This is part 2 of a guest post by Xurxo Vidal. Xurxo is a co-founder and search marketing strategist at Bloom Search Marketing – an agency specialized in paid search campaigns, SEO, Google Analytics and conversion improvement. We are lucky to have him here today to talk about optimizing Adwords campaigns. You can find more of Xurxo’s writings on his company’s blog.

This article is part 2 of a 2 part article on adwords reports that can increase conversions and save you money. If you haven’t done so already, please check out part 1 here

In part 1 , we covered the keyword performance report, the ad performance report and the geographic performance report.

The remaining reports I’ll cover in this post are:

Search Query Performance Report
Placement Performance Report

Search Query Report
The search query report can be your best friend in finding those pesky unrelated keywords that you’re paying for – especially if …

This is a guest post by Xurxo Vidal. Xurxo is a co-founder and search marketing strategist at Bloom Search Marketing – an agency specialized in paid search campaigns, SEO, Google Analytics and conversion improvement. We are lucky to have him here today to talk about optimizing Adwords campaigns. You can find more of Xurxo’s writings on his company’s blog.

This is part 1 of a 2 part post on adwords reports that can increase conversions and save you money. When you are ready, you can find find part 2 here

You’re spending your hard earned cash to advertise your products and services on Google, so finding out how well your campaigns are working is critical to your success with AdWords. Today I’m going to cover some of the key reports available to you to track your campaign’s performance and identify problems and opportunities so you can maximize your ROI. You’ll …

First off, I just wanted to thank everyone for taking part in this contest. I got far more entries than I was expecting and the feedback was extremely helpful in determining which direction to take with my future blog entries.

Photo By Vetustense Photorogue

Of the six topics that I presented, the order of popularity from highest to lowest was as follows

Personal stories about obstacles we face running our business
How to guides with respect to building an online store
Motivational articles focusing on entrepreneurship
Marketing an online store
How to increase productivity
Ecommerce strategies to boost sales

Thank you for all of your responses. The lucky winner of this contest is….Sophia of www.ellies-whole-grains.com. Congratulations Sophia! I will be contacting you shortly for your address information and have your phone shipped out immediately.
How The Winner Was Chosen
Picking the winner wasn’t easy but it was definitely fun. I hadn’t used my perl skills …

It’s rare for me to get the exact same question in the same week but I had 2 people email me last week about how I deal with credit card chargebacks with our online business.

Photo By Squeaky Marmot

Before I begin, I just want to explain what a chargeback is. As you know, whenever you buy anything with a credit card, the credit card company protects you from any sort of fraud that a merchant might commit.

This includes incorrect amounts charged to your card, failure to deliver the goods as promised or shipping faulty or damaged products. When any of these things happen, you can call your credit card company and they will issue you a refund if certain conditions are met. This protection is one of the primary reasons why I always use my credit card to make any large purchase.

However as with everything in life, credit …

While I make an effort to read business related books on a regular basis, rarely do I ever come across a business book that is truly practical. For example, I can’t remember the last time I came out of reading any New York Times bestselling business book with a concrete and actionable plan that directly applied to me. In fact, I’ve become so accustomed to lumping most business books from the bestsellers list into the pleasure reading category, that I don’t ever expect to learn anything that I can directly apply to my current situation.

Don’t get me wrong, I love well written books that make me feel exhilarated and pumped up, but I tend to prefer books that make me get up and take action, especially ones that I can actually apply towards running a real business.

Thankfully, Smart Business Stupid Business is not your typical business book. …

Over the past several years, our online wedding linens store website has undergone 3 major revisions. In the beginning, I was lazy, didn’t know what I was doing, and launched the store with more or less the stock OSCommerce shopping cart layout. After several months of very few sales, I decided to redesign the entire site to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Finally during the 3rd revision, I redesigned the site based on customer behavior to maximize conversions and sales. Here are a few things I learned from all of these changes.

Photo By The Fox And The Polar Bear

Don’t Use The Stock Template
I repeat, do not use the stock, out of the box template for any shopping cart or website package that you choose to use, because it will suck. You might think that the engineers designing the software did so with an optimal …

There are many of us out there who are tired of working a day job. But thanks to the web, we can now actually do something about it while risking very little financially. In his ebook, Blueprint On How To Make Money With A Blog, Peter tells us his story on how he gained financial freedom through his popular blog Bible Money Matters.

Incidentally, if you have never visited his blog, I encourage you to check it out. He writes about a wide variety of topics focusing on personal finance and how to accumulate wealth.

About Peter
There is something special about Peter’s background story that especially resonates with me. Oh wait! I know why. Peter has his first child on the way and he now earns enough with his blog so that his wife can quit her job to stay at home with …

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for supporting my blog these past 1.5 years. I really appreciate your comments and your continued readership. I also wanted to announce that MyWifeQuitHerJob.com has partnered with HP to give away a free HP iPaq Glisten Smartphone to one lucky reader! The odds of winning this phone are actually much higher than you think. Read on to find out more about the phone and how to win.
HP iPaq Glisten Smartphone Features

The HP iPAQ Glisten is a stylish, 3G smartphone designed for on-the-go professionals who need to stay connected to the people and information they care about.

Here are some of the Glisten’s features:

A quad-band world phone, featuring Windows Mobile 6.5
Built-in Wi-Fi and GPS functionality
3.1 megapixel digital camera
5 hours of talk time and 15 hours standby battery life
Full QWERTY keyboard for fast, easy and …

The other day, I came across a heated forum discussion that went back and forth debating over the definition of a “true” entrepreneur versus just a regular small business owner. The thread was over 5 pages long and participating in this discussion were a wide variety of different business owners. Some of them ran brick and mortar retail stores. Some of them ran small-medium sized internet consulting or software companies. And some of them were freelancers looking to eventually start their own firms.

Photo By maubrowncow

The main crux of the debate was whether a person opening a brick and mortar business like an ice cream store or a freelancer with no employees could be considered a true entrepreneur. Where do you draw the line between true entrepreneurship and just running a small business?

As the two sides argued back and forth, I couldn’t help but think…who …

This is a short follow up post to my article on Are Coupon Code Searches Costing Our Online Store Money?. I got a lot of good responses and just wanted to summarize some of the main points. Ultimately, I decided to make a small change to our store based on one particular reader’s input and I wanted to talk about the effect this change had after just 2 days of operation. Usually, two days of testing means absolutely nothing but in this case, it firmly cemented in my head what I needed to do.

From the comments, pretty much everyone agreed that as a customer, seeing a coupon code field and not actually having a coupon code carries a negative psychological effect on the whole shopping experience.

For one thing, most of you that responded stated that seeing an empty coupon field is an instant signal to go off …

Every couple of months, I take an in depth look at the search keywords that people use to arrive at our online store. In addition, I also use keyword tools to see whether people are doing searches for our business directly.

Photo By MissMessie

Much to my surprise, I found that some amount of searches were for the term “Bumblebee Linens coupons” or “hanky coupons bumblebee” etc… I guess it’s only natural that shoppers search for coupons.

But the truth is that we rarely give out coupons yet we prominently display a coupon code field during checkout. The fact that customers are looking for coupons makes me wonder whether they are prematurely exiting the checkout process in search for nonexistant discounts.
Why We Don’t Issue Coupons Very Often
There are different schools of thought when it comes to coupons. Some companies always have coupon codes outstanding as a way to entice customers …

When I first saw the title of Adam’s new book, I thought to myself…”Why would I possibly want to unautomate my finances?” If I’m getting by with the status quo, why would I ever need to change things up?

The truth is that there are a lot of us who are just coasting through our financial lives and living from paycheck to paycheck. And because we still manage to get by, we tend to ignore all of the little things that negatively affect our financial livelihood in the long term.

In his book, Adam provides concrete steps and tutorials on how to “unautomate your finances”. In other words, he teaches us how to re-sensitize our financial lives, to start saving and to stop getting by with excessive debt.
Who Is Adam Baker and Why Should I Listen To Him?
For all of you who don’t know Adam, he …

Adwords, like any tool, is a double edged sword. If used improperly, it can flush your money down the drain. But used correctly, it can be a very powerful driver of sales to your online store. The main problem however, is that most new users fall into the money wasting category.

One of the biggest mistakes that newbie Adwords users make is to misuse broad matching keywords with their campaigns. To illustrate my point, I’d like to tell you about some of the boneheaded mistakes that I made early on with our Adwords campaigns.

As I mentioned in some of my previous articles on How To Use Adwords The Right Way With Your Online Store and The Realities Of Using Adwords Effectively, finding the right keywords to use is an iterative process that requires patience and the right tools. And the only way to refine your campaigns properly …

Many personal finance and “get out of debt” blogs often advise their readers to avoid the use of credit cards at all costs. For some people, it’s all too tempting to buy more than you need and waste money on frivolous items when all you have to do is hand over a piece of plastic. By paying for everything in cash, you force yourself to correlate the cost of the items that you buy with actual dollar values which in theory helps curb your spending.

Photo By Andres Rueda

While these mind games work for the average individual, when it comes to running a small business, credit cards are an absolute must. My personal opinion is that if you lack the self control to watch your spending, then you have no business becoming an entrepreneur either. When running a small business, it’s important to watch what you …

Ever since my wife and I bought our new home, we’ve been using a variety of contractors to help change a few things around the house. For example, we had new tile and carpets put in, changed the layout of the house a little bit and had the outside of the house painted as well. While everything we remodeled turned out okay, overall our experiences were a mixed bag and it had nothing to do with the quality of the work that was done.

Photo By Atomicshark

In fact, every one of my contractors did a fantastic job at whatever was assigned to them, yet I would probably not recommend at least 2 of the 3 contractors to friends or use them ever again. Why? It’s because it takes more than a good job to leave a lasting good impression on a customer. Sometimes even a small …