Ideally, the best marketers utilize both on and offline marketing together. While I’ve never advertised in a newspaper (not even a classified ad) I was an advertising rep for my college newspaper. It was volunteer but I learned a lot from doing it. Plus one of my regular customers owned a Cajun restaurant and offered me free food (like hush puppies or fried alligator).

Back then I thought I was furthering the cause of our paper, but really I was learning about business and sales with no pressure on me. I wish I’d done even more volunteering like that.

I’ve been interested in Google’s newspaper advertising or as they call it Google Print ads (this goes to a video explaining how it works). Today I gave this a closer look. Note: you have to have a Google AdWords account to access this. First, I was surprised that they don’t just include traditional papers but have some weeklies, Spanish papers, college papers, and other niches. Over 600 in all. Note: if you live in Utah you can choose from the Salt Lake Tribune and/or Deseret News and that’s it.

The pricing is like Priceline bidding except there is more interaction. You get the newspaper’s list price and then you submit a bid. You don’t compete with other advertisers, publishers review your bid and get back to you in a day or two. They can accept, deny, or negotiate on the price. You can send an email to the publisher through the Google interface.

Here’s a quick example: you probably want to run your ad at least 3 times minimum. You select the newspaper(s) and set your budget. You can choose what section you’d like to advertise in. The list price for the paper I chose was around $1200 an ad for a daily (in a mid-size city). Your minimum bid is going to be around $300. Contrast that with a college newspaper that is around $800 with a $170 minimum bid. This is for 2 columns wide and about 11 inches tall (Google recommends at least 10 inches high or if you run smaller ads increase the frequency).

You’ll get an electronic tearsheet – or PDF file of your ad, after it runs.

There is an excellent “Tips for Beginners” section within your account that gives a lot of guidance, research, and advice. The nice thing is you don’t have to sign any agreements or contracts with the paper, like you normally would have to.

Newspapers have high trust and people tend to look at them longer and keep them around. I’d like to experiment advertising my SEO blog writing services that I offer.

If you want to try Google Print ads, you have to sign up for an AdWords account first.

This is a theme that’s been on my mind for most of the past two years. I dream about working from home and a flexible schedule. Then I live it and start to miss the routine and being paid on time. Contracting and building your own business has a certain amount of stress built in that doesn’t leave at the end of each day. When I work for someone else I still take what I do seriously, but I can more easily disengage from it when I’m not at work.

Lately the days seem to melt into each other. It’s like being in college. I could choose what to do with my time, but if I wasn’t studying, I felt like I should be. So it goes with working from home. I get paid for my time and the other time I’m building things that are residual.

I’m a social person but working online so much has turned me much more introverted. I notice how much more difficult it is to really engage people I don’t know. That used to not be a problem! I used to love talking to people where now I more often observe.

I read a lot about Google (I blog about them at www.podango.com/Google) how a lot of Google millionaires actually don’t quit their jobs or they go on to found charities or join VC groups. Work doesn’t stop because a job does. Work is an opportunity to make meaning and a framework for growth.
I’ve been daydreaming about looking for a regular job with a PR firm. Where my social media, SEO, and writing skills can play in and I can fill in the gaps. And ideally I can blog. This is just an idea I’m tossing around (don’t worry Paul Wilson). Once again I crave the social atmosphere and routine that a job offers. I’m not quite there now, just thinking.

Here’s a great post that covers the pros/cons of freelancing and working from home that I could relate to.

I normally praise Google but there is an exception – Google Checkout for Sellers. This is the most un-intuitive program to use. I invoice through it. I had to del.iciou.us the right URL because there are separate ones depending on if you’re buying or selling. It took me a long time to find the correct one, but in case you need to know (and for my memory) it’s http://checkout.google.com/sell/.

After logging in you go to the “settings” tab to find a link on the left that says, “send an invoice.” Why is it under settings? That is usually things like how you want to format or set up your account. Not to bill from. Then you fill in the information and send the invoice. It does not remember past emails, so I have to look it up again. Also, there is no formatting on the message, it takes out all the spaces. So I still send a separate email with an actual invoice.

Once you get payment, you have to claim it (another unnecessary step).

The best part of Google Checkout is that there are no fees to use it. Otherwise, I prefer PayPal. Even PayPal hides invoicing and makes it difficult to find. Once you’re there though it’s pretty straightforward.

If you’re purchasing things online, Google Checkout is a breeze to use and you use the same login wherever you go.

I just wrote about how Google launched a new project called International Cleanup Weekend.They want local communities to clean up their communities and map it on Google Maps. I’d like to get a group of people to take on projects like cleaning up the Provo River. Or, we could climb a mountain and bring trash bags to pick up things on the way back down (Phil 801 you could coordinate that one).

There are projects like this going on all over the world on October 13th and 14th.

How it works:

- Choose a spot to clean up (submit in comments)
- Add the place to Google Maps
- Everyone meet Saturday morning October 13, with gloves, trash bags, and if needed a truck to haul off the garbage
For two years I was a community organizer. One year of that was through Americorps who are partnering with Google to do this. As I blogged about in a soon-to-be-published post on Marketing Pilgrim this is a good idea for businesses to get involved in. Serve employees breakfast, get the bags and everything and send out a press release on how cool you are to be involved in something so progressive. You can use Google in the headline.
Read More about the Google International Cleanup Weekend

Google AdWords Management Software
What I’ve always hated most about pay-per-click advertising is managing it. I call it a babysitting job. I didn’t think Jeremy Palmer could do anything without being chained to his stats. I know over time he developed ways to mitigate that. Since he is mainly a PPC affiliate and a very successful one, I listen to his advice.

Since I know him I’m certain he didn’t just get lucky or that he got in early or any other excuse why he’s a millionaire as an affiliate. He’s also a decent person who is honest. If you’re running AdWords or other paid search campaigns, you should look into software to manage it.
I just got a newsletter from Jeremy Palmer. In it he endorsed some new software that makes creating and managing PPC advertising a snap. As you may know it automates a lot of things that Jeremy has done by hand for years. For example, when he promoting a dating site, he uses local keywords for states and cities all over the country. Then he makes landing pages – a version that matches each keyword. As you start to realize, this is INCREDIBLY time consuming.

Jeremy Palmer, the Utah super affiliate, has risen to the top tier of affiliate marketing. I know it’s been a lot of work, but I’m constantly amazed by his ability to continually learn and move forward. This is a VERY competitive industry and if you don’t produce, you don’t get paid.

I’m curious what John Jonas would have to say about this software. He’s another friend who is an expert at PPC.

It’s called SpeedPPC management software. It works for Google AdWords and MSN Adcenter.

Here are some of the benefits:

• Dynamically generates landing pages that perfectly match each keyword. Includes example templates.
• Simple code will track PPC across marketing channels, even through email autoresponder series that go on for years.
• Affiliate datafeed integration.This is some extremely powerful server side software that uses affiliate datafeed files to dynamically build as many landing pages as there are products. You can create a new ad group for every model and brand name.
• Learn about maintaining your Google AdWords quality score – this keeps your PPC costs down. If you’ve ever gotten a quality score alert, that means you’ve got to pay more per click or your ad is disabled. It can really hurt business.

I’m sure affiliates will use the tool to promote this product!

Check it out and let me know what you think. If Jonas reviews it, I’ll post a link. The software isn’t cheap, but considering how much you can spend on PPC advertising in a day, you can probably make it up within a day or two. If you have a small PPC campaign, this will help you expand it very quickly.

Check out Speed PPC AdWords management software…of course you don’t have to be an affiliate to use it.

I’m getting a kick out of this search engine ranking tool on Shoemoney’s blog. It’s addicting. You type in a keyword phrase and your URL. It tells you where you rank in some search engines.

This is where I rank for the term: Utah Bloggers:

Google 11
MSN Search 9
Yahoo! 0
AltaVista 48

Fun facts: I’m #15 for Utah internet marketing – almost the front page. I rank higher for newspapergrl than my actual name Janet Meiners.

More Google rankings:
#87 on affiliate marketing. #2 for Utah affiliate marketing. Looks like through my blog, without actually doing it on purpose, I’ve branded myself as a Utah expert in these areas. I’ve lost a lot of ground on “Jeremy Palmer” but rank fairly well for “super affiliate Jeremy Palmer.”

What could you brand yourself as an expert in for your state? I need to change my title tags.

This is just amazing – if you can program a widget, or as Google calls them, a gadget, you could get money from Google. Gadgets are fun, useful mini-applications that help you do everyday tasks. There are desktop or online gadgets (like one that shows the weather, or the one I have that scolls news).

Google Gadget Ventures will grant $5,000 to developers with at least 250,000 page views per week to their gadget.

After that, you could be eligible to turn your gadget into a business and can apply to get $100k to do it.

I think some Utah bloggers/programmers could pull this off. How about a Jibberjobber gadget? a job seeker’s gadget? a linked in or social networking gadget? A keyword tool gadget (TagJungle). A stay-focused gadget that has your tasks to get done or “to do” list? I need to find a delicious gadget so when Paul Wilson adds a new page I see it.

here’s the scoop: http://www.google.com/gadgetventures/

Google employees who’ve made a lot of cash on Google stock are leaving to pursuit other dreams. The latest are Bret Taylow and Jim Norris, involved in starting Google Maps. The friends are going to well-known venture capital firm Benchmark Capital. The fresh faced 26 year old millionaires have unique titles there. They are “Entrepreneurs in Residence.”

What does that mean? Getting paid to think about starting a business. I know some more potential employees they might want to talk to!

Here’s the classic quote:
“This gives them paid positions to hang out at Benchmark’s offices on Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road and think through starting a business. They have a specific idea in mind, but are secretive about it, telling VentureBeat only that it’s a “consumer Internet” company.”

Read my blog at www.podango.com/Google

I love this article because it captures the way internet marketing is going. This is taken from a speech by Brendan McGeever, marketing manager for Google Inc.’s Consumer Packaged Goods.

Here are the main points of Internet marketing:

• Don’t wait until your product is perfect to launch it, get it out there and improve it as you go.
• Ask your customers to help develop, market, and advertise your product instead of relying on your marketing dept. to come up with the ideas. He suggests user-generated ads, and videos.
• 12- to 24-year-olds are incredibly tech savvy and connected, look to them for leadership.
• Businesses should take part in the online communities their target market is using.
• Innovation and learning are constants in this industry

Thatcher Drew, President and CEO of the business group being addressed said: “ever since the Internet came along, there has not been a standard way of doing things. As my technology changes, I have to completely reinvent the approach to innovation…It changes every six months…if we’re not constantly innovating and constantly learning and constantly coming up with new ways to meet our clients’ needs, then we lose.”

“…you’ve got a problem and you go to the Internet…you go to your communities that you’ve already set up with your users and consumers. Ask them what are some ways for us to solve this problem, and then you test those ideas.” AMEN!

If you are marketing to moms, find the social communities where moms are going, the blogs they are reading, the places they visit online (ClubMom, iVilliage, etc). Don’t go there to market to them and tell them to buy your product. Go there to start a dialog and see what they think of your product. Start conversations and take notes.

Rather than keep what you are doing a secret, open up the discussion early on and you’ll end up with a better product, book, article, etc. I still need to do this more. It is counter-intuitive for most of us. But it has been shown to work again and again. I’m betting the next generation won’t even think of developing a product WITHOUT doing this. I can’t wait to see how things evolve!

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!