Day 181

It seemed like I spent the entire day paying bills. Paying bills used to be simple. There was the electric bill, the gas bill and the water bill. Now, these basic necessities have been replaced by the necessity of staying in touch with the rest of the world. There are a multitude of phone bills: regular land line phone bills, cell phone bills, data line bills, cable company bills, even bills from companies that connect one form of communication to another. The electric bill used to be my biggest recurring expense in the Summer. Now, all the various telephone and Internet bills make electricity seem like a bargain. The ironic thing is that I don't even talk on the phone much. I still think having a functioning air conditioner is far more important than having a functioning phone.

I went to another one of those free lunch seminars today. This one was about event planning software. This software would actually be quite useful to the Dalmatian Rescue group, since we organize an annual charity golf tournament, along with several other events throughout the year to raise money for the dogs. Even though the speaker made a point of mentioning that there was special pricing available for non-profit groups, the cost was still way too high for most animal rescue organizations. Maybe the SPCA could afford something like this, but it's way out of our league for the Dalmatians. The lunch was good though, so the time I spent wasn't a total loss.

I'm beginning to wonder if the money I'm spending on Google AdWords is a total loss though. I've been running my campaign for several months now, and as far as I can tell, it hasn't resulted in any new business at all. Apparently, a few more people now realize that Sealander & Company is really an ad agency instead of a resource to find information about dogs, but that's about it. I've never run Yellow Page ads for my company, but people I know who do use the Yellow Pages say an Adwords campaign is a lot more affordable. Probably so. I do know that an Adwords campaign is more expensive than sending out postcards ever once in a while, which is all I ever used to do. I'll probably continue the campaign for a while, but it would be nice to see some tangible results.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day