Posts from ‘Me’
My Thoughts on Think Visibility 2010
So far I have managed to attend all three Think Visibility events and this year was without doubt one of the best. I don’t get to go to many conferences but of the ones I do go to this is probably the one I enjoy the most. This year featured some really great speakers and I was particularly excited to see that Tom Critchlow would be making an appearance.
There have already been some great roundups of the event so I won’t try to emulate those posts. In this post I wanted to share with you some of the point that I found most interesting about the event.
Like many people i am guilty of creating some pretty standard looking 404 pages. Luckily there are some people out there with some creative magic who have created some super cool 404 pages. There examples have inspired me and i thought i would share them with you. I’m sure you will agree that they are pretty dam awesome.
Blue Daniel
Probably one of the best examples i have come across. The moving train and sliding elements add real depth to it.
So every year i like to set myself a new set of goals and what better time to do it than on new years eve. This year i am going to be a little bit more ambitious and use a special tool to track my resolutions, which i will share with you shortly. Firstly i wanted to look back at last years resolutions.
As you can see i had 7 resolutions or goals in 2009. In all i think i managed to achieve around 4 of them which is not great going.
1. Passed Adcenter Exam
2. Made It to America
3. Pushed this blog a bit more
4. Improved SEO results in some key places
Looking back at them has made me think that i should set my sites a little higher and put more energy in to all aspects of life. Life outside work is just as important as in it.
I don’t use Ebay all that often but after recently purchasing a new Macbook Pro (which is awesome by the way) i decided to put my old Macbook up for sale on Ebay. The listing process is all very easy and monitoring an auction is pretty straight forward but there is one thing that really pisses me off with the whole setup. That is dispute times.
Why do Ebay enforce such long dispute times. After an auction a buyer can lodge a dispute 45 days after a purchase. It essentially means that anyone selling anything of any significant value has to wait 45 days before they can transfer the money from PayPal to there bank account. I mean do people really want to run the risk of spending that money during the 45 day period. I certainly don’t.
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Today i managed to pass the adExcellence exam from Microsoft and thought it would be useful to share some of my experiences. I managed to learn and pass the exam in as little as four and a half hours but i did find the exam much more challenging the Google equivalent.
Firstly many of the questions were based on example ads and why they might be disqualified. These questions throw me quite a bit as i did not spend a great deal of time learning the materials. There were also many questions which were similar to one another and it made me think a lot about whether a the answers were in fact the same or completely different. I found many were the same but still found it very off putting.
If you are taking the exam then i would definitely take the time to learn the billing cycle, trademark and character length lessons. Although i felt it was worth while taking the exam i think my preference is still Google Adwords.
After a lot of delays and cash flow problems i have finally been able to book my long awaited trip to America. I originally intended to go last year but this morning i booked 12 long days in the USA and will be visiting cities such as New York, Boston and Toronto (I know!! Toronto is in Canada not the USA). I also booked a private helicopter tour around the big apple. I have always wanted to fly in a helicopter so i thought it was as good an opportunity as any. Should be fun.
source: Infliximab – Flickr
Roll on November!!!
About Mark Mayne
Manchester based SEO consultant who specialises in online marketing and PPC. Mark currently works for PushON ltd, one of the north west's top online marketing companies and has helped numerous companies boost their online profiles.
