The Journal of Julie

  We are continuing to learn about Google Ads and this week we worked on writing our ad. I like that we have two headlines that can catch the attention of the viewer. I also like that there are a couple of description fields with 90 words each. I think that is plenty of space to get the idea across, but I do need to be very careful to add keywords and make it catchy. One of the things I learned about writing ads is that you need to use words that call people to action. Words like purchase, call today, order, get a quote , or in my case, I used book online . Another call-to-action word I could use is book now . I’m excited about giving it a try and seeing how it will work For the discussion board this week we posted our ads and had a peer review from our group. I thought it was very helpful to me as one of my classmates gave me a good idea to use in my ad. I thought this was a great discussion board to see everyone’s website and business ideas. It was a great help to me that other...

  I started learning about Google Ad campaigns and learned about keyword basics this week. I had no idea the level of importance a good keyword can have. I think that is going to be a challenge to find just the right combination of keywords so that my ads can show up in searches. One of the pieces of advice I read was that I should think like the customer in determining what keywords to have. I’m glad that Google has all sorts of analytic tools to help me as time goes on to figure out what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong. At least that is what I think will happen based on the things I’ve read this week. Another thing I looked into a bit more this week was whether or not I was going to choose automated bidding or manually take care of that myself. I think I will need more experience before I do the manual bidding, but that is something to consider later on as I gain knowledge. I read that automatic bidding saves time, you get higher CPAs (average cost per action), and gua...

  This week we learned about legal structures for our businesses. We also learned about licenses we’ll need to operate the business and what taxes we’ll need to pay. I have already set up the legal structure for our business because we’ve been working on this for a while. We chose a Limited Liability Company because it will protect our personal assets in the case of a lawsuit. We thought this would be smart because of the nature of our business. Another reason is the taxation of an LLC. I was reminded this week that an LLC is taxed like a sole proprietorship, and it’s called “pass-through,” which means the profits pass through to our personal income tax so we aren’t taxed twice on the business and individually. I think that is a nice aspect of an LLC. I also learned about business licenses and what we need to be operational in the coming months. We’ll get a business license from the City of Island Park once we are ready to rent. I looked up what we’ll need for that and we’ll need...

  This week we started to learn about site design for our websites. One thing I liked from the article we read was that everything on a web page must serve a purpose. That means to me that anything I put on my pages must have a reason for being there not just because it looks pretty. Any visitor who comes to my site needs to be able to find what they are looking for fast or they will leave. Another thing I liked about the article is to use full-screen images. I think this is the latest trend because a lot of the website templates I’ve looked at have this style. I will use that for my website. I looked at other websites that do similar things to what my business model is. I’m was so glad to be able to look at cabin or bed and breakfast type websites to get an idea of what to add to my site because I wasn’t sure where to start. I’m going to add a “things to do page," I think that will help visitors know what they can do while staying with us. One section of the other websites I li...