Author Archives: Mario Lurig

Comparing Facebook and Google Adwords Advertising

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The focus here is to understand when to leverage Facebook Ads vs Google Adwords for your online advertising. While both command very large audiences, and both can also command a large Cost Per Click (CPC), the way each service approaches an audience is very different.

Google Adwords

Adwords allows you to specify keywords for your searches. While you can be broad with your searches so they compete whenever those words exist within any search query, you can also specify exact matches via surrounding the keywords in double-quotations “”. This also you to hyper-target your ads to that search audience, and also allows you to get a lower CPC price. You are competing with anyone who has ads running for either those same exact matches, or loose matches that incorporate the keywords you use. If you are fishing for some long-tail advertising (maybe as research for Search Engine Optimization tweaks), Google Adwords is the way to go.

Facebook

While Facebook now offers the ability to specify a ‘category’ for your audience, the primary method of limiting the results is by specifying pages or groups that individuals may ‘Like’ or be a part of, allowing you to target a t-shirt about NPR to an audience that ‘Likes’ NPR’s fan page. Sounds fantastic, right? Sure, if you are willing to pay for it. The reason is that Facebook is driven primarily by the demographic information it makes configurable in the ads you design. When advertisers are trying to entice males into a dating site, or 18-24 year olds to play a video game, they aren’t using the ‘category’ or ‘pages/groups’ limitations, and since they are use to paying a lot of money for these highly competitive advertising areas, their bids are going to blow yours out of the water. You have to match their price just to be seen, even if you are going to be more relevant to a particular user.

I consider this a major flaw in the way Facebook prioritizes ads. It benefits their bottom line, not their audience. I actually believe that if they improved this methodology to focus on benefiting their users over advertisers, that a larger number of advertisers will come on-board to take advantage of these focused groups, spend less money overall, but the financial gains for Facebook will be made up in shear volume. Currently, I’m limited in the amount of Facebook advertising I do for these reasons.

Final Thoughts

Do you want demographics? Go to Facebook. Do you want to target very specific words or ideas? Go to Google Adwords.

Tips for PHP Developers on the PayPal API

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I recently had a large amount of frustration and work trying to get an integration going with the PayPal Express Checkout for Digital Goods API. The steps to just get an account were tricky, but then weeding through all of the API documentation was hard. Mind you, I had just come off of building integrations with both SendGrid and Twilio, which have fantastic RESTful APIs. In all, the entire process was 8 hours. After that much trouble, I wanted to put online a few of the tips, tricks, code, and documentation links to help others out.
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Creative uses of Google Adwords

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Just building the ‘next killer website’ is useless if nobody knows about it. That’s where the marketing comes in. I’ve switched gears recently to start diving back into online advertising. Previously, I had limited success spending Google’s money after given a $50 credit to test out the service. I figured, if nothing came of it, then nothing lost; it wasn’t my money. However, this time around, aside from spending $50 of Facebook’s money (more on that in another post), it was my money going towards the effort. So, it was time to get serious.
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FlyTimeNotify.com Airline Schedule Horizon Notifications

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For Memorial Day weekend, I launched FlyTimeNotify.com flight schedule notifications a few days early (or late, depending on how you look at it). At this point, it’s fully functional as a notification site, and the only thing left is to setup the PayPal integration so that future customers can pay for priority notifications via email and SMS. To date, the project took 53 hours of coding.
Over those 53 hours, I built every line of HTML, CSS, Javascript (jQuery), and PHP by hand. I’ve also learned how to integrate with both SendGrid, email service API, and Twilio, SMS messaging API. I also explored building a website from the ground up with a focus on speed and performance, including an integration with Amazon S3 and Cloudfront (cloud-based content delivery network). I know that may sound like a lot of jargon, but it’s a lot of learning for me and a lot of progress. Until this point, I’ve never built a webpage layout completely from scratch. It’s amazing what ‘need’ will do to your skill set.
Now, I can’t say that I did it 100% by myself. One simple fact I learned was that the best lesson you can learn is understanding where your limits are and surrounding yourself with experts. Without the help of a great graphic designer friend, the centerpiece of the website would be lackluster (the large image at the top). So, I reached out and got exactly what the site needs.

To recap, here were the goals of this and all future web-designs:

  • The page loads in less than 2 seconds
  • Tell the user what the site does and what benefit it brings them within 6 seconds of them arriving on the home page
  • Present a call to action immediately on the home page
  • Build in a profitable business model from the beginning

Next stop, marketing. I’ll keep everyone posted on some of the avenues used to advertise the new service.

Update: June 2nd
An additional 8 hours, bringing the total up to 61 hours to completely launch (PayPal integration complete!). Phew!

Getting Started Requires a Working Motor

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This isn’t a story of building all the parts before you have a working product. No, that would be obvious. This is about needing a working motor before you can even get started on the trip. After years of going into an office, accomplishing tasks from 9-5, and trying to fit in the other priorities of my life around that timeframe, it’s tricky to build out a day and a schedule where you can balance all those priorities in your own way. Continue reading →

The Adventure Begins: Level 1 Entrepreneur

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I thought I would let everyone know that after just shy of 3 years with SurveyGizmo as a customer support rep, sales engineer, technical training manager, and business development manager, I’ve decided to pursue my own interests and become a self-employed, poor for a little while, entrepreneur. I tried this three and a half years ago with limited success, but thanks to personal learning efforts and the wealth of knowledge I’ve gained from my coworkers at SurveyGizmo, I’m 5x’s as knowledgeable and capable as I was back then.
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