We close out each week with our Who Said That?, where we give some link love to other blogs and posts that have really caught our attention.

But before we get started: be sure to submit your best post of 2007 for our ‘Best Posts of 2007′ eBook. This is a great way to get some additional exposure and linkage! Space is filling up fast so be sure to get yours in while we’re still accepting posts!

Attracting Money With a Where Instead of IF

Daylle Deanna Schwartz from the blog “Lessons from a Recovering Doormat” (Love that title!) offers an important lesson for freelancers for retraining their mindset about income and security. It’s constantly amazed at how one little change in our self-talk vocabulary can often make such a big impact on our lives!

Square Watermelon Problem Solving

Jay White of Dumb Little Man shows an example of some true outside the box thinking… or actually inside the box thinking… that reminds us that any problem is solvable if we just apply creativity. When faced with a logistical and profitability dilemma, a group of creative people came up with a strange and highly effective solution – you’ll understand when you read the post! Thanks the ever inspirational Stephen Hopson, for posting this in his Weekly Gratitude Post.

Dave’s December Challenge: Erase The Victim Mentality About Time

Dave Navarro is a master of writing posts that will kick your butt into gear. In part one of his multi-part December Challenge series, Dave challenges us all to eradicate the ‘victim’ mentality that most of us have about time. I know that this month has been a real challenge for me time-wise, and I’m expecting 2008 to be even more hectic. If I’m going to achieve my goals, I need to get rid of anything that is taking away from the time I have to achieve them, including any victim mentality! I’m already gearing up for the higher productivity in 2008, which is exactly why I and am gearing up to start Dave’s 30 Hour Day program!

Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was Younger

I think that I was about 24 when I finally realized that the wisdom of people with more years that I was something to be coveted. Jenny from ‘Jenny and Erin – A Tongue in Cheek Quest for Understanding’ lays out 5 things she wishes she would have known when she was younger. Just think… one day you’ll be wishing you knew something right now that you won’t learn until years later… Maybe in these lessons learned you’ll save yourself some time that you may have spent in trial and error.

How I Organize My Desk

I just found Dave Walker’s We Blog Cartoons and am loving it! Dave creates all kinds of humorous, computer-techno-blogger-funny cartoons that everyone can post on their blog. Here’s one of my favorites:

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Have a great weekend and a wonderful holiday!!

**who**

If you want BIG ROI from Paid Search, YES!

This is a common question with almost every small business or individual that runs their own web based business asks and a very common question for medium and large businesses. There are a LOT of key things to consider when making the decision to do in-house or outsource.

PPC Budget

Your companies budget is always a concern. We all have one. And have to stick to it if we want to stay in business. If your a start up with low funds you DON’T need to be gambling with your capital by outsourcing from the start. A quality campaign does not happen over night.

My experience is 3 to 6 months till the performance is in top gear with enough data to be predictable. If cash flow is tight educate your self and do it for a while on your own. This way you will know how to communicate with your paid search manager down the road when you do outsource or have a consultation.

The more data you have and build the better. Even if there is a fair amount of waste and low results it can be refined upon by a full time professional Paid Search Manager.

Keeping PPC in House

A close friend of mine who is cleaning up with SEO and paid search says, “those that are good do it for themselves.”

If you have an in house sales or marketing person that is getting incredible results with PPC for your company, be willing to risk them leaving if you aren’t going to reward appropriately. If that person is money motivated, you will have to pay to keep their attention.

Make sure you invest in the proper education for paid search if it is done in house. Training, books, CD’s, and networking events are all great resources in gaining the necessary knowledge for top performing Pay Per Click Advertising.

If you have an individual that can focus time, energy, and passion to PPC marketing that will stay with you long-term that’s good as gold. I would still suggest an occasional audit from an outside source just to make sure that nothing is being overlooked that could increase ROI even more.

Outsourcing PPC

When you take the plunge and make the decision to have a full time pro take over your paid search accounts, do your home work before you hire someone. Certified Professionals have proven skills. The most common search engine stamps of approval are:

• The “Certified Google Advertising Professional (or Company)”
• The “Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador”
• The “Microsoft adExcellence Member”

Make sure you get quality referrals from current or past customers. However, just because an individual is certified at a big company doesn’t mean they are quality. If a big company or even a small company with current clientele wants to get an individual certified quickly with out proven success it’s very very easy to do.

Unlike a company who may put a rookie on your PPC campaign, an individual that has built their own clientele over time has earned and worked for their reputation. They can’t get the referrals and new clients if they don’t. Make sure that there is a real individual reviewing and overseeing your account. There are great robots that can manage things but a truly effective PPC strategy requires a human touch!

In closing, I do believe that there are times when you shouldn’t outsource PPC and times when you should. Use this post as a thought card in your considerations. It is always great to consult an outside expert periodically – and for serious ROI, almost necessary to fully outsource.

Noah @ LookToTheRight

2007 has been a huge year for the David Williams Online internet marketing team. Over 2007, David and Fred have tripled their business and helped their clients grow at even greater volumes by increased internet exposure.

However, all of this success has come with some growing pains! Growing pains that I hope to experience more of in 2008 and that I hope you will as well!

Overcoming the obstacles of small business or freelance business growth is not a challenge easily tackled. This post could easily cover a multi-part series (and will) but today I’m going to focus on my specific challenges with growth as the person in charge of the creative aspect of copywriting.

As David and Fred continued to bring in more clients it became increasingly more difficult for me to keep up with their client’s demands for creative copy. As a result, I had to figure out a way to scale up quickly without losing the creative aspect. I still have a lot to fine-tune before I can jump to the next level of growth, but these are things that have helped me handle a tripling in business growth:

#1 Be Willing to Relinquish Some Control

One of the biggest problems that small business owners and freelancers face is the fact that they feel the need to control everything. Even if we think we are doing fairly well at delegating, there are probably some time-wasting tasks that we are holding onto that could be delegated. Can you think of any?

#2 Define Which Creative Pieces Set You Apart from Your Competition

There are probably hundreds – or even thousands of business that offer the same thing that you do. What is it about your business that attracts clients to you and keeps them coming back again and again?

If you’re a designer and people come to you because they love your design style, it’s not so easy just to bring on another designer to take on extra work. They are expecting a design from you! The same goes for writing and consulting and many other creative services.

Ask yourself… what is at the HEART of what makes your creativity so unique? You may find that your creative output is 10% vision and 90% execution. What if you could be responsible for only the 10% vision piece task out the 90% that is execution?

#3 Multiplying Your Output Without Sacrificing Your Creativity

If you operate a creative services business, such as consulting, design, writing, etc, you may be wondering the same thing I did… how can I possibly increase the amount of creative services I provide without spending MORE time working?

After exploring this question in great detail, I realized that many of the elements of a ‘creative’ task include tasks that are quite routine. If you’re developed some creative processes, you may not have ever really analyzed the exact steps you take to bring a project together – you just do them.

If you outsource all your creative pieces, you risk losing quality and continuity. What I’ve learned is that if I define exactly what the creative pieces are in the tasks, create a creative framework, and assign out all of the other tasks needed to bring the task to completion, I can get the same quality of results in far less time.

For example, there are certain things that I do whenever I start develop a topic for a page of content or sales copy for the web. Before I analyzed my process, I didn’t spend too much time thinking about the techniques I used to create pages, I just did them and I knew that they worked.

What I’m doing now is creating outlines and templates based on my own creative process and then outsourcing the tasks needed to bring the pieces together. This might take the shape of researching, putting notes in a finalized format, giving a direction for the next person to add their own creativity to the process.

This system can work with design (create a base design and then outsource the process of breaking apart and testing the design), consulting (put your notes together and then outsource the writing of the finalized document for the client), and just about any other creative process.

#4 Have a Damn Good System of Communication

If you’re working with multiple people to bring multiple pieces of a project together, you absolutely must have an effective way to communicate. Some of the things I am using are:

• Basecamp (for communication with multiple people on a single project)
• Backpack (to house information about a client so that when I need to bring another person in on the project, I don’t have to spend hours explaining every detail about the client),
• Google shared calendar (so that everyone is on the same page about when things are supposed to get done.)

#5 Find Great People and Treat them Well

It’s hard to find good people that have a similar vision and mission as you do. I’ve found that referrals and blogs are some of the best ways to find good people. Blogs are a great way to find out if someone shares a common vision and work ethic as you because the signs of this are written all over their online presence.

Once you do find great people to work with, you’ve got to hold onto them tightly. If you treat people as if they are disposable, you’ll effectively grow a disposable business. People are what make a business great.

Even if you don’t have the resources to pay them tons of cash right now, there are small things you can do like thanking them for a job well done, and remembering them on birthdays and holidays with a gift basket or a Starbucks gift card or other token of appreciation. Share your growth goals with them and let them know how you want them to factor into the equation as the business grows. These kinds of appreciative gestures go a long way.

What Challenges Do You Face With Growing Your Small Business or Freelance Business?

Turning down business because you don’t have enough time is a shame. Giving less that your best to your clients because you don’t have the bandwidth is a recipe for disaster. How can you grow your business next year without sacrificing quality? What challenges do you face with growing your business?