert, this is probably the  biggest challenge.

I’m a fan of ThinkSeer SEO firm. I started reading their blog this week. I’m just geeky enough to celebrate out loud when I got a link a few months ago on Stanford’s site (.edu with a high page rank) for a key term. People think it’s strange. I don’t know a single programmer who yells out in glee when they write some killer code.

I like how Laura captures the emotion of search engine optimization in her post. SEO is part technical, part art.

Top traits of a good at SEO marketer (or internet marketer). SEO is like a big fun game you get paid to play. Here are some of the rules of the game:

• You must love to learn and stay educated. You read a lot of blogs, newsletters, and publications. You attend conferences, webinars, listen to podcasts, and network with other people who are into SEO.
• Your ADD makes change vital. You hate to be bored and love a challenge. Algorithms change, new techniques, sites, or tools are created. These innovations can make your job easier or score you a great link.
• You like problem solving and tweaking things (non-complacent). She says, “when keywords start slipping too far, the game begins again – what can we tweak – title tags, descriptions, footers? Were we too aggressive somewhere? SEO is one big puzzle with lots of different pieces – we just try to put them together in the right combination.”
• You are humble. The best internet marketers know what once worked may not work tomorrow. They know they don’t know everything, nor can they.

As I write this I’m suffering from mental exhaustion (from learning a new industry and talking with a friend who’s a SEO expert). So I was sloppy with the link text. I have this feeling ThinkSeer is going to find this post and ask me to change it. I’ll make it easy and use a trackback. Am I right? Watch the comments…

Have you wanted to run paid search ads on Google (Google Adwords) but don’t have a web site? This is *hot*. Merry Christmas – what a great time for paid search marketers! With yesterday’s roundup of free ads worth $550 and now free landing pages, you have no excuse!

Google will help create and then host landing pages free for small businesses. There’s an example on Google’s AdWords blog. That’s a small specific web site relating to your ad. When someone clicks on the ad, it’s the page they land on. It usually is designed with a specific goal in mind. So it won’t have press releases, or all of your products, it is designed to sell.

The best news is you don’t need to be technical to do it.

Google Checkout is giving $10 off $30 at selected stores. Until December 31, 2006 you can use Google Checkout to take orders and it’s free.

This is good news – Google is passing out great deals this holiday season, make sure to check it out!

Paul Allen has a great post about all the promotions right now with pay-per-click advertising. You can get a combined total of $575 worth of free paid search ads. MSN ($200), LookSmart ($300), and Ask.com ($50) and Enhance Interactive ($25 – nice landing page!). MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Ask.com $50 credit: sign up at sponsoredlistings.ask.com, and enter promo code SESCHI06 during the check-out process.

LookSmart $300 credit expires on Christmas Day. Visit AdCenter.LookSmart.com, and use this coupon code at check-out: SESCHQ4

If you’ve ever wanted to learn paid search marketing on someone else’s dime, start today. Promote your blog. Promote your article. Your product. Practice and learn what sells, what works, how it works, and then stay with the one giving the best results.

I wish I had time to do this. If you do, let me know how it goes. I’ve been partial to Google AdWords, but I’m curious about these other search engines. If they let you link directly to a product buy page, try using an affiliate link directly (Google doesn’t let you, not sure about these).

Help spread the word – digg this article.

Have you been in on the Secret craze? The basic principle of focusing on what you want in your life rather on what you hope doesn’t happen (first you have to know what it is you want).

I went to a former workplace today. I thought of who I hoped to see. Four of my favorite former coworkers came by. [Now that I work from home, I don't have coworkers. I have Skype and chat friends. I'm a little afraid of becoming reclusive, but I attracted this setup too.]

Now I want to attract a bigger desk, an extra bedroom with a water cooler, and Dragon speech recognition software. I’m also hoping to attract a personal chef specializing in preparing healthy food, a yoga instructor, a massage therapist who is very strong, and a housekeeper that comes once a week. This summer I want to attract a trip to Thailand. Oh, and a copy of the Secret. I’ll let you know how all that goes.

I’m not trying to be greedy. I just don’t think you can attract things to other people’s lives. I’m supposed to go into all the detail of exactly what these things would be like, but I’ll spare you.

Larry King did a segment on the secret that you can see on YouTube. It’s a little mystical for my taste, but still. It reminded me how a few years ago I decided I wanted my next title to be Internet Marketing Manager. About a year later, it was.

EDELMAN INTRODUCES WEB-BASED TOOL FOR PUBLISHING SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS RELEASES

StoryCrafter Designed To Offer Pushbutton, Fill-In-The-Blank Ease

The headline and promise of this news release catches my immediate attention. I read it and I’m sold. I want to use StoryCrafter. But how? They violate a big rule in social media press release writing – there is no call to action. I don’t know how to get this tool. Do I contact them directly? Is it only through Edelmen’s agency?

You spend a lot of time on a press release. You grab people’s attention. Then what? Tell them exactly what you want them to do and how you want them to do it  (this goes for emails too).

What is the purpose of your news release? Get someone to sign up for your email list? Buy your book? Use their tool? Become an Eldelmen client? Whatever it is, make sure it’s clear and easy to act on.

I found this handy free tool that helps score your web site. The post I’m referencing (SmallBusiness 2.0 blog) also talks about meta tags, descriptions, and keywords in straightforward terms.

This week I’m starting to think of this as a dream request blog. I blogged about Carolyn wanting someone to film a video about her experimental business. Within an hour Lorri read it, and now Carolyn has a professional film crew scheduled tomorrow. Carolyn’s business plan helped Kelly’s dream of having her products on a mall kiosk near the holidays. Kelly’s already had to reorder and is now trying to keep product in stock – a great “problem” to have.

I can’t say the other things that have happened to me personally lately, but they are dreamy.

So, if you have a wish tell me about it and I’ll blog your request. I seem to have good blog karma lately.  Who knows how long it will last, so hurry fast!

Yepic Shocked by Success with their first PRWeb Press Release

I was just about to fire off an article on Yepic when I got this news. (They are my outlet for writing when I don’t have a publication to write for and have a story in my head). Submit your dig here, Yepic guys, this is diggable…(you need blog love, but then again, so do I because I don’t have digg links!).

The Yepic story goes like this. New company has limited budget but great site and idea. They decide to spend a few hundred and issue a press release through PRWeb to launch the beta. What happened is beyond their dreams.

• Sent out a press release via PRWeb the afternoon of November 9th, a Thursday
• Friday the magazine Fast Company wrote about them in their blog
• They got more traffic than expected during their entire beta run (which we had planned to run for 6 months, or so).
• They got blogged about (my post is #7 in Google) and covered in other places. Shameless plug: they loved my articles on selling on eBay and finding a job. I haven’t had a chance to make the changes.
• New registrations, new articles, and attention shoot through the roof.

The conclusion? They are widely popular and entertaining offers. From their own blog: “Yepic is currently in discussions with lots of potential partners and everything you’ve seen till now and much, much more is on it’s way in early 2007.”

Companies bawk at spending $200 or more on a press release. Let me count the ways it’s worth it: A free podcast about your news release done over the phone. An image in your press release and a smaller one by your release (catches your eye). Technorati tags, trackbacks. Submission to news sites like Google News and Yahoo News. A permanent URL on PRWeb’s high page ranked site (front page: 6)

It’s more than worth $200 – if you write your press release well. You’d spend that much in a day to buy a few PPC links. PRWeb ranks the quality of writing. I’m aiming for a perfect 5, most of mine are 4s. You can also choose to get their releases in the categories you choose, specifying what ranking you want (see what the 5s are doing).

PRWeb has my vote for the #1 way to launch a new company and for social media press release. I don’t work for them, I’ve just seen the results. And the results are amazing.

Someone dugg Carolyn’s experimental $100 business story today. It’s grown to over 200…here’s the link if you want to digg it. Also, if you visit the Provo mall kiosk, bring food for her! It’s not made up, she has about $100 to her name and got laid off a few weeks ago…I just love seeing the story unfold. It’s hilarious. It’s real. Someone should chronicle it for YouTube. She doesn’t have a video camera so if you do, go interview her! I want to back her up so she can start talking to the local media…