A web agency weblog

Hey, I’ve got some Gmail invitations, you can win one just by suggesting a nice slogan for Ventanazul, something that goes along with our design, style and solutions.

Just make your suggestion in the comments and let’s see.

Well, after three months publishing “A web agency weblog", I would like to officially introduce myself.

My name is Alexis Bellido, I am peruvian and live at Lima. I work developing Internet projects since 1998, in 2000 I founded Ventanazul, a web agency focused in worldwide customers. I used to be a networking consultant before that.

This weblog was born as part of our agency’s web site redesign. I needed a more personal space, a place to share my comments about work, family, ideas and projects.

I love reading and hope writing a book someday. Having a weblog is a very interesting exercise for a novel writer. Some of my favorite authors: Gabriel García Marquez, Asimov, Neal Stephenson, Bryce Echenique, José Saramago, Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R. Tolkien, Bertrand Russell, Orson Scott Card, Dan Simmons, Neruda, Borges … well! It is a very long list.

I hear many genres of music. Currently I enjoy nordic rock, bands like: Sigur Ros, Mew, Kashmir, Under Byen and Kent, and post rock such as: Mogwai, Giardini di Miro and Explosions in the Sky, are in my playlists. Of course I have a very special place for classics like: Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, Chopin, Sui Generis, Beatles, CCR and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I play some guitar, but just for relaxing myself, I’m not quite good at it, I should have chosen piano, which I will learn later with my daughter.

I participate in many online communities, discussion forums and administer Forums Ventanazul, where we are gathering a nice group of people from many different countries, talking about: Religion, Internet businesses, movies, books, music, online marketing and web design, to name a few topics.

I’ve offered lectures about Internet related issues at many cities in my country. I really enjoy talking in public and traveling.

I was one of the founders of the Asociación Nacional de Webmasters Perú (ANWMP), a non profit local webmasters organization and moderate Red Científica Peruana’s Teleworking mailing list.

I like to study and talk about many issues: Society, human behaviors, customs, theology and others.

I live with my wife, Yesenia, and my daughter Beatriz. They are the force behind each of my days.

Currently there are not dogs or cats in this family, but we will solve that soon.

I hope to offer my best, or at least my most honest, writing to all of you who choose to include this weblog in your regular readings.

If you want to comment on any of the articles just use the comment function of the weblog. Enjoy reading.

Continuing with the campaigns: AnimaNaturalis, an international community fighting for an ethic treatment to animals, has started one to ban the bullfightings in Lima, Peru.

This is an activity -if you can call this cruelty an activity- that I’ve always hated and, I know it sounds bad but anyway, I feel fine every time one of these guys, so called “toreros", are hurt by one helpless bull that is fighting for its life.

You can find more info here, it is in spanish. You can also go directly and sign the petition to stop the bullfighting. The petition site is written in english.

The folks at the Web Standards Project has launched another interesting campaign: Browse Happy.

The site explains why using Internet Explorer is unsafe and showcases testimonies from many people who have, happily, changed to safer, easier to use and standards compliant web browsers.

I am currently using Firefox, even wrote an article about it, but you have other choices as well, the WaSP campaign mentions Safari, Mozilla and Opera.

Why don’t you give them a try?

And while you are at it, this could be a good time for moving your email to Thuderbird, another great open source product from Mozilla. I’ve just did it and will tell you more about it in a few days.

Johhny Depp is an undercover FBI agent, working under the name of Donnie Brasco during 1978.

Al Pacino is “Lefty", an under ranked mob guy who will become friend with Donnie.

This movie has remarkable performances by both, Depp and Al Pacino, most of the story is based in a real case.

The story occurs at New York, Brasco will infiltrate the NY Mafia, Lefty is the man who, without knowing Brasco is FBI, will introduce him to this world.

We will see how Depp’s character changes over time, he hangs out with these mobsters and starts acting like them sometimes, his wife and his three daughters don’t know how he spends time in his “work".

One of my favorite scenes is when Lefty and Brasco discuss about how to pronounce “forget about it!", it reminded me of some Tarantino scenes.

I also loved the way in which Lefty leaves his things in a drawer before leaving his home when he is “called".

Nice quote: “You don’t walk out of me!, I walk out of you!”

Michael Madsen, as Sonny Black, and Anne Heche, as Donnie’s wife, also offer solid performances.

If you have not seen Brasco, it’s time to do it, if you have, then see it again, it’s a great movie!

Well, today is Friday 13th and, as promised, we have selected the winners of a free Linux hosting account from the members in our forums.

Yes, plural: Winners, one from our spanish based forums and one from the english based ones.

They are:

Willy Wong: Willy proposed some cool ideas, such as working an e-zine idea and creating a chat section for webmasters. He has helped us with his constant feedback. He is from Peru.

Pacres: From Canada comes our friend Pacres, we have had very interesting threads about music, poetry and TV with him. He is also getting interested in Scandinavian music (i.e. Sigur Ros rocks). And yes, we can setup AWStats for him.

Well, congratulations to both of you guys, just contact us in order to set up you new hosting account.

To everybody else participating in the forums: Thanks a lot, keep posting, I promise we will have more contests in days to come (did I hear Gmail accounts?!) , your suggestions will be always appreciated.

If you are not a member, you can still register.

Writing effective ads for PPC campaigns is an art by itself, as many SEO and SEM related topics are.

Guys getting the first positions using Adwords or Overture get my respect, they are doing something right. Some minutes ago I found this on top of a search for “reseller linux hosting” -highly competitive terms in which I intend to compete- in Yahoo:

“Linux Reseller Hosting PHP 7, MySQL, Red Hat, SSL, E-commerce, 10 sites included, fast … “

Wow!, PHP 7, they are not only doing a good job with their PPC campaign, they are also using a very advanced version of PHP !

See to believe.

Many of you may already know this, for those who doesn’t, here is a very interesting chart about the relationships between the main search engines and directories in the net (Flash required).

Who has not read about Google Adwords or Overture? , two of the most recognized PPC (pay per click) systems on the Web.

Yesterday I decided to start a very modest campaign for Ventanazul using Google Adwords.

I am not trying to get lots of new customers, just wanted to have a better knowledge about Adwords and PPC in general.

Adequate selection and use of keywords, analyzing return of investment (ROI) and increased traffic, are some of the important issues to be considered in a good PPC campaign.

Signing up with Google Adwords is easy, in fact you start by creating a campaign, ad group and ad. You only have to supply your email and select a password to be able to do this. If you want to activate the campaign, then you’ll have to provide billing information. Once you have done so your ads start showing.

My first ad focused in our web hosting services, a highly competitive business with more than 82000 searches for that term, according to Overture, at least I got that for today Sunday.

I tried to include every keyword I had in mind and could see many impressions in a short span of time, this could seem a good thing for a newbie but later you will realize that some clicks obtained from broad searches are not necessarily focused in your target audience.

After reviewing Google’s optimizing tips and some interesting points explained in a Webmaster World’s post, I started using exact matches, including my keywords between brackets to get impressions only for people using those exact keywords.

I also used negative keywords for words such as “free” or “cheap” and reduced the number of keywords.

Finally, I used geographical targetting, I wouldn’t like to pay for an accidental click by a japanase girl who can’t understand a word of what my site is offering (not at problem with japanese girls, they are beautiful, just a silly example, you know what I mean).

This resulted in less impressions but I expect the clicks will be from people more interested in our services.

I have not followed Google’s suggestions about cost per click (CPC), yes, I am being very cheap with my CPC, between 5 and 10 cents to start with, but remember: It’s just a test, I will use a higher CPC in a few days to see if there is noticeable differences.

I am reading many posts and asking questions in SEO related resources such as SEO Chat or Search Engine Roundtable. Webmasters World Search Engine promotion forums contain excellent posts by highly professional guys too.

You will have to keep monitoring your Google Adwords campaigns to see how well they perform, writing good copy in that little space is a great challenge by itself and Dr. Nielsen has some good comments about it.

What is great about PPC is that you can see results almost in real time and make the needed corrections, being able to control how much you want to spend is a plus too.

Every business and campaign has different needs, what worked one time won’t work later, but there are some general guidelines to be followed. Of course, don’t forget to read all of the Google documentation and terms of services to avoid your account or ads being cancelled.

I wll be commenting more about my little testing campaign in a few days, in the meantime, I would really like to know your comments about Google Adwords.

Well, lunch is calling, see you later!