Friday, August 31, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
My Crazy Monday!
Had to share the events of my Monday with you guys. You may not think it was so funny, but I was cracking up almost all day.
The morning was pretty uneventful and rocked along quite quickly. I had an eye doctor appt. this afternoon so we closed the office for lunch. That is when funny stuff started happening.
First off, my co-worker and I were chatting away while dining at a Chinese restaurant. All of the sudden we hear a ticking sound. The couple that was eating behind us had left and the ticking seemed to be coming from their table. Tracy started getting really nervous and made the statement that maybe we should get out of there quick. We were discussed the idea for about a minute because nowadays you never know. All of the sudden the ticking stops and we kind of freeze. Tracy blurts out "Ashley, I love you". Then we both break out into laughter. Thank God it wasn't a bomb and thank God she loves me!
After I leave her, I head to my dr.'s appt where more funny stuff happens. I'm sitting there in the waiting room with about 15 other people when this guy in his early 60's whips out his cell phone. I guess he figures he might as well call his buddy since he has nothing else better to do. The funny part is that he seems oblivious to the fact that he is in a doctor's office. He loudly discusses his plans for the day, retells a story that he heard to his friend, then starts talking about how people down in Wewa (a country town not far away) love to eat. I feel like saying "hey, please use your indoor voice." The more I think about telling him that the funnier it seems to me. I kept wondering what he would say if I said it to him and how the other people in the lobby would react if I did.
After the loud mouth gets off the phone, I see a lady walk up to the receptionist and ask a question. I don't know if the receptionist actually said this or not, but I could have sworn that she said there was a 1 1/2 to 2 hour wait. The lady then says she is going to call her husband to let him know. I look around stunned to see if anybody else heard about the long wait. Either nobody did or they didn't care because I didn't see any surprised faces.
I go back to reading Save Karyn which is pretty funny in itself when my name is called. I begin gathering my stuff and when I start to get up I see an older guy walking toward the nurse. I think what the heck, that guy is pretending to be me so he wouldn't have to wait for 2 hours. When I get over to the nurse she is looking at him kind of crazy too. She sees me and tells him to go back to his seat to wait his turn. I just shake my head. Crazy!
Once I'm in an exam room the doctor comes in and gives me a big hug like we are long lost friends. He always does it, but it catches me off guard every time. When he starts examining my eyes he seems to get REALLY close to me. So close that his little light that he is using keeps touching my nose. It has already been a funny kind of a day so all I can think about is he is so close his lips are about 1/2 centimeter away from me. I keep thinking, what if he tries to kiss me. I know he would never do that and feel safe with him, but it has been a day and I have to do my best to keep from busting out into laughter while he is examining my eyes. It was really hard to keep a straight face. I did my best so he wouldn't think I was an idiot, but inside I was dying of laughter.
My crazy day ended when I got home and checked the mail. There waiting for me was a jury duty notice for federal court. I'm a jury duty magnet. This will be the third time I've been called. Some people never get called, but I'm a jury duty queen.
The morning was pretty uneventful and rocked along quite quickly. I had an eye doctor appt. this afternoon so we closed the office for lunch. That is when funny stuff started happening.
First off, my co-worker and I were chatting away while dining at a Chinese restaurant. All of the sudden we hear a ticking sound. The couple that was eating behind us had left and the ticking seemed to be coming from their table. Tracy started getting really nervous and made the statement that maybe we should get out of there quick. We were discussed the idea for about a minute because nowadays you never know. All of the sudden the ticking stops and we kind of freeze. Tracy blurts out "Ashley, I love you". Then we both break out into laughter. Thank God it wasn't a bomb and thank God she loves me!
After I leave her, I head to my dr.'s appt where more funny stuff happens. I'm sitting there in the waiting room with about 15 other people when this guy in his early 60's whips out his cell phone. I guess he figures he might as well call his buddy since he has nothing else better to do. The funny part is that he seems oblivious to the fact that he is in a doctor's office. He loudly discusses his plans for the day, retells a story that he heard to his friend, then starts talking about how people down in Wewa (a country town not far away) love to eat. I feel like saying "hey, please use your indoor voice." The more I think about telling him that the funnier it seems to me. I kept wondering what he would say if I said it to him and how the other people in the lobby would react if I did.
After the loud mouth gets off the phone, I see a lady walk up to the receptionist and ask a question. I don't know if the receptionist actually said this or not, but I could have sworn that she said there was a 1 1/2 to 2 hour wait. The lady then says she is going to call her husband to let him know. I look around stunned to see if anybody else heard about the long wait. Either nobody did or they didn't care because I didn't see any surprised faces.
I go back to reading Save Karyn which is pretty funny in itself when my name is called. I begin gathering my stuff and when I start to get up I see an older guy walking toward the nurse. I think what the heck, that guy is pretending to be me so he wouldn't have to wait for 2 hours. When I get over to the nurse she is looking at him kind of crazy too. She sees me and tells him to go back to his seat to wait his turn. I just shake my head. Crazy!
Once I'm in an exam room the doctor comes in and gives me a big hug like we are long lost friends. He always does it, but it catches me off guard every time. When he starts examining my eyes he seems to get REALLY close to me. So close that his little light that he is using keeps touching my nose. It has already been a funny kind of a day so all I can think about is he is so close his lips are about 1/2 centimeter away from me. I keep thinking, what if he tries to kiss me. I know he would never do that and feel safe with him, but it has been a day and I have to do my best to keep from busting out into laughter while he is examining my eyes. It was really hard to keep a straight face. I did my best so he wouldn't think I was an idiot, but inside I was dying of laughter.
My crazy day ended when I got home and checked the mail. There waiting for me was a jury duty notice for federal court. I'm a jury duty magnet. This will be the third time I've been called. Some people never get called, but I'm a jury duty queen.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Weekly Update ~ Week 7
I have no idea where last week went. It seemed to fly by. I can't believe that I only did one post. I think I wrote a few of them in my head, but never got a chance to post them.
Last week wasn't a terribly exciting week, although I did advertise on a couple new websites. Hopefully I will get lots of traffic from them. I also posted 24 ads on various classified ad sites and message boards. However, so far I haven't received any sales from them. I have periods like that. I then start to feel like I'm wasting my lunch hours posting ads for nothing, but the ads do show up in the search engines and my stats show that my site is getting traffic from them so I keep on posting.
I'm currently adding new fall theme wedding favors to my website and will soon follow with a few winter theme favors in the coming weeks. I'm also starting to think about the beginning of the holiday season so I need to focus on updating my e-Bay store with gifts for the holiday season. My e-Bay store keeps getting put on the back burner. I haven't updated it in forever. I know shame, shame! I just haven't had the time because I've been really focusing on getting a better search engine ranking for my main website, CherishedGiftFavors.com.
I'm going to keep this post kind of short tonight, because I want to add some more products to my website. I checked my rank on Google again and I've slipped to page 2. Yuck!! I noticed 2 new sites ranking ahead of me. I have no idea where they came from. I've never seen them before. One of them doesn't even have any text on their home page! My SEO company and various e-commerce newsletters that I read insist that search engines love a site with lots of words. Hmmmm...my home page is informative, theirs is not, yet they are ranked higher than me. I'll keep watching them in the next few weeks to see how they rank. I've heard of new websites getting high ranking at first them they slip in to never never land. It looks like the websites also sell only Kate Aspen's line. I sell a lot of their products too, but I sell other lines so I can set myself apart from other wedding and party favor sites. However, Kate Aspens favors are my biggest sellers.
Last week wasn't a terribly exciting week, although I did advertise on a couple new websites. Hopefully I will get lots of traffic from them. I also posted 24 ads on various classified ad sites and message boards. However, so far I haven't received any sales from them. I have periods like that. I then start to feel like I'm wasting my lunch hours posting ads for nothing, but the ads do show up in the search engines and my stats show that my site is getting traffic from them so I keep on posting.
I'm currently adding new fall theme wedding favors to my website and will soon follow with a few winter theme favors in the coming weeks. I'm also starting to think about the beginning of the holiday season so I need to focus on updating my e-Bay store with gifts for the holiday season. My e-Bay store keeps getting put on the back burner. I haven't updated it in forever. I know shame, shame! I just haven't had the time because I've been really focusing on getting a better search engine ranking for my main website, CherishedGiftFavors.com.
I'm going to keep this post kind of short tonight, because I want to add some more products to my website. I checked my rank on Google again and I've slipped to page 2. Yuck!! I noticed 2 new sites ranking ahead of me. I have no idea where they came from. I've never seen them before. One of them doesn't even have any text on their home page! My SEO company and various e-commerce newsletters that I read insist that search engines love a site with lots of words. Hmmmm...my home page is informative, theirs is not, yet they are ranked higher than me. I'll keep watching them in the next few weeks to see how they rank. I've heard of new websites getting high ranking at first them they slip in to never never land. It looks like the websites also sell only Kate Aspen's line. I sell a lot of their products too, but I sell other lines so I can set myself apart from other wedding and party favor sites. However, Kate Aspens favors are my biggest sellers.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Weekly Update ~ Week 6
'It's About Time!' Let's Celebrate - Champagne Bucket Timer
Gotta be honest here, I'm pretty excited!!
Google "elegant corporate event favors" and "elegant corporate event party favors". Who do you see? ME!! CherishedGiftsFavors.com is ranked #1 on Google! My other keywords are doing really well on Google too. My hard work and $$$ are paying off. I just tightened up my keywords on my home page and then I paid a company to validate my website. If the company will ever get their act together and give me a quote I'm going have them do a Mod Rewrite on the inner pages of my website to help me get ranked better on Yahoo & MSN. Google likes me, Yahoo & MSN, not so much. Go figure since Google is the hardest search engine to get into.
As far as marketing goes, in addition to my normal weekly ads, I also advertised on a new website. I haven't heard anything else from them so I'll have to check out their website to see how they are doing. I was one of the first to advertise in their shopping section, but the price was really good so I decided to take a chance on them. Hopefully they will be able to drive a lot of traffic to their site very soon.
The magazine that I advertised in plus had a 2 page spread featuring my products has been out for about a month, but I haven't seen one single sale from it. Very disappointing.
I'm still working on my idea to promote my party favors and personalized gifts for corporate events. I will see how it all comes together over the next few weeks.
Don't forget to tell others about me. Cherished Gifts & Favors is really growing, but I still need all the help I can get in the marketing department.
Gotta be honest here, I'm pretty excited!!
Google "elegant corporate event favors" and "elegant corporate event party favors". Who do you see? ME!! CherishedGiftsFavors.com is ranked #1 on Google! My other keywords are doing really well on Google too. My hard work and $$$ are paying off. I just tightened up my keywords on my home page and then I paid a company to validate my website. If the company will ever get their act together and give me a quote I'm going have them do a Mod Rewrite on the inner pages of my website to help me get ranked better on Yahoo & MSN. Google likes me, Yahoo & MSN, not so much. Go figure since Google is the hardest search engine to get into.
As far as marketing goes, in addition to my normal weekly ads, I also advertised on a new website. I haven't heard anything else from them so I'll have to check out their website to see how they are doing. I was one of the first to advertise in their shopping section, but the price was really good so I decided to take a chance on them. Hopefully they will be able to drive a lot of traffic to their site very soon.
The magazine that I advertised in plus had a 2 page spread featuring my products has been out for about a month, but I haven't seen one single sale from it. Very disappointing.
I'm still working on my idea to promote my party favors and personalized gifts for corporate events. I will see how it all comes together over the next few weeks.
Don't forget to tell others about me. Cherished Gifts & Favors is really growing, but I still need all the help I can get in the marketing department.
Friday, August 17, 2007
The Roadmap To The American Dream!
For those of you who know me, you know I enjoy being an entrepreneur. I get excited when I hear success stories about entrepreneurs that refused to listen to the negative people and instead went on to turn their ideas into multi million dollar companies. For that reason I absolutely love The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch. I happened upon his show on CNBC about 2 months ago and have been HOOKED every since! Anyone who needs to be inspired and wants to find out how others got their business started then I highly recommend you checking out his show.
One night you may tune in to see him featuring a segment on Cherished Gifts & Favors
One night you may tune in to see him featuring a segment on Cherished Gifts & Favors
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
$$$
Donate, Donate, Donate! Don't cha want to donate to helping me build Cherished Gifts & Favors into a worldwide distributor of elegant party favors and personalized gifts?
Donate $2. Donate $4. Heck if you got it and want to spend it donate $400. I'll dedicate any amount you give straight to my marketing fund so I can spread the word about my party favors and gifts! Brides, event planners, corporate party planners, and party hostesses will truly be grateful to learn about a website where they can purchase unqiue party favors and gifts at affordable prices!
Do it for me, do it for them, do it just because you can!
Donate $2. Donate $4. Heck if you got it and want to spend it donate $400. I'll dedicate any amount you give straight to my marketing fund so I can spread the word about my party favors and gifts! Brides, event planners, corporate party planners, and party hostesses will truly be grateful to learn about a website where they can purchase unqiue party favors and gifts at affordable prices!
Do it for me, do it for them, do it just because you can!
Times They Are A Changin!
Ok, so I thought of this little saying last Friday night when I was discussing the future of Panama City Beach with my husband. We had been to a new movie theater at the beach and before the movie started we were subjected to numerous ads about planned communities and real estate investment opportunities that are currently in the works.
I have lived in this area my whole life and know how this town works. For many years it has been run by the "good ole boys" who turn away business and growth opportunities for PC so they won't have to give their employees more money or benefits. Panama City consists of mostly small family owned businesses. Keeping it that way, keeps more money in certain local families' pockets because their employees don't have the opportunity to seek a better job unless they want to move. HOWEVER, money is now being made in this town and it is from outside investors.
OMG we now have condos with parking garages. We've never seen the likes of that in this town before! Panama City Beach is finally getting a clue and taking some pointers from area towns such at Destin & Sea Side. Beach roadways are now landscaped. Shocking! You can see the changes and you can feel that a big change is in the air. It will be very interesting to see how it all plays out!
Why I blogged about this I have NO idea! Well, yes I do. I liked the title of my blog. HeHe!! Before I starting ranting, I was going to blog about how I can feel something big is coming my way too. I don't know how it is all going to pan out, but I do know I have been working my butt off for a long time in regards to building CherishedGiftFavors.com. I have spent every free moment I have had (and many that I haven't) on marketing, promoting, researching, networking, learning, and doing everything I can to make my dreams happen. My business is my passion! I love it! I get excited about finding new favors and gifts to offer my customers.
My goal is to give up my job and devote myself full time to building my business. It will happen. It is frustrating while I'm having to work full time at my current job, but I'm beginning to feel that wonderful things are coming my way. Nothing that I can truly pinpoint now, but little pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place. I've been doing a lot of networking myself, but now others are starting to network for me in ways that I wouldn't have thought of. So cool. I can tell times they are a changin for me! I'm very excited!
If by some reason you haven't checked out my website, then stop reading this post and go there now! Bookmark my site and spread the word about me to your friends and co-workers. I will be truly grateful.
I have lived in this area my whole life and know how this town works. For many years it has been run by the "good ole boys" who turn away business and growth opportunities for PC so they won't have to give their employees more money or benefits. Panama City consists of mostly small family owned businesses. Keeping it that way, keeps more money in certain local families' pockets because their employees don't have the opportunity to seek a better job unless they want to move. HOWEVER, money is now being made in this town and it is from outside investors.
OMG we now have condos with parking garages. We've never seen the likes of that in this town before! Panama City Beach is finally getting a clue and taking some pointers from area towns such at Destin & Sea Side. Beach roadways are now landscaped. Shocking! You can see the changes and you can feel that a big change is in the air. It will be very interesting to see how it all plays out!
Why I blogged about this I have NO idea! Well, yes I do. I liked the title of my blog. HeHe!! Before I starting ranting, I was going to blog about how I can feel something big is coming my way too. I don't know how it is all going to pan out, but I do know I have been working my butt off for a long time in regards to building CherishedGiftFavors.com. I have spent every free moment I have had (and many that I haven't) on marketing, promoting, researching, networking, learning, and doing everything I can to make my dreams happen. My business is my passion! I love it! I get excited about finding new favors and gifts to offer my customers.
My goal is to give up my job and devote myself full time to building my business. It will happen. It is frustrating while I'm having to work full time at my current job, but I'm beginning to feel that wonderful things are coming my way. Nothing that I can truly pinpoint now, but little pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place. I've been doing a lot of networking myself, but now others are starting to network for me in ways that I wouldn't have thought of. So cool. I can tell times they are a changin for me! I'm very excited!
If by some reason you haven't checked out my website, then stop reading this post and go there now! Bookmark my site and spread the word about me to your friends and co-workers. I will be truly grateful.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Weekly Update ~ Week 4
Last week was a busy week in some ways, but slow in many others. I wasn't able to do as much advertising which may have affected my sales. On a positive note, I was able to finish processing three big orders at the beginning of the week, but since they were from previous weeks I don't count them as sales for last week.
I'm still bummed about the magazine not mentioning my name in their 3 page spread. Actually I'm really disappointed. I've been waiting on this magazine to hit the stands since the beginning of June. Now it is the beginning of August and I find out my excitement has been for nothing. The lady I have been working with at the magazine should be back to work tomorrow so I'm going to contact her to see what she has to say about me not getting credit for my pictures and products descriptions that I sent to her.
I'm wondering how this week is going to play out. I paid a company $450 last week to validate my website. I've read in many search engine optimization newsletters that it is a good thing to do. Google's (where I get most of my business from) spiders can crawl a site without it being validated, but many other search engines can not. As of today I'm listed near the top of the second page for 2 of my keywords on Google, but I'm on the third or fourth page for the same keywords in Yahoo & MSN. Go figure since it is much easier to get ranked high on Yahoo & MSN.
Validating your website is supposed to clean up any code errors, but I still have a lot of errors showing up in the inner pages of my site. The company I hired said the errors showing up had to do with the design of my website and weren't important to the search engines. The changes were completed last Wednesday or Thursday. Google crawled my site on Wednesday and my page rank dropped from a 2 to a 1. Awesome!! I'm trying to increase my page rank not lower it!
I'm still bummed about the magazine not mentioning my name in their 3 page spread. Actually I'm really disappointed. I've been waiting on this magazine to hit the stands since the beginning of June. Now it is the beginning of August and I find out my excitement has been for nothing. The lady I have been working with at the magazine should be back to work tomorrow so I'm going to contact her to see what she has to say about me not getting credit for my pictures and products descriptions that I sent to her.
I'm wondering how this week is going to play out. I paid a company $450 last week to validate my website. I've read in many search engine optimization newsletters that it is a good thing to do. Google's (where I get most of my business from) spiders can crawl a site without it being validated, but many other search engines can not. As of today I'm listed near the top of the second page for 2 of my keywords on Google, but I'm on the third or fourth page for the same keywords in Yahoo & MSN. Go figure since it is much easier to get ranked high on Yahoo & MSN.
Validating your website is supposed to clean up any code errors, but I still have a lot of errors showing up in the inner pages of my site. The company I hired said the errors showing up had to do with the design of my website and weren't important to the search engines. The changes were completed last Wednesday or Thursday. Google crawled my site on Wednesday and my page rank dropped from a 2 to a 1. Awesome!! I'm trying to increase my page rank not lower it!
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Magazine Ad
I finally got my copy of the magazine that I advertised in. The person I had been working with said there was a 2 page spread featuring only my products in a special section they did called "Bridesmaids Gifts". I could hardly wait to see the magazine. It was supposed to be out June 1st, but was delayed until the end of July. It turns out my gifts were featured on 2 full pages and 3 small photos appeared underneath the article itself. The magazine was going to be a wonderful way to promote my products free of charge. I was helping the magazine out by filling their pages and they were helping me out by promoting my products. A win-win situation for both of us. EXCEPT..my name & website addy wasn't mentioned anywhere in the article. Brides may like my products, but they won't know where to buy them.
I'm calling the magazine tomorrow.
I'm calling the magazine tomorrow.
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