If you invested in bid management software within the past few years, chances are high that you were probably duped in one key area: automation.

Now, before you think I’m about to split hairs here…let’s walk through a few basics to make sure we’re on the same page…and…wait…who am I kidding? This might make you mad – or it will make ppc software companies mad so I suppose it really might split a few hairs…

We used massive custom spreadsheets (customized for each client! no ‘rubber stamp’ approach!) with rules that would tell us to move a bid up or down or change the ad copy or revise the ad group…it was really quite an amazing ppc management tool and I would often brag that we had tested a handful of ppc management software in the space only to outperform it manually every time!

That was before most web-based or desktop based ppc management software had extensive, customizable bid rules to the extent we had in our spreadsheets…

I’m stoked to be going to Affiliate Summit West this year!

I’ll be getting in late Sunday night but I’ll be there all day Monday and Tuesday. I’ll probably be tweeting a bit – I’ll tweet out my location, etc sometimes so I’d love to chat!!

Ads on this blog

I will be experimenting with ads on this blog in the very near future…

Lately I have found myself getting less willing to share knowledge, insights and tricks in the ppc space or even some of the cool stuff I have learned in the SEO space…and to that end, I feel like I have chosen to hide underground for quite some time. This is clear by the amount I wrote last year…this year I would like to turn a new leaf, but we’ll see what I feel like I can share vs not…

I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything since June…well, I guess I can believe it.

Here is a quick summary of what I have been up to:

1. Growing the affiliate marketing side of my personal income…and have been doing quite well with it. In fact, I have launched or am in the process of launching 12 more websites in my personal portfolio. I must admit that affiliate marketing is very time consuming but I have effectively replaced my income from the agency so it is a full-time passion right now…

Students have been dropping by the office more and more as the year moves along…they are looking for internships, jobs or simple career advice. Some of the best questions that have come up so far are: What can I do right now so that you or somebody like you would hire me? What do you look for in a job candidate? What can I read or where can I learn more?

Most of these students are absolute beginners when it comes to pay per click advertising and web marketing in general…

semvironment has been going through a shiny new internal transformation lately…here’s the latest:

semvironment is now a one man show. I (James Zolman) realized that during this economic turmoil, it is easier to be flexible and strong as a service provider if the people that help me can maintain their sense of freedom to work for others while we have the strictest agreements of confidentiality and non-disclosure in place between our contractors and our clients…

While setting up a mobile campaign last night I thought “Wouldn’t it be great to see the mobile search volume for these keywords? I bet Google has a tool…let me go to AdWords Help and see.”

Kablam! Here was the 1st result…

We’re going to SMX West next week – and we’re speaking at a few awesome sessions!

Register to attend if you haven’t already, it’s going to be a blast!

The sessions we are speaking at:

Advanced Landing Page Strategies

Writing Killer PPC Ad Copy

Analyzing & Converting Paid Search Traffic

Let us know if you’ll be there! We’d love to meet one and all!

Related posts:

• Traveling From Coast to CoastPosting has been slow this week because a lot is happening right now: Shane is moving to Hawaii to pursue a Master’s Degree in New…

Related posts:Decrease Landing Page Load Time by 500% With 3 Lines Of Code!This was almost the title of one of the top del.icio…

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I just started noticing this tonight…how long has this been going on? What determines when a result will have 1 or 4 description lines? Thoughts? Please see this screen shot…it’s a big file/image – please click to see the big picture:

Related posts:

• Paid Organic ‘Site Links’ In Yahoo!?Yahoo! Search Submit Pro recently added (99% sure this is recent because I haven’t seen this before) a ‘site link’ functionality that looks very similar…

Thank you loyal followers for sticking around – you will not be disappointed this year! Watch for some cool stuff coming up this month and throughout 2009.

Happy New Year to all of our readers and visitors!!

Related posts:Happy New Year!Our last official post of the year…..

Thank you loyal followers for sticking around – you will not be disappointed this year! Watch for some cool stuff coming up this month and throughout 2009.

Happy New Year to all of our readers and visitors!!

Related posts:

• Happy New Year!Our last official post of the year…wow, so much to do TOMORROW because it’s a NEW YEAR!!! Yes!!! We are so grateful to our customers,…

You can expect to see more out of semvironment in the near future – we have been swamped with work and we have a whole bunch to share…

You can expect to see more out of semvironment in the near future – we have been swamped with work and we have a whole bunch to share.

We’ll see you next year!

Related posts:

• Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from your friends at semvironment! We will be back on Wednesday, December 26 for a few days…