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….