Business 250 - Reflections

Week 7 This week we learned about creating an Adwords campaign. I have to be honest, this is very confusing for me. I am also very leary about using google adwords for my particular website. I don't intend for this website to generate a lot of income. My main purpose of my site is to attract visitors to my husband's website and to sell his textbook. His textbook can benefit people other than byui students, so eventually people may buy his book that aren't students at byui. We also learned a lot about how to choose our keywords. This lesson was very beneficial because I now realize how important it is to choose the right words or phrases. I am still working on my website. I thought using a "drag and drop" builder would be helpful, but I find that it is a lot of work to learn the program. I also realize that I am not that good at designing. I want it to look  a certain way but am having problems getting it to look the way I want.

Project 2 was due this week. I have my website started but it is not complete. I need to add artwork and make it more attractive. Learning a new website builder is hard and takes a lot of time. I probably spent 10 hours this week uploading art work and working with my husband to get digital files of all his work. Now I need to learn how to format the pages better. We also learned about state licenses and tax. I have registered my husband's business with the state years ago.  I need to check with the state and make sure everything is in order. I am choosing a sole proprietorship structure for this business. My husband will be the only business owner. I will help, but I won't be a "hired employee". We don't have any risk involved where someone may come after us an sue. I look forward to completing the website and hopefully find the time. It is hard because I have a very busy full-time job and busy church callings.

Week 5 - Reflections This week we learned about credit card payments and Paypal. Most of this I have experience with and will continue to use Paypal. I did learn about Amazon Pay and will have to look further into this option since Amazon is so well known. I started building my website. I decided to go through iPage and now I am not so sure if that was the right decision. I had to pay $81 for 3 years. This paid for the domain name and hosting. What I didn't realize is the website builder only lets me build 6 pages for free. So, I paid an additional $12.99 a month to use the website builder. Now I can have more pages. It's amazing all the hidden costs. I believe I have a 30 day money back guarantee. I will develop more of the website this week and decide if I like the builder enough to pay that much.

This week was a hard week. The spreadsheet we had to do took a lot of time. Luckily I started it during week 2. It helped me to learn which business ideas may do better. I thought I had my mind made up on using Wix for a site builder. If I used Wix, I would need to use it as a host also. I learned that later in the week on we studied hosts. I didn't realize that most site builders are also hosts. I was set on using GoDaddy because I all ready have a domain name through them. I thought the price that I am paying of the domain would also cover the hosting. I was wrong. I don't really want to go through GoDaddy because I haven't had that great of experience with WordPress. I am looking for a site builder that is more "drag and drop". iPage seems to be a good option. I need to do a lot more research this weekend before I make up my mind who to go with. I think I am going to do my husband's art business for this class. He doesn't have a website yet and he r