Avatar Business Solutions Blog

2005-12-28T17:24:00.000-05:00

Site Maintenence:

Greetings.

From December 27th, 2005 till January 5th 2006 (at the latest) our site will be down for maintenence, domain transfer, hosting updates, and a host of other upgrades. We apolgize for this down time and will look to have everything up and running as soon as possible.

2005-12-25T18:21:00.000-05:00

Seasons Greetings!
We hope everyone out there is having a great holiday season. Time for presents and joy, love, and life. Speaking of presents, we figured it was time to hand out this years present to everyone. Every single customer of ours who has stayed with us this entire year will be getting 50% (thats right 50%!!!) off their January's marketing bill! We thought nothing says we appreciate you as a nice huge price slash. This is of course just for the month of January, and only clients who have had a marketing plan the entire year, and have had no problems paying the monthly bills are entitled to this. All discounts will be given automatically without any further action by you. Should you feel you were overlooked for this gift, please fill our feedback form and let us know of the oversight.

Have a merry christmas and an even happier new year. See you in 2006!

-Avatar Business Solutions CEO.

2005-12-17T03:19:00.000-05:00

Hey there everyone,

As you may have noticed things have been a little quiet here. We have been engaged in a massive partnership gathering program. Trying to get more people to link to us, and vice versa. If you would like to link to us please visit our partners page and add our site, then send us an email and we will add you.

2005-12-08T04:13:00.000-05:00

Greetings and salutations everyone!

The following article was recently added to the main site seen here.

Misconceptions About Flash

Interestingly enough, one of the most common requests we get here at Avatar Business Solutions is to build flash only web sites, or questioning how much x amount of flash will cost someone. We thought it prudent to touch a bit on this.

First and foremost, we DO build flash web sites, we have built many of them, but for each and every one of them they have gone against our advice. That is fine if a customer really wants it, but it is our professional opinion that, well, frankly Flash web sites really stink. Now you probably are saying to yourself, "Hello! is this the pot calling the kettle black or what! you guys have a flash banner at the top of your site!" Yes, this is true, we do have a flash banner at the top of this site, however, if you notice, there is almost no content of importance at all in that banner, just our logo, and our Phone Number which is also available on our home page in text format. The problem with flash sites is that they serve no purpose but to show your potential customers how cool you are, and how much money you have to burn to make such a fancy site. Rarely do these sites actually have a good structure, and even more rarely do they make the customers experience a pleasant one. This is why we suggest to most of our customers to keep it simple! for example, take one of our earlier site creations, it was a VERY simple site we did for a beauty salon in Lawrenceville Georgia called O Salon & Spa this site is very simple, and yet actually generates a tremendous amount of clientele for that business. It is simple, elegant, has a few pictures, NO FLASH, pricing, and some product/service descriptions.

So you are probably saying, wow, why does such a simple yet elegant web site do so well? Well quite simply, rather than try to trick and confuse the customer into purchasing by flashing lights, it places a coupon on the main page (always a smart thing to do to grab customers by the way!) has an easy to follow structure and navigation system, is easy on the eyes, and most importantly it is marketed by us!

Seriously though, there are other, less obvious reasons why flash stinks. Flash is actually a black hole to a search engine, when a search engine sees flash, what it actually sees is a big gaping hole. The search engines never see your cool and nifty effects, they never see all the important text, sales, offers, etc that you have there, all they see is a big black box. which is why it is oh so important to have html websites with as little flash as possible.

We hope this convinces you to skip the flash, go for more elegant html design, and to purchase a web site from the people who actually tell you not to waste your money on expensive, and useless things such as Flash.

2005-12-01T02:50:00.000-05:00

Hey there everyone.

We here at Avatar Business Solutions have been mighty busy, as you can see by the lack of posting. We have been revamping our site with new content, we have implemented a Reseller program, as well as a Freelance sales program. Also as you know we are an Atlanta Web Design company, but what you may not know is that our entire staff is actually based in Atlanta! We do not, and will never outsource our work to a foreign company, so you have peace of mind that the person who is doing your web site design is not only a qualified individual, but that the designer actually lives in the United States and speaks english!

Also you guys might be thrilled to know that we have added tons of content to our site, mostly text describing everything you get with our services. We thought that most of our customers who are actually interested in what we have to offer would take the time to read through what we have written, therefore making a long post would actually be worthwhile. therefore to check out our Atlanta Internet Marketing please click the previous link. Also if you are interested in Atlanta Web Hosting there is a link for you.

Also be aware that we are recieving literally hundreds of inquiries to be Freelance, and Resellers of ours every day, this is causing a bit of a clog in response time, we apologize for that, but know that each and every application will be reviewed, and responded to.

Take care!
-Avatar Business Solutions

2005-08-25T15:29:00.000-05:00

Greetings to our Floridian neighbors,

Avatar Business Solutions would like to wish all our friends, neighbors, and clients in Florida a safe few days. It appears Florida is going to be hit by yet another hurricane. Board up your windows, stay away from loose objects, and stay safe. Our thoughts and prayers will be with you.

Stay safe,

Avatar Business Solutions

2005-08-24T18:59:00.000-05:00

Greetings Everyone,

As many of you have by now heard Google has changed the way the AdWords system works. They have reverted from a system that favored intelligent advertisers to one the favors the deepest of the deep pocketed advertisers. This is not to say the intelligent ones still do not have a marked advantage, it is just to say that the ones with the smaller pockets will be hurt the most.
Here is the email we recieved as Google advertising professionals:

"Hello from the Google AdWords Team:
We're happy to let you know that we've implemented our new keyword status system. We've simplified our keyword states and introduced quality-based minimum bids, giving you more control to run on keywords that you find important. With these improvements, your keywords will now either be active or inactive, depending on their quality and maximum cost-per-click (CPC).
We suggest you log in to your account to view these changes. Any keywords that were previously normal, in trial, or on hold are now labeled as either active (triggering ads) or inactive (not triggering ads). Any keywords that were disabled before implementation will remain labeled as disabled in your account for several weeks. This gives you the opportunity to review and activate any disabled keywords you'd like to run on before we delete them. However, we will no longer disable any new keywords you enter into your account.
Here are some resources that will help you get better acquainted with the new keyword status system:
The new performance monitor
What's changed FAQ
New keyword states
We believe these system changes will give you more control to run on keywords you find important and result in higher quality ads, enabling you to reach your potential customers more effectively.
Sincerely,The Google AdWords Team "

So what does all this mean? Well as a major victory for us, and for all of our clients, we now have free reign over which keywords or phrases we can bid on, we are no longer held to a secret formula that judges whether or not you are even allowed to purchase a word. However equally as devastating is the new minimum bid system. In the week now since its release this new system has seen our average expenditure in some of our clients accounts go up 500%, and in not even one case has it gone down.

Does this mean your prices will go up? That is difficult to answer, because as of now this new system is severly damaging our ability to provide quality, targeted keywords to our customers. However the principal board memebers have unanimously decided against raising prices for the time being. We feel we are strong enough as a team to overcome this obstacle, and intelligent enough to search for loopholes to exploit on our clients behalfs. So for the time being, you can rest easy. Should the prices be increased in the future, all clients who have paid advanced billing will NOT be subject to the price increase, furthermore we will give all clients at least 1 months notice.

Should you have any more concerns on this matter please feel free to contact us at service@1avatar.com

Kindest Regards,

Avatar Business Solutions

2005-08-23T21:42:00.000-05:00

Greetings Everyone,

I just wanted to drop in for a minute and bring something to your attention which I am sure most of you already know. A great source of information on the net, besides just going to google and searching for a keyword is to go to Wikipedia and search there. Wikipedia is a free resource and works just like a standard encyclopedia, with the exception that it tends to be more dynamic than your typical encyclopedia. I suggest everyone give it a shot!

-Avatar Business Solutions

2005-08-22T22:30:00.000-05:00

Greeting and Salutations everyone,

This is the first ever post of the Avatar Business Solutions Blog. This site has been created to keep our customers up to date on what is going on with the company, and to offer some free promotion for some of our customers. One of the things we will do is spotlight a site every month or so that we think is worth showing to the entire network.

Let me begin by telling you a little about myself. I am the CEO and founder of Avatar Business Solutions. Many people wanted to know a little about me, so I decided to do this on the blog rather than post it on the home page of http://www.avatarbusinesssolutions.com

Assuming you would like to know the credentials of the owner of this company here is a quick breakdown of my background. I have degrees in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Economics. I was a founding member of an elite group whose purpose was to implement an online marketing department for the biggest telecommunications company in the south east. Upon working there for 2 years I became disappointed in the companies stance with blatant lying to customers in order to acquire more revenue, as well as promotion of false promises. I took a stance and left the company, my morals and ethics in tact, and founded my own company doing more or less the exact same thing, called Avatar Business Solutions.

We do web design, web hosting, and search engine marketing via ppc promotion. Our clients are big and small but most of our clientele are small to mid-sized businesses with search engine advertising budgets less than $500/month and websites that we built that cost less than $1000.

We take our stance of affordability, and customer satisfaction VERY seriously.

That is all for now, please be advised that all the remaining blog posts from here on out may not necessarily be directly from me, however I will try my best to post here as often as possible.

I would also like to just say thank you once again to all our loyal, long-time customers, you are what drives our company, and makes it so that it is fun coming into the office on a daily basis. Thank you!

Kindest Regards,

Avatar Business Solutions