Warm and Dry

I was reading an article online about advertising. She was actually promoting offline advertising for online work. I do agree with her in terms of PPC – Pay Per Click. It sounds fantastic in the terms that you only pay when people actually visit your site. But how many times have you been to a site and instantly realised it is not what you want? Yet as a business you would have paid for that customer to hit your site. The only way to get PPC to work is to target your market really well. And that is not easy.

Personally, I have signed up to HomePages Friends (previously known as My Search Funds - which I think is a more apt name), and this means that I do an online search which gives me results. It uses a search engine to do this. Previously it used to use Google but currently uses Yahoo! Now besides the search engine results, it also targets the advertising. If for example I searched the word Joke, it would bring up a list of websites. Now if say The Joke Shop decided on PPC advertising, the search engine would realise that I was the target market and show the advert. If I ignored the advert, then The Joke Shop would not pay for that advert. If on the other hand, I clicked on it, then The Joke Shop would pay for that click. It would also mean that the person who visited was really interested. There is a negative side. If I wanted to read a Joke, then The Joke Shop would have paid for me to visit without it turning to a sale. At least it would mean that I have become aware of the site, so I may go to it in the future. In Marketing, familiarity helps. But not being there is a disadvantage.

I digress, so places like MySearchFunds want you to click on their adverts shown, so they can keep up their high ratings and keep earning money. So they actually pay you a part of their revenue for clicking on their sponsored links. The truth is that you were doing the search anyway and you are the target market which means everyone is happy. But it can be open to abuse, where people keep doing searches just to earn money. In the long run, this won’t work as you would be spotted abusing the system and your account would be closed. You would also lose any earnings you would have made.

But it does make you wonder about whether PPC really works or not. As for offline advertising, I think it could be helpful but you do need

• A memorable website name eg www.thejokeshop.com
• An easy telephone number eg 0800 000000000000 (obviously not a real number but you get the point)

However, people do tend to forget about the adverts unless it is really on their mind, or if they have been able to cut out and keep the advert eg from a newspaper / flyer.

Talking of newspapers… my experience with them is horrific. When running The Joke Shop, I placed an advert in the local paper. It cost £550 + VAT and hit 80,000 homes. I received less orders than 1 had fingers. I tried this twice. Needless to say, I did not do it again.

I personally feel that the best is to keep your clients happy and they will spread the word. Displease your customers and they will also spread the word. The saying a bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush is a true saying. It also costs less to keep a customer happy than to find a new one!

You want your customers to constantly keep you in mind, so giving away promotional items like engravable gifts, printed balloons and pens, stickers, mouse mats, etc all contributes to keeping you as a business foremost in their minds.

I must say, I learnt a lot from The Joke Shop and really miss it!

I have always wanted to learn hypnosis. As I went through my degree, I found out that one of my credits included hypnosis. I was overjoyed. I was finally to learn all about hypnosis. Sadly I discovered that it was nothing like hypnosis as featured on TV and in movies.

It is quite interesting and more impressive than TV where people are acting and not really hypnotised.

I was absolutely miffed however that my course only gave us 1 actual lesson on hypnosis. Really disappointing. So I keep thinking about finding some time to follow a hypnosis course. Hopefully one day soon.

There once was a boy called Ran,
Who was a really great big fan
Of creamy gooey Nutella
Even though he was a fella!
And now he wants to try it with Jam!

There once was a boy called Rod,
Who thought he had a great bod!
But then he found
His tum was round
And he really was just no god!

Bachelorette.com? is a website not unlike our own jokeshop but just concentrating on the bachelorette and hen party side of things.

They do have a few intriguing ideas which is unusual for a shop of this type. For example they will donate a dollar if you donate just a cent to a suicide charity. Mind you, if someone wants to die, who are we to stop them? But on the other hand… maybe it is just a cry for help. I guess I will never make a good psychologist. Just imagine someone comes to me and says “I want to kill myself” and I respond, “ok, would you like a box of paracetamol!”. It is a good thing that I never worked in psychology!!

I digress.

They offer free gifts but you have to add them to your cart. Personally I like their giving free gifts but having to add them to the cart might mean that you miss the freebie. But you have been warned…. just add it to your shopping basket!

They also have some other good ideas like Party Ideas and Advice, Free downloadable invitations, free downloadable party award ribbons and games!

It is US based.

As I keep mentioning, there is no problem with actually making a mistake as long as you learn from it and correct your errors. Drugs are often experimented with by teenagers. Sometimes, this experimenting, well goes a step too far and people end up using hard drugs and getting addicted.

Thankfully, there are drug rehabilitation? places where you can get help. Often places like Stone Hawk are run by people who have experienced rehabilitation, which is why they have highly successful treatment and rates.

With the right counselling and treatment, you are just one step away from being an ex addict.

I thought I would dedicate a section to Psychology. After all, what is the point of having a degree in Psychology without putting it to good use.

Just watch this space for more psychology and mental health related items.