Introducing Google Engage for Agencies in US and UK

[Cross-posted from the Agency Ad Solutions Blog]

Are you a US or UK based Webmaster? WebDesigner? SEO? Marketing Consultant? Freelancer? or offering web related services to Small Medium Businesses? then keep on reading...

At Google, we’re committed to the success of the digital economy and we believe that helping small business get online and thrive is fundamental to that success.

We recognize that many SMBs rely on freelancers and small agencies to create and manage their online presence as well as help them with their online marketing. To make the jobs of these agencies easier, we’ve launched a new training and incentives program called Google Engage for Agencies.



Google Engage participants will receive free access to educational resources dedicated for them and more incentives to grow their own and their clients’ businesses.

We hope Engage will help businesses that offer web services in attracting new clients and in adding value to existing clients. Check out Google Engage today and learn about the benefits the program can offer your business and the SMBs you support.

If you’re a webmaster, web-designer, digital agency, freelancer, SEO, IT consultant, or provide any other web services to US or UK based small businesses, you can apply to join the program starting today.

Please see links below for information on participation for US and UK-based agencies:
Google Engage for US Businesses
Google Engage for UK Businesses

Posted by: Alon Chen & Esra Guler, Product Marketing

More Snow and a New Addition to the Office

This is what we woke up to this morning...another gorgeous snowy morning. Ya'll we live in the deep South, and this is just unheard of....and I LOVE IT!!

 We took the kids sledding with some others in the neighborhood. Just so you guys know, we have the best neighbors....EV-UH! They are so much fun!!

 This right here was hysterical. Here in the South, we don't own sleds...what's the point? We won't see another snow like this for 15 more years:o) So we use what we have...in our case, we have laundry baskets. 

Watch our little dare devil:

 Weeeeeeeeee.....

 Ker-plunk!

And yes, I waited to pick her up AFTER I took the picture:o)

 We have had a blast today. I even made snow cream, which is so yummy!! A big shout out goes to the mom-in-law for providing her recipe. Definitely a keeper(mom-in-law and recipe;o)HA!)

Anyway, we knew that this line of snow was coming, so I made sure to knock out a few projects that required working outdoors before the really cold air hit.

The one I am sharing with you today started out like this:

Well, actually, this is after sanding...with our NEW orbital sander!!

(It's totally awesome!!!)

 This was another roadside find that my friend Sharon found while walking her dog. She is the one who found S.R.'s chair on the side of the road. 

You guys keep her in your prayers right now. 

She just had knee surgery and recovery is really painful. I know she would appreciate them!!!

 There were a few things that needed to be fixed with this find.

1)Remove the icky gunk that was on the top of the table

Goo Gone works wonders!!

2)Sand the devil out of it...the poor thing had been varnished to death

3)Tighten up all the loose boards. 

Once all of that was done, it was ready for spray paint. 

It's kind of tricky in cold weather, but I got it done. I made sure the paint was warm and that the table was warm. Then I would run out to the garage with the door slightly open for ventilation purposes, spray really quickly and then run the table back inside to dry. It actually worked really well. 

And this is how it turned out.

 Nothing too spectacular, but it looks so much better and serves a great purpose. It's like it was made for this spot:o) We already had the little basket and it's perfect for holding the extra printer paper.

Here's a peek at what I am currently working on.

I can't wait to reveal what I am doing with them!! 

Have a great rest of the day!!

What you should do and don't,in self marketing with blogs

Well,in high competitions on marketing strategy anyone can be friends and enemy. Friends when they doing what you want to. Readers then being subscribers and become loyal buyers it can be a hardwork to do.

Enemy when your readers become spying on your affiliates programs and stole your hardwork, Bang! you  just lost your great opportunity by your own enemy.

There are some method that you can find on web to protect your hardwork. Many of them can be accessed by entering Google marketing index. I will tell you some easy tips to handle your website or blogs.

What you should do and don't,in self marketing with blogs.

For newbie it was so easy to maintain blogs with blogger (blogspot) and some of them use this free platform to make a self marketing blogs. Free and cheap that's the answer when you ask them why they use blogspot platform to enter the marketing loophole.

But, there's so many pros and cons to using this platform.When the Affiliate website or the owner need to use your own domain e.g. TLD (.com,.net,.us) they give up. So for the next investment better if you upgrading the platform to marketing your blogs.

Self hosting domain make a different view on marketing strategies. Believe me free platform is better only for biography and article writing its not good for selling and marketing community.

How you had a value readers that turn into loyal buyers by using blogspot?

And now what you should do in self marketing with blogs.

1. Buy host and domain!
This will helpfull if you wants to be a marketers.Let see if you still newbie, you can use your own domain.
Set your self hosted blog with 4 or 6 affiliates banner into it. You don't need to write a long tail post to hipnotise your readers and it very easy if you don't know how to write a killer articles. Just put it and the business will go on.

2. Choose the right affiliates for you
To choose the right affiliate marketing is so easy, the key is similar with your keywords and blog tittle.This is the golden key when you join affiliates with the right keywords, you will have a similar content and this will
attract more readers.

Some affiliates master will help too by giving you a promotion tool to use. Articles, Banners, Videos, Keywords research, and email marketing's tips and all you do is, use it to your value subscribers.

3. Stay away from hackers, copyscapes, spyers, from spamming.
This is not an easy works, you must take a time to focus on your web from this. A popular affiliate marketers will protecting they web from being target. You can tracking them by checking their ip when they suggest to be your fake subscribers,Using akismet on wordpress is help too, and don't forget to disable right clicks on your webs, protect your contents will minimize your next problems.

4. Design makes money
Ever heard something like this, Good design makes money. Sure you had to make your readers love to stay long and reading your contents. This will bring money if they being your loyal readers..

Here's the catch!

a) Make your site or blogs simple, easy to find, fast to loads and have great content as they need. Too much animations, flash, or too much big ads will slowing down your blog access.

b) 1 post per page, this will helps you to raise your Pagerank as long as you add sub menus, readers will have a faster load with this. Try linkwithin to shown your another post or content, or you can make a label clouds to mapping your blogs.

c) Use the simple themes design.
This is the things that you must consider to use, besides Keywords. Let see if you had great keywords but poor design, readers will think like this, oh man.. are you serious to selling this $650 gadget on blog like this?

5. Read and knowing how
Yup its simple just read and knowing how/what the readers need, there you go, you can sell anything to them. In this case you must straight to the point! don't let other affiliates stealing your readers if you had to bring them to your affiliate links, do something like this cloaks your affiliates link with no ads cloacker! you can find it on Google or viral marketing.

If they seen ads when they want to go to your affiliates links,bye-bye.. 50% of them will going to clicks the ads if they seen the similar of what they need. Remember Flash and fancy ads can hipnotised the readers eye.

You can read and knowing how by learning with the gurus or professional marketers.Coming to a seminar or trainings will open your cave mind plus you get more friends and more skills on how to manage your affiliates programs.

6. Traffic is the king
This is the power, the more traffic you got, the more subscribers and loyal buyer will buy from you. The question is how i can get the massive traffic to my website/blogs?

There's three way on how to bring traffic to your web.

        1. Buy it! you can buy traffic from traffic generators,PPC sites,PTC programs or Traffic sellers.But $100 for newbie is a hard cash, i don't suggest this for newbie, this will burns your pockets.

        2. Find it! you can find traffic source or traffic loophole on web by active in forums like social media, Facebook, Twitter and the easy tricks, jump in to a business web or news site,this quiet works.

7. Update your website or blogs regularly.
yeah, this affected with your Google Adsense Account. Google will check it, besides the page rank, indexes and inactivity of your blogs.

You must have a scheduled post or content to miss the banned from Google. A blogs with inactivity or no updates but have a lot of clicks will tagged as a fraudulent clicks! beware if you still wants general checks coming from Google, you can use article from Ezines 20-80% combining with your own contents is the easy way. Try your self to make a scheduled post or content to manage this...

shghh.. next time i will publish what you should not do,in self marketing with blogs..see you..

A Little Rearranging

First off, I want you guys to check out my new stools...the white ones. I REEEEALLY like these!! I got them from AllBarstools.com. They are apart of CSNStores.com  I had the BEST experience with their customer service!

It's really nice to know that there are still people in the service industry who take the time to work with their customers...There was a mix up in the delivery, and they were so friendly and fixed things right away. Can you ask for a better experience? I think not. I will definitely be visiting them again, especially since I like the white stools better than the wood toned stools. Guess I will be posting the old ones on craigslist soon;o)

I have been extremely unmotivated to do anything here lately. I did, however, rearrange some furniture in the living room.

This is the third time that I have changed this area. I just can't seem to make up my mind. But I think I like this arrangement best. This table fits the space better. I plan on stripping the paint off and fixing it up a bit, but it's too cold outside right now, so there it sits:o)

 The table also needs a new handle. 

Now for a little Family Night action. This is my fave night of the week!! Here's a little quote to leave you with...

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me.

– ~Erma Bombeck 

Hotpot Goes Barhopping

[Cross-posted from the Google Places Community Blog.]

Editor’s Note: While we’re in Portland over the next few weeks, we wanted to bring some local flavor to the blog by asking writers who live in the area to contribute Hotpot-style city guides: recommendations on where to eat, where to shop, where to hang. Below, locally based writer Geoff Kleinman shares how Hotpot recommendations guided him through a night of Portland barhopping. Be sure to join the conversation in the comments below.

One of the things I love about Hotpot is the way it uses my ratings and my friends' ratings to point me toward places that are the best match for me and my tastes. While I've discovered some great businesses in my Google searches using Hotpot from the comfort of my home’s desktop computer, I thought it would be fun to take Hotpot on the road using my Android phone, acting as my “person in the know” on a recent Portland barhop.

First stop: Irving Street Kitchen.

For the first stop, I wanted to find a place that was known both for its good food and good drinks. Irving St. Kitchen was recommended to me on Hotpot because I had rated Beaker & Flask 5 stars and my Hotpot friends had rated Irving St. Kitchen highly.

The Place page for Irving St. Kitchen had several Best Ever awards and most of them talked about the amazing drinks and bartenders such as Brandon Wise and Allison Webber. It seemed a perfect place to start our hop.

Allison Webber whips up something tasty.

When we arrived at Irving St. Kitchen and took a seat at the bar, Allison made us a few great classic cocktails. My favorite was a variation of the Negroni — a White Negroni that was flavorful, balanced and a perfect before-dinner drink.

White Negroni at Irving Street Kitchen.

Allison made some food recommendations including a beet salad with truffles, fresh salmon over lentils, and our favorite dish of the evening, a shrimp and crab fusion dish served over a savory bread pudding.

Shrimp, crab and bread pudding - True Fusion at Irving Street Kitchen.

We probably could have spent the entire evening sitting at Irving Street’s bar, but we were on a mission to hop with Hotpot. Using the Rate Places widget for Android, we gave Irving St. Kitchen a glowing rating, then used the Android Places app to look for other bars nearby that friends had recommended. Clyde Common came right up. It was just down the street and recommended by our friend Jennifer Heigl on Hotpot.

Second stop: Clyde Common.

Checking out Clyde’s Place page, we read that the restaurant is the home bar for noted bartender and blogger Jeffrey Morgenthaler. Several of the reviews referred to the barrel-aged cocktails, so when we sat at the bar we immediately ordered one.

Jeffrey Morgenthaler's famous barrel-aged cocktails.

Jeffrey wasn't behind the bar that night, but Andrew Volk was, and in addition to mixing up a few barrel-aged drinks for us, he also made an original Islay scotch cocktail that simply blew us away.

Andrew Volk works the Clyde Common bar.

Clyde Common is a little bit of a way station bar, and we found that our group grew a bit as we headed along to our next stop. This time around, instead of looking for a nearby bar, we wanted to see what would happen if we just asked the Places app to search for the "best cocktails."

Third and final stop: Teardrop Lounge.

So far Google Places with Hotpot hadn't steered us wrong, and it was doing a great job of being the “person in the know.” Teardrop Lounge came up on the list and it was just around the corner, so we made our way over. Many of the reviews on Teardrop’s Place page talked about its classic cocktails, so we sat at the bar and checked out the massive cocktail menu, which has close to 30 different drinks listed. A little daunted with the menu, we got help from bartender Brian Gilbert, who spent a lot of time with our group getting to know what kinds of things we drink.

Brian Gilbert helps us decide what drinks to order at Teardrop.

I ended up with a drink called “Unfinished Business,” which was served in a very cool antique glass with a huge block of ice.

One of Teardrop's many cocktail options, "Unfinished Business."

Having Hotpot recommendations as our guide for the evening took a lot of the guess work out of figuring out what to do and where to go. Even more helpful were the reviews and tips left by my Hotpot friends, so I knew exactly what to order.

Using Hotpot on your hops and crawls? Share your stories in the comments below.

Posted by Geoff Kleinman. Geoff is the editor of DrinkSpirits.com, a national blog helping people figure out what to drink, and OnPDX.com, helping people figure out what to do in Portland.

New Year !, New Color !

Happy New Year 2011 !!

I just happy with this new themes, New Year with New Colors ! New Haircut with New Look ohh.. awesome New Years to come..well after a long holiday i hope enjoying this early moths with full of brilliant ideas. So don't go anywhere ... 

Happy New Year for you.....

Spiritual Subway Art

This is the time of year when we all reflect on who we are as a person. We look at who we have become, for better or for worse, and think about how we arrived at our current state. If for worse, we usually make a New Year's resolution to better ourselves in the coming year...lose weight, make more money, be a nicer person, etc. Resolutions are great in theory, but they usually are only carried out in the first 2 weeks of the year. 

I chose not to make any resolutions this year. We have jumped on the weight loss train, but only b/c we are too cheap and too stubborn to go out and buy bigger clothes. That's a good thing, right?

Anyway, in my last post I talked of a few changes that would be made on this blog. Things that I hope you will find beneficial.

 I feel like the abilities that have been given to me are a gift. A wonderful blessing from God. I have invited you all into my home(virtually, that is) and shared my ideas on crafting, home decor, and everyday life. The one thing I haven't shared with you all is my undying love for our God. He is the reason that I have these abilities, and I have failed miserably in giving Him the glory. 

I am only able to reach a few thru this blog, but I want to use this opportunity to share the good news of the Lord. This will still remain a "crafty mommy blog." However, there will be a lot more mention of our Heavenly Father. I make no apologies for this, whatsoever.

I love all the Subway Art that is out in blog land right now. I have seen a lot that had to do with all the holidays, but I hadn't seen one that was spiritual. Well now there is:o)

weird coloring, bad lighting, I know....sorry!

I have needed this verse desperately, which is found in Galatians 5:22-23. I have been a bear here lately and I blame it on the holidays...they have been WONDERFUL, but I am so ready for normalcy. (I put self-inflicted stress and pressure on myself to have the perfect gift for everyone. Crazy, I know. So, that is why I am glad that it is January  and not December:o)

This frame was purchased from Hobby Lobby. This is what it looked like before:

I found it in the clearance section forever ago. I think I paid around $6 for it?? Anyway, I gave it the same treatment that I did to THIS old picture frame.

The hubs helped me get all the lettering just right (thanks, MY LOVE) and now I can share it with you all!

(I have changed it to a jpeg file, so hopefully it will be easier for you guys!!)

To download, just go HERE.

I hope that you enjoy it and that it helps put your day into perspective:o) 

Happy Monday!

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