About
The Short Bio I’ve managed from $7,000 to $1.5 million annual spend in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and held the Google AdWords Certified Professional status. While managing a PPC account during a recession, we brought in $130,000 – $160,000 per month in gross revenue. In pay-per-click advertising, I’ve achieved a 70% opt-in rate during a recession in PPC and a goal of 34% for new-to-file customers. My search engine optimization (SEO) techniques have achieved top two rankings in Google. My email marketing background includes increasing sales, writing copy, and conducting A/B split testing to improve results.
After ten years of membership and holding various volunteer positions, I joined the Executive Board of DC Web Women. I’m a blogger for Women Grow Business and love to engage with people on Twitter.
Longer Bio
I started this website to teach people WordPress and SEO strategies, because I remember those days when starting a WordPress website seemed overwhelming. I got my start in the web space by teaching myself HTML from a book and hand coding a website for my University of Florida graduate program. Not long afterward, I created a website for a literary magazine. Eventually, I joined a large government contractor and started designing sites—and incorporating information architecture knowledge from Jakob Nielsen—for a large government client. Soon, I was winning awards from the government client for my work on their intranets. That felt pretty good, and I loved my work. Plus, I had three computers and taught myself how Linux worked.
When I moved on to become a website manager and marketing director for a training company, I saw the potential for this (then relatively new) thing called WordPress. If you think about a Model T versus a 2010 Porsche, then you can imagine the difference between WordPress in 2004 and 2010. Installing WordPress back then was not for the faint of heart and getting this tool to do exactly what you wanted was not always easy. However, I persisted and set up the company’s first blog in order to attain better search engine rankings.
I started converting my websites to WordPress and kept learning more. I could not believe WordPress was free.
When I started using WordPress, this is the kind of forum conversation I’d have:
“Do I need to know PHP to use WordPress?” I wrote on a WordPress-related forum.
“Mwahahaha. You will get nowhere with WordPress if you don’t know PHP,” someone replied.
Um, I did not know PHP. However, I was not going to let that lack of knowledge get me down. Every time I did not know something, I went and learned it.
I learned PHP (programming language) basics and added to my existing CSS (cascading style sheets) knowledge. I loved WordPress and wanted to shout about my adoration from the rooftops. Fortunately, I have a pointy roof and realized the danger in this desire. Instead, I probably annoyed friends and family by talking about how much I loved it. My mom did not really understand “my internet stuff” but she acted interested, and that was good enough for me.
With WordPress, I could create accounts for writers and let them add their own posts for me to review and edit. WordPress kept my website design safe while I made content changes. Designers and developers created more and more “themes” (aka frameworks or designs) that could be added to WordPress and later modified for a unique look. I moved my poetry blog over to WordPress from Blogger and loved how easy it was to install Google Analytics and other plugins (pieces of software that add functionality to a blog). Plus, I kept all that search engine juice to myself as opposed to giving it all to Blogger.
Here I am. I’m ready to teach you what I know and hope you’ll join me and find the information useful.
Disclosures
To follow the FTC regulations, I’m adding a page regarding disclosures so you understand the aim of this site and when I’m writing for the monetary benefit of others and myself. In other words, I will “disclose clearly and conspicuously” that I am being paid for my services in many cases on this website.
Companies Sending Me Free Things
When companies send me free products in the hopes that I will promote them, I will inform you of that in any post or page I write about their products or services. I will not keep it a secret that the product was free. On that same note, receiving a free product or service does not guarantee a good review from me.
Organizations that Hire Me
I will not promote the work of organizations or companies that hire me. If this changes, I will update this page to reflect that.
Affiliate Marketing
I do promote products and services I’ve used, and I do this via an affiliate model. For instance, I may review a product and include a link to another website. If you buy that product, I will make money off of that sale. By doing that you help me get paid for my writing. In other words, I will make money off of recommending products if you then go and buy that product. I am an affiliate for Market Samurai, Thesis, and for other products and companies.
Do know that I will let you know what I find useful about products — and will, if it applies, let you know the downsides I’ve found for any product. In short, I aim to provide a full review of products— the good, the bad, and the ugly— in each review I write. Sometimes, I love a product so much (the Thesis Theme is one) that I may not find much of anything I don’t like. And that leads me to the next section…
About Content
This is my content. I will write what I like about various products. I hope you like it. If you don’t, you are welcome to disagree in a civil manner in the comments or via email. Obviously, I am going to write about what I find useful, what I like, and what I think will benefit you. You, as my reader, are important to me, and I want to be a valuable resource for you.
