First day of work

Thursday was my last day of work at DSNR, and today was my first day of work at Inlight (no site yet). Starting a new company includes going through lots of legal papers. Sign the company foundation papers, register the company, open a bank account...
Even though all these processes take time, there is a certain excitement in the air. I can't wait to get the first customer up and running.
Are you out there?

Last day of work

Today is my last day of work at DSNR. It's been 2 years since I've started working here and I've grown attached to the place and the people. Even though I am starting a new road, I feel sort of nostalgic for this place. Since I started working there in September 2004, the company has changed in many ways, growing from 30 to 800 employees and penetrating new markets. Now all that's left are memories, friends and a nice picture of me with a tie taken for the company website.

Tags: DSNR, Work

Starting a new job

For the past 3 month I've been working on starting a new company. It wasn't an easy process and took far longer then I've expected but it finally happened. The new company will provide SEM services for the Israeli market and benefit it's customers (already in the pipeline) with our intimate understanding of search engine marketing as well as automation tools for campaign management. At this time I am not able to share some more info on the new company but I will followup on this subject.

Tags: SEM, Job, Company, Israel

Reasons to remove social network links

Here are the reasons why I removed all social network links from my blog.

1. Most people never use them. Those that would probably have some bookmarklet or add-on in their browser for this.
2. They take space.
3. It takes focus from the actual content
4. They link to social network sites but I'm not getting enough links back
5. Now that they are gone, my blog looks much neater
6. I am popular as is - Suggested by Yanir Alter
7. I am here to help you find your way , not to get lost - Suggested by Yanir Alter

Got some more reasons to add?

Tags: Social networks, links, digg

Adsense missing feature - ad size report

In a recent post by the Inside Adsense Team, a recommendation was made to put the most successful ad size as the first one in the page which would cause it to display the most high valued ads. To calculate which ad size is most effective, they suggest that we create custom channels for each ad size and then use the reports to figure out which ad size generates the highest ROI.
I have to disagree with this concept due to the following reasons:
1. Not all ad sizes and formats are suited to be displayed as the first ad of the page. You can't place a skyscraper in your header for example.
2. If the ad size is so important then why isn't Google providing us with reports by ad size without having us go through the setup of custom channels.

Tags: Adsense, Custom Channels, ROI, Ad Placement, Ad Size

Adwords tip - competition names

I've been planning to write a post about using your competitor's name in an ad, when I stumbled upon MindValleyLabs's post about the same subject. In their post, titled Ads to Take Business From Your Competitor, they buy the competitor's brand and create textual ads such as "Read This Before You Buy [Enter Competitor]". Read more about it here.

Tags: SEM, Adwords, competition, brand, copywriting

Alexa rank and power users

There's an ongoing debate in the internet marketing community on the accuracy of the alexa page rank. Alexa, is an Amazon.com company. Alexa's primary product is their web browser add-on toolbar that shows a numeric rank for each site visited. The top 3 ranked are:
1. Yahoo
2. MSN
3. Google

As the alexa toolbar and ranking system has become a must-have tool for internet marketeers, some feel that it does not reflect what the users like but what marketeers and other internet power users like. If such is indeed the case, then why should I care about my alexa rank (525,489 if you must know). The answer to this is simple, it depends on your target market. As my blog becomes more and more focused on internet marketing, It's relevance to marketeers increases. The connection between technology and marketing content in a blog and the alexa page rank is so tight that as soon as I started posting about adwords and PPC campaigns, my alexa rank started rapidly climbing.

What do you think? Is Alexa rank still valid? Are you using it? What for?

Tags: Alexa, Page rank, Marketing, Adwords, PPC