Internet Marketing Tools and Web Development

In the ultimate fair play move, Google makes it so that you can compete with large advertisers on some scale at least. A highly competitive keyword can have $5.00 (or even more) cost per click, but can you get a return on that kind of investment? If it takes say 50 clicks to get a sale, you paid $250.00 for that single sale. Depending on what product you’re selling that may not be worth it at all. That ROI number depends completely on your conversion rate, and your product price, both long and short term. The good news: raising your conversion rate can now make your advertising less expensive.

I saw this first hand while advertising my hosting services. When I first started running Adsense ads, I would start of at $0.25 per click limit and then within a day to a week it would be up to $1.00 or $5.00 minimum bids. So I’d stop running and try something else and come back and do it again, doing the same thing. (Kind of makes you think of that insanity definition.)

Then I observed that if I just redesigned (reworded) the ad, or changed the url that it was linking to and came back to it a day or two later the ad was running again. Google was raising my prices because the ad was not performing well. I assume they measure this by looking at bounces. Meaning if someone clicks my ad and comes back to Google seconds later, it means the ad and the page that it clicked through to were not relevant to what I was advertising nor what the user was looking for.

Not only does this level the playing field on a NATIONAL advertising campaign, but it shows you almost immediately whether your ad is working! Google is telling you, your ad isn’t working, we’ll still deliver it for you, you’ll just have to pay more, your choice.  This is something no other advertising media is going to do for you! Google, in there outstanding vision, realizes that end users need to have a good experience and rewards advertisers who provide it. So when you see, “Your ad has been deactivated unless you raise your minimum to bid to $5.00″. Take that has a blessing, that you were notified your advertising can be better.

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Besides the obvious fact that NetworkSolutions charges $35 per domain, when you can easily register a domain on hundreds of other sites for $10 or less, they have now started a completely immoral and unscrupulous policy. They now register domains as you run a search for them, which has the unwanted effect of forcing you to purchase the domain through them.
Apparently they are fed up and angry that their business is hurting because they lost their monopoly status on domain registration years ago (which they abused), and they are now registering domains as you search for them. Another abuse of their registrar status.

If you have a domain registered with Networksolutions, transfer it and save money every year. If you are looking for domain registration make 100% sure you don’t go anywhere near Networksolutions to do it.

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Author Byline: The War for Talent in the Middle Kingdom

“What an idiot!�, you say to yourself as you sign off on a Job Offer letter for the third highly questionable candidate this month. “How could he think that guy has what it takes!�, you mutter on the way back to your office, “It’s just like the other two people that he hired last week. All losers. Bit like him I suppose�.

Sitting down at your desk you may be tempted to regret your anger and somehow find a reason, any reason, to justify the hire. There is the possibility that he is seeing things that you can’t see, you rationalize. Or maybe you need more training, and an MBA like his.

But maybe, just maybe, your line manager truly is an idiot. If only there was just something or someone that could back you up here …

Now there is, and it’s a study done by those nice people at the University of Granada.

Escape Clause

According to their research, “bosses who feel insecure or unqualified to hold their position often choose to hire less competent people�. Basically, the process is like this: idiot line manager is hiring fellow idiot because fellow idiot does not have the capacity to understand that idiot line manager is completely out of his depth.

So, unqualified bosses are afraid of competition and will do anything to avoid it. That they consistently get away with hiring carbon copies of themselves is a scandal and a major bugbear for third party recruiters and internal HR staffers. The corollary is that people who are both qualified for their position, and competent at performing the work, will hire people who can take on responsibility and deliver for their team. The first is a negative spiral, and the latter the kind of positive upward spiral that we all look for.

The University of Granada researchers divided the subjects into two groups. The first group were told they were qualified for their position of power, while the other group were told they were not. Each participant was instructed to choose between a very competent and sociable subordinate, and a person with noticeably less competence and sociability.

The results were as expected in that the weak bosses preferred the less competent and less sociable candidates in a higher proportion than did the competent bosses. Moreover, they requested more information about the good candidates than about the weak candidates. It seems that they were probing for strengths, and would use that information to rule candidates out. This is exactly the opposite purpose you would expect for an interview.

The only downside of all this for those of us who have to deal with ‘idiots’, ourselves included, is that the study only had a sample size of 73. Oh well!, back to the drawing board. The study does have a ring of truth to it though.

It’s just not the trump card we were all looking for.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry-level jobs and other career opportunities.

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