Month: May 2008

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AdWords Password Protection

You must guard your Google account login especially if you are using AdWords as if it is your bank login ID. It is a good idea to even change your password every month in Google to protect yourself.

Personally I feel that after having a previous client have their AdWords account hijacked several weeks ago that Google is wrong to force users to have one master Google login. If someone gets a hold of your Google master account, they can wreak havoc in so many areas now that Google has required it’s use across it applications.

If there was one thing that I could tell Google, I would say let AdWords have it’s own login and even if the user email is the same allow for AdWords to have its own password different from the Google account login.

The client who we know who had been hijacked had been fooled into revealing their login and password from a phishing email sent as a Google AdWords correspondence. It is so very important to know that for PayPal and now Google AdWords that you must never login by clicking a link in an email or send your password plus login together in an email. I say PayPal as well as it has long been known that PayPal has been a target for phishing campaigns. As for AdWords, phishing is new for them, just this last week I have received over 15 emails supposedly from Google to login from a link in an email. So my suggestion is to very carefully guard your login and change your password for Google with a degree of regularity. You must actively work to keep yourself safe from AdWords bandits.

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Blogging For Hire – A Note to Professional Writers

If you are blogging for clients professionally be aware of several potential pitfalls that we have experienced – the unexpected use of your blog content.

You won’t care if you are “working for hire”, how a client uses your blog posts, but if you also sell your services to create press releases and web content, if you do not license your content or contractually state how your content is used, you may end up hurting yourself. What I specifically mean is that without restriction a client can build website content at the price of your $10 or $15 each blog post price, can get a press release written on the cheap, or even get content for their next how-to book at your expense.

Certainly this is not what you expected when you started blogging at $10 or $15 per post, but this is what has happened specifically to us, so learn from our experience! Although each client contract is different and we can be flexible, now, our standard contract states that our created blog content is licensed only for use on th client’s one blog and to see us for prices on web content and press releases created from blog posts.

If you don’t care that the going rate for press release writing is around $250 and you are potentially supplying a press release at your blog post price of $10 to $15, then go right ahead. If you don’t care that the going rate for 450 words of content is around $250 and you are supplying it for $10 to $15, then go right ahead. Just be aware that there are some potential clients who WILL make an effort to build their site, book, or press release arsenal at your expense hoping that you simply won’t be savvy enough to know any different.

We even had a client even gloat to us about the fact that they compiled our created blog posts into a book and published it as a “how to book”. The nerve! If you don’t spell it out in your contract, you are simply setting yourself out to be taken advantage of unfortunately.

Be particularly careful of clients who are very specific of what they want you to write in a post as they may be using it for a press release. Don’t be afraid to ask why and what the use will be. Be careful of clients who give you a list of topics that look like chapters in a book, or steps to follow in a process. They may be writing a book from your content.

The bottom line is if you are contractually working for hire, you have no rights, but be aware that the price for a blog post is way, way, way below the average established market price for press release writing, book authoring, and web content creation. Don’t sell yourself short or give away your intellectual property too cheaply. If you are not sure if your client is taking advantage of you, do a web search on a verbatim phrase from some of your work quoted like this “search phrase in quotes” on Google and see what pops up.

It’s time to take a careful look at your contract or if you are writing without one, to get one in place.

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Outlook 2003 Missing Holidays?

I have Outlook 2003 on several of my computers and found that on one there was no entry for Memorial Day this year which is on the 26th of May. Funny, isn’t it, maybe you have the same problem. I found that Office 2003 may not be showing the holidays past 2007.

I found a fix at Microsoft. In my case, I was not able to just install the update. I have to change the outlook.hol file to outlook.old, remove all of my loaded holidays from within Outlook, download the update for holidays to 2012, and then re-enable holidays in Outlook all over again.

It sounds complicated, but is not really. Just click my post title to read the instructions, get the download link, and follow step by step instructions.

If you are not sure if you have a problem, go to July 4th in your calendar. If you don’t see the Fourth of July holiday listed you have the same problem as I did. In my case even having Office service pack three did not resolve the problem. My computer was up to date, but the holidays had simply not loaded and reverted back to the old holiday file. Microsoft addresses this specific issue in the link and exactly how to fix it.

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Our Blog Has a New Name

Our new blog name is The Web Authority. We’re retiring our Web-World Watch name over the next several weeks. In addition to a new name, we have a new focus, a new look coming, and great new content already planned.

so, stay posted as we change our URLs, our feed address, and in general change our message and look to be more valuable to your and your business needs.