Thread: never at the right time

I'm not even sure how to title this. I just need to whine for a moment.

So I got google adwords, and it seems to be working. In the last few months, I"ve gotten about 3 calls to book me as a bellydancer. and unbelievably, every time, I have had a prior commitment - already dancing somewhere, in a foreign country, have to go to a wedding. Will I ever get a call for a show when I _can_ do it? At least I do get to recommend people I think are good dancers when I get a call.

This last one was the hardest to turn down - the woman said she had read over my whole site and decided I was the one she wanted. & it was for a woman's 50th birthday, a woman who loves bellydancing - doesn't that sound like the perfect gig?

Speaking of which, google adwords keeps telling me that my ad isn't showing enough and I should up my budget. Of course they say that. But I was wondering, for those of you who use it, what do you set as your monthly budget?

So funny, Mariyah and I were just emailing about this exact same topic today (the adwords, not the unavailability - but I know what you mean, I HATE that I am unavailable for more than half of the jobs I am contacted for!!).

I have my budget set at $30 per month and they can kiss my booty telling me that is not high enough! Mariyah suggested that I narrow down the phrases I use so my add shows up more for the phrases I keep and I just did that - for example, I got rid of any combination of Daniela and bellydance, because when you put those two words in google, my website is one of the first to pop up anyway. No need to waste clicks on it!

I'm not sure how I feel about adwords yet, but I just started. I will give it a few months and see what happens!

it's good to hear that google adwords is working! It seems that 'wrong timing' is very common for most dancers. You could ofcourse clean your calender for the next to months and not commit to anything so you can say 'yes!' when you get a call. But I bet that you wouldn't get booked if you did because clients have bad timing all the time and they would all want to book you on the same night ,f::

I think google adwords is great if you can't land the search terms on your own. But truthfully, in most markets, it's pretty easy to land local belly dance related search terms.

Yeah, that's why I got it - because in my market, if you google any combination of "bellydance" and "new york" a gazillion sites pop up before mine! (I'm on page 25, actually....).

I don't know what to tell you about the scheduling problem, but here's a quick, easy, *Free* way to move your page up the google rank ladder without using AdWords.

Write an article relating to what you do, that your target audience would find interesting (like birthday party ideas for little girls--if you book "Princess Jasmine" parties). Post it on your website as value-added content.

Go to Digg / All News, Videos, & Images , sign up for an account, then click on "Submit an article" (Yes, it's okay to submit your own!) Fill out the information, the link to the page where the article is (not necessarily your home page) Try to use appropriate search terms in your title and article description.

Then go to www.propeller.com and do the same thing.

Wash, rinse, repeat with other articles. If you have loads of time, you can submit to other social bookmarking sites, but Digg and Propeller are the ones I've had the best luck with when trying to rank on Google.

Good luck!
Mira

Mira - great idea, because I love to write articles anyway!

Articles also make great submissions to the local "weekly" papers, press releases, blog posts....there are just tons of ways to use words :D

That is an awesome idea! I will be putting "write an article" on my to do list!

Originally Posted by mira

Write an article relating to what you do, that your target audience would find interesting (like birthday party ideas for little girls--if you book "Princess Jasmine" parties). Post it on your website as value-added content.

And weren't Nepenthe and Badriya and I all talking about how much fun princess parties would be, just a couple of weeks ago!

I also saw a spike in calls after signing up for ad words (more for my teaching ad than performances, but that too). If it helps, my bellygram campaign is at $20/month and my teaching campaign is at 50 cents per day.

Just chiming in to say this sort of thing happens to plenty and I just want to cry my eyes out when it does. Paid gigs are not that plentiful around these parts, and it seems like at least half the time when I get a call, I'm out of town for a workshop or show, or have something else un-rescheduable going on.

I had a great opportunity to do a performance/lesson at a local college's International festival this past Friday, but had to turn it down because of going to visit my in-laws in Tennessee. Gah!

On the adwords thing...You know your business better than Google. The Big G runs on algorithms and is making a "best guess" as to what your budget and PPC should be.

For my blog site, I have an adwords campaign set up for certain keywords and G. says I'm ranking "3rd or 4th" for those keywords. But in reality, I'm all alone on the PPC Ad side of the page.

So, trust your instincts and trust your metrics. Adjust one thing at a time, so you know what is working and what's not.