Shoemoney System Review & Overview

Sunday 21st March 2010

I haven’t done anything much today in regards to my Shoemoney System sites, however I did send my very first question in for the next webinar, so it will be interesting to see if Jeremy answers it.

About the only other thing I’ve done is update my earnings from the Shoemoney System on the sidebar. Now I’ve had one or two people ask me why I’ve set my goal at $10,000 and not a higher, or lower, target. The answer is that I didn’t really care what I set as a target, as long as it was bringing in some money (and paying for itself). It had to be set at something though so I just put down $10k. If I get near that mark I’ll just scale it up a bit to a brand new target.

Apart from all of that, what’s mainly occupying all of my time is this new micro-site that I’ve been setting up. It’s not part of the Shoemoney System, so I can’t include any future earnings it may have in the stats for this blog, but it’s something I want to do nonetheless.

So, until next time….

Saturday 20th March 2010

Man, what a day! Basically I’ve spent several hours troubleshooting my main money-earning sites because of (what turned out to be) a problem with one of my plugins. It took me quite a time to pin down the actual problem but, once I’d determined exactly what was wrong, it was an easy enough fix.

Essentially what was happening was that the pages weren’t rendering properly at all. None of my actual content was showing up — let alone any advertisements or affiliate products. Needless to say it will be a lean day or two, sales wise.

Not that I’m particularly concerned about the money aspect of it. I was more worried that none of my visitors could access my content. As I said though, now it’s all fixed up. First I disabled the plugin in question, then I isolated what the problem was and deleted the offending files (which happened to be the files required for geotargeting as it stands). Once everything was up and running again, sans geotargeting, I went about fixing up the code so that I could get everything back to normal again. It took a while but it’s all done now.

But doing a lot of coding hurts my brain, so I’m going to take it easy for a few hours.

Until next time….

Friday 19th March 2010

I’m starting to get mail now from readers who are wondering what I’ve been up to and why I haven’t written on here for over a week (sorry Ralph). I also apologize to anyone else out there reading this blog.

I have actually been writing, but I just haven’t got around to posting it on here until now. It’s all been on “hard copy” (well, most of it anyway. The stuff I have typed up I haven’t got around to posting yet because some of the posts previous to them haven’t been finished).

Anyhow, on to today’s video, which is all about how to promote affiliate offers on Facebook. Once again Jeremy is flying solo for this one. He begins by logging into Clickbank to find a product to promote. After he’s found one (I won’t say what it is) and created a hoplink with a specialized tracking ID, Jeremy goes to his Facebook account to start setting up his ad copy.

As he will be setting up more than few different ads (each with their own ID so that they can be tracked for performance) it takes a little while to go through the process — especially when picking the many images to try out with the ads. Jeremy then goes through the keywords, target audience etc. and, finally, chooses a CPC campaign to start with. All in all Jeremy finishes up with around 30-40 ads, all saying the same thing but with different images.

But guess what? All of his ads get rejected! Now I find this quite refreshing because I would think that quite a few internet marketers out there — especially those who are pushing a “make Money Online” type system would NOT, under any circumstance, show you that they failed in any way. Thankfully Jeremy doesn’t work like that — which is one of the reasons why I bought into this course. If something is not working, he’ll tell you about it (for the most part anyway).

The reason that the ads were disapproved, however, was the fact that Jeremy had said one or two things in his ad copy that (currently) are not allowed. Jeremy then made some changes and re-submitted the ads — but that was the end of the video….

I guess I’ll have to wait for the next video to see how it all panned out. Until next time…

Thursday 18th March 2010

Once again my plans have been temporarily put on hold as I throw myself into a HUGE information site that I’ve been avoiding doing the past year. But the inspiration has finally bit and so I’ve been striking while the iron is hot.

Not that the site is huge in the true sense — about 250 to 280 pages of very unique content. The trouble is that it’s so unique and specialized that I basically have to write all 250+ pages myself. There’s simply very few people out there who can do it for me.

The last time I did a similar site — size and content wise — was around a year ago and it essentially burned me out! Not only that, a week after I launched it someone else had launched their own site on the same topic, which effectively halved my traffic — and this after a decade or so of basically NOTHING on the subject!

However, having said that, the site is bringing in over $150 consistently each month. Not too shabby for a micro-niche site.

This new one I’m doing is essentially in the same boat — absolutely no other websites on the subject at all. There’s the odd page here and there, but no authoritative website dedicated entirely on the subject. What’s encouraging about it though is that there are a lot more products than the site I did last year. Plus there are a lot of search engine queries for it (well, a lot for a micro-niche anyway). When I launch the site later this year I fully expect it to be bringing in around $300 or so every month. And I won’t really have to worry about Google’s “sandbox effect” because there’s no other sites out there dealing with the same content. Brilliant!

Actually, I should add that I’ve already pulled it out of “non-Google stasis” so that it can start getting indexed as I add the content to it. Previously it’s been blocking all search engines while I’ve been working on the site templates. By the time of it’s “official launch” it will already have many pages indexed and bringing in the crowd. I figure the launch will be in about 3 or 4 weeks — depending on how quickly I become burned out again.

Needless to say my other web projects will suffer a bit. My updates etc. won’t be as frequent. I’ll try to continue to post updates here whenever possible though. Even if it’s just a few sentences!

So, until next time!

Wednesday 17th March, 2010

OK, I’ve been awake and busily working away for the past 32 or 33 hours straight and now I’m in need of some major sleepage! Needles to say I’m not going to be writing much on here tonight — either about the Shoemoney System or anything else!

I will say, though, that I have been extremely busy doing a lot of website stuff. Not so much affiliate stuff — more like actual website creation! I might write more about it tomorrow but, for now, I’m off to bed!

Goodnight!!

Tuesday 16th March, 2010

Or rather, how to get your Facebook ads approved, as it were. Shoemoney flies solo for this video, and goes through the processes you need to know to get your ads approved by Facebook.

Much, if not all, of these requirements are set out in the Facebook Advertiser Guidelines, so you might want to go over there and check them out sometime (that’s if you want yo advertise on Facebook, of course). In point form, as they appear on the video, they are:

• 1. All Facebook advertising must comply with the existing privacy policy.

• 2. The guidelines are subject to change.

• 3. You need permission for multiple Facebook advertising accounts.

• 4. You need permission to automate the creation of accounts.

• 5. Links to the body of your ad must link to the same URL or domain.

• 6. Ads must send users to the same landing page when the ad is clicked.

• 7. No pop-ups when leaving or entering the landing page.

• 8. Landing pages can not trap users within their landing page.

• 9. No mouse trapping on your landing page.

• 10. Don’t be evil.

• 11. Ads can not require users to submit personal information.

• 12. Unless it is to enable a clear ecommerce transaction.

When it comes to your own site “referencing” Facebook, you must:

• 1. Ads may make limited references to Facebook.

• 2. Ads cannot mention Facebook whatsoever in the title, body or URLs.

• 3. Facebook site features can not be emulated.

For “Ad Copy & Image Content”, the main points are:

• 1. All ads must be related to the landing page content.

• 2. Ads must clearly represent what is being advertised.

• 3. Ads can not insult, harass or threaten a user.

• 4. Ads cannot play audio without the user’s interaction.

Next is “Prohibited Content. Once again the main points are:

• 1. Ads cannot be false, misleading, fraudulent or deceptive.

• 2. Ads cannot contain any of the following…

a). Offensive language or content, tobacco products, ammunition and weapons.
b). No gambling without authorization, scams or contests.
c). No get rich quick or money making schemes.
d). No adult or sexually suggestive content.
e). No adult dating sites, toys, videos or products.
f). No uncertified pharmaceutical products, spycams, or non-accredited colleges.
g). No inflammatory religious content, and no political/religious agendas.
h). No content that exploits political agendas, or misuse of hot button issues.
i). No hate speech of any kind.
j). No content that advocates against an organization, person or group.
k). No content that misrepresents a health condition in any way.

And, on the subject of “Data and Privacy”, the main points are:

• 1: You may not give data received from Facebook to advertising networks.

• 2. Your ads may not display user data.

• 3. You cannot use user data received from Facebook without user consent.

• 4. Any targeting of ads based on user attributes must be relevant to the offer.

There were other points made, such as “Subscription Services must be disclosed” and various “Regulations for ads with alcoholic beverages, copyrights and trademarks”. Jeremy stated several times throughout the video that pretty much EVERYTHING was subject to change at ANY time, with can make it quite frustrating for the advertisers involved. He did add that, although it can be a challenging thing, that it was well worth the time and effort involved.

So, on that note, I’ll leave it here for now. Till tomorrow!

Monday 15th March, 2010

Good God there are a lot of them! I’ve been subscribed to a few shows for a while now, such as SEO Rockstars, SEO 101, Affiliate Thing, Affiliate Marketing Insider, Press This and of course The Shoemoney Show. Some of the podcasts are no longer going, or have been incorporated into other shows, but there were quite a few in my iTunes that I hadn’t had the chance to listen to until now.

Some of them are old — too old to be of much use nowadays. Still, it’s been good to listen and reminisce. Because I’ve been listening to them it means that I haven’t been listening to much music at all (not so good) or watching a lot of TV (good). It’s not too bad though because I’m basically up to date with all the podcasts now. There’s only a few that I haven’t listened to at this stage.

Now I know that probably what I should’ve been doing is load them up in my iPod and listen to them in the car — the only thing with that though is that I haven’t been driving around much of late, so that wouldn’t have worked out too well at all.

So have I learnt anything by listening to these podcasts? You betcha! While a lot of the older SEO stuff (in particular) just doesn’t work any more, a lot of the other stuff still does. I’ve been alerted to new sites, services and market opportunities. I’ve found out about new WordPress plugins (my CMS of choice for the past 5 years or so), and discovered old ones that I never even knew about. All in all it’s been pretty good.

Now all I need to do is post here more regularly, day in, day out — rather than save up a few posts that have been hastily scribbled on scraps of paper or, worse still, paper napkins, and re-type them up a batch at a time! Still, I do what I can…

Until tomorrow….

Saturday 13th March, 2010

In this video, Jeremy introduces us to Kara. Now I have to ask at this point, what is with all these girls? Why not have another guy in the videos every now and then? Then again, I can only assume that Jeremy has probably done his homework and discovered that his target demographic is primarily red-blooded alpha males who want to look at nice chicks while he’s explaining the “how-to’s” on a particular subject — and don’t get me wrong, they are nice women to look at… if somewhat a little distracting. Makes me wonder how his wife feels about it all though?

Anyway, I digress…. (FOCUS, FOCUS. Get back on target)

Today’s video concentrates on how to advertise your Facebook Fan Page. Kara is not new to social media and has used Facebook for a while now. She also works at nights as a bartender for a local club, which just happens to have its very own Facebook Fan Page.

Jeremy talks about how Facebook came up with their advertising method, leveraging both images and text to target a specific user rather than using just a simple “catch-all” effect. Now I have to say that I’ve never really noticed the ads on Facebook much (I have mentioned this fact in previous blog posts), so I didn’t realize that they were supposed to zero in on your specific interests. Now that I think about it I’m not sure I’ve set up my Facebook profile properly anyway, so the ads that are shown to me might not be that targeted?

I also didn’t realize that there was a “More Ads” link down the bottom of the page so I’ll check that out soon and see what ads are targeting me. It could be interesting because most of the stuff I say on Facebook, which granted isn’t much, is fairly trivial…

Kara then asked Jeremy about the big ads when she logs on to her page (man, I don’t recall ANY of this stuff? I think I must have a severe case of ad blindness!), however when it came to actually showing a sample page it did come flooding back to me — though I wouldn’t say the ads were big at all. Besides, I thought most of them were just more of those useless applications….

Jeremy goes on to talk more about CPM and CPC (which was covered somewhat in an earlier video) and the differences between the two. He also talks about how to set up a targeted ad campaign for Kara’s club/lounge — plus how to check the statistics to see what is, and isn’t working once it all goes live. Apparently the reporting is very good with Facebook and, as Shoe says, the numbers never lie!

Jeremy finishes up by adding a number of different images for the ad, to see which one of them gets the most clicks. Once that’s determined (I guess in the next video) the most popular image, signup/click wise, will be the final one used for the extended ad campaign.

Anyway, that’s basically it for today’s video. Until next time….

Thursday 11th March, 2010

For this week’s webinar Jeremy is on his own (I guess Jeanne is still not feeling well?). He opened up by making a few announcements, most notably the fact that the Shoemoney System now has a different ticketing/support process in that everything will now be handled “in house” (I think?) rather than with a 3rd party. Hopefully the responses will be a lot quicker for those members who require it.

Jeremy also said that he would be getting in industry pro, Frank Kern, for a future webinar/chat session which might be interesting? Frank has done some very cool things online over the years, and is a master at creating mailing lists which work really well for you.

So, on with todays questions… The first one was about how to place Clickbank links (and other links for that matter) on your blog or website. A fair enough question if you’re new to the internet and just starting out with marketing online. Jeremy answered by saying that he will get a video together on basic HTML to address this.

The second question was in relation to the best place to market your own products using PPC on the social media networks (Facebook, Twitter etc.), to which Jeremy answered that the Facebook stuff was happening in month two (basically now if you’ve been reading the blog) and your own product creation in month three. he said that we’ll also be looking extensively into membership sites training — using one of his own websites as the “training ground”.

Someone then asked Jeremy about how and when he met Paris Hilton (ho hum). As I don’t really give a rat’s ass about her I’m not going to relay what he said here on this blog.

Next there was a question on Jeremy’s upcoming appearance at the Underground Conference and whether or not it was going to be taped for the Shoemoney System members to see. Jeremy answered with a resounding “No”, as it was not up to him to do so. However, he did say that he could record his own presentation in an upcoming chat room/webinar session, where members will be able to submit their own questions. Jeremy also said that his talk focused on branding and how best to leverage your brand name, as well as talking about social media. He also had a few interesting things to say about Twitter which I’m not at liberty to talk about on here. Sorry about that, but this is a review — not an exposé.

The next question was back to the Facebook ads and how to implement them (301 redirects, landing pages etc.) As these things are now being covered in the current videos I’ll not get into what Jeremy had to say about it. Actually this question was a series of separate and in-depth questions so I’m not even sure if I’ll write on this blog just how to go about doing these sorts of things anyway. I’ll have to digest it, mull it over and see.

There were questions about using images and HTML, issues involving Nigerian scammers on eBay (talk about dumb luck!), and even “How do you make your head look so good? WTF???

Jeremy finished by saying that the System might feature stuff that the members are doing (not this little black duck, thank you! I value my limited anonymity). He said they might even go out there and interview or talk to some of the members about what they’ve been up to? Again thanks, but no thanks.

That’s about it for today’s video. Until tomorrow, seeya!

Wednesday 10th March, 2010

While the last video was all about creating a Facebook Fan Page, this video concentrates on optimizing your Fan Page so that you can get the most amount of fans possible.

Jeremy begins by saying that one of his methods of optimization includes the use of HTML. Now, while a number of beginners out there might be a little wary of using HTML simply because they don’t understand it or know how to use it, Jeremy explains that all the code needed will be shown in the video, as well as in writing just underneath the video, so it’s just a matter of simply copying and pasting the code, which can then be edited to your requirements.

Jeanne is not actually in this video as she was apparently ill on the day, however, Jeremy takes us through the process of optimizing Jeanne’s account on her behalf.

Jeremy navigates his way to a link down the bottom of the edit page which says “Static FBML”. Now FBML apparently stands for FaceBook Markup Language, which is similar to HTML (HyperText Markup Language) Yeah, whatever, Facebook!

Anyhow, Jeremy goes through the process of creating a new page, adding the optimized code (which is basically just been copied from one of his own Fan Pages, initially), editing the code for that particular page so that it suits Jeanne’s business, and a few other things (including a nice little tip or two). This is basically where the video ends, with the completion of Jeanne’s new Facebook Fan Page.

Jeremy suggests that you play around with the code a bit until you get something which suits your needs. Even if you are a complete HTML — Sorry, FBML — beginner you should try to get to understand what the code is doing and how changing a few simple things can dramatically change the layout. Plus it’s something that you WILL be using in the future as it’s very helpful and effective to know at least a little bit of coding in your online marketing endeavours.

I remember how difficult is was to learn HTML when I first started making websites over a decade ago — cause basically the whole internet thing was so new to me back then anyway. Still, I was able to pick up a few things here and there just by using Dreamweaver (actually I think the first software program I used was Claris Home Page? Anyone remember that?)

After a while I stopped using all the WYSIWYG programs and just started coding, or modifying code by hand, using a text editor. Since then I’ve learned a little Perl (a beautiful language), PHP (not a beautiful language at all), JavaScript and a few other things along the way.

So learning code is a GOOD thing, and it will only make your online marketing better!

Until tomorrow!