Shoemoney System Review & Overview

Saturday 27th February, 2010

I think I first read about this last month or so, but it seems imminent now. Jeremy is about to open up the Shoemoney System so that more users can join up. Personally I think it’s a bit too soon, and I wasn’t sure he was going to do that for a while (something about the “500 spots only” kinda made me think there were only 500 spots, but I guess that’s marketing for you. Or, more precisely, a Call To Action campaign!)

Anyhow, I understand that Jeremy was going to open it up when he was sure that the system could handle it. I just wasn’t expecting it just yet, that’s all.

So if you like what you’ve read on the Shoemoney System in this blog then sign up for it when it becomes available again. If you don’t like what you’ve read then don’t bother. I know that some people might be put off by the cost, but if you start to make some good money then it’s not much cash to fork out at all in the long run. Only you are going to know what your budget is and what you can afford.

I know I’d be making a lot more money if I took more time to work on my newer sites (that I’ve been setting up purely to do this course). As it is at the moment though, I’m not worried.

Until tomorrow…

Friday 26th February, 2010

This is the first interview with a marketing expert, and I have to say I was pretty impressed with it. The eBay entrepreneur in question is Alex Barbara who, along with his wife, started a dropshipping business using eBay back in 2005 (the same year I made my first dollar online I should add). Alex used to be in the navy and was living in England at the time. He decided that he didn’t want to work a 9 to 5 ever again and so he and his wife needed to come up with a plan. eBay was their answer.

Alex’s wife found some products in England that were selling for up to five times the original cost than they were in the U.S. The couple started to build relationships with the manufacturers and it just kinda grew from there over the next four months into an actual dropshipping business with sellers on eBay. It also helped that Alex’s wife was a salesperson as well (real estate etc.).

Since then they’ve managed to set up around half a dozen eBay stores and half a dozen “off-ebay” stores (by this I assume he means their own websites). Because they’re dropshipping they don’t actually carry any inventory at all — therefore no products just sitting around waiting to be sold.

So basically Alex and his wife are selling the products using little or no capital investment whatsoever. Once they’ve sold an item, they then purchase it from the manufacturer and deliver it straight to the client’s doorstep! Genius!

As they started off with their first manufacturer on an item that was just starting to come on to the market they have now become the sole distributor for that item on eBay. They have exclusivity. No other seller can sell the same items on eBay. Now Alex didn’t mention exactly what that item was, but it’s interesting to know that relationships like this can be achieved.

Alex says that the opportunities are endless, but that you should definitely know your product and become an expert in the field. That way people will regard you as being authoritative and that helps to build trust amongst both buyers and manufacturers. Alex also mentions a few more things that I won’t repeat here. I will say that the interview was very informative and got me thinking about what I can do in my own area to create income using the same, or similar, methods.

Till next time…

Thursday 25th February, 2010

Here are the reviews for the next set of videos in the “Fundamentals” section of “Getting Started”:

What Is Call To Action?

I think I can safely say, for the most part anyway, that I’m probably useless at “Call To Action”. Even on my money making micro-niche sites I never do the hard sell. I just let my (freakin’ excellent) content do all the talking for me and offer a few affiliate options to further “enhance” the content. I suppose in some ways that IS a Call To Action? I just don’t hit people over the head with it, that’s all.

UPDATE: Actually, now that I’ve seen the entire minute long video, what I do is not Call To Action at all… To be considered “Call To Action” requires red arrows and attention-grabbing terms like “Click Here Now” or “Only 3 Places Left” and the like. I can’t say I have ANY websites, thus far, that require things like that. maybe soon though?

What Is A Squeeze Page?

A squeeze page is a page that is set up on your domain for the specific purpose of gathering information from your users that you can then use to market to them sometime in the future. Something like a page where people give you their name and email address so that they can sign up to your newsletter or something. Likewise, until now, I’ve had no reason to have one on any of my micro-niche sites, though I have filled out or used a TON of them on other people’s sites over the years!

Until now I always thought a squeeze page was one of those long-ass “Buy My Product Now”, one page sites with those made up testimonials and equally made up “Proof of my income” images etc? Shows you how confused I’ve been all these years!

What Is List Building?

I HATE list building, but I guess I’m gonna have to just get over it for this system. I think one of the reasons I dislike mailing lists (though I’ve subscribed to a few) is because I get tons of spam emails and I just don’t want to burden others with the same fate. Plus I would also have to come up with new stuff to email out on a regular basis. Actually, THAT’S the REAL REASON why I don’t want to get into mailing lists per se’ — I just don’t do the “regular” thing well! I am not a regular type person. Each day is different. I don’t wake up at a regular time, I don’t go to sleep at a regular time, hell, I don’t even eat at a regular time (and sometimes I’ll forget to eat altogether!). So the idea of putting out a regular newsletter just, well, scares me! Maybe this is something I can outsource?

I WILL build a list while I progress through the Shoemoney System. I’m just not looking forward to it, that’s all.

What Is CAN-SPAM?

I’ve heard the term, but that’s about it! As it’s about sending out emails (I would assume via a mailing list setup), it’s understandable that I don’t know too much about it.

Apparently there are three main parts. The first deals with unsubscribing, in which you must 1: Set up a visible “unsubscribe” link. 2: You must honor that request within 10 days of receiving it. 3: You must maintain an “opt out” or “suppression” list.

The second part is to do with content compliance. You have to have accurate subject lines and “from” names/addresses in your emails. It has to be seen to be from a marketing company (apparently).

The third part is that you cannot send emails through an open relay. It has to be from a specific service or service provider, or your own email address. You cannot use false headers (I hate the emails that are sent to me, apparently FROM me! I can’t even block those ones!)

It’s interesting, however, that emails of a religious, political matter or Homeland Security matter are exempt from the CAN-SPAM act (I guess it’s an “act”, isn’t it?). It only applies to marketers. I see that Jeremy is amused by this fact as well. It’s also interesting to note that it’s basically ineffective at stopping spam, but it’s something that we (apparently) need to adhere to.

With all this in mind I probably get very few emails that would legitimately pass through the CAN-SPAM criteria. Very few indeed!

I guess if you want to know more about CAN-SPAM then it’s easy enough to Google it?

What Are Cookies?

Cookies are what you have with milk. Just kidding. Cookies are a way to track what you’re doing on the internet. Probably 95% of all websites have cookies that they throw at you. When you login to your Yahoo mail with your browser you’re probably using a cookie to remember your password. Same thing with forums, chat rooms, Twitter, Facebook etc. Cookies are EVERYWHERE!!!

I once saw a TV drama series in the 90′s about a software company that was focused on creating a cookie, week in, week out (amongst other things). I never did find out if they ever got around to finishing it, but I remember they kept on saying how “top secret” it was. It was a silly show and the series only lasted a short time.

What Is Conversion?

Conversion is all about the money! If people don’t convert, then you don’t get any money. Simple as that! So it’s your “job” as an internet marketer to get people to convert on your site — whether it’s to watch a video, sign up to your newsletter, or buy a product. It’s all about conversion.

What Is A Landing Page?

A landing page is a page on your website that is set up to help “convert” your potential customers. Basically, as almost every page on my various websites could be considered as landing pages (except for my privacy policy pages etc.), my entire network of websites would be my landing pages. If that makes sense? I guess what I’m saying is that almost all of my pages on my websites have some form of “conversion” to them — mostly affiliate links.

Of course this would probably differ on other people’s sites, depending on the way they’re set up?

What Is CPA?

CPA stands for “Cost Per Action”. It’s basically when you determine the worth, to you, of a certain action. For instance, if someone signs up to your mailing list and that’s worth, say, $5 to you, then you could pay that same person $2 for signing up and still profit $3 from the transaction. It is a Cost Per Action — An action that the person completed.

What Is A Domain?

A domain is something like “ebay.com” or “google.com” or “shoemoney.com”. It’s a name that you register that you can then set up a website on. It’s not necessarily the name of the website (or blog). For instance you can register bakedbeans.com, yet your site could be called “My Adventures With Bouncing Castles” or whatever. Now I don’t know why you’d want to have such a silly site, but it’s just an example.

Top Level Domains (or TLD’s) are .com, .net and .org.

What Is Social Media?

Social media includes sites such as Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg etc. It’s basically sites in which users can be social with the media they find, interact with others, link to other sites and media, give their status etc.

As Jeremy explains it: Web 1.0 is downloading from “old school” websites (as in ordinary sites). Web 2.0 is where users can upload to the web (like YouTube or FailBlog etc.) Web 3.0 is more like a sideways criss-crossing between sites and linking a whole lot of different sites together and sharing.

What Is CTR?

CTR stands for “Click Through Ratio”, which is the percentage of times an ad has been shown versus the amount of times it has been clicked. So if your CTR is 10% and an ad was shown 100 times, then it was clicked on 10 occasions. Simple!

What Is URL Shortening?

URL shortening is basically the process of shortening a long URL and making into a short one. fans of Twitter know how to do this already through services such as bit.ly and tinyurl.com. One thing I wasn’t aware of though was explained in this very short video, and that’s the customization of a shortened URL that can be done on bit.ly. I’m definitely going to try that out next time!

That’s about it for now. I will cover the various “Creating A “whatever” Account” in the next few days or so. Like the “Fundamentals” there are more than a few of them to get through. Obviously I won’t cover the accounts that I’ve already written about in previous posts (such as Google, eBay etc.) cause there’s no need to.

Until tomorrow!

Wednesday 24th February, 2010

Yesterday I gave a brief rundown of the topics included in the new “Getting Started” section of the Shoemoney System. Today I’ll talk about some of the topics in more depth. Keep in mind though that I won’t get too detailed about just what exactly is in the videos. It’s just an overview.

Fundamental Topics

Jeremy just gives a quick rundown on what to expect with these videos. I say “quick” because the entire video only runs for about 50 seconds so, needless to say, there are no revelations or “get rich” tips here — Just an intro stating that these videos are meant to be seen as a “video glossary” more than anything else.

What Is Video Marketing?

Now you have to keep in mind that this portion of the System is aimed squarely at the beginner, and there may be some people out there who have absolutely no idea what video marketing is — Hence the basic title. In this () video, Jeremy just lets you know that video is hot right now and that many, many products are sold through video marketing. Of course that wasn’t always so, but faster and faster broadband means that uploading and viewing videos is easier now than it ever was — coupled with the fact that good quality video cameras are so cheap nowadays! Even Amazon.com are getting into the act!

Now so far I’ve managed to avoid putting videos on most of my sites, but I can see that’s gotta change!

What Is Link Buying & Selling?

This video is a quick rundown on link buying and selling. Essentially if your website or blog is popular enough for various companies to come calling and offer you some money to link to their site or product (and you accept it), then that is link selling. Beware, however, that Google does not like this at all because it artificially inflates the perceived popularity of the site who’s bought the links so, if you do this, you should try to make the link a “nofollow” one if possible.

Likewise, link buying is when you buy a link to your own site from another site. Once again Google doesn’t like this practice, so be careful.

Personally speaking I don’t bother with selling OR buying links. It’s just not worth the hassle to me. I know of quite a few people who do this though.

What Is Pay Per Click?

Pay Per Click is basically what the name says, and it’s something that is bread and butter to most websites, whether it’s buying or selling. There are many forms of PPC, such as text link ads, PPC through media buys, or through social media such as Facebook and MySpace.

Just about everybody has heard of Google AdSense. They’re the little text link ads that you see on a lot of websites, and publishers (as in website owners) make money by having other people click on those ads (but NEVER click on them yourself or tell your friends or family to click on them or you might end up being banned). Likewise, you can “buy traffic” to your sites by setting up a PPC campaign through Google AdWords and other networks such as MSN and Yahoo.

As this video (along with others in this section) only lasts for about a minute or so, there’s not really a lot you can say about Pay Per Click at this stage, but it WILL be looked into in more depth in coming videos.

What Is Crowd Sourcing?

Crowd sourcing is a term that I hadn’t really heard about before, so it was interesting to hear a little bit about it. Basically it’s about “listing” a particular job, such as a graphic design or logo for your website for instance, at and then seeing what other people (the “crowd”) come up with. You continue to work with the crowd as they, independently of one another, design and redesign your graphic. When you see something you like you can pay that particular designer for that graphic. Not a bad system!

Apparently it costs something like $50 or so to list your job, and whatever you deem as an appropriate sum of money for the winning result.

Likewise this is a topic which will be looked into more thoroughly at a later stage.

CPC vs CPM Advertising

A quick rundown of CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPM (Cost Per 1000) advertising and how they work. For instance you might pay 1 cent for each time someone clicks on one of your text links campaigns (CPC) or pay 50 cents for each 1000 impressions, or views, of a particular campaign (CPM). This is the same principal if you’re earning money through either of these methods.

As far as buying is concerned you might want to start off with CPC advertising (through AdWords for instance) as you’ll only pay for each click. Down the track you might switch to CPM or even try a combination of the two.

For those interested, “M” is Latin for 1000.

What Is Link Building?

Link building is simply building links to your own website. Some of these links will happen naturally as your site becomes more well known but, initially, it’s something that you need to kick-start yourself and continue to work on whenever you can. The more links you have to your site, the higher you’ll get in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). The higher you get in the SERPs, the more traffic to your website. And the more traffic to your website, the more money you’ll make! Easy, right?

What Are Website Analytics?

The more information you can gather about who comes to you website, the better off you’ll be. With website analytics you can see where your potential customers are coming from, what they’re looking at, how long they spend on your site, what keywords they used to find your site, what links they’re clicking on when they get there, where they’re exiting and much much more. Not only that, it’s just cool to look at all the stats. Well, it’s fun for me anyhow!

What Is Media Buying?

I can’t say that I’m any the wiser on this topic, but media buying is buying media on very large sites, such as Facebook and MSN. Actually I take that back. I understand the concept, but not the reason why. Mmmm, that’s not true either. I understand why you would do so, but not HOW you would do so. Damnit! I could figure out how you would do so, because I would assume that it’s pretty straightforward, I just….. Nah. Stuff it! I understand it all, but I don’t understand any of it. I guess because it probably requires LARGE SUMS OF MONEY I feel that I don’t need to know about it just yet. Yup, I think that’s it. The money thing is the stumbling block for me. Maybe in a few months time I’ll comprehend it a little better.

As Jeremy says at the very end of this video “Media buying is just buying a huge bulk set of media packages on websites”. Enough said!

What Is Web Hosting?

A web host is a place on the internet which hosts your websites. Simple enough, yeah?

Shoemoney Quote Of The Day in regards to hosting your site on your own computer (using a “normal” internet service plan) — “You could service one or two people but then your complete uplink will be down”. Guess you have to see the video to appreciate it. Sorry…

Me personally? I use Hostgator. Cheap and effective!

What Is Link Cloaking?

I have to say I was initially a little concerned by this topic and it had me thinking “Now where is Jeremy leading us to, here?” I needn’t have worried though as it was just simple stuff that won’t get you into trouble. It’s simply a mixture of anchor text and URL shortening as far as I can see. A little bit like using tinyurl.com or bit.ly for example. Anyone using Twitter will understand what I mean.

You just turn an ugly long-ass affiliate link in to a much shorter and prettier one, that’s all. Apparently that’s called link cloaking.

OK, that’s enough for now. More tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Tuesday 23rd February, 2010

Due, I expect, to feedback and possibly some criticism from users of the Shoemoney System, Jeremy and the gang have decided to release a whole lot of “mini-videos” that deal with the fundamentals of the System, as well as setting up the various accounts that need to be done to increase your success rate with making money online. I do remember Jeremy mentioning something about this in an email (I think), but I was probably too busy at the time to fully comprehend it. In fact I didn’t even notice the slight change to my Dashboard until today.

Apparently Sunday was the day that they took all that sort of supplementary material and released it all at once — Setting up a separate section on the left hand side of the Dashboard called “Getting Started.” I’ve had a quick look (and an equally quick copy-and-paste) and there’s around 30 or so new videos in there. They’ve also put a couple of the previous videos in there as well (but strangely not the “Creating An AzoogleAds Account” one?)

I can only assume that, from now on, the core content will be all the real money making content that some users have been expecting. Rather than write about the videos today, I will just give a brief overview of the topics covered for now. You’ll have to wait another day or so for the upcoming reviews of them, but I’ll probably only cover half a dozen videos or so each day. They’re short enough, but there’s quite a few of them to cover. Anyway, here are the topics covered:

Videos in the “Fundamentals” section of “Getting Started” include:

• Fundamental Topics

• What Is Video Marketing?

• What Is Link Buying & Selling?

• What Is Pay Per Click?

• What Is Crowd Sourcing?

• CPC vs CPM Advertising

• What Is Link Building?

• What Are Website Analytics?

• What Is Media Buying?

• What Is Web Hosting?

• What Is Link Cloaking?

• What Is Call To Action?

• What Is A Squeeze Page?

• What Is List Building?

• What Is CAN-SPAM?

• What Are Cookies?

• What Is Conversion?

• What Is A Landing Page?

• What Is CPA?

• What Is A Domain?

• What Is Social Media?

• What Is CTR?

• What Is URL Shortening?

Videos in the “Creating Accounts” section of “Getting Started” include:

• Creating Important Accounts

• Creating A Google AdWords Account

• Creating A Google Analytics Account

• Creating A Google Website Optimizer Account

• Creating A YouTube Account

• Creating A StumbleUpon Account

• Creating A Sponsored Tweets Account

• Creating A RevTwt Account

• Creating A Reddit Account

• Creating A oDesk Account

• Creating A Del.icio.us Account

• Creating A Clicktale Account

• Creating A Chitika Account

• Creating A Digg Account

• Creating A PayPal Account

• Creating A Google Account

Phew!! Anyhow, until tomorrow…

Monday 22nd February, 2010

Wow! This is the end of Week Four of the Shoemoney System and I’m already in front, money wise — and without a huge amount of effort I should add. I have worked at it though. Not as much as I’d like (and as I intend to do over the coming months), but it’s a good start at least.

Like the video that I wrote about the other day, this is a continuation. The last video talked about listing an item on eBay, whereas this one talks about buying an item from eBay.

Once again it’s very straightforward, with not a lot of revelations that I didn’t already know about. It’s just a good step-by-step approach to buying items on eBay, what to look for in regards to seller feedback, understanding the postage costs, how exactly to bid on the item (though, in this case it was a “Buy It Now” item, how to go through the process of paying for it etc. Fairly low-key stuff, but stuff you need to know nonetheless. And, of course, a good resource for someone starting out.

Because the past two videos are about arbitrage on eBay, I will report that Jamie was able to make a little over $100 U.S. profit from just the one transaction. I won’t give details, but if you’re in the U.S. it’s gonna benefit you greatly by following the process set out in these videos. It’s just a shame I’m not based in the U.S. — but I will think up ways of getting around that problem, I’m sure.

Until tomorrow…

Sunday 21st February, 2010

I’ve been having some internet problems of late which has prevented me from updating every day. However I have been writing everything down on paper, so I wouldn’t fall too far behind, and I’ll add them when I’m able to.

The good news is that I’m up on the money so far. Not by a lot, mind you, but I haven’t had much of a chance to promote products and work on articles for the newer sites. I have managed to work out a suitable solution for keeping the money made from the Shoemoney System separate from money made from my pre-existing sites.

How exactly have I made the money, you ask? Well, I’m trying to approach things systematically, using ONLY the methods shown, thus far, in the Shoemoney System. I’ve resisted the temptation to throw in a few of my own sure-fire methods. So far it’s been pretty even, with offers completed through AzoogleAds, products sold through Clickbank and, of course, Google Adsense. To speed things up a bit I have placed a link or two from some of my established sites to the new ones — just for indexing purposes though, really. After a couple more days I will delete the links through as they’re not really that relevant for the new sites.

I should add that I’ve found that it’s always good, wherever possible, to fast-track my new sites this way as it usually just takes a few hours or so for Google to come crawling. Some links I leave up, because they’re relevant, while others I’ll take down again once they’ve done the trick.