Closing January

Hello everybody.

I haven't written in a while. A big while. I know, that's a big blogging sin, and I hope the internet god will forgive me for that. That's because I have great news for him.

January 2008 will be remembered by me as the first month that allowes me to use the word profit. Finally, after two losing months, comes a month and shows me this is possible. Internet marketing does work, there is money to be made out there. If I get another sale today or AdWords doesn't go over $16 today (preferably both), I can put a little plus sign. And if AdWords takes the entire budget, well, losing $4 can be called break even.

Lately, and that's one reason I need another sale, Google gave me wonderful QS, but clicks were nowhere to be found. People just ignore my ads between 0:00-6:00 in the morning (PST). Then they come in a bulk and at the end of the day I end with 30. When my page starts converting 10%, that'll be acceptable. Now it's converting about 4% (which means about 10% of the people who go to the sales page!), so I need 40-50 clicks to make two sales. I suspected the low number of clicks was due to position preference, but now, when I turned it off, it doesn't seem to have an effect. AdWords is a weird system indeed.

And finally, like every quarter, Google is going to report its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2007 and the report for the entire year. It's going to be interesting to see how a company that keeps going against its customers (the new QS rules are harsh, but they seem to ease for me. Nine words went from OK of $0.15 to Great of $0.05) turns out a bigger profit than last year. Reports are after Wall St. closes, at about 4:00pm EST. Conference call is at 4:30 pm EST (right when Blogger is down... Weird...).

Have a great February!
nadavs