Still Alive & Kicking

A very good customer of mine, Hein from KZN, rang me yesterday. He was concerned that he had not received any communication from me for a while and wondered if all was OK. So that was a bit of a wake-up call for me to let subscribers and friends who subscribe to my lists know what I have been “up to” and will be “getting up to”

1. The World Cup… as you all might know by now I own Vuvuzela.com. The weeks leading up to the World Cup and throughout the world cup period I was completely overwhelmed by the demand for Vuvuzelas created through my Adwords campaign. This demand has quietened down a lot and I’m not quite sure if I’m happy or unhappy about this because the sales were very significant but the time demand involved was high.

2. I’ve been studying. .. A couple of months ago Google announced sweeping changes to their Google Adwords Professional program. In fact they will be discontinuing this program. People like me were given 6 months to become re-qualified and earn the status of Google Certified Partner. The re-qualification program now entails that Professionals take 2 qualifying exams including one advanced Adwords or Analytics exam as a specialization subject. The pass marks for the exams have been increased significantly. The new qualification requirements in my opinion will make it very difficult for anyone to pass the new exams without having considerable Adwords experience. For my advanced exam I chose to specialize in Google’s Display network (previously the Content Network) since this is where many of the future opportunities will lie and it’s a field mainly untouched even by Adwords professionals. At this stage only 3 people in South Africa have re-qualifed.

The last few months have also given me time to reflect on the strategic direction of SEOza and my own future for a couple of reasons (remember I’m officially a pensioner now and if I lived in UK I would be given a free bus pass!!!):

My son, Gareth completes his 3 year IMM marketing studies in November and he will probably come and work with me after that. He already has considerable website optimisation and Adwords experience having owned south-african-game-reserves.com for some 6 years and more recently has opened up an online shop… www. fishthesea.co.za.

As far as I’m concerned I will probably focus more and more on working directly with clients and focus on some of my own "hobby" websites like thekruger.com.

I will probably bring to an end my workshops… I might just do one more before calling it a day. Adwords is now so powerful an opportunity that I probably don’t want to share much of what I’ve learned any more. Even compared to a year ago Google Adwords has moved on significantly.

I will also probably offer a wider range of Adwords services over next few months in addition to my full-service account management. These will include:

1. One-time account optimisation

2. One time account set-up

3. Display network set up for established Adword campaigns

4. I will also be selling my workshop DVD and "Adwords & Beyond" book so if you're interested let me know.

These services will have greater appeal to a wider base of website owners since the costs involved for my services will be significantly less than for my full service product.

So there you are… I’m alive and kicking still.

Take a look at the new Adwords Certifed Partner logo at www.seoza.com

Give me a call if you think I can help you make progress with your online marketing opportunities… 011-454-0105