December 19, 2014

Book Review: Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, 4th Edition

Katie December 19, 2014 0Comment

While this book speaks more towards using Google AdWords to sell your product, a lot of the techniques can probably be used to help get hits to blogs that have great content even if they aren’t selling something as well.  The book has a lot of content, 36 chapters. It starts with “Wait! Before You Read This Book…” with how to read it if you are a veteran or a beginner with AdWords and also has supplemental material for you to check out.

You can and should use this book as a guide before spending your money.  There are lots and lots of tips to help you plan out what you want to do so that you can use your money in the most effective way.  There’s information in here that Google won’t tell you and how to make sure that your niche gets seen.

A lot of great information, though a bit overwhelming. If I decide to use AdWords I will probably skim through this book a couple of more times to make sure that I am approaching everything the right way!

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

Covering the latest breaking news in Google AdWords, the fourth edition of this best-selling guide introduces revised, expanded, and new chapters covering Enhanced Campaigns, Google AdWords Express, and Google’s Product Listing Ads, as well as an introduction to Google’s Universal Analytics.

Nuances in Big Data advertising are also revealed and expanded sections cover everything advertisers need to know, including Chatmeter | Reputation Management Software for Chains and Agencies, flexible bid strategies, enhanced site links, and bid modifiers specific to location device and time; AdRank formula changes and the increased importance of ad extensions; enhanced AdWords Express for small business advertisers to get launch and rates faster, new display ad builder options that save small advertisers time and money, updates to Google’s Keyword and Display planners and the retirement of Contextual Tool, and improved Paid vs. Organic reports that include obscure data from AdWords.

Coached by AdWords experts Perry Marshall, Bryan Todd, and Mike Rhodes, advertisers learn how to build an aggressive, streamlined AdWords campaign proven to increase their search engine visibility, consistently capture clicks, double their website traffic, and increase their sales.

Book Review: Reforming the Rock Star

Katie December 19, 2014 0Comment

Reforming the Rock Star is another Head Over Heels Novel.  I previously read Resisting the Musician which is another book from this series.  In this book, we are with Laz – who replaced Dash in the band from the previous book. Syd doesn’t want to spend time in her hometown for her best friend Callie’s wedding.  Or rather, she wants to spend as little time as possible.  Then she finds out that they want her to do a lot of the catering for the wedding so she’ll be forced to stick around for much longer than she had been anticipating.  After making all the food for the bachelor party, she meets Laz,  who is in the band with the groom, Jake.  Somehow, Syd ends up in bed with Laz after he is drunk – though nothing happens – other than a kiss.  But then Laz decides that he wants to take her out on a date. She agrees and it is clear that he is into her, but she isn’t sure she’s as into him because of his lifestyle.  The end up hooking up after the date, he saves her from some high school bitches and things seem to be going well for them.  That is until Syd catches Laz with someone else in his bed…

Will that be the end of their relationship or will they realize that they are both in love with each other and really work well with each other? Well, you’re going to have to read and find out!

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

When Sydney Metcalf’s bestie asks her to cater her wedding, Syd can’t say no, even though the thought of going back to her hometown makes her break out in hives. She’s off to a great start until best man and rock god Lazlo Stone calls with a request for her to cater the bachelor party too. Petit fours adorned with rose petals, she can handle. A cake shaped like boobs for the sexiest guy in the universe? She’s not so sure. But this is the chance of a lifetime and she refuses to screw it up by being a prude…

When a sexy stripper dressed as a Plain Jane crashes the bachelor party, Laz is all about getting vertical and making some music with her. Too bad his stripper is really the caterer and the bride’s best friend. After a kiss between them blazes out of control, he can’t seem to stop thinking about sweet little Syd.

But everybody knows, life on the road and love don’t mix…

Book Review: A Coney Island Reader

Katie December 19, 2014 0Comment

A visit to Coney Island has been on my Bucket List for years. It is so close, I don’t know why I haven’t bothered to make the trip there yet!  But for now, I will live vicariously through A Coney Island Reader.  The book begins with a timeline and has a ton of history throughout the 300+ pages and some wonderful photographs too.  Coney Island is the home of Nathan’s Hotdogs and the yearly hot dog eating contest. (I’m not sure I want to visit to witness that though!)

It was great to see and read about all the history that is at Coney Island.  I just love the old photos of what it looked like in the early 1900s!  Each essay throughout the book is by a different author and features a different part of Coney Island.

And now I want to visit all the more! Take some awesome photos, ride some rides, catch a ball game…

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

Featuring a stunning gallery of portraits by the world’s finest poets, essayists, and fiction writers — including Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, José Martí, Maxim Gorky, Federico García Lorca, Isaac Bashevis Singer, E. E. Cummings, Djuna Barnes, Colson Whitehead, Robert Olen Butler, and Katie Roiphe — this anthology is the first to focus on the unique history and transporting experience of a beloved fixture of the New York City landscape.

Moody, mystical, and enchanting, Coney Island has thrilled newcomers and soothed native New Yorkers for decades. With its fantasy entertainments, renowned beach foods, world-class boardwalk, and expansive beach, it provides a welcome respite from the city’s dense neighborhoods, unrelenting traffic, and somber grid. Coney Island has long offered a kaleidoscopic panorama of people, places, and events, creating, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti once wrote, “a Coney Island of the mind.” This anthology captures the highs and lows of that sensation, with works that imagine Coney Island as a restful resort, a playground for the masses, and a symbol of America’s democratic spirit, as well as a Sodom by the sea, a garish display of capitalist excess, and a paradigm of urban decay. As complex as the city of which it is a part, Coney Island engenders limitless perspectives, a composite inspiring everyone who encounters it to sing its electric song.

Book Review: Barely Legal

Katie December 19, 2014 0Comment

Barely Legal is Book 1 of 6 in a “serial”.  After reading it I decided I will be avoiding any further serials unless I have all of them to read at once, because this one just left me with a cliffhanger and incredibly confused.

The book is about Laura Turner, a lawyer, who has apparently been involved with some sort of kinky sex death.  She gets a text from a “P” asking her to meet him.  Then he sends her to an apartment where there is a mold of her breasts and every dress fits her perfectly.

She trusts a neighbor and ends up “abducted” in their apartment by Michael’s sister – Michael the one who was killed during whatever this sex act was.

Oh, and this “P” is apparently super sexy and made her do things to herself over the phone with just a tie…

I’m not sure I will bother reading any of the future books in this serial as this one left me with a cliffhanger and too many questions…

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review, I Was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

For Laura Turner, helping others had been her way of coping and forgetting a past so painful, she had to hide it from the ones she loved or risk going insane. Helping her best friend Serena Singleton start a new life free from a dark past, made her feel she was helping herself move forward.

Laura, whose family ran in the same circle as billionaire composer Sebastian Sorensen and lived a life many would envy, had secrets of her own, and it had been years since she’d lived free of the same addiction that consumed her friend Serena.

When Laura moved to Los Angeles to work at a law firm who hired her to start even without her passing the bar, she meets the mysterious and sexy Peter Townshend, whose irresistible charm and take charge personality brings out a part of her she had hidden for years.

Hidden behind a wall of secrets and giving her his orders, she only has his seductive voice to guide her to do his bidding. He knows all her buttons. He knows all about her.

He knows she’s been a bad girl.

He knows good girls do bad things sometimes…even things that are…

Barely Legal.

New Adult Contemporary Romance Suspense Serial that will be 6 books.

This series is a separate series from The Protege Series, but is related.