Dazzleverse

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-12-09T23:44:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Increase Productivity By Changing Your Environment

Posted: 09 Dec 2008 06:10 AM CST

I am always amazed at the amount of work I get done when I am out of my normal element. I came to Orlando a day early because I was going to meet up with a friend. He got a nasty case of the flu and bagged out on me so instead I worked from my hotel room all day last friday.

No phone ringing, no aim client going, just me getting stuff done. I went through about 300 emails and totally cleaned out my inbox.

When I used to live in Omaha I would go to Hooters and work out of their for a few hours. Its kind of weird to tell people you are working at Hooters. They are always like YOU WORK AT HOOTERS? and im like no I am working at Hooters… anyway there were some “other” distractions at Hooters.

A.D.D. moment- Speaking of Hooters wtf?? Get some new outfits already. The top is still money but those ugly ass orange shorts are so 80’s.

Anyway remove yourself from your normal element sometime and give it a try.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Increase Productivity By Changing Your Environment

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-12-08T23:35:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

And…. You Lost Me

Posted: 08 Dec 2008 06:21 AM CST

Everyday we get about 15-20 pitches sent to the contact-us form. I am talking JUST pitches not requests to advertise or anything else just pitches for us to talk about a product/website/service. About half are just some general form letter aka “Dear X, Here is our press release please write about it”. Those quickly get deleted and then we get a few spams.

But their are 3-5 everyday that have promise but fall short and never make it. Here is why.

I have said this a zillion times. Just get to the point. Tell me what it does and how its different from your competitors. THATS IT.

You lose me when you:

1) Go on to tell me I need to write about it because all these other bloggers are.
2) Write a book with 5 pages of background on the CEO.
3) After you tell me what it is you tell that you understand why I would not write about it (WHAT?)
4) Tell me “I know you wont right about it and when you don’t you will prove me right” (What kind of jedi mind trick bullshit is that?)
5) Dont act like you know - “Hey I know you wont like this”, “Your readers will love this”, “You owe it to your readers to post this”. Guess what? This is no a publicly held company or a news site. Its my personal blog and let me be the judge of what is good to post here.

Anyway maybe I am the only person who feels like that… or ?

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

And…. You Lost Me

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-12-07T23:20:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Getting Back From Orlando

Posted: 07 Dec 2008 08:03 PM CST

Just getting back from Orlando where I attended the Izea Board Of Advisers meeting. Also on the Izea Board with me is Chris Brogan, Bryan Clarke, Jim Krukal, Missy Ward, Michael Brito, and Neil Patel. Great group of people with a huge variety of ideas.

I think we overwhelmed Ted Murphy (Izea CEO) a bit with all the different things we were throwing at him.

I believe Izea reached a big tipping point with the Kmart promotion last week. It generated a ton of buzz and I can’t help but think Kmart is thrilled with the outcome.

Are you in the SocialSpark program? If not you should be. Some pretty cool opportunities there.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Getting Back From Orlando

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-12-06T23:00:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

What to do with all the free shirts

Posted: 06 Dec 2008 05:41 AM CST

Last year we gave over 140 shirt to the local shelter. Being they were T-shirts and it was the middle winter they kind of looked at us funny and suggested we take them to good will. We did… but they were not excited to get them either.

So we have about the same amount. Between free shirt Fridays and all the stuff companies send me we have a TON of shirts and other stuff. We also have a lot of gadgets and stuff people send us to. I think we have over a DOZEN company branded flip mino’s I have not even opened. I mean if you guys saw all this stuff you would be amazed.

I have a couple ideas but would love to hear your suggestions!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

What to do with all the free shirts

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-12-05T23:07:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Net Atlantic - Free Shirt Friday

Posted: 05 Dec 2008 08:00 AM CST

NetAtlantic.com is a company that tries to empower individuals, businesses, and non-profit organizations by providing new and enabling technology-based services that help their clients with messaging, hosting, and other Internet business solutions. They strive to be best in class in providing services that is fast, reliable, and user-friendly.

Thanks for the shirt!

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Net Atlantic - Free Shirt Friday

Casino Affiliate Programs Launches HD Episodes

Posted: 05 Dec 2008 05:10 AM CST

Everyones favorite community for poker and casino news just started doing HD videos wrapping up the news for the week. I know a lot of poker affiliates are following the legal stuff lately and its nice to just watch a quick video telling you whats going on rather then reading (for me anyway).

Check it out:

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Casino Affiliate Programs Launches HD Episodes

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-12-04T23:46:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

New Lost Season 5 Trailer Out

Posted: 04 Dec 2008 01:09 PM CST

Getting closer!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

New Lost Season 5 Trailer Out

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-12-03T23:37:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

No Recession For Online Marketers That Bring Value

Posted: 03 Dec 2008 01:17 PM CST

On Monday evidently it was official that we have been in a recession for over a year. Honestly our business has grown enourmously during this time. After talking with other marketers and companies they all seem to agree that people are spending money on items that bring value to their business.

I will be honest I was really nervous about having the Elite Retreat conference this year. But with 2 and a half months left we are about 2 seats away from being sold out.

Also we launched ShoeMoney Tools about the same time the markets started tanking but they are doing awesome ;). We continue to bust out and improve the tools and pickup new users every day.

Now all the junk out their will be suffering… no doubt. But if you have a product of value then I don’t think you have anything to worry about.

So at ShoeMoney Media we have decided to not participate in this recession and I made a little video about it.

Thanks to Zoomiscooters for the scooter! You guys rock!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

No Recession For Online Marketers That Bring Value

Intel’s Digital Drag Race Showcases New i7 Chip

Posted: 03 Dec 2008 06:05 AM CST

Ya… I am a Apple guy but I have always been a HUGE fan of Intel. Through the years I have always been a HUGE advocate of Intel and its all we use to power our servers.

And now Intel powers my mac!

Don’t thing I am a big Intel fan?

Check out this thing I had framed in my basement. Its every chip Intel made from the first all the way to the Pentium Pro. I bought most of them off of eBay throughout the years then had a local crafts place put them all nice and in a frame:

(Click to enlarge)

Anyway Intel launched the new i7 chip last week and it looks totally badass. Its a Quad Core PLUS hyper threading.

Intel started a new site called Digital Dragrace where they are having graphics and multimedia experts create some pretty badass animations and then judge them. The site is pretty sweet these guys create some AMAZING stuff in a short amount of time.

Anyway I have seen them on facebook and other places around the web. Pretty cool.

Also it gives me a chance to show off my nerd art =P

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Intel’s Digital Drag Race Showcases New i7 Chip

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-12-02T23:51:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

What Would You Spend $500 At Kmart On?

Posted: 02 Dec 2008 06:23 AM CST

Disclosure: I received compensation for writing this post.

Kmart and Izea are having some fun this holiday season. They choose a few high profile bloggers to write about their experiences shopping at Kmart. I happened to be one of the chosen few!. They sent me a $500 Kmart gift card and asked me to share on my blog what I purchased. They also said I could give away a $500 gift card to a ShoeMoney.com reader!

First we started in the bed and bath dept. Found a nice comforter for my daughter:

Little Mermaid bath set:

Fishing Pole and Net for my dad

Hmm we need a dart board:

In the sporting goods section they had these pink tennis balls in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (last month):

Spiderman Scuba set for only $3 WOW!

Scouting for more deals:

Oooo workout rings:

Awe ya now we are talking! Amazing prices on media.

They still sell VHS tapes? Guess so!

Man no computers section? Kind of weird. Just a bunch of small electronic stuff:

Lots of Flip Video accessories. Wonder why I need a bunch of these =P

HAHAH ELF I love that movie. “SANTA I KNOW HIM”

Movies! I love movies!

Always good to have a plunger around:

Awe ya its jam time. Juliet is going to love this:

What is it with elmo?

I love UNO!

Candy… my nemisis:

Pickup this driver for my father in law.

My wife and I sponsor a soldier who is in Afghanistan. He told us they desperately need long underwear.

I picked up as many as would fit in the cart. Good thing they are 50% off!

So now what you have been waiting for. How can you win a $500 gift card to Kmart? Simple!

In the comments below leave what you would purchase with sku numbers that would add up to without going over $500.

You can also enter via twitter:

In twitter just say:

“RT @shoemoney is giving away a $500 #Kmart Gift Card on his blog - simply tweet or comment to enter http://urlbrief.com/d9366c”

For official rules see here

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

What Would You Spend $500 At Kmart On?

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-12-01T23:57:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Win A Ticket To The Elite Retreat!

Posted: 01 Dec 2008 04:08 PM CST

The Elite Retreat is still 3 months away, and is shaping up to be the biggest and best one so far! The response for this years retreat has been phenomenal, and we are happy to announce there are only 4 seats left!

Kris Jones of Pepperjam is having a great contest for 2 tickets to this years Elite Retreat. In addition to paying your entry, Pepperjam is also going to cover either your flight or hotel for this event. That’s a pretty sweet deal. The contest details and rules are all listed here, and the winner will be determined based on affiliate commissions.

So if you are still undecided about attending the Elite Retreat this year, make up your mind quickly. A sellout is inevitable, so reserve your spot today!

I also want to give a shout out to our sponsors for this years event, they make a lot of this possible. From the great hotel, to the 5 star dinners, and a few surprises for the attendees, many thanks to:

Our Platinum Sponsor

Azoogle Ads

And our other great sponsors:

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Win A Ticket To The Elite Retreat!

q&a round 17 answers

Posted: 01 Dec 2008 06:00 AM CST

Stanley Tang asks:

do you personally like to use those long salesletter where you have to scroll down and down? if not, how would you sell a product?

ShoeMoney: I never have and thats probably a mistake.

Ross asks:

Do you believe in Build it and they will come ? (I mean valuable service/product)

ShoeMoney: Yes but also believing in what I do I am not afraid to spend money to promote it.

Bondox asks:

When starting a new blog that’s just few weeks old. What advertising method will you recommend one to use. Like me, I am a bit confused. i know you always preach for good content. But is there any other way to boost readership for new blogs?

ShoeMoney: I have never tried to advertise a blog at all.

Donny asks:

Did you eat a lot of candy too for Halloween?

ShoeMoney: I do.

Ren asks:

Shoe,
How did you find your legal representative? What’s your recommendation on finding one for a web startup without a lot of funds to spare on this?
Thanks.

ShoeMoney: We did not have much of a choice being out of Omaha Nebraska at the time we went with the biggest firm.

Dave asks:

I know I’m a noob, but do you know of any handy guide on creating landing pages for newbies? Something like “Landing Pages for Dummies” Thanks!

ShoeMoney: Look at what others are doing and try some of their tactics. Thats about the only shortcut then you need to do a ton of split testing and analytics.

steve asks:

What do you do when a campaign is deactivated and you’ve spent a long time developing a landing page and getting traffic to the landing page? aka How do I get a blockbuster campaign for blockbusterdvdrentals.net when Hydra ended their campaign?

ShoeMoney: change to netflix?

James asks:

What ratio of your time on a daily and weekly basis should be spent on educating yourself as opposed to working on your projects.

ShoeMoney: I am always learning. There is no set percentage.

D. Psyko asks:

what are you using to display “This Post Is From ShoeMoney's Internet Marketing Blog” then the Post name below that
?

ShoeMoney: joost’s plugin called RSS Footer

xcelent88 asks:

Are ringtones a good niche for a beginner in the affiliate marketing?

ShoeMoney: Its still VERY profitable and very easy to make money in depending on how you are driving traffic. If you are good with SEO or some “out of the box” methods then it would be a great area to start.

Jay asks:

Why haven’t you made an API for fighters.com? What are your plans to make fighters.com more interesting than sherdog?

ShoeMoney: I wish it was all done tomorrow I think fighters is already more interesting then Sherdog. Sherdog to most MMA fans is pretty obnoxious.

ITF asks:

I also have two little girls (mine are under 2), and I’ve got to know, how often to YOU have to change poopy diapers?

ShoeMoney: When its needed. I don’t have a quota.

Brandon asks:

A few times I’ve seen the AdWords strategy mentioned of copying someone else’s ad copy. Is it really okay to do that?

ShoeMoney: Sure why not. How else would you know if its more effective then yours =P

David asks:

What percent does this blog account for your companies total income?

ShoeMoney: I don’t have a exact figure but I would estimate right now its probably 10% - 15% up quite a bit then last year.

Andrew asks:

Can I have a t-shirt? If not, can I have one for my girlfriend?

ShoeMoney: Sure if you see me at a show just ask for one.

AffiliateObsession.com asks:

Do you use myspace to advertise any sites you operate? If so, how is that working for you?

ShoeMoney: Yes. I am still experimenting but I will post a guide soon.

Funny Chix Dot Com asks:

Hi Shoe !! What do you think are the most important things that happened on the Internet this year? Which events, sites and trends come to mind? Thanks and have a happy day.

ShoeMoney: Its been a great year for internet marketers… tons of tools have been made available and lots of spending going into performance based marketing. I will have a year end post on this.

Pedro Infante asks:

What advertising method would you use for a mexican website? google adsense or wich would be the most profitable? thanks

ShoeMoney: I would do a lot of research and a lot of experimentation.

meethere asks:

one more question - is the comment contest continuing this month too ?

ShoeMoney: We will continue to give away shirts daily but I am not doing a grand prize one. Just too busy.

Rajaie AlKorani asks:

Would you mind if someone commented on your blog with a keyword? Even if the comment added value?

ShoeMoney: Not at all. There is just a good chance it will be blocked from the top commentators or the contests.

Steamy Kitchen asks:

At what point is my site littered with too many ads? Esp above fold.

ShoeMoney: The point it starts to have a negative impact on the user experience.

JC asks:

I just started a local website design company in Des Moines, what is a great cheap way to market to business without websites? Direct mail, PPC, calling them? Each way tends to have lots of laws in the way between spam and do not call lists.

thanks,

ShoeMoney: I would find the biggest local sites and redo them for free and get a link /ad from their site. You spend no money and get a huge return if you are good enough.

Mr. Cranky asks:

For local affiliate marketing, how do you initially approach them? Do you cold call? Do you stop by they office unannounced? Direct mailing?

Thanks!

ShoeMoney: They have always found us.

Craig L asks:

What character on Lost do you think is most like you and why?

ShoeMoney: Probably Sawyer. He is unpredictable

Debo Hobo asks:

If you could only have 3 top money making bloggers in your aggregate news reader who would they be?

ShoeMoney: Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Problogger

Deano asks:

Lost: Think back to the first series: Is Claire’s baby Good or Evil?

ShoeMoney: Good

Steven-Sanders asks:

When using Feedburner Feedsmith, how do you find out what feed url to use when selecting a feed to burn at Feedburner?

It redirects the original feed url, so that can’t be used anymore.

ShoeMoney: I dunno I just typed in shoemoney when I set it up.

teamray asks:

do you use and variation of c or c++ programming language in your business and why if you do?

ShoeMoney: I don’t. Just have never had a use for it.

Cigar Inspector asks:

What do you think about the current state of the domain names industry? Will it slow down with the economic crisis?

ShoeMoney: In the USA I have not seen much impact. I think we have sold more domains in the last 3 months then in the last 2 years.

Patel asks:

What is your favorite football team?

ShoeMoney: I have lost any passion for following sports teams =(.

lawrenceq asks:

I decided to fall back and learn a few skills before I jump back into affiliate marketing. Out of all of the big-dawg affiliate marketers you know, what common skill(s) do all of them have?

ShoeMoney: Most are pretty hack and slash programers. Most lack a lot of social skills and are pretty reclusive.

James asks:

When you say you host your websites on your own server rack, do you mean you have purchased servers yourself and sent them to a hosting company to put in their server room, or have you got your own servers in your own racks, in your own building, with just a super fast internet connection connected to the building?

ShoeMoney: We own our own servers and lease space.

Craig asks:

Jeremy,

Loved yesterdays newsletter. I have one or two questions about this…

1) How can we actually track this? This is my main concern with this business model - you are relying on the merchant being 100% honest. I think businesses would only report around half of their actual leads. How do you prevent this?

2) Do you sell a ‘final customer’, or just leads. What I mean is, do you do the sale (for example, make an apoointment for the user to see the dentist) or do you just take the users details and pass these onto the dentist?

I have been working with local businesses in my area for around 3 years with internet marketing, but they all want to pay me to manage their marketing. They don’t want to pay for each lead - how can I convert my current clients to go for the new model?

ShoeMoney: These are all answered in the news letter. Did you read it?

funkysouth asks:

What is your long term plan for fighters.com ? Buyout, VC funding ?

ShoeMoney: Just building a great service that people want. That is our goal. Its funny you put VC funding as a goal… I think VC funding is a major negative. I can’t imagine a scenario where we would accept VC funding.

Patrick asks:

What tips do you have for monetizing a small-niche forum that is large? I’ve contacted everyone in my niche that I can think of, and yet to have any success for direct sales. However, surely someone would want to advertise on the site for 15,000 impressions a day for $50/month.

ShoeMoney: I dunno its hard to get blood out of a rock. Maybe there is just no money in the niche.

Önder asks:

Dear Jeremy i want to learn something about twitter. Do you have any idea how to make money from it. For example just now you habe 7115 followers on it and maybe this small big thing will help you and maybe us to make money. Is there any service which can help us to make money?

ShoeMoney: I use twitter as a business tool. I have not seen any service yet that I think is worth it.

TheAnand asks:

I am currently in college but I have no interest in studies. Do you support dropping out of college and persuing full time web money online (which i am moderatly successful.). Hope this is not the question I should be asking some agony aunt!

ShoeMoney: Sure if it makes sense. I have written on this topic a lot.

Debo Hobo asks:

If you had the time to learn another language, which would you select?

ShoeMoney: Perl or spanish depending on what you meant.

therealdeal asks:

ShoeBaby I have a few Questions:

1) What software or script are you going to use for your newsletter?

2) Any tips on how to get an A-List bloggers attention? (via email)

3) Is it true your not going to Pubcon because you know that you won’t make it as far in the poker tourney this year?

ShoeMoney: 1) I use aweber for the newsletter. 2) be direct and to the point. 3) yes its true I am terrified I wont be able to finish 2nd out of 200 people again.

Derek asks:

With being a company owner who employes a few people, what have you found helps motivate these people the most?

ShoeMoney: I think the fact I don’t treat them as employees and am extremely transparent about what we do financially is motivation enough. If not they dont last.

Dan Schawbel asks:

Shoe, should all blogs with thousands of readers go for monetization?

ShoeMoney: If making money is their primary goal then yes.

browie asks:

What happened with the newsletter? How come some of us did not get it?

ShoeMoney: I think I use too much html in the email.

Tushar Dhoot asks:

Do you believe in Philanthropy? If so, how much of your income do you think you should give, and to who?

ShoeMoney: Yes of course. Its something my wife and I take very seriously. We contribute an amount that makes sense to us and research a lot before doing it.

coderbari asks:

From where do you get that much energy to maintain all your schedules such as - maintaining this blog,attending conferences, writing those big newsletters and also giving time to your family?

ShoeMoney: Those are the easy things Running 4 different corporations takes up a lot also. All we have is time. I quit playing video games and watching sports and work a lot

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

q&a round 17 answers

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-30T23:14:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Back On?

Posted: 30 Nov 2008 10:50 AM CST

There is a post over at Techcrunch about a Microsoft/Yahoo deal.

So the deal is really that Microsoft would put up $5 billion to help a new management team buy preferred shares and warrants that would give it a 30% stake in Yahoo. In return, Microsoft would get a 10-year operating agreement to run Yahoo's search business.

The numbers do not really make sense (as tc points out). According to this Microsoft is now ready to spend more for Yahoo’s search but will not have any control.

One thing I feel pretty sure about is that a MS/Y! deal is going to happen. I just don’t think the original source of this story had the right numbers.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Back On?

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-28T22:49:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

NewHomesSection.com - Free Shirt Friday

Posted: 28 Nov 2008 08:15 AM CST

NewHomesSection.com is a site that is trying to ease the stress of purchasing a new home, and is trying to become a comprehensive new home resource center, synchronizing the efforts of all interested parties in the purchase of a new home.

Thanks for the shirt!

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

NewHomesSection.com - Free Shirt Friday

Why $4800.00 A Month ?

Posted: 28 Nov 2008 07:44 AM CST

I get this email all the time… maybe 1-2 times a week. I am sure you all get it something similar too:

From: <mweeks@rogers.com>
Date: November 27, 2008 8:00:23 PM CST
To: <jeremy@shoemoneymedia.com>
Subject: I’ve visited your website http://www.shoemoney.com/2006/09/04/my-top-10-worst-ideas-to-make-money/

Hi,

We’ve seen your website at http://www.shoemoney.com/2006/09/04/my-top-10-worst-ideas-to-make-money/
and we love it!

We see that your traffic rank is 88919
and your link popularity is 3153.
Also, you have been online since 5/20/2004.

With that kind of traffic, we will pay you up to $4,800/month
to advertise our links on your website.

If you’re interested, read our terms from this page:
1stsite.ca

Sincerely,

Marie Weeks
The ContactThem Network

So in every email it says I could earn up to $4800 per month.

This is one of those things that make me go “hmmmm”.

I wonder why the 4800 price point. I mean why not say 5000 ? Normally 4800 would be a good price point if someone was buying something but here you are trying to drive home how much I can earn right?

Anyway ….

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Why $4800.00 A Month ?

Thesis Wordpress Theme Black Friday Sale

Posted: 28 Nov 2008 06:12 AM CST

One of the most popular commercial themes is having a 20% discount for black Friday.

Check it out here

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Thesis Wordpress Theme Black Friday Sale

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-26T23:08:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

ShoeMoney Busted Drunk Driving Homicide

Posted: 26 Nov 2008 10:36 PM CST

Last weekend on Saturday night I was invited to go out with a bunch of my friends. We went out and I had way to much to drink got behind the wheel of my car and ran someone over. Just like that some stupid decisions ruined what I had worked so hard for all my life until that point. Then I woke up. It was a bad dream.

It really made me think how easy something so horrible like that can happen. I don’t think I have operated a motor vehicle under the influence since college but in my dream the situation seemed to just happen.

This holiday season please don’t put yourself in a situation where you end up driving drunk.

And on that note. Happy Thanksgiving!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

ShoeMoney Busted Drunk Driving Homicide

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-25T23:21:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Wordpress 2.6.5 Released - Urgent Upgrade

Posted: 25 Nov 2008 12:23 PM CST

Wordpress has just released version 2.6.5. This contains security fixes and you need to upgrade now.

Official Announcement

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Wordpress 2.6.5 Released - Urgent Upgrade

Juice Up Your Business with Cross-Marketing

Posted: 25 Nov 2008 10:44 AM CST

This is a guest post by Levi Thornton. Levi is a serial entrepreneur who has built multiple successful technology-based businesses from the ground-up over the past 10 years. Levi's background is strongly planted in internet based application development with a light touch of humor and a side of sarcasm. To learn more about Levi Thornton visit his LinkedIn profile (http://www.linkedin.com/in/levithornton).

If you have not already heard, cross marketing is big business, and if you're not doing it already then you're missing out on a large segment of customers.

When you hear people talk about cross marketing, your mind may conger up a marketing team that is developing a new product line for your current customer base, or maybe you have a wild imagination and envision a company opening up another gas station on the other side of the street. Frankly, this type of cross marketing has nothing to do with tagging your current customers with a new product or launching a large advertising campaign.

Cross marketing is a very cheap and lucrative method of marketing that allows two companies that have interests in each others customers, and can come to an agreement where each party advertises the other company's service or product in exchange for the same amount of advertising or access to the customer base.

While the rules for cross marketing are wide open, there are a couple of things you must always keep in mind when reaching out to other businesses.

One of the first mistakes you see is small companies reaching out to competitors for their cross marketing. This is, will be, and has always been a bad idea. Your competitors have zero interest in sending you their customers, and if you happen to strike up some type of deal, they are really clueless or see an opportunity to swallow up your business overnight.

The next most common mistake your will run into is zero value. Many companies get an idea that they are providing a great value to other businesses, so they reach out to very large companies and try to pitch them the idea that their small customer base will somehow be good for the other business when their reach is 20x larger than the offering company.

As you reach out to pitch your cross marketing ideas, you need to find companies that fit your market, or have a customer base that has a high opportunity of buying in. Once you understand your customer profile, you need to analyze what it is that you can offer the other company and how they would see the value of the opportunity.

Your offer could be anything; advertising, data, technology, or a sponsorship. Just ask yourself what the other company would value the most. In most cases you should be able to develop an offer that has a higher face value to the other company, so that they feel they have a win-win and not another company trying to leach off of their customer base.

For example; many years ago one of my old competitors TheKnot, Inc (NASDAQ:KNOT) launched a cross marketing campaign. Their method was simple; they had traffic and plenty of content, but they wanted to grow their network and insure that they would be the first wedding site that brides used when they got hitched.

Their cross marketing plan was to offer articles and local vendor services to radio stations and news papers. In turn for the opportunity, the media outlets would have more content on their websites to sell advertising. Each media outlet would advertise their new service to their customer base through their normal operations in radio and print while the brides would use the content then follow links to TheKnot's website.

In another example, Doggyspace.com did a cross marketing deal with the SPCA that helped raise awareness about the SPCA on a local and national level. In turn, the SPCA would attach Doggyspace to its marketing, press release, and give out media about the social network to the owners of people that adopted pets from the SPCA. Because of this, the organization and the social network helped each other reach their goals through cross marketing.

As you have seen in both examples, the rule is simple; help each partner reach a goal through their natural daily business operations. That way the expense of the deal does not outweigh the value of the opportunity.

While small businesses may think that cross marketing is too expensive and is only for companies with large bank accounts, it's not. Even the smallest of the small companies can work out deals with companies of greater or equal size to their advantage.

Search engine experts can provide seal of approval programs to SEO software developers, social-based sites can provide brand awareness or a platform interface, while bloggers can provide professional Q&A for content rich sites. If you can dream it up and find a partner then you could have a great cross marketing plan that could grow your business as large as you want.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Juice Up Your Business with Cross-Marketing

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-25T00:05:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

All Marketers Are Liars

Posted: 24 Nov 2008 06:01 AM CST

The Book All Marketers Are Liars is my second most favorite marketing book behind The Dip. This book is amazing and taught me how important having a great story is. Having a good product is no longer enough. You also have to be able to tell the story of your product and gain trust of your customers in a world where nobody trusts anything.

From the book:

We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior to a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better-and look cooler-than $20 no-names . . . and believing it makes it true.

Again I HIGHLY recommend this. Its one of the many books I put on the Elite Retreat ipod Touches.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

All Marketers Are Liars

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-23T23:19:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Thats What She Said

Posted: 23 Nov 2008 06:38 AM CST

I frickin love the office. Found a vid on youtube of every single “thats what she said”. Thanks Andrea!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Thats What She Said

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-22T23:03:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Festival Of Trees

Posted: 22 Nov 2008 04:34 PM CST

Traveled to my home town of Moline Illinois this weekend. Its only about a 5 hour drive but with 2 little girls under 2 1/2 took us about 8 hours.

Today we went to the Festival Of Trees which I never really have understood. When I was a kid I sang in a choir and always had to sing at this thing. It was kind of cool taking my little girls to it today. Also my sister Andrea came with us.

At the Festival Of Trees they have tons of home made trees for sale that people made. They must have some sort of a contest cause a lot of them had ribbons and stuff.

My favorite one was this Mt. Dew Tree:

It had a BIN of only $150 but the top bid was $20. I bet it cost $200++ to make this thing in pop costs alone.

Fun trip hanging out with the fam. Here is a pic of me and my sister:

And my daughter Juliet and wife Dr J:

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Festival Of Trees

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-21T23:07:00.000-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

CashHomeBuyers.com - Free Shirt Friday

Posted: 21 Nov 2008 08:00 AM CST

CashHomeBuyers.com is a residential and commercial real estate investment company. They offer U.S. Customers and Investors a hassle-free way to buy and sell residential and commercial property. They link interested parties to investors in their member network.

Thanks for the shirt!

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

CashHomeBuyers.com - Free Shirt Friday

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-20T23:29:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

ShoeMoney Tools New Keyword Tracking Tool

Posted: 20 Nov 2008 08:07 PM CST

Just debuted the new Keyword Rank Tracking Tool in shoemoney tools:

We also hit a pretty big milestone being we sold the 1,000th domain via the domain marketplace.

Here are some peaks at the documentation for the other tools in the set. We are adding a new tool about every 10 days.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

ShoeMoney Tools New Keyword Tracking Tool

If Apple Had A Search Engine

Posted: 20 Nov 2008 09:55 AM CST

it would look like SearchMe.

This week searchme launched their iPhone search application which looks pretty sweet. Check out the vid:

If I had a iPhone I would use it

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

If Apple Had A Search Engine

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-19T23:33:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Does Google REALLY Want To Go Down This FTC Route

Posted: 19 Nov 2008 04:50 PM CST

Every time paid links is brought up Matt Cutts brings up the FTC’s “suggestions” on bloggers disclosing things they have been compensated for. In no where in these “suggestions” does it talk about paid links. But even if it did they are just suggestions.

They are not law and if Google was following the FTC’s suggestions I doubt Google Adsense/adlinks would be engaging in some of the most deceptive advertising methods I have ever seen on the internet.

Also I am curious then why Google is not requiring Firefox to display that they are paying Firefox billions of dollars to be the default search engine each time you search. The funny thing is not even firefox developers know they are getting paid so much by Google as you can see in my posts about it before. Talk about a lack of disclosure.

And what about all the other properties Google has bought their way into? How many times have you seen Adsense ads not labeled as ads?

What about the spyware/virus bearshare I have BEEN SHOWING IN SLIDES FOR PRESENTATIONS FOR 3+ YEARS that is still ruining Google Adsense. Google CLEARLY has knowledge of these things and they choose to participate in deceptive advertising.

Now in regards to Matt you know why he must do this right? He is a smart guy. And I would guess he HATES ADSENSE with a passion. But as we saw before text links are Google’s achilles heel and remain to be.

Now honestly there is absolutely zero way for them to detect inlink ads if it is done properly and Matt (and maybe former Googler Vanessa Fox who chimed in also) knows that.

If its easy to detect why did they have all the calls for help using the paid links form to rat on people who pay for links and employ the hundreds of people to review all those submissions?

Surely if you can “detect” it so easily that would save a few bucks.

Anyway I personally don’t think Google wants to go down this path with the FTC.

If they want to come out and say they will take you out of their search engine index if you don’t follow their rules then fine. But don’t act like its some Government mandate and everyone is going to go to jail who is selling/buying paid links.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Does Google REALLY Want To Go Down This FTC Route

InLinks From Text Link Ads - Now Google Compliant?

Posted: 19 Nov 2008 02:23 PM CST

MediaWhiz today launched Inlinks. Its basically Text-Link-Ads 2.0.

On the Advertiser’s - sites looking to pickup links to their product can specify keywords and anchor text they are looking for and the Inlinks magic will go through all its publisher base finding matching and give you EDITORIAL CONTROL over which ones you would like to purchase.

On the blogger's side when they get a new advertiser they are alerted and have EDITORIAL CONTROL if they want to place the link or not.

So the key here is going to be to not make Google look stupid. If your site is about electronics and your accepting ads for stuff not related to electronics clearly trying to manipulate Google search engine placements then your probably going to get dinged. But if you are only approving relevant websites that add to the user experience as a reference then from what I have seen and heard from Google Engineers you should be OK.

I don’t care what others are saying about this the bottom line is unless InLinks has some sort of fingerprint its going to be completely impossible for Google to detect.

Curious to hear your thoughts on this.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

InLinks From Text Link Ads - Now Google Compliant?

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-18T23:30:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Post Dip Strategys

Posted: 18 Nov 2008 11:25 PM CST

In the book The Dip Seth talks about how superstars lean into the dip. They almost use the dip as an advantage. Also when superstars come out of the dip and master their craft they create a giant barrier for any competitors.

So what are some real world examples of this? Well look at eBay! How hard is it to overtake eBay in the online auction space?

What about Google? Not only does Google have the best search engine but they also pay over 1 billion dollars a year to be the default search engine in Firefox, Safari, AOL, and others. If anyone even thought about competing with Google they need to bring a TON of money to the table.

Think Microsoft created much of a dip for competitors with its Office Suite and Operating Systems?

Many times reporters have asked me who I think is going to be the next big search engine. I tell them I think it over. Search as we know it is owned by Google and only the government will be able to stop them. The dip to overtake Google is just to much for any company to overcome.

If you can overcome the dip your compeditors have put in front of you then you can be #1. But what will your post dip strategy be to remain #1?

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Post Dip Strategys

Zipfs Law

Posted: 18 Nov 2008 06:00 AM CST

In the book “The Dip” Seth Godin talks about Zipfs Law. In my search for more on this I came across many typos of this as Zifs law, Ziffs law, etc… Anyway Harvard linguistic professor George Kingsley Zipf applied statistical and linguistic theories on human communication. He did all kinds of studys on word stuff… and rankings…

But the biggest thing he showed the world was that it is important to be #1

Zipf’s law states that in a tabulation of the occurrence of all words in a sufficiently comprehensive text, ranged by their frequency, will the product of rang number and frequency make up a constant. In addition will the number of different words in the vocabulary be equal to the frequency of the most common word (rank number 1).

So what does that mean? To be honest I dunno. Sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me but the one thing I do know is its good to be #1 for whatever you do. Often times I look at what I am doing with a project and ask myself the probability I can be #1. If the answer is absolutely no then its time to quit that project.

Many times businesses get customers simply because they are regarded as #1.

Do you hire the 2nd best person you interview for a job or the #1 ?

With Nextpimp we were #1 for several years and loved it. Then we lost passion and got quickly overtaken by competitors.

ShoeMoney.com is by far #1 as far as a blog that talks about making money from real experience. Sure that sounds cocky but its a fact. Am I lying? Advertisers always will go with #1 and they will pay more for the association with #1

The Elite Retreat is by far #1 for what it does.

AuctionAds despite having 8 compeditors before launching including eBay themselves quickly became #1 for eBay display Ads within only a few short months before we sold the company.

Do I always have #1’s? No. In fact I would say 90% of the time I quit a project or cut it lose because we just do not have the resources to become #1.

Is it possible for you to be #1 in what you do? If so are you willing to put in the time and work its going to take?

If so the rewards are massive!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Zipfs Law

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-17T23:52:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Elite Retreat 75% Sold Out On First Day!

Posted: 17 Nov 2008 11:33 PM CST

I am pretty excited. We have never had so much interest so fast in the Elite Retreat.

Someone made a really good comment yesterday and asked why I didn’t link to last years recap. I dunno I just forgot ;).

http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/04/14/elite-retreat-2008-san-fran-recap/

For those wanting to read reviews from people who attended there are a ton from that url.

A lot of people yesterday in the comments on this blog were complaining about the price and stuff and I totally understand. This conference is not meant for people looking to “start” making money online. Its meant for businesses or websites who are already doing pretty good to take their business or website to the next level. I assemble the best people in the industry I know from all corners to do that. Between our combined experiences and connections for 2 full days of doing nothing but analyzing companies and coming up with game plans for them its a giant recipe for success. For the people that attend its a massive tipping point in their business.

We only allow 35 people to come and everyone must sign a non disclosure agreement that they will not reveal what anyone else does or says without their express written permission.

I am super pumped for this years event. We have some awesome things cooking I will be sharing in the next few months!

There are a few seats left so make sure you sign up today if interested!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Elite Retreat 75% Sold Out On First Day!

Gary Vaynerchuk Kicks Off Elite Retreat 2009

Posted: 17 Nov 2008 12:05 PM CST

The Elite Retreat 2009 event is officially taking new registrations! I expect this years event to be another sell out. We have a great cast of industry leaders. This years event takes place in San Francisco February 18th-20th at the The Hotel Vitale. We have a few nice surprises for the guests this year I will be revealing in the next couple weeks.

1st day Keynote: Gary Vaynerchuck
2nd day Keynote: TBA

Leaders:

Stephan Spencer - SEO Expert
Chris Winfield - PR Ninja
Neil Patel - Marketing Consultant, SEO, Social Media whiz
Andy Liu - Startup Expert
Kris Jones - PPC, Affiliate expert
Jeremy Schoemaker - this is me!

So what is different this year? Well to start things off we will be adding a 3rd optional day to the event we are calling the Elite Retreat Field Trip. We will be going to some of the top companies in the Silicon Valley area and I think this will add a nice layer of value. We will be announcing the full schedule for this last day soon.

You can check out the official press release of 2009 Elite Retreat event here.

If you are thinking about attending this year you should register ASAP.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Gary Vaynerchuk Kicks Off Elite Retreat 2009

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-16T23:27:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Have You Read The Dip?

Posted: 16 Nov 2008 02:30 PM CST

The Dip by Seth Godin

I was listening to the book “The Dip” - by Seth Godin, on the way back from Vegas when it hit me how much this book has played an influence on my my life. It hit me so hard that I felt compelled to write Seth a note and thank him. In the email I gave very specific examples to Seth about how many times his book “The Dip” greatly influenced a decisions I had. And many times these decisions turned out to some of the biggest turning points in my business(s).

I was not expecting any response from Seth. I kind of wrote the email more for me then him. I think you guys know what I mean by that.

When he did respond I was very nervous to look what he had said:

From: Seth Godin
Date: November 12, 2008 7:25:35 PM CST
To: Jeremy Schoemaker
Subject: Re: Your Impact On My Life

holy smokes

what a fantastic note Jeremy

that means a lot. You get all the credit for your success, but it’s great to know you!

I thought maybe this week I would kind of do the same on my blog. I know many people who have read the book “The Dip” but I don’t think they really comprehend it well. Also a lot of people think “The Dip” is just about powering through tough times. Its MUCH more then that.

I listen to the book at least once a month to keep it fresh in my head.

Anyway this week I will probably making a few posts about how the dip has effected my life. If you have not purchased it yet… its only 9$ on Amazon and it will change the way you look at things.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Have You Read The Dip?

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-15T22:55:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Brock Lesnar Randy Couture UFC 91 Videos

Posted: 15 Nov 2008 04:16 PM CST

Been scouring the net reading posts and watching video for tonight’s event.

Here is the press conference video courtesy of mma-tv.net

I noticed in the video that Lesnar is a lot classier then normal. I wonder if Dana White kind of sat him down and told him to quit being a jackass and this is not the WWF

So pumped!!!

Here is the official weigh in results:

OFFICIAL WEIGH-IN RESULTS:

-Randy Couture (220) vs. Brock Lesnar (265)

-Joe Stevenson (156) vs. Kenny Florian (156)

-Gabriel Gonzaga (256) vs. Josh Hendricks (238)

-Demian Maia (185) vs. Nathan Quarry (185)

-Dustin Hazelett (170) vs. Tamdan McCrory (170)

-Jorge Gurgel (155) vs. Aaron Riley (156)

-Jeremy Stephens (155) vs. Rafael dos Anjos (155)

-Alvin Robinson (155) vs. Mark Bocek (155)

-Ryan Thomas (170) vs. Matt Brown (171)

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Brock Lesnar Randy Couture UFC 91 Videos

ufc91 Randy Couture vs Brock Lesnar

Posted: 15 Nov 2008 12:32 PM CST

Man I am so nervous for the fight tonight. David and I talked with Randy Couture on Thursday at his gym in Las Vegas and he seemed super composed (as always). Randy said they had a great plan and he is going to win. I would not expect him to say anything less ;). I have met Randy Couture probably 8 different times now and there has never been any fighter that was nicer and more accomidating.

This fight is the biggest in UFC history and I suspect for those who miss it there will be a lot of video of the fight around the net.

Its tough for me to break down this fight. Obviously I want Randy to win. I will give it a shot and try to be objective.

I really only see 2 probable outcomes for this fight. Randy winning by decision or Brock winning by knockout. Even though Randy trains with the worlds best jitz guys ( Robert Drysdale ) , I don't think its very likely he will be able to catch Brock in a submission, although I look for him to try more for subs then to work to standing if it goes to the ground. Wrestlers are always the hardest guys to knock out because when they get rocked their natural instinct is to clinch up and recover. This is why I don't think its going to be likely either guy will get knocked out but Brock Lesnar has knockout power.

There are some other fights on the UFC91 card tonight:

Ryan Thomas vs. Matt Brown
I really like Matt Brown but newcover Ryan Thomas has almost Josh Koscheck like take down ability and even though Matt has MUCH better standup I look for Ryan to become the human blanket and win this fight on the ground..- Thomas by decision.

Alvin Robinson vs. Mark Bocek
This should be a awesome fight and I look forward to seeing this after the fact. If Kid Robinson can stay away from Bocek's jitz he will be good to go..- Robinson by TKO.

Jorge Gurgel vs. Aaron Riley
How the hell does Gurgel keep making UFC cards? SERIOUSLY!!!! I dont think I have ever seen him win a fight. The UFC just keeps giving him cans to fight and he keeps losing to them.- Riley by Decision

Jeremy Stephens vs. Rafael dos Anjos
I look to Rafael to shoot a lot and Stephens countering with strong punches. - Stephens by KO

Televised Card

Dustin Hazelett vs. Tamdan McCrory
Hazelett is a badass with amazing jitz. - Hazelett by Submission

Gabriel Gonzaga vs. Josh Hendricks

The wildcard here is Hendricks. If he has the cardio and can keep away from Gonzaga's devistating kicks/jitz he has a chance .- Gonzaga by TKO

Demian Maia vs. Nathan Quarry
This is a tough fight to call. I think Rock Quarry's hands will overcome Maia's jitz - Quarry by Decision

Kenny Florian vs. Joe Stevenson
Joe Daddy just recently was awarded his blackbelt but no matter. Florian will donminate the striking and jitz game from start to finish. The biggest weapon Joe Daddy has is his guillotine which is deadly… - Florian by TKO

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

ufc91 Randy Couture vs Brock Lesnar

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-14T23:15:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

SoapBoxxer.com - Free Shirt Friday

Posted: 14 Nov 2008 08:07 AM CST

SoapBoxxer.com is a site that allows you to Agree or Disagree on opinions submitted by other SoapBoxxer members. You can also submit your own thoughts, and have others agree or disagree with you. It also allows you to comment on the discussion as well.

Thanks for the shirt!

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

SoapBoxxer.com - Free Shirt Friday

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-13T23:41:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Beyond AdSense - Website Magazine

Posted: 13 Nov 2008 06:04 AM CST

This months Website Magazine is starting to hit the shelves and I am receiving some pretty good feedback about the article I wrote titled “Beyond Adsense”. In the article I talk about how I started with AdSense years ago and how I evolved to other forms of advertising.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Beyond AdSense - Website Magazine

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-12T23:46:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

How To Make Money With Blogs - DMA Session

Posted: 12 Nov 2008 10:05 AM CST

Here is the video from our panel at the Direct Marketers Association conference last month.

In the video is Stephan Spencer, Chloe Spencer, Duane Forrester and Steve Spangler.

In my portion I talk quite a bit about how shoemoney.com went from not accepting advertising pre 2007 to accepting advertising in 2007 and to earning almost $500,000.00 in 2008.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

How To Make Money With Blogs - DMA Session

WPReviewSite Helps Affiliates Chose the RIGHT Network

Posted: 12 Nov 2008 06:04 AM CST

After I wrote the post yesterday on wpreviewsite I had a slew of people write in wanting to showcase their review sites. Ian wrote in about how he is using it on AFFpinions.com so I asked him if he would not mind doing a little writeup about how he uses it.

The other day Jeremy introduced WPReviewSite and how it can be a big help for your search/affiliate marketing. This is definitely true. Having a comparison and user generated reviews puts more trust in a product or offer; the reason for this is because there are no influential factors besides other users. It is a social interactive system which calls attention to your product or offers. Recently I decided to come up with an idea which can be incorporated in our industry, affiliate marketing. If you were one of the beginners in affiliate marketing you only probably started with CJ.com or ShareaSale.com. Now there is a ton of CPA networks out there that want your business. The reason for this is because without our business their business will not and cannot exist. Everyday there are tons of networks just springing up and if you were at ad tech recently, then you know there were a ton of networks there.

Well with the help of WPReviewSite Plugin by Dan Grossman, I
was able to create an epinions version for our affiliate industry called AFFpinions.com.
This new site incorporates Dan's helpful plugin and helps new affiliates decide what networks to join base on prior affiliate's experiences. The problem with networks
is they state they are the best, have the best exclusive, highest payouts, etc. Upon joining them you may find yourself unhappy and now have an annoying affiliate manager asking for traffic. Why not talk about how great or poor a network is which can be benefit new affiliates.

I personally have been through several networks that have left a bad taste in my mouth. AFFpinions.com will help beginners and even veterans find useful networks in which they can feel important. This is why I incorporated WPReviewSite to AFFpinions
because it was a simple and painless way to create a review or user base website. Also, once it is setup you do not have to add any content because it is user generated. The most work that may be needed is simple maintenance.

Another great factor of the plugin is the rapid response from the SERPS. The reason for this is the plugin is incorporating the WordPress CMS platform and you have constant updated content from users. You can quickly get the number one spot in the search engines if you have the proper keywords or topic and constant updated content. For example AFFpinions.com ranks #1 in the SERPS for several networks, example below:

Since content or opinions is always being generated about the network, search engines are always crawling and finding more and useful information they can provide to the end user. Content is being generated by users and not me, painless work. Also, WPReviewSite creates a sense of community, similar to any review site or forum. Users are entering their basic
knowledge of a network and rating how beneficial the network is base on 5 main criteria's: overall, payouts, support, offers, and tracking. With WPReviewSite you do not have any limit on ratings. (that I know of) If you do not want to use it you can just turn the plugin off and it will not affect anything. It is literally a 5 minute install and a 2 minute configuration.

AFFpinions has no influential factors besides its reviewers. I personally do not leave an opinion about the network because I do not want to influence my past experience onto the network and its future users, I want personal user experience. It is user experience that drives others to join a network. It is similar when you are personally trying to purchase a TV, you read other reviews good or bad. It is curiosity and ‘what if’ factor that drives us to do this.Sometimes even reading an experts review may not be the best of interest as they maybe too thorough for an average user. I do not want my advice to influence others, it should be others influencing others - even if they are experts.

Finally, with WordPress having so many plugins you can customize your review site to look and even become more interactive. I personally added these sets of plugins to AFFPinions.com to help with the community and the overall feel of an opinionated network site:

Recent Comments
Most Commented
WP Ajax Edit Comments
Subscribe to Comments
Comment Karma

These plugins help AFFpinions enhance the WPReviewSite Plugin more because it helps the end user make a faster decision. Using this review style in the affiliate marketing or even paid search industry can be the best of your business or the downfall. With AFFPinions as a source of information from other affiliates, it stops the marketing gimic of ‘we are the best’ from the networks. Now networks can see where and why they are losing affiliates and affiliates can find the perfect network to join.

WPReviewSite has helped AFFpinions grow because of the basic concept of security and curiosity. Users search for reviews because they are ready to take action – they just need to know someone else was happy with the product or
service.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

WPReviewSite Helps Affiliates Chose the RIGHT Network

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-12T00:38:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Getting Great Quality Scores With Review Sites

Posted: 11 Nov 2008 10:00 AM CST

When I first started in affiliate marketing I simply dumped a ton of cash on Pay-per-click engines and did pretty well. Well its not so easy anymore.

Especially now with pretty much every easy engine using a quality score component of some sort. We have talked a lot about ad copy and keywords and I feel that has been beaten pretty good so this is more about the basic techniques of the landing page.

The key is to build sites that people can interact with and are a service of some sort to the user. There are a couple basic sites you can build like this:

Review Websites:

In my experience review websites when designed properly are the best way to drive leads. “Designed properly” is the secret sauce. I dunno about you but designing great looking templates sucks for me. The Wordpress Reviews Plugin is a gift from god and makes deployment of these sites really fast. If you can install Wordpress then you can make a great looking review website in minutes. There are also a bunch of themes ready to go. You can have dating, weight loss, ringtone services, whatever reviews up and running in no time and start raking in the affiliate money with these. We use them on a local level and just charge flat rate advertising. I would show you but after the abuse the coddington dental website took (ahh the downside of showing real life examples) I think I will just let your imagination run wild with this one.

Anyway on average our prices have decreased dramatically with these review sites. If you are in a niche that you think building review sites is for you then you need to give the Wordpress Review plugin a whirl.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Getting Great Quality Scores With Review Sites

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-10T23:46:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

PurposeINC Hijacks Pubcon This Week

Posted: 10 Nov 2008 05:35 PM CST

I had zero plans to goto the Webmaster World Pubcon this year (which is this week Nov 11-14). It would have been the first time in 5 years I am not attending. The value of attending any conference for me to hear people speak has drastically decreased. Most of it is not only the same ole topics but lots of it is the same ole exact presentations.

The real value for me at conferences is the night time networking. Unlike at the event where you get maybe 5 minutes to spend with a speaker if you can catch them at a bar or somewhere most will BS with you all night. I am always found at either the expo halls or the bars of every major conference and love talking to people. Conferences in Las Vegas make this VERY HARD to get everyone to the same place. Half of the nights get wasted trying to get everyone organized because they are all staying at 40 different hotels.

Last year DK from Purpose INC put together a poker tournament and it was a total who’s who of the industry. As people were getting eliminated from the tournament they stayed around and had some drinks. It was by far the biggest/best networking event of any Pubcon I have ever gone to. Internet Marketers LOVE poker!

Anyway like I said I planned to skip Pubcon this year until I saw this years PurposeINC events:

Everybody is welcome! But you have to pay for yourself

All of these places are within a 5 minute walk of Treasure Island. (Except the Couture gym which is a 10 min. taxi ride)

Monday

8:00 P.M. Night - Sushi Roku - Dinner and/or drinks - top floor of forum shops. My bud Kenji is the G.M., amazing food, amazing view. Although they will still have other customers, Kenji has given us the run of the place with some of the best views of the strip anywhere in Vegas, amazing sushi, and also other amazing cooked stuff!

Tuesday (all on Tuesday are with Kate)

Tuesday continued..

2:15 - 3:30 P.M. Fight Club (safe gentle UFC fight training) at Xtreme Couture gym -(register in advance $150) Address: 4055 West Sunset, Las Vegas NV 89118.

5:30 - 6:30 (Head over to the Exhibitors Reception at Pubcon from 5:30 till 6:30.)

7:00 P.M. BLT Gourmet Hamburgers at Mirage Hotel. Go in the front door of the Mirage, all the way to the back, then hang a left. It's new, and is supposed to have amazing burgers! Just grab a table with some of the guys with Pubcon tags, sit down and eat a burger!

9:00 P.M. Parasol Up Bar at Wynn (the round bar on Casino floor) Shnazzy place with comfy chairs where you can sit for hours until The Mad Hat has had enough to drink to fess up his secrets. Go in any door of the Wynn and look for the round bar elevated up 3 feet above the casino floor.

Wednesday

11:30 a.m. Dim Sum Brunch at Red 8 at the Wynn. One of my absolute favorite restaurants on the planet. Dim Sum are small Chinese breakfast plates that seem much more like lunch items to an American. Some of them are simple such as dumplings or ribs, and some a bit more exotic Brunch will cost your between $15 and $40 depending on how much you eat! I love this place! Find the fancy shops and head away from Las Vegas Blvd. staying along the wall. When you get lost ask someone where Red 8 is.

2:50 to 4:05 I am supposed to speak on local search. I will be doing something fun, unique and helpful. Need Links? Come to this talk! Even Matt Cutts is invited! If you don't plan on laughing at my jokes, then don't come! (Hint, I won't be talking during most of my talk.)

10:15 P.M. Dinner at Maggianos (Should be room for tons of people!) (Cost is around $20 per person) Feel free to call in advance and reserve a table for 6 and you will have lots of friends! Maggianos is across the street from the Wynn, directly on Las Vegas Blvd. Fantastic, old school American Italian food. It is on Las Vegas Blvd. at the end of the mall away from Treasure Island.

12:00 Midnight - High Limit Bar at Mirage Hotel (Go in and through High Limit gaming room to get there) This place is gorgeous, and a great place to hang out with plenty of room for all of us, (unless all 2000 Pubcon attendees show up!)

Thursday

9:00 P.M. Poker Tournament Baby! The poker room at the Venetian Casino. Your chance to be part of history.

(Get a Venetian players card on the way! You will need it!) Make sure you are registered, as it should sell out soon!)

Then you are all welcome to join me for breakfast. The Terrace Point Cafe at the Wynn will be open at 3:00 a.m. Last year the service was a bit slow, but the food is always fantastic and will be a million times better than most places at 3:00 a.m.!!

As you can see from the above, I love Asian food, and I love the Wynn! (Somebody please make them a website that where you can link to individual pages!) I tried to find great places that are close to Treasure Island. Everyone is welcome to be part of all of the above events. Even if you don't drink, or don't play poker you are still invited to be part of all of it! I know a lot of my friends who are rock stars will be rolling in and out of these events, but it these events are mostly for the average guy and gal. Come make friends, have fun, and stay up all night!

Keep an eye on this site for updates, and ask me for a printed schedule when you see me. You can't miss me!

Anyway I just booked my flights. These events are going to kickass.

See you at the PurposeINC events!

Especially the poker tournament!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

PurposeINC Hijacks Pubcon This Week

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-09T23:28:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Social Engineering 4tw

Posted: 10 Nov 2008 01:17 AM CST

So as I wrote about yesterday I took my wife on a much needed weekend get-a-way to see Madonna on Saturday night. We flew in early Saturday morning, checked in, got into our room and napped a bit before getting ready for the big show.

I planned this trip as kind of a present to my wife. She kicks ass and works super hard. I bought the best suite I could find and for the Madonna Tickets we had floor seats about 7 rows back from the stage on the left side. I paid $1300.00 for the 2 tickets on eBay over 2 months ago. So ya I have been planning this for a while.

So we go through the turnstile and we go through, they scan our tickets and a buzzer goes off. The lady looks down at them and is like “Umm these tickets are for TOMORROW night not tonight”. I looked down in horror and saw the Sunday the 9th on the bottom of the tickets. GREAT NOW WHAT. So I just looked at the lady and said what do you suggest we do. She said to goto the box office and see if they can do anything for you.

Now we were already through the turnstile and there were mobs of people coming so she said we would have to walk around past the concessions. But we were inside the arena. I told my wife lets just chill a little bit and grab a drink and think about things.

Now I dunno how many know about my background in security but I have about 5 years in the field. I was the lead Unix Server Security admin and lead a team for 3 years with Wells Fargo at there head quarters in Des Moines, IA. They sent me to tons of training but 50% of the training involved social engineering as much as IT. Psychology and how to get people to do what you want them to do was fascinating to me. 90% of it is just acting “as if”.

Ok so back to our situation. My wife and I are waiting in line getting drinks and I am studying the tickets. I notice that the tickets have a perforated side which does not contain the date but just has the seats, section, and price you paid. NICE. I ripped them off and put the larger pieces in my pocket. Now my wife and I made a B-line for those seats. Every time someone looked like they were about to stop us I turned around and pretended to talk to my wife about something while keeping forward momentum acting as if we were going where we belonged. We were only stopped 1 time and I showed the stubs to the person for the section. She was like Umm where is the rest of the ticket. I said they tore it off “she asked who tore it off?” and I totally ignored her and said “HEY LOOK THERE IS JON LETS GO SAY HI” and dashed off to where our tickets were for (even though the wrong night).

Now keep in mind its early… like 7:30PM. Madonna does not take stage until 9pm. So it was very dangerous to stay in this section where we really did not have tickets for. If someone came and had those tickets we would for sure be escorted out of the arena.

So I explained to my wife we were going to go back outside where the soiveniers and drinks were BUT we were going to make sure all the ushers on the way up noticed us so they would not question if we came back down.

I kept asking them where the closest places to get drinks were, where the bathrooms were etc. and when I would ask I would also ask them by name and tried to keep there name in my mind incase I needed to yell down to them to let me in. Afterall I belonged down there.

So long story short my wife and I had a great time just walking around talking and drinking. By this point I was not really that pissed at myself for making this massive mistake and was pretty excited to see how this was going to play out.

Madonna took the stage and I figured it was now or never. We each grabbed 2 drinks and headed down to where we were before. I had already told my wife we just need to eye a open area and go there like we belong. We had 2 drinks so it would be difficult for us to reach for a ticket =P.

We walked right down to the floor and our row we were in before was full but 4 rows up had quite a bit of room. We went in there liked we belonged and started high 5′ing the other people in the area who were dancing it up.

We stayed there all night and had a blast.

Not only were we attending a concert we did not have tickets for we were about 4-5 people back from the stage. All because we did some basic social engineering.

I put together a small compilation of videos from the concert… feel free to make fun of me.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Social Engineering 4tw

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-08T23:10:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Madonna At The MGM Grand Tonight

Posted: 08 Nov 2008 06:36 PM CST

Took my wife to vegas for the day for the Madonna concert at the MGM Grand. Pretty excited to see the show tonight.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Madonna At The MGM Grand Tonight

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-07T23:16:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Jimdo - Free Shirt Friday

Posted: 07 Nov 2008 08:00 AM CST

Jimdo.com provides a really cool service for creating websites. I messed around on the site for a bit, and it looks ridiculously easy to get signed up and have a website you create visually, hosted on jimdo.com for free. With their pay version you can get your own domain, and some other added features. Pretty slick.

Thanks for the shirt!

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Jimdo - Free Shirt Friday

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-06T23:42:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

How To Incentivize Users To Get Content

Posted: 06 Nov 2008 12:53 PM CST

Sandra G asks:

Hi Jeremy,
I am currently building a community review based site for my niche and I was wondering how to seed it, do I pay people to write reviews and if so, what are the guidelines such as how much to pay per review? Or should I hold a contest, the most quality reviews in a given time period wins something, money or a prize?

Great question and one I think a lot of people will be interested in hearing the answer to. I will try to break it down to each section.

Paid Content:
I have always had a massive problem trying to find authors to write content they were not very familiar with. It just never works. While I understand the need to want to seed the site I feel this method will leave you frustrated (and broke).

Revenue Sharing:
Going blind and not knowing what your website is about I would say revenue sharing is probably your best bet to incentive users to start using the site. There are several ways you could do this but the easiest way is to run the users ads on pages they wrote. This would be fairly simple to setup on almost any content management system.

Contests:
I am a huge fan of contests and I think to get this site started and get the initial word out contests might be a great way to get people to the site. Things like revenue sharing might push them ever the edge to write content though. Contests can also be a great way to make a site go viral through the “buddy system”. Basically you refer a friend to the site and if they win you win. Works very well.

Naturally Interested:
Again not knowing anything about the niche its hard for me to guess on some of these issues. One thing from my own experience with fighters.com - We placed ads in craigslist in major cities all over the united states and we were flooded with requests from people who wanted to write for the website for free. In closing I just want to say I am a little concerned as to why you are having issues seeding the site with reviews. If its something you are truly passionate about I would think you could just keep writing reviews yourself. Maybe its a much bigger niche then i am thinking though. Hopefully some of my answers gave you something to think about!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

How To Incentivize Users To Get Content

A 7 Step Guide to getting more Comments

Posted: 06 Nov 2008 08:52 AM CST

Wikipedia says it, so it must be true: “The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.” They are important, because they can tell you what you should improve, in your writing, your products: they tell you what they want, you might as well give it to them.

Next to that, building a relation is an essential part of getting people to talk about you, and that is the goal isn’t it?

But even when your blog software hands you all your commenting capabilities, there are other things you can and should do to get people to comment. So here it is: the 7 step guide to getting more comments.

1. Ask them to comment

As simple as it might sound, this is often overlooked. You can ask for comments in your writing, but your “comment links” also speak volumes. Does your comment link say “22 comments” or “22 people commented, what’s your opinion?” And if you tested it, which one do you think would attract the most comments?

2. Respond to smart comments

You don’t have to respond to “wow, cool post”, of course, but if someone has a decent remark, it’s only fair to respond to it and see if you can do anything with it. This will encourage other readers to post their comments too.

3. Reward very good comments

If someone has really added value to your post, the best thing you can do is do a small update to your post, and give the commenter kudos for his good remark, or maybe even a link.

4. Keep people involved

Having the possibility for people to subscribe to the comments on your blog is essential if you want people to return to comment again on the same post. For WordPress, you’d use Subscribe to Comments for that.

5. Fight spam, all the time!

If you’re not taking care of the spam on your blog, people won’t feel as though you’re paying attention to the comments. So: fight spam, all day, every day. But keep in mind though:

6. Keep it Stupid Simple (to comment)

While fighting spam is very important, please, please, find another way of doing that than using a captcha or any other prevention that makes it harder to comment. It’s happened to me quite often that I wrote a lengthy comment, and the captcha had timed out, and my comment was lost. Save to say I wouldn’t be trying that again.

7. Measure, repeat and improve

You have to keep track of how you’re doing, on WordPress I’d recommend my own Blog Metrics plugin. It’s based on analytics guru Avinash Kaushik’s 6 recommendations to measure your blogging success.

So, what would you do to get more comments?

About the Author: Joost de Valk is an Internet Strategist at OrangeValley, and the founder of Yoast.com, a resource with loads of WordPress tips, tricks & plugins, where he also runs a weekly WordPress newsletter, which has been dubbed “essential for anyone seriously using WordPress”.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

A 7 Step Guide to getting more Comments

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-05T23:44:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Google Tells Yahoo To Stick It

Posted: 05 Nov 2008 11:15 AM CST

After vowing repeatedly to go through with its search advertising deal with Yahoo no matter what the Justice Department does, Google reversed course today and pulled the plug on the deal. Chief legal counsel David Drummond writes:

. . . after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn't have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement.

We're of course disappointed that this deal won't be moving ahead. But we're not going to let the prospect of a lengthy legal battle distract us from our core mission. That would be like trying to drive down the road of innovation with the parking brake on.

Apparently, the recent revision of the deal's terms to cap the amount of Yahoo's revenues generated by Google at 25 percent was not enough to satisfy the Justice Department. And Google threw up its hands, giving up the fight.

The intransigence of the DOJ made the deal untenable. There was no longer enough upside to put up with all of the antitrust scrutiny the deal would continue to bring.

And then there is the Microsoft factor. The only reason Google offered the deal in the first place was to help Yahoo fend off Microsoft's takeover advances earlier in the year. It is a different world now. Microsoft seems to have moved on. The financial markets have collapsed. Yahoo is going to have to fix its own problems.

Interestingly, Yahoo's stock is up nearly 5 percent to $14 on the news (while Google's is down 2 percent to $358). Is that because Yahoo's destiny is once again in its own hands, or because Microsoft can now make another run at the company?

Microsoft was the biggest opponent of the deal, and its lobbying efforts seem to have paid off. It can now buy Yahoo for a much cheaper price than it originally offered (one analyst suggests $20 a share, compared to the $33 Microsoft once offered), and Yahoo has nowhere else to turn (except AOL, which isn't doing so great).

This post was originally posted by our content partner Techcrunch and is being republished on shoemoney.com with permission. I occasionally syndicate news posts from Techcrunch I feel shoemoney.com readers get value from and likewise you may see posts on Techcrunch from ShoeMoney at times.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Google Tells Yahoo To Stick It

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Motive Interactive Releases Advent 2.0

Posted: 04 Nov 2008 02:14 PM CST

Motive Interactive is releasing their new version of their advertising platform called Advent 2.0. The system was developed to increase advertisers ROI and to maximize publishers profits.

I have never worked with Motive Interactive, but I’ve been seeing a lot of information popping up about this new release. And after I was contacted by them to check out the system, I thought I’d detail my thoughts about the new release in a post.

At first glance, I’m really impressed. The interface is fast loading and easy to use. They have a a great selection of offers, lots of which are exclusive to them. One I’ll discuss in more detail later. But overall, I have no idea what Advent 1.0 was like, but 2.0 looks pretty sweet. I guess it’s ran off of an ajax system, so everything is running off of one page. Very nice. Advent contains features other platforms can’t touch, like multiple payout support including commission based sales, individual publisher and advertiser allocations and lead routing to multiple advertisers and buyers.

Once I logged in for the first time, I wanted to check out the stats section to see what that was like. They have probably the most detailed statistics I have seen from an affiliate network. That’s a huge plus in my opinion. And is a huge selling point for any publisher.

They have a really good demo video you can see the system for yourself:

I also noticed, they have a rewards program that is paying 2%. Most are around 1%, so obviously these guys know the value in rewards. The payouts are below:

Commissions - Rewards
$1,000 - $10
$2,500 - $25
$5,000 - $50
$10,000 - $100
$15,000 - $150
$20,000 - $200
$25,000 - $250
$30,000 - $300
$50,000 - $500
$100,000 - $1,250
$150,000 - $2,000
$200,000 - $3,000
$500,000 - $10,000
$1,000,000 - $20,000
$1,250,000 - $25,000

They also have the highest referral commission around, with 5.5%! But they do state “The referred publisher must continue to generate commissions without a lapse of twelve (12) calendar months in order for the referrer to continue receiving the 5.5% commission from that publisher each month.”

Overall, Motive is making a big step with Advent 2.0. If they weren’t a top affiliate network before, they will be after people check this system out. They have some really cool offers like this:

And exclusive offers like this one I found that can be run in search and email:

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Motive Interactive Releases Advent 2.0

Making Money Online With Local Affiliate Programs

Posted: 04 Nov 2008 06:00 AM CST

This was originally the 4th volume of the ShoeMoney Newsletter. I had some deliverability issues and had so many requests to resend that I thought I would just post it here (with some enhancements)

Everyday people ask me how they can make money online. In the past whenever I have found something lucrative, I have written a step-by-step guide on how to make money with it. The down side to having a massive reach, however, is that as soon as I write about something it becomes massively saturated. Right now, companies are tightening up their budgets. Some of you may be out of work right now and trying to make ends meet. Look on the bright side. Performance-based marketing thrives in this economy and right now, this is a great opportunity for you to take advantage of it. This following guide will show you how to setup local affiliate marketing, or commission sales deals. I'll also give you real-life examples so you can see exactly how it works.

Getting Setup With Local Affiliate Marketing

Getting setup with local affiliate marketing is not easy, but once you get it down it's like shooting fish in a barrel. There are many different businesses that are great to market but the higher-end businesses include Lasik Eye Surgeons, Plastic Surgeons, Dentists, Car Dealerships and the list goes on. Most local companies not only have no affiliate program but they will not understand the value of your efforts.
The best way to get their attention is to just be flat out with them. Tell them you'll charge them nothing for the first month and see what happens. (This method has not failed us yet.) We know what we bring to the table and we know that after one month of new business they will see a HUGE value to it (or be scared to death we start to work with their competitors). It would be pretty silly for the business owner to not take advantage of this opportunity.

Determining The Goal

Most of these companies have already done research about their demographics and what a new client, buyer or phone call is worth to them. Obviously the number one goal of these companies is to make more money. However, you need to ask them a lot of questions to help develop the best target market for them. I am going to use a local dentist, Dr. Brad Alderman, as my example throughout this guide as he is one of our most recent clients.

So Dr Alderman explained to me that his goal was to get more clients. I asked him more questions like if he knew any demographics or more information of that sort. He revealed to me that he had done a lot of demographic research and knew that women age 30 to 45 schedule appointments for the whole family. Boo-yah! Now we are talking. So I pressed Dr Alderman to find out more information about the demographics' interests. He already knew the answer. It was teeth whitening. I asked Dr Alderman what his markup on that was and he said that it cost them virtually nothing other than labor to perform this "teeth whitening" service (which they normally charge $600). Now we know our target but how much is it worth to them? I asked Dr. Alderman if they have ever done metrics on what a new customer is worth versus a returning customer. That's when Dr. Alderman told me that a new customer to them is valued at over $250. Boom!

Tracking The Leads & Determining Value Per Lead

Once you are ready to enter into an agreement with the local business, you'll need to break down your compensation per lead. You will probably be surprised to learn that most of these established local businesses have already done in-depth research analysis. When we were working with one of the bigger car dealerships out of Omaha, Nebraska, they told us they knew every time their phone rang it was worth $14 to them.
Depending on your trust level with them, there are several ways for you to get paid by sending Internet leads to local businesses. One thing I have always learned is that greedy people will never settle for just a little bit of greed. If they are cheating you, eventually it will be so blatant that it's time to move on to their competitor at which time you are MUCH better positioned because you are kicking ass in the space.

You can just direct people to call a special number. - Most companies have a dedicated person or team of people who answer the phone. Their job is conversion. It's all they do. They have been doing this for years and they are much more knowledgeable about the products and services their business offers than you are. They usually work on commission and this is all they do; they convert interested people into buyers. The value to them is getting the phone to ring period. Car dealerships are perfect for this. Above as we talked about, the car dealership determined that every time the phone rang it was worth $14. I proposed a $10 per call rate and that is what we agreed upon. In 2007 we averaged 4712 calls per month, which meant $47,120.00/month for us. Our costs were about $6,000.00 per month in pay-per-click expenses and labor. That means a profit for us of about $1320.00/day (or roughly $41,000.00 per month). And this is only one client that we spent less than 2 to 3 total hours per week keeping everything running. They were so happy with the results in 2007 that in 2008 they cut their print media, radio, and TV budgets by 80% and gave us a much higher payout. They even offered to reimburse us to try some other online marketing tactics.
Setup a special code that receptionists will ask for in order to take advantage of the deals. - In this instance, I will use the local dentist's office we are working with, Coddington Dental. (They have also granted me permission to use them in this newsletter). Dr Alderman does not have a team of sales people but instead just has a receptionist who books the appointments. She does not work on commission and has no incentive to get people signed up. While Dr Alderman understands a lot about the value in marketing, his primary job is obviously dentistry and nobody in his office is specialized in conversion. In order to cater to this situation we developed an incentive program. For all new customers, they would be able to take advantage of plenty of offers, but only if they had a special promo code. This promo code also helped us track which campaigns were doing the best and also which leads we should be credited for. We negotiated a rate of $75 per new customer that was within the target demographic. In 2008, we have driven an average of 195 new customers per month. After our expenses, we are profiting just shy of $14,000 per month from this deal.
You can collect all the data yourself. (This includes name, phone number, email, age, demographics, etc., and then forward this on to the business and charge them per lead.) This method is ideal for businesses who have no online presence at all. In this case, you will have to create a site for them along with landing page(s). The basics of this is that you create a website with a form in order to collect the user information that your business is looking for. I have used this method the most and it is usually a gateway to the previous two methods I mentioned. I have done this for such a wide range of local businesses, everything ranging from tanning salons, real estate agents, lawn services, and an in-ground pool company. You name it - I have probably tried it. Like I said before, most companies can be leery about paying for a new service off the bat and we understand that. That's why we give them the leads for free for the first month or so. You have to use some common sense with this. If you rack up 20 leads in a day then that is probably enough to turn over to them and see what kind of feedback you get after they have contacted the leads. If they come back and tell you they would like for you to continue it, then work out a price. Bonus Tip: When you are working with someone and they have not done the research on what a new lead is worth to them you might have to sit them down and walk them through it. Keep in mind these companies might not see the big picture of the compounding value of a returning customer over time. If you feel sour about the deal, walk at any time and go right to their competitor. When negotiating a price never be the first person to name a price per lead. Let them give you a place to start. If they keep saying they don’t know, then tell them to call you when they do know as you have other clients to deal with.
You can charge them a flat rate above expenses to manage their campaigns. (boring) If you go with this approach, basically you'll charge a flat fee to manage the Pay-Per- Click and other accounts for the company. To me, this is unbelievably boring and I try to avoid it at all costs. Maybe it's more up your alley? For a performance-based marketer like me, I hate it.

There are several different approaches you can take when generating local business leads. The most important thing when looking where to spend money to promote these offers is demographics and obviously geo-targeting. For those who don’t know, geo-targeting is when you target a user based on their geographic location. For my campaigns I am ONLY going to want to target the Lincoln, Nebraska, area. Here are some of the various ways you can promote the offers:

Promote the offers Via PPC.

Search Engine Pay-per-click - There are many Pay-Per-Click search engines and I suggest you start with Google Adwords (the big dog). Google Adwords is eons ahead of the other search engines in terms of volume, accuracy, and speed. Plus, by advertising with Google Adwords you are also advertising on all the properties they have deals with like Yahoo!, AOL, and ASK.com. If you are new to pay-per-click advertising, I HIGHLY suggest going through all Google Adwords tutorials and even taking the test to get Adwords certified. You get your certification after you have managed at least $1,000 in spending and have passed the test. (It will also help you get clients if you are certified.)
The secret sauce in pay-per-click marketing is keywords and ad copy. Your ad copy for the PPC engines needs to convey the incentive (covered later in this article). It also HAS to convey that it is a local business. A lot of people do not know you can enter phone numbers into ad copy within Google. This can be great because it might not cost you a click to get a lead. Also, people can easily look at the ad and see the area code. If it's the same as theirs, the ad appears to be a legitimate local offer.

Get keywords.

Keywords on a local level are a different ball-game than on a national level. For instance, when we took over the Coddington Dental website we did some basic SEO. Within no time it was ranking #1 for Lincoln. Seems like the target keyword, eh? Not so fast. Over 65% of the PPC traffic coming was coming bidding on his company name “Coddington Dental” or his personal name “Brad Alderman”. To us, the magic was in bidding on the dentist's name and business name. Now you can go through the phone book and do this or you can use a ShoeMoney Tool designed specifically for this situation. Feel free to preview it here:

https://tools.shoemoney.com/documentation/ppc-local-brand-tool/

Also, much of the traffic was coming from people bidding on phrases surrounded by city/state/zip code names. For this reason, we built this tool, also. It generates thousands of possible combinations quickly:
https://tools.shoemoney.com/documentation/ppc-local-keyword-tool/

Money Tip: If the local business you are promoting keeps logs… GET THOSE! They will contain valuable keyword data of what people are looking for and give you a great head start.

All-in-all, keywords are going to be a trial and error process on the local level.

Promote the offers via Social Marketing Websites.

Websites like Facebook and Myspace are the best bang for the buck that we have found. They already have each user's exact location, age, and sex, it's very easy to target your demographic.

Here are our current ads we started running on Facebook for Coddington Dental:

Failure Tip: One lesson we learned pretty fast is that you do not want to run multiple versions. Run them long enough to figure out which one converts best then only run that one. The reason from our experience is that the same person who is likely to curiosity click (person who clicks to see what the offer is for but does not convert) on 1 ad is also likely to click on another version of the ad costing you more money for no lead. With Facebook we have yet to see the same ip address for the same ad. I am guessing that Facebook does not show the same ad to a person once they click on it but I am not 100% on that. Anyway just run them to get data then go with 1 ad.

Promote via SEO.

You should not discount the value of Search Engine Optimization but just make sure that the site you are optimizing is owned by you and you can take it with you (the domain).

Promote via Craigslist.

Promotion done via Craigslist can be very lucrative if done properly. You have to be very careful not to be "spammy." For instance, if you can find any way to promote your offer along with the current events or say a local concert, that would be a lot less spammy than if you were just to advertise the offer. In Lincoln, Nebraska, it is best for us to tailor some of the offers around the Nebraska Cornhusker football team. That means our ad may read, “Hey Husker fans! Limited time offer! The Husker special! Come in next week and get a free XXXXX." You also want to be careful to not get your postings consistently flagged for spam. Try to come up with a creative way to promote the local business mixed with some value to the Craigslist user. It's quite an art!

Landing Pages

As I stated before, there are going to be some businesses for which you will create a landing page that contains contact information or a form for users to fill out. If that is your case, I have some very useful tips.
1) If the landing page is part of a larger site, then keep the landing page with the same look and feel as the rest of the site. The user should get the impression that the site was tailored to them. Let me give you an example. For example, here is the landing page we developed for the Coddington Dental Facebook ad I showed before:
http://www.coddingtondental.com/facebook.php

We did a ton of split testing on this page with heat-maps (more on that later) and found this was the best layout.
As you can see on the page, the title and context let the user know the page was custom made for them as a Facebook user. The bounce rate (length of time users stay on the page) showed that this was a huge thing. Also, the “promo code” is properly placed for ease of use. Below is a ton of information about what the user gets and other offers that the dental practice provides.

Tools Of The Trade

Crazyegg - Crazy Egg is a heat-map tracking utility that will show you where your users are clicking on your page. It's very useful when conducting split testing.
Google Website Optimizer - I cannot say enough good things about the website optimizer. It will rotate all of your different combinations and then show you the data on what the best possible combinations will be. We have seen 20-45% improvements using it.
ShoeMoney Tools - These are our tools which we have been using in house and now we have opened them up to the public on a membership basis.
ClickTale - ClickTale shows your mouse tracking. It's amazing to see what people do with their mouse movements. It's an absolute "must-have" for those who are using forms to collect leads. It will show you where visitors stop to pay attention, where people stop to read more, and even where people quit and give up on your form.

Other Things To Think About

Integrity - One of the key things to think about is the integrity of the business that you’re promoting. They have spent a lifetime building up their reputation and you single-handedly could destroy that. Always keep that in mind.
Legalities - Always have all contracts thoroughly looked at by your lawyer. You do not want to get caught up in some non-compete or nondisclosure agreement. By the same token, in certain cases, you will want the local business to sign a non-disclosure agreement in regards to your methods.
Go with your gut. - If you talk to a local business and you just do not think it’s the right fit, walk out the door and find another one. I can’t tell you how many times I have worked with local businesses when I knew in my gut it was going to be a train wreck. Sure enough, it always ended up costing me more money, time and stress than it was worth.

Right now, local pay-per-click marketing is honestly, well I would call it the new gold rush. Actually, I think it's even better than that. It’s really like shooting fish in a barrel. It's really that easy. There are a bunch of people who will post in the comments all the excuses why this will not work for them. Do not be discouraged by them. Find a local niche and try it. Its going to take a little bit of hard work but its really the new frontier. There is a HUGE dislocation in how cheap it is to advertise on these social networks probably bigger then the ringtone market of years ago when I wrote about it. Get after it!

The folks at Facebook are giving a free $50 to new users of their advertising platform. Just use code “shoemoneynl”.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Making Money Online With Local Affiliate Programs

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-03T23:39:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Where Are All The Black Tech Entrepreneurs?

Posted: 03 Nov 2008 05:00 AM CST

I know most white tech Bloggers would not touch this question with a ten foot poll but I will give it a shot. Here is the question from last Sundays questions:

Lance Bailey asks:
HEY SHOE where are all the blacks in technology. I can name a ton of suits who are vp’s or executives for major corporations, but when it comes to being founders or the creative mind behind a website or technology they are usually absent. I know race has nothing to do with it . Its more about exposure. I am not complaining, but i just notice that at local user groups and code fest I am usually the only black kid there. How do i expose other to this entrepreneur movement that’s going on online?

I grew up in a area called the Quad Cities west of Chicago in Illinois. There is a huge Latino and African American population there. Looking back on my childhood some of my closest friends were African American. I was highly influenced by the African American culture. I listened to Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace (AKA Notorious B.I.G.). I went to a lot of BBQ’s and family events with my African American friends. I was a part of many of their family’s.

Alright so lets break down the questions.

HEY SHOE where are all the blacks in technology. I can name a ton of suits who are vp’s or executives for major corporations, but when it comes to being founders or the creative mind behind a website or technology they are usually absent?

When I was in the corporate world and held many IT jobs I worked with many African Americans. There are a lot of very savvy African American tech people out there. Some of the best network engineers I worked with were African American. So I guess I agree with you that there are a lot of tech savvy African American people in the tech workforce.

Now as far as the founder or creative mind behind a website - I have had this very discussion with a lot of my childhood African American friends. With one of my most successful websites I actually registered a legal alias of Mike Lowery and used a picture of Will Smith in bad boys as my avatar. I did business with a lot of people who thought I was a African American so it certainly did not hurt me from being incredible successful with absolutely no budget what so ever.

As far as the rest of your question:

I know race has nothing to do with it . Its more about exposure. I am not complaining, but i just notice that at local user groups and code fest I am usually the only black kid there. How do i expose other to this entrepreneur movement that’s going on online?

I am not sure what you mean by exposure?

I have tried to encourage my African American friends to take advantage of racial positions. I registered blacknn.com years ago and had the idea of creating a “Black News Network” where African American’s could contribute news. Each of my African American friends I approached were excited about the idea but none of them wanted to take on the extra work in addition to their day job or none of them were in the position to quit their day jobs to go for it. Also none of them had the skill set really in managing a web server and programming.

I think there is a HUGE need for service oriented websites that cater to minorities. Get after it man! Such opportunities!

So why aren’t there more African American founders of companies? I am purely guessing here but perhaps its because there are not many African American programmers? If you look at the founders of most big websites/companies that were founded by low or no budgets (Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Myspace) they were all founded by programmers. Maybe a better question is why are there not more African American programmers? and the answer to that question I don’t know.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Where Are All The Black Tech Entrepreneurs?

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-03T00:11:00.001-08:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Ask Questions Round 17

Posted: 02 Nov 2008 05:59 AM CST

Fire away. I am going to cherry pick a bit more this round. We have had a ton of repetition lately.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Ask Questions Round 17

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-11-02T00:06:00.001-07:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

November NewsLetter Feedback Pretty Good!

Posted: 01 Nov 2008 05:58 PM CDT

Published the November Newsletter this morning. Pretty good feedback so far:

@PreSellPageMan (PresellPageMan) says:
@shoemoney really love your Local Affiliate and PPC Guide - great job!

@chrishedgecock (chrishedgecock) says:
@shoemoney great newsletter

@thinklikeansob (thinklikeansob) says:
amazing info. and out of the box thinking in @shoemoney newsletter. thanks @shoemoney

@richaffiliate (richaffiliate) says:
@shoemoney Great newsletter Jeremy - anyone who hasn’t signed up for Shoemoney emails, do so now! This advice is worth $$$$$$$’s

@ChrisMonty (ChrisMonty) says:@shoemoney That was a fantastic read. You need an affiliate program for sign-ups to that list.

@cmaddison (cmaddison) says:@shoemoney WOW- you could have published this and sold it as a $97 ebook! Fantastic newsletter. Printing to re-read later.

@moneyreign (Zac Johnson) says:@shoemoney good stuff in the newsletter today!

I have a few other topics I want to cover so might make this a bi-weekly thing.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

November NewsLetter Feedback Pretty Good!

LOST Season 5 Promo Video

Posted: 01 Nov 2008 06:56 AM CDT

Where the other LOST fans?!?!?

I can’t Frickin Wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

LOST Season 5 Promo Video

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-10-31T23:13:00.001-07:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Man Its Going To Be Great

Posted: 31 Oct 2008 08:26 PM CDT

No more worrying about the mortgage payments… No more worrying about putting gas in my car.

This whole spread the wealth thing is going to be so awesome!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Man Its Going To Be Great

NewportSEO.com - Free Shirt Friday

Posted: 31 Oct 2008 01:30 PM CDT

NewportSEO.com provides search engine optimization and internet marketing. Their headquarters is in Newport, CA.

Thanks for the shirt!

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

NewportSEO.com - Free Shirt Friday

$50.00 FaceBook Coupon Code In November Newsletter

Posted: 31 Oct 2008 09:00 AM CDT

I know I just talked about it the other day about how much work I put into the November Newsletter (goes out tomorrow) but you will not want to miss this one! We do a lot of it with Facebook and when I sent a preview to some of the brass at Facebook they offered to give a free $50.00 code for new users to the Facebook advertising platform to get started.

I better not hear I did not give enough warning this time =P

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

$50.00 FaceBook Coupon Code In November Newsletter

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-10-30T23:37:00.001-07:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Daves Apple MacBook Pro Birthday Cake

Posted: 30 Oct 2008 12:08 PM CDT

My wife had this cake made special for Dillsmack’s Brithday:

It was a perfect mirror image of the new Macbook Pro including the status lights!

And even taste as good as it looks:

Go over and wish David a happy birthday!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Daves Apple MacBook Pro Birthday Cake

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-10-29T23:42:00.000-07:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Triggit - In Text Ads That Don’t Suck

Posted: 29 Oct 2008 06:00 AM CDT

Remember Triggit? I wrote about it about a year and a half ago. Back then it was a toolbar that would allow you to embed links to a select group of sources.

Now Trigged has really transformed the platform. Now it is a in-text advertising platform but unlike Kontera it does not suck. It uses caching technology so after it scans your page once it keeps a cache of the content and what links it wants to underline. It also does not do any of the BS double underscore stuff.

I talked to CEO Zach recently at Blogworld about the new platform:

After I got back from Blogworld I thought I would give it a run and started sending traffic to fighters.com. Its been one of the better PPC investments we have made. I strongly recommend users and publishers get in on Triggit early.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Triggit - In Text Ads That Don’t Suck

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-10-29T00:05:00.001-07:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Local Affiliate and PPC - The New Gold Rush

Posted: 28 Oct 2008 10:05 PM CDT

Been working pretty hard on this months newsletter. Its basically a walkthrough on how to create local affiliate programs and make a ton of cash. We have been doing this for a couple of years now and honestly its been pretty simple.

In the Nov 1st newsletter its basically a total walk through. Everything from how to negotiate a payout to what business are best suited for it. I even throw in a bunch of real world examples and screen shots of our local campaigns.

I am giving you several days warning so make sure you are signed up to the ShoeMoney Newsletter:

Also in the newsletter we will be announcing the winners of the 2 laptops we are given away this month!

I just recieved the ALL NEW macbook courtesy of Marketleverage and also do not forget we will be giving away a Macbook AIR courtesy of QuickSprout (Neil Patel).

Good luck!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Local Affiliate and PPC - The New Gold Rush

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-10-28T00:16:00.001-07:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

First Look: AzoogleAds iPhone Application

Posted: 27 Oct 2008 11:56 AM CDT

AzoogleAds put out a press release last week announcing their the beta of their iPhone application:

First performance-based ad network to make marketing dashboard available on iPhone

NEW YORK, NY – October 23, 2008 – AzoogleAds (www.AzoogleAds.com), a division of the New York-based online marketing leader Epic Advertising, announced today the successful beta launch of its new iPhone Publisher Reporting Platform, iMobilePublisher. The beta launch represents the latest in a string of successes stemming from the company's Product and Technology teams, and will initially include a small number of trusted publishers.

The application will be demo’d this week at Ad:Tech and they are hoping to have it in the app store within a couple months. So the big question within the industry is what is it going to do? Well I was sent a screen cast of a early build a bit ago. Looks very promising: (click play and wait a bit takes a sec to load)

Looks pretty sharp!

AzoogleAds in another press release talked about how they are experiencing great growth:

Stellar performance marked by growth in revenue, profit, advertiser and publisher bases; new iPhone application & international expansion geared to keep up momentum

NEW YORK, NY, October 27 - Epic Advertising (www.EpicAdvertising.com), the privately held, New York-based online marketing leader, today announced strong September results, posting seven percent and 14 percent gains, respectively, in revenue and profit over last September. In an environment marked by tightening budgets and consolidation, the performance marketing company's publisher and advertiser bases experienced robust growth.

That is very encouraging. I have a theory that affiliate marketing or performance based marketing in general will experience amazing growth during this “recession”.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

First Look: AzoogleAds iPhone Application

Answers To Questions Round 16

Posted: 27 Oct 2008 06:30 AM CDT

Asle Skarpengland asks:

If you should pick one affiliate network, which one would it be?

ShoeMoney: For me Azoogleads. Their reporting API is the best I have come across and they have the best offers for what we do.

BarackObamasBlog asks:

Do You Think Barack Obama Is A Terrorist? If So Why? If No Why Not?

ShoeMoney: I don’t think he is a terrorist. He has done nothing I am aware of to suggest he is a terrorist.

ethan asks:

What is a good number of ad-networks to belong to? Is it possible to belong to too many? Better to belong to a select few?

ShoeMoney: I would join as many that have offers in your niche… then split test them and let the statistics tell you which ones to use and which ones are shaving leads.

Josh Smith asks:

Are you planning on doing more interview type pieces with affiliate networks and their owners?

ShoeMoney: If they have an interesting story I like.

AffiliateObsession.com asks:

I want to learn PHP, what book(s) do you recommend, or other reading materials, for that matter?

ShoeMoney: I recommend you start with free guides on the net and make a project and learn as you go.

andrew asks:

should we forget about users with 800×600 monitors, and just design sites for 1024+ ?

ShoeMoney: Using Google Analytics will show you what resolution your visitors are using. That should answer your question. (I am guessing yes)

Schoonzie asks:

What do you think is the best way to go about getting direct advertisers for my blog so I can replace AdSense. I have a list of manufacturers and retailers that advertise on my competitors sites, but I’d like to know what you think is the best way to approach them.
Thanks!

ShoeMoney: I wrote a post on this here

Nick asks:

If you lost everything, but were left with a stream of $300 / month what would you do with it, in an attempt to get back to your former glory?

ShoeMoney: I would probably just become a Mr. Mom and take care of our kids.

Sohail asks:

How long does one should take recieving search engine traffic on a blog about technology if one new post comes up daily. If it depends, what are the factors on which it depends?

ShoeMoney: You should start receiving once it depends. (do you guys really read these questions before submitting?)

Static asks:

Are we allowed to ask random questions like “How did you come up with your slogan?”

ShoeMoney: Yes you are.

Chetan asks:

As for what i always ask something related to Mac..
Do you have some tools to post from Mac to your blog directly?
And what apps do you use to create videos in mac?

ShoeMoney: I use snapz pro for capturing movies. I love it. I use Skitch a TON for blog use and other stuff. I write most of my posts in program called Textmate (using it for this)

Moneybites asks:

Who do you host with and why?

ShoeMoney: We have our own rack of servers and host everything ourself.

browie asks:

When you get in a funk with Internet Marketing (I’m in one) what things can help you get out of it? take a break?, shut it all down start over?

ShoeMoney: I usually will head to the gym and bust out all by agression running and lifting weights. Then I think back at when I was in the corporate world working for the man and how much I hated it. That usually does it.

vipey asks:

would you rather be a fish that cant fly or a bird that cant swim?

ShoeMoney: Fish that can’t fly.

David@EntrepreneursBlog asks:

Four20 asks:

How stable is your online revenue? I recently started making twice as much as I did at my ‘normal job’, but I have noticed the income can vary a few hundred dollars. Does the threshold for you vary only a few hundred dollars per month. . .or does that grow just like your total revenue does.

ShoeMoney: When I first started many years ago thats how it was for me to. I put it all in the bank and kept working my day job until eventually I was fired. Stability really comes with a surplus of cash. Once I had enough cash in the bank to cover my salary for 2 years I felt stable. Now I do that too but with my employees also.

Simon asks:

Hi, why do all your ads have google page syndication type links?

ShoeMoney: We use Google Ad Manager to sell direct ads. Its really an awesome system that I am extremely thankful for Google for making. We struggled with OpenX before that.

Cigar Inspector asks:

Are there any WordPress theme design firms that you can recommend except UBD?

ShoeMoney: We use UBD for 99% of our projects and not just for blog designs. We have used them for print magazine/newspaper flyers, banners, stickers, traditional web design, and lots of other stuff. We have tried many people but nobody provides the support and flexibility that they do. They just get it and they do not need to be hand held. I love working with them. So to answer your question… no

JL asks:

regarding forum subscriptions in your experience (where members can pay/donate money for additional features) do you find that having a lower subscription price like $9.99 would attract more people or something higher like $19.99 would be better (as it wouldn’t dilute the ‘value’ of being a VIP member). also, what special features have you found that your VIP members have enjoyed the most?

ShoeMoney: Sure subscriptions were/are our bread and butter. We found that people would much rather pay 19.95 every 6 months then 25$ for 1 year. Kind of strange huh? You really need to play around with price points a lot to see what works for you. As far as what to give them? You can see our terms for nextpimp premium service here
http://www.nextpimp.com/become_premium.php and we had over 70,000 paying subscribers in 2006 (its gone down significantly as my interest in the site has faded)

Bob asks:

Jeremy, I have this great website that converts like crazy so I thought I’d create another website on a different domain name reviewing the same services but with unique content. Will the second website rank in Google even though the keywords are the same as the first and the ip address of the domains are the same?

ShoeMoney: Well I am not a SEO but I would not put it on the same ip address. I would not even use the same dns servers.

Adamxcl asks:

Things are a lot different on the net than the last downturn. How does the current economic outlook affect how you look at businesses and new projects? Is success going to be at a slower pace with a new project? Obviously things are different now and a new idea may not execute the same way it did two years ago.

ShoeMoney: The current economic outlook has had zero effect on what we look at in projects. Anyone who reads this blog knows we go after service oriented websites. We build services that are needed and wanted. People are still spending money but it is just for things they need. We have always provided those value add services.

Sly from SlyVisions dot Com asks:

I assume you do some PPC marketing yourself to promote affiliate products and leads. My question is, is PPC your #1 tool for affiliate marketing?

ShoeMoney: No. I would say less then 10% of our affiliate income is from PPC driven traffic.

B. Durant asks:

I feel like I don’t put out enough content and would like more. I was considering hiring someone to write content for my site. Problem is that everyone who I’ve found has no idea about the niche. I’m told that it doesn’t matter as content writers will research whatever subject you give them and then write the content. I’m leery of this approach.

I guess I’m asking if it’s actually reasonable to expect good, accurate content from someone who isn’t familiar with what the site is about?

ShoeMoney: No

Tushar Dhoot asks:

At what point do you draw the line between ethics and affiliate marketing? Basically stuff that you know is a scam but still get paid big $$ to do it. So where do you say, I’m not going to promote this. ex: “Weight Loss” “Payday Loans” “Ringtones” “Spam Newsletters” “FREE Stuff”

ShoeMoney: Great question. For me the end all be all is legalities. We always go by the letter of the law and have an amazing record of compliance with every affiliate network we have ever worked with.

As far as ethics go its hard to have ethics in marketing. I mean in general a lot of marketing is psychology of getting people to do what they would not do naturally. To some people marketing in general is not ethical. Having a great story… or whatever. You should read Seth Godin’s All Marketers are Liars book if you haven’t. Its a great book on telling stories.

Christine asks:

How bad will this economy get before it recovers, and when will it recover?

ShoeMoney: I think the left wing media will talk about the doom and gloom of the economy until Obama is in office then everything will magically turn around as every story on digg and the evening news is how the messiah has saved the economy. Perception is everything.

Sandra G asks:

Hi Jeremy, I am starting a new site where people can review products in my niche, how do I go about seeding the site before I start to publicize it, should I hire people from Craigslist to pay for reviews or do I throw it up there and see if people get excited about it? Thanks a lot!

ShoeMoney: Just start writing reviews now and give people the option to send you their products. Thats how free shirt friday started. I just started writing about shirts I got at conferences then companies started sending them.

Dan asks:

When is the ShoeMoney Playbook going to be released? or an update on its status?

ShoeMoney: I dunno. Its not that far from being completed but yet so far =(

Larry Weaver asks:

Jeremy, I’m having trouble attracting quality affiliates for my site FunnyEmployeeAwards.com. I’ve got a fun site, a quality product, and great client reviews. And with holiday office parties just around the corner, the timing couldn’t be better. But I just can’t get affiliates excited about the prospect. I don’t think people see the potential. What advice can you give about reaching good affiliates and getting them fired up about my product? Thanks!

ShoeMoney: For affiliates its pretty simple… they either make money or they don’t. If I were you I would blow it out of the water by offering a MUCH higher payout. I think its as important for you to get brand recognition as it is to get sales $$$ at this time.

Here is the scoop when it comes to affiliates. They are SO adverse to change but once they try it they will probably keep going. So your goal is just getting them to try it. Maybe offer a 100% payout for their first month? Sure you break even for their first month but the brand recognition and buzz might be worth it.

Esteban Panzera asks:

What do you think will replace affiliate marketing in some years from now?

ShoeMoney: I don’t think affiliate marketing will ever be replaced. It was around way before the internet… I think it will just evolve.

Josh asks:

What plugin did you use for your newsletter pop-up and what kind of boost have you seen to your subscription?

ShoeMoney: I am actually using a hybrid but will probably completely rewrite my own like most plugins ;).

Brad Ney - The Blog Manual asks:

When advertising:

Should you start out small and target cheaper (advertising prices) blogs for advertising..

Or go big from the start and then branch out to smaller blogs.

Thanks Shoe.

ShoeMoney: I think i depends on what you are going for. Lots of companies advertise on shoemoney.com for brand recognition as well as ROI. So I guess you have to ask yourself what are you going for more?

Sid Savara asks:

I want social media traffic. I have quality content that never gets voted up. It looks like building a social media profile takes a long, concerted effort - and I am more interested in content generation than profile generation, but still want some help getting publicity for my content.

Part 1: Where can I hire good, cheap help on social media sites?

Part 2: Do you have any experience/success with kicking off viral campaigns via ad networks, sponsored stumbles, etc?

ShoeMoney: I once did an experiment and got on the front page of digg 4 days in a row. The traffic was pretty worthless though. I just ask friends to digg my article. Thats really the only experience I have with it.

Dave asks:

How can I promote http://lookgreatonline.net/ ?
adwords doesn’t really work. ppc are to high

ShoeMoney: I will be honest I am not real big on the idea but if you really believe in it then I would try to advertise on social networks like myspace and facebook. Its the goldrush right now for PPC. I would also buy some super cheap 3-4th tier search engine traffic and probably even some exit/popunder/interstitials

Collin - Feed Flare asks:

Jeremy
I started into PPC a few days ago and am looking to build my very first landing page for the campaign I am running. Would recommend using Wordpress to build a landing page from and if so, what would be your best tip to help in conversations.

ShoeMoney: I would use anything that will allow you to easily do tons of split testing for conversion. That is the secret sauce.

Reid asks:

When people see you in Lincoln do they realize that your kind of a big deal, or how often do people ask what the heck is shoemoney?

ShoeMoney: Nobody knows me in Lincoln I try to keep a low profile locally.

Lupe asks:

Will you be giving out candy on halloween?

ShoeMoney: My wife will be. I will be trick-or-treating with my daughter.

Zurpit asks:

Its great to see that you will start reviewing sites…. My question is: When you first started out, what did you do to promote your site?

ShoeMoney: I made good services people want to use and made it easy for them to share with their friends.

Önder asks:

i want to create a blog network. now i find 3 niche idea and with them at the beginning the network will start with 3 blogs. i want to ask you will wordpress is suitable for this or can you give an advice. if i do well i will add some new blogs to it. and i want to learn how can you concentrate yourself to write several post everyday? thanks a lot.

ShoeMoney: Wordpress would be suitable but to learn how to be a expert in several different niches… dunno.

teamray asks:

what was your major in college?

ShoeMoney: I never really went that much to pick a major.

Mike Huang asks:

Why are you using that pop-up method that John Chow is using to gain a subscriber for a free eBook?

ShoeMoney: Problogger made a post about how it increased his subscribers by an astonishing amount. I can’t speak for John but I am seeing pretty amazing results so far.

Juegos de Dragon Ball Z asks:

Do non-tech people believe that you make that amount of money from the internet? Have you ever lied about your work just becouse you didn’t want to explain it?

ShoeMoney: Well the weird thing is when I goto parties for my wifes work and meet some of their husbands who “make money online”.

copyright asks:

Can you please recommend a copyright/trademark place to c/t website.

Also how much is it going to cost and is it worth it to do it? thanks!

ShoeMoney: yea search this site wrote about it before.

lurksteraz asks:

Do you still talk to Shawn Hogan? if so, did he ever finish his house?

ShoeMoney: I have not talked to him that much in the last couple years he has fallen in love and goes awol =P

joe asks:

Do you have any advice on how to recruit the best people to work with you?

ShoeMoney: Sure search for how we hire

Greg asks:

What do you think about the lightbox so far?

ShoeMoney: the javascript library? I think its cool. Been using it for a couple years now on various sites.

mrkbsm asks:

As you’ve been getting bigger in the field of making money online, do you find yourself starting many new affiliate marketing related sites or have you been focusing much of your time lately on your current large projects (such as fighters.com)?

ShoeMoney: I think one of the bigger mistakes I have done since the sale of Auction Ads was think I was a good CEO and should start all kinds of companies. More on this in a future post.

Zak Show asks:

Hmm, let’s say: Did you still making big cash from adsense? By the way I submitted my blog for a review, will see how it goes.

Thanks J.

ShoeMoney: After a couple months of 6 figure checks we started figuring out on how much money we were losing out on and have not used AdSense since for most bigger sites.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Answers To Questions Round 16

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-10-26T23:19:00.001-07:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

New Sumo Omni Plus Bag

Posted: 26 Oct 2008 09:43 PM CDT

2 years ago I wrote about a Sumo Bag I got online and how much I liked it. Well a month ago in the mail I got a new Omni Plus from them.

The new Omni Plus is totally awesome. My daughter Juliet is now 2 1/2 years old and she loves running fullspeed and jumping on it (and also demanding I do the same).

Here is a picture from their site:

Its also good for just lounging around and reading your kids books too. Great product!

Check out sumolounge.com and pick one up!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

New Sumo Omni Plus Bag

Ask Questions Round 16

Posted: 26 Oct 2008 12:40 PM CDT

Its been a couple weeks since we have taken questions so fire away!

Also I have been toying the the idea of doing site reviews. People ping me a lot for advice on how to make money or increase there revenues on their site and a lot of times I wish I could post it here because I think the advice is great content and a lot of people could benefit from it (or disagree with me which is great too).

So if you want you can submit your website from this form. We will see how it goes. Might make it a regular thing.

Comments closed pending answers

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Ask Questions Round 16

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-10-25T23:12:00.001-07:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

How To Carve A Pumpkin

Posted: 25 Oct 2008 11:45 PM CDT

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

How To Carve A Pumpkin

ufc90 Anderson Silva VS Patrick Cote

Posted: 25 Oct 2008 05:45 PM CDT

Back to back UFC events! For a true MMA fans this is a pretty stacked card and for newbs to the sport the main even with Anderson Silva should get your attention ;).

Unlike last weekend I think a lot of these fights will go the distance (minus the main card). There are tons of world class wrestlers on tonights card

Rich Clementi VS. Gray Manard - Love this match up. Up in comer and Xtreme Couture trained Gray Manard vs is going to give UFC veteran Rich Clementi all he can handle in this fight. I look for Gray to take this fight to the ground and ground and pound as much as possible but Clementi is pretty dangerous off his back. I look for Manard to take this fight by decision.

Tyson Griffin VS. Sean Sherk - Another great matchup of Xtreme Couture trained younger fighter vs the Muscle Shark Sean Sherk. 2 Great wrestlers… This fight is an absolute must win for Sean Sherk and I look for him to control this fight and win by decision.

Junior Dos Santos Vs. Fabricio Werdum - Junior Dos Santos has never been heard of before to most fans but this guy is a total badass. This is my underdog pick of the night. Right now he is a giant 5:1 underdog. I think this guy will shock the world and knockout Werdum 2nd round.

Thiago Alves Vs. Josh Koscheck - I am totally partial here because I am friends with Josh Koscheck and have partied with him before. He is a really cool guy and I will be rooting for him. Its going to be a massive challenge against Thiago Alves who is coming off of a huge upset win over Matt Hughes. I will go with Koscheck by decision.

Anderson Silva Vs Patrick Cote - I have only seen Anderson Silva have problems twice in his career. Once against BJJ Blackbelt Travis Lutter and against Dan Henderson. Both excellent ground fighters. Cote will stand with Anderson Silva and while he has a punchers chance… its not much of one. I am going with Anderson SIlva by TKO (right hand) 2:22 of round 1.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

ufc90 Anderson Silva VS Patrick Cote

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-10-24T23:27:00.001-07:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

A Country With No Leader

Posted: 24 Oct 2008 03:42 PM CDT

I cant believe we are less then 10 days away from the election.

I have always been a political junkie. I love the way politics works. Its a long the same lines of how religeon facinates me. Such a study of psychology and how to get people to do what you want them to do (believe your beliefs, give you money, vote for you, etc etc).

For the first time in my life I am pretty disgusted with our voting population. Not for the way they are voting but rather for what they are putting up with from their elected leaders. No matter what source you look at congress has the lowest approval rating in history. But what are we going to do about it? Do you even know who your congressman is? Do you know how they voted on this recent bailout? Do you know even who is on your ballot in 9 days?

You probably do not and that pisses me off.

When times are tough is when we need to step up and do what it takes to get back on the right path. You work hard for your money and your elected leaders are wasting it and laughing in your face.

I feel like we are a country with no leader. W on the way out and who knows who is coming in. I am actually still undecided.

There are many things I like about both canidates and negative things. I honestly think about this every day and go back and fourth.

So I would like to here from you who you are voting for for president and why?

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

A Country With No Leader

Ride-Strong.com - Free Shirt Friday

Posted: 24 Oct 2008 09:21 AM CDT

Ride-Strong.com is a cycling blog that is run by Tyler Ford, which he started in 2007. This blog is really cool, and he has great content related to cycling.

Just a warning there is a really sic picture of a guy with a branch stuck through his leg from a biking accident on the front page. Might be a little too early in the morning to see something like that.

So if you cycle or want to cycle or just want to read about cycling, check out Ride-Strong.com

Thanks for the shirt!

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Ride-Strong.com - Free Shirt Friday

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

2008-10-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Twitter - My Thoughts After 4 Months Of Use

Posted: 23 Oct 2008 01:58 PM CDT

For a long time I did not understand twitter. I thought it was pretty stupid. Then an opportunity came. The person who had the shoemoney account sent me a email and asked if I wanted it. I said I did and they just released the account to me. Pretty cool of them. I still did not do much with it until one day Michael Gray sat me down at SMX West last spring and showed me how he was using it (I had to sign a NDA or I would tell). I was pretty fascinated with it So last May I gave it a serious look.

The first couple months I used twitter it was down more then it was up. But I still had fun learning and now its pretty rock solid.

Starting To See The Light:

For the first month I was using the website only. I started to find other people I ~~partied with~~ met at conferences and followed them. Most of the people I hang out with at conferences I only talk to them during that time. The value of twitter was starting to become a little bit more clear to me. The best way I can do it is to compare it with other ways of communicating with people:

Traditional ways to keep in touch:

Email - I honestly hate email. Between not getting email because of spam filters and people that fricking write a book it drives me nuts. I just do not have time to go back and fourth with emails 99% of the time even with friends. Just takes to much time and if the email is longer then a paragraph its probably lost me anyway. Twitter only allows 140 characters in a tweet. Its very easy for me to respond to pretty much 100% of the people who ask me a question and takes little time out of my day to do so. Also a lot of times with my answers to people it has a nice side effect of answering perhaps what other people were interested in also. Double win.

Instant Messenger - Being most of our team works remote throughout the country we use Instant Messanger services as our key communication tool. I would say 90% of our communication even inter-office is done with Instant Messanger. I never accept anyone to my Instant Messanger unless there is a very good business need. Twitter is much less informal but still has that feel of an instant messenger client… only it does not bug you when you get a message if you are busy.

Ok so that’s what I realized after the first month. The just of the service IMO is that its a great way to contact people that is much more intimate and to the point then an email yet not nearly as invasive as a instant message.

Great way to find local people:

Being centrally located in what is not exactly a tech hub its been very hard to find developers. We have advertised in the local college papers, traditional papers, craigslist and other means but there has just not been one good source to find the people we are looking for…. until I started using twitter.

Twitter has been a great way to find people that fit well with us. For one if they use twitter they already get some social media stuff but lets go beyond that… Lets say I am looking for a developer who lives around me. I can simply search twitter like this.

Its also good to find local recommendations for restraunts, happy hour specials, and other local events.

Quality of traffic from twitter:

The quality of traffic from twitter is pretty awesome for a blogger. Check out these numbers for the last 2 months to shoemoney.com sorted by highest refer’s of traffic. (click on image to enlarge)

Lets break down these numbers a bit from twitter in the last 60 days I recieved almost 17,000 visitors. Of those 17,000 visitors over 40% had never been to shoemoney.com before. Once they were here though they viewed an average of 2.25 pages per visit and stayed on the site for an average of 2 minutes and 18 seconds. They had a 65% bounce rate.

Now if you compare that with Google traffic that was 95% for the search term “Shoemoney” (and should be the highest quality) that brought in double the amount of traffic but had less pages/vist, less time spent on page and higher bounce rate.

I now consider the #2 most important source of traffic in terms of value behind only stumbleupon which always delivers an amazing about of new visotors with the lowest bounce rates.

How do I get the traffic in the first place? Well I twitter everytime I have a post… so once a day. But the cool thing is other people retweet my posts probably 10x for each one I tweet… kind of a domino effect.

I know I hear the excusers saying it can’t happen to them cause they are not me but guess what its all relative.

The badass twitter reach:

Couple months ago we were really stuck in a rut. We were working on a new application and felt that a service amazon was offering called SImpleDB would make a massive impact on its performance. While simpleDB was open for anyone to appy for they only had about 200 people they let use it. I really wanted to try it out and so I twitted asking if anyone knew anyone at amazon that could get us into the SimpleDB program. Within 1 hour I had 2 different AWS people contact me asking what the application was and what SimpleDB was going to be used for. I replied and moments later got the email saying it was now added to our account.

There has been a ton of other times I have asked for tips, contacts, or whatever about a subject and got help within seconds. Twitter is an amazingly powerful tool.

So to those that don’t get twitter hopefully this makes a little sense. You dont have to have a blog or anything you just need to start connecting with friends. Through friends of friends you will develop an amazing reach.

For those already using twitter whats your tips?

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Twitter - My Thoughts After 4 Months Of Use

IMBroadcast - Internet Marketer Media

Posted: 23 Oct 2008 09:00 AM CDT

IMBroadcast launched today and looks good so far. It could be the media center for the industry in the same way that sphinn has become the social media center for Internet Marketers.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

IMBroadcast - Internet Marketer Media