Shoemoney System Review & Overview

Monday 15th February, 2010

OK, now we get into some “meat and potatoes” with this video — at least for me anyway, as I know absolutely nothing about arbitrage at all. I’ve heard the term being bandied around for many years but, for some reason, never bothered to delve deeper into the topic to learn more about it. So this video was a bit of a revelation to me.

In financial circles, arbitrage is the activity of buying shares or currency in one financial market, to sell for a profit in another market. The profit is made from the financial imbalance between the two markets, and really only applies when you are buying and selling the same commodity.

Seems straightforward enough, but how does it apply to making money on the internet? Well there are many, many ways actually. Jeremy spoke about his experiences with buying old second-hand computers from one source, then breaking them up into component parts and reselling those parts, on places like eBay, for up to ten times the price of which he paid for them. Now I just thought that was part of doing business but, apparently, is a form of arbitrage.

As with some of the other videos that I’ve written about on here, I’m not going to give away too much. With this particular video it is, in part, my own ignorance of the subject which determines why I won’t say that much about it. Put simply — I don’t really know what is common knowledge and what is more of a “secret tip” with this video (and arbitrage in general), so I’m going to play it safe and not say much about it at all. Suffice to say that there may be nothing here that you can’t read about on Digital Point or elsewhere, so if you want to know more then maybe do a search for “arbitrage” and see what you can find.

All I can say is that, being a total noob with arbitrage, I found this video fascinating and I think I’ll look at it again a few more times over the next week or so.

Until next time…

Sunday 14th February, 2010

Today was another day in which real life took over from my internet life, though I did manage to register a couple of new domain names that I thought would be good to have. I won’t name them here, but one I’ll use for yet another “micro-niche” site, which may or may not generate some good money over time. Of course I’m confident that it will generate money and more than pay for itself, but it just won’t be a big site as far as income is concerned.

So why do it, you ask? Well, basically it’s to offer a good resource for people out there who are looking for it, and it will help strengthen some of my other micro-niche sites on similar topics. It’s not ALL about the money with me. That’s why I have absolutely no interest in made-for-AdSense sites — though I have experimented briefly with that in the past just to test out the concept (and I’m annoyed with myself that I bothered to tell you the truth). I decided a while ago that I want to provide good solid content though, not junk!

The other domain name that I registered would probably be a lot more mainstream. I say “probably” because, at the time of writing, I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with it. It’s just a great name with a ton of potential at this stage.

As we near the end of the third week I’ve still yet to make any real money by using the system — though I have made some at least. This is not so much the fault of the System, per se’ — although many of the videos so far are “setting up” to make money rather than actually getting down to making it. I have to add that I’ve also not devoted as much time as I could have to working the System just yet. I’m too busy getting other stuff organized and working on the sites that are already making steady money for me, month in, month out.

But I am doing a few things at least — experimenting here and there and watching the videos as they become active (and working on this blog as well). I am fortunate that I do have this luxury and I am in no way panicking about how much I make through this System. It could be argued, however, that I might be a little bit too comfortable and therefore not applying myself as such. There could be some truth in that statement.

Still, I want to do things my way. Only then will I be happy with what I produce and the direction I wish to go in. And at the end of the day it’s all about choice, isn’t it?

Until tomorrow!

Saturday 13th February, 2010

Formally known as the Shoemoney System Live Chat Number 2.

Once again I managed to miss the live chat, so it’s good to know that I can catch up with these recorded webinars. For the second webinar Jeremy switched to another video service from the one he had originally. Unfortunately the quality of the resolution wasn’t as good, as there were moments when the pixelation was a bit excessive. There were also annoying ads sliding up from the base of the video. Now if these ads were relevant to what was being said in the video then it wouldn’t be so bad, however they had absolutely nothing to do with what was being said — hence a high (for me) annoyance factor.

Having said that, it’s more important to get the information in the video rather than the delivery of it, and there were quite a few good questions in there for Jeremy to answer.

The first one was about AzoogleAds, and just what is meant by “incentivised traffic”, and whether or not it should be enabled by our Azoogle account managers. Jeremy answered by saying that it’s something that should be taken up with the the particular person’s account manager to see what they have to say about it, as everyone’s situation is different.

The second question was of interest to me because it was something that concerned me directly. Someone asked whether or not Jeremy would be OK with the idea of having people blog about their experiences with the Shoemoney System, and Jeremy said he was fine with that — in fact he encouraged it! Now, as I’ve been writing about the System for the past 3 weeks or so, it was good to hear that.

I also noticed that someone else who was doing the course had similar problems to me in signing up to AzoogleAds (my issues have since been sorted out I should add), so Jeremy suggested they contact someone at Azoogle to help them through it.

Other questions ranged from recommended software to build sites, WordPress themes and plugins, when to start doing affiliate offers, using url shortening services like bit.ly & tinyurl.com to mask affiliate links, and more.

I can’t say that this week’s webinar was (to me) as informative as the first one, but it was OK. One thing I would definitely add for Jeremy to consider — please turn off the phone and quit instant messenger when you’re doing these webinars! That way there can be no distractions during the recording. After all, people are paying good money to do this course and it just doesn’t seem respectful for you to have these distractions all the time. Surely you can put aside half an hour or so for your paying clients? It’s not a criticism as such — more like a suggestion.

More tomorrow…

Friday 12th February, 2010

Finding an audience through forums is an excellent way to get people to your site, and one which I’ve been using for a dozen years or so — probably closer to 15 years I would say. With this in mind you should take care not to spam or push your site/products too hard or you’ll quickly find yourself being banned from those forums.

In today’s video, Jeremy walks Jamie through a crash course in forums — how to find them, how to sign up for them, how to edit your profile and how to post to them. It isn’t rocket science by any stretch of the imagination, but it is aimed squarely at internet noobies after all.

As I stated earlier, going to forums is something I’ve been doing for about 15 years now, so I would say I’m well versed in this sort of thing. Jeremy suggests to “personalise” your profile — which I do on some forums — but mostly I prefer to use an alias so that I can keep a bit of distance from other people in the forum. Sometimes I just think a forum post looks more authentic if it’s coming from a person who “seemingly” is not connected to the site they are pushing. Not that I push hard at all. It’s purely subjective though, and each person/marketer has their own views on the subject. Their own approach.

I can say that I’ve had great results from forums however, and that they’ll always be a part of my arsenal in getting people to my websites.

Until tomorrow…

Thursday 11th February, 2010

Yup! It’s happening! Slowly, but surely, I’m starting to see some cash coming in that is a direct result of the Shoemoney System. Initially I was a bit worried about how to separate, or at least determine, what money was coming in purely from the Shoemoney System as opposed to my normal money coming in from my already existing sites (and I’m still not 100% clear on a couple of things I should add). However, the amount that I am clear about is money that I’ve earned in my AzoogleAds and Clickbank accounts — accounts that I’ve, so far, used solely for this exercise.

It turns out that I was right about the geo-targeting of one of my AzoogleAds campaign, as I was able to check it using a U.S. based proxy. I didn’t, however, complete an offer or anything. I know Jamie and Jeremy did it in one of the videos, but there was no point in me doing so as there was absolutely no gain for me to complete said offer (apart from the click cash). All I wanted to do is to see if the right page was displaying and, as it turns out, it was. It was good to wake up this morning and see an earnings figure other than $0.00 in my Azoogle account though.

I’ve still yet to check up on a few things and run some sums before I put a dollar amount up here, but I’ll know that, hopefully, by the end of the day. Stay tuned!

Wednesday 10th February, 2010

Today’s video talks about some of the ways in which to find a market for your product, blog or website, and it’s basically a little lesson in social networking. There are no big secrets here in this video as it’s just an overview. Instead there’s some very sound and solid ideas all centered around one thing — participation. Yes folks, participation.

For people to know about you (without help from a search engine of course) one thing you can do is actively go out and seek them — either through blogs or through forums. Go out and find blogs in the same niche as you, or similar, and read what they have to say. If a blog post is interesting to you then comment on it. You don’t have to do the hard sell of your website at all — in fact in most cases it’s best not to — just write something worthwhile and people will click on your link if they feel you have something to offer. Don’t take into account whether the link will be dofollow or nofollow. That’s not the issue here. The idea is just to participate and get real people, not search engine bots, to go to your site. If they like it (and they have a blog or site of their own) then they might link to you anyway, so you will pick up some link juice if they do.

The same goes for forums. Pick a forum in your niche, join up, set up your profile page and then start posting. But don’t post stupid comments or any old thing that comes into your head. Post something worthwhile. Something of use to others. That’s the key to getting credibility. If you build it, and work on it, and participate, then they will come.

OK, I’m all fired up now! I’m gonna go and check out some blogs. Till tomorrow…

Tuesday 9th February, 2010

YAY!! I got my AzoogleAds account so I’ve been spending time having a look around my account dashboard for the past couple of hours or so — with some mixed results I should add.

I was having some real troubles in trying to get the code for various ad campaigns for one or two of my sites. Now at one stage I wasn’t sure if it was a browser incompatibility problem (I use Safari), my operating system (Macintosh), gremlins at work or whether it was just me. As it turns out I’m still not sure but, by the end of the session, I was starting to finally see, copy and paste things properly.

It was all a bit weird though, so I’ve put it down to Gremlins in the works. At one stage something wasn’t working properly and the affiliate code just wasn’t generating. Five minutes later it was all fine and dandy.

But then when I pasted the code on one of my sites, the page I should have seen when I clicked on the link wasn’t the page I expected to see. Instead I was redirected to a page about smileys and emoticons.

Then it dawned on me that it was all probably down to geo-targeting. I wasn’t seeing the right page because, put simply, I wasn’t the right type of guy to see it! I’m only assuming this of course, but it makes sense. Not that it’s a problem. Most of my site visitors are in the right geo-zone so the campaign should work fine. The only reason why it might not work is because the site I placed the ad on doesn’t get a lot of traffic in the first place. Plus the ad is below the fold, which doesn’t help.

I may try to post the code on one of my more popular sites to test out whether the system is working or not. At this stage I would be satisfied with just the clickthroughs, regardless of whether they convert at all. After all I’m just testing things out. If they do happen to convert then that’s just a bonus.

I’ve also been having a look at what’s on offer at Clickbank and I’ve managed to set up a few things there. What I need to do though is write some copy — a short article or three promoting the items in question, rather than just have an image or a link to the affiliate’s landing page. I haven’t quite got around to doing that just yet as I’m too busy writing articles for a couple of my other sites. It’s a never-ending process!!

I know, I know. I need to outsource more, that’s for sure. Only trouble is on some of my micro-niche sites there would be very few people in the world capable of writing an article for them. That’s the trouble with being a “world authority” on such an obscure and niche market — there’s no-one else to write articles on the topic except for you!

For instance, and this is not my field of expertise by the way but rather just an obscure niche for which to demonstrate, how could you expect a paid article writer to write an article on, say, the complexities of the tuning pin system on a 1920′s Pleyel harpsichord? That’s just way too obscure a topic for a paid article writer. If you’re talking about life insurance or home renovation or tax law though then you’re all set! Most article writers would be able to knock out a decent article on those subjects, no problem.

So yeah, I have some issues with writing articles on some of my micro-niche sites but I’ll work it out eventually. It’s just another reason why I’ll probably have to do some more mainstream sites — just so I can outsource more with the content and concentrate on other things.

Speaking of Pleyel tuning pin systems (for which a friend of mine who IS an authority on that sort of thing explained to me the other day), I just did a Google search — in part to find out how to spell Pleyel — and if you do want to know something about them then you’re probably out of luck as there’s basically nothing on the internet about them. However the internet being the internet the only sound advice I can give you is “Check back next year”. There might be something then.

As always, until tomorrow…