Wow! Now I know why people come from all over the world to see Niagara Falls. It’s spectacular! I’m on the 19th floor looking out my window at the falls and the mist rising from them–yes, the mist is rising that high (and higher)! It looks like there’s a cloud hovering over them. The falls themselves are incredible. You can hear the constant roar of the waterfalls across the street and through the closed windows. The volume of water that’s flowing over the falls is mind boggling.

So about 2 hours ago, www.BetterEdit.com switched servers from one web hosting company (with lousy customer service) to a different web hosting company, www.HostMySite.com. We had another great experience! The nameserver switch went seamlessly, but I ran into a glitch with the email. And that’s a MAJOR glitch for an Internet-based business! No worries, though! I simply went to the HostMySite.com site, clicked on “Chat” and voila! Poof, disappearo! The problem was fixed in a single conversation with a rep from tech support!

My administrator, Angela Lewis (who lives in Australia), also had a great experience with them–and she’s on the other side of the world in a completely different time zone operating on a different day, and they were just as easily accessible and customer friendly! I can’t say enough great things about www.HostMySite.com. Thanks for making our Internet experience a great one!

Remember! Better Use BetterEdit for Better Communication!

Hey, wow, this is … way too cool! OK, so let me have my moment! Hey, if we can’t have fun in life, what the heck are we here for! True, we have responsibilities, and I’m taking care of those. So, have fun too! And get pleasure from the small things in life–like being totally awed by a totally awesome company with totally awesome toys! Namely, www.HostMySite.com (da bomb!), www.SmarterTools.com and www.WordPress.com! These comments are unsolicited–really. I own a 24/7, 365 worldwide, Internet business that specializes in comprehensive editing services. I need my support to be seamless and as available as we are! I am switching hosting companies to www.HostMySite.com because it was recommended and the experience has been totally amazzzzzing!

It’s that time of year again. We are looking to hire more contract editors.

If you know your academic writing and fancy some work editing student essays and theses, please visit our jobs page and apply:

http://www.betteredit.com/jobs.shtml

Yaro Starak
BetterEdit Manager

BetterEdit is looking to hire a part time poster distribution campus rep in Toronto.

For more details see:

Job Opening – Toronto Canada – University Campus Representative

Do you need a casual job and are located in Vancouver, Canada or Honolulu, Hawaii?

BetterEdit is recruiting one university campus representative for each of these two cities. The jobs take 2-4 hours per week placing posters around different university campuses.

For further details click these links:

• Job Opening: Vancouver Campus Rep
• Job Opening: Honolulu Campus Rep

Yaro Starak
BetterEdit Manager

I’ve just about finished the final touches for the new Official BetterEdit Blog design, which if you are viewing this through a browser you should be able to see.

It’s a nice and clean design that I had built for use on other blogs and I think it’s perfect for BetterEdit because the text is easy to read. Since a significant proportion of BetterEdit’s clientele are from non-English speaking backgrounds it’s important that this blog is clear and simple to navigate.

The design also features a new system backend which I am using to type this entry. This blog is now powered by the ever beautiful WordPress blog content management system, which is a breeze to use.

I hope to implement some systems here at the BetterEdit blog which will see more regular content produced focused on providing tools, resources and education for university students writing essays and theses. Our new admin officer Angela Vink will take over writing at this blog so you can look forward to hearing from her in the near future.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy the new blog design, I certainly am.

Regards,

Yaro Starak
BetterEdit Manager

A visitor to the BetterEdit website emailed me and had the following question -

I was wondering if you could recommend some books that I could refer to in order to improve my writing skills. I am not good at punctuating sentences, and am in need of desperate help.

I decided to email one of our most helpful editors, Alexa Grunner, to see if she could offer a recommendation to answer this question. As expected Alexa was quick to respond with the following advice –

I use the following book which is written for overseas students. It’s not perfect, but it has great advice regarding essay and paragraph structure.

Oshima, A. & A. Hogue. (1999). Writing Academic English. (3rd Edition.)
New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Regarding punctuation, it has great charts and explanations on pp.245-254, which are easy to follow.

Yaro Starak
BetterEdit.com Manager

Jetlag is a bitch. I didn’t feel it heading to Canada but coming back to Australia I’m feeling it. So far I haven’t managed to sleep past 5:30 AM yet. In honour of my tired state I offer up a mixed bag blog post today…

I was walking the downtown streets of Brisbane city today for the first time since getting back to Australia. I was heading down Adelaide St, passing the many bus shelters and I noticed the ads where moving. Yep they have installed sliding ads so each bus shelter rotates between two ads rather than just a static single ad. The movement tends to catch your eye too. Smart move advertising company but when did little Brisbane get so cosmo.

This one for all those Australian young entrepreneurs out there – Chris Khoo, one of the guys that manages YNOT in Brisbane (that’s Young Network Of enTrepreneurs) has moved the forums to their own domain at www.youngentrepreneur.com.au. Check it out for some good local Aussie business chat.

The Bnoopy Blog has been updated with an interesting article about The Long Tail Effect

I was just reading a post about click fraud at the Young Entrepreneur forums. It mentioned some pretty nasty things your competitors could be doing to you if you use pay per click (PPC) services such as Google Adwords.

Statements like this are an example of a possible method that your competitors could be taking advantage of your PPC advertising budget.

I know of SEO companies who have scripts that will click on their clients competitors Adword ads until the competitors have hit their daily max spending limit. They do this to the ads above their clients ad, and once the competitors maximum spending budget is reached, Google removes the competitors ads, and the clients ad is at the top, and the program stops.

I myself use Google to bring in some traffic but I’ve never given too much thought to fraud since I hoped (perhaps naively) that Google and the other PPC providers kept on top of fraudsters. They say (that’s the word on the street, dawg) that Google has some fairly sound technology behind their programs which offer good protection.

The key thing is to be smart when using PPC. You need to be tracking your campaigns and monitoring results carefully. You should notice some indicators fairly quickly if you are a victim of fraud. You can’t just turn Google PPC on, throw some money at it and hope that you get more sales as a result. It takes time and maybe you should even consider hiring an expert or having a dedicated staff member manage your campaign, especially if you don’t know your CTs from your CT%.

If you can’t afford to hire specialists and don’t have the staff to do it for you, then do like most of us small business folk do, get educated so you can maintain your own campaign. A good place to start is the Google Adwords FAQ. You might also try third party sites such as Pay Per Click Universe.

Yaro Starak
BetterEdit Manager

An interesting development here in Toronto regarding poster laws. As I have mentioned previously postering in Toronto is pretty rampant and you can basically stick a poster on any telephone pole in the city and well, everyone does! It’s pretty crazy how many posters are out there. The same certainly can’t be said for other cities in the world. In my hometown Brisbane if you stick up posters on public property chances are the city council will fine you so it’s not a wide spread practice.

It appears that Toronto is heading the same way as the city council has been slowly debating and now implementing new poster laws to restrict the amount and type of posters allowed. Currently the plan looks to be restricting postering to approximately 2% of the total telephone poles in Toronto. As you would expect there has been an uproar against the plans and a campaign was launched to fight the polices. Most of the complaints are about restricting freedom of speech and making it so only corporate business can afford to advertise (referring to billboards, buses and other outdoor advertising options).

I find this an interesting development because of my relationship and past contacts with some of the postering businesses in Toronto. If this law was passed and enforced fiercely I can see poster businesses really hurting.

Personally I do think something needs to be done to curb the somewhat ruthless and excessive postering going on in downtown Toronto but the current proposals do not seem adequate. You can read what some of the local GTA bloggers are saying too.