Shoemoney System Review & Overview

Monday 8th March, 2010

I haven’t got around to doing a Facebook Fan Page yet, because I’m not sure which of my sites I want to promote in this way. I did do a “kind of” Facebook Fan page a while ago, but it was a different setup and I’m not sure it was actually a Fan Page or not. I’ll need to check it to see. As it was basically a “placesetter” for a non-profit organization — and therefore I have no desire to monetize it — I’m not sure I need to check it out just yet.

I’ve been slowly working on my (non Shoemoney System) websites and tweaking a few things here and there. I’ve also been updating the CMS software and plugins as this seems to be a never-ending thing. Still, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know there are plugins and systems out there that will allow you to update all your WordPress sites at once, abut as I have my sites spread over a dozen or so shared webhosting accounts I’m not sure those systems would work well for me. Plus doing things manually, site by site, lessens the processor loads of those sites anyway, so I prefer doing things my way. maybe if I were on dedicated servers then that would be an option for me? Most likely though I’ll outsource this part of my business to an assistant when the appropriate time comes for that.

For the past year and a bit I’ve been avoiding doing a major new website — mainly because it’s such a big job. The only thing I have done in that time is to work on the theme templates so that it looks the part — and it looks GREAT I should add!

However now, or at least in the next couple of weeks or so, I feel that I can now delve into it and get it up and running as a proper website soon. I’m still “ummming” and “ahhhhing” at the moment, but I’m getting there.

So, until tomorrow, bye for now…

Sunday 7th March, 2010

Today sees Jeremy and Jeanne setting up a Facebook Fan page. Now Jeanne already has a Facebook page and is already an avid user, but she doesn’t have an actual Fan Page at this stage, so Jeremy takes her (and us) through the steps of setting one up.

Jeremy goes on to say that one of the biggest reasons to have a Fan Page is that you’re able to mass email all of your friends through it, as well as being able to have more than 5000 fans (your normal Facebook page/profile will only support up to 5000 fans). Apparently another reason is that you are able to tell what your demographics are when it comes to your fans which, I guess, makes it easier to market yourself to them.

I won’t go into the details of setting up the page, as you can most likely find some tutorials out there that can help you. I will say though that apparently it is important to name your page properly, as you have no say over changing it when it comes to advertising/promoting the page.

Jeremy talks about the various settings you can use (geotargeting, age restrictions etc.), the settings for your wall (user generated content for instance), settings for your default landing page, and various applications that you and your users can use.

After typing in a little information about what the Fan Page is all about, we’re all set to go! Unfortunately for now though we’ve come to the end of the video, so all of the optimization of the Fan Page will have to wait until the next video is up.

Until then, bye for now….

Saturday 6th March, 2010

There are more Facebook-related videos coming up, but the video that grabbed my attention was “This Is The Video Title” — Ya gotta love place-setters!

Anyhow, in this video Jeremy talks to Jeanne about how Facebook originally got started by Mark Zuckerberg, and what the idea behind it was. Now basically this sort of information — or most of it anyway — can be found at Wikipedia and other places, so I’m not really gonna get into it here at all. The reason for that is twofold — a) The aforementioned “find it at Wikipedia” thing and b) The fact that I’m just so busy with other stuff (I’m actually writing this (originally) on a paper napkin at the local mall. Heck, a guy has to eat sometime, doesn’t he?)

Anyway, Jeremy goes on to talk about Facebook “Beacon” (part of Facebook’s advertisement system), which worked with selected retailers from around the world, integrating from within Facebook itself. Although Facebook Beacon eventually fell by the wayside, it did make way for Facebook Connect, which has since become a big success.

Another thing Jeremy spoke about are the applications that work with Facebook, and the fact that anyone with sufficient enough skills can make their own application to work on Facebook (whether good or bad). He also talked about the fact that “real people use Facebook” and that it has some form of accountability. Now I really didn’t buy this as, basically if you really want to, you could set up a fake profile (or 20) and no-one would be the wiser. I mean why not? It’s not rocket science after all.

Jeremy also talked about the various people using Facebook — everyone from celebrities to politicians to internet marketers, businesses and even “ordinary” folks. He finishes by adding that, in the coming days, we’ll be learning how to set up our own Facebook Fan Page, learn how to optimize it and, finally, how to advertise and promote it to bring traffic to the page.

So until tomorrow, seeya soon….

Friday 5th March, 2010

Continuing on from yesterday’s post, todays video was an introduction to Facebook advertising. Jeremy tells us that it’s about to get “hot and heavy”, so we’ll see if he’s right on this one. However, for this video, it’s just an overview of how it all works.

Now I think I must have some sort of “ad blindness” when it comes to Facebook because I can’t really recall any ad I’ve seen there. Not that that’s unusual as I have a general ad blindness for most webpages unless they scream out at me! I can’t say that’s a bad thing though. Quite the contrary in fact. As an affiliate marketer it pays to not automatically notice ads unless you’re specifically looking for them. Google AdSense beat that one out of me years ago!

Jeremy takes us to the Facebook advertising page where we can create or manage our ads (not that we have any at the moment, but still). Going to our “existing ads” shows us all the pages that we administer. For this demonstration Jeremy shows us how he creates a Facebook ad for the Shoemoney System, once again using the step-by-step method.

NOTE: I had to laugh when Jeremy was selecting the keywords for his ad. He had typed in “Money” and the suggested keywords from that were “Blackpool Pleasure Beach”, “Lucozade” and “I Love My Quilt”. WTF??????

Jeremy runs through a few more options — target audience, daily budget, starting date etc. He also touched upon whether to go for CPC or CPM. A decision not to be taken too lightly, it appears.

OK, that’s about it for now, I think. I’m just gonna go over to Facebook and drop a cool $1000 on advertising for my “Quilt & Lucozade Blackpool Pleasure Beach Vacation Tour”.

Till next time…..

Thursday 4th March, 2010

In this video Jeremy gives Jamie a rundown on what Facebook is all about. He explains that, while MySpace is an open network by default — in which almost anyone can see your page — Facebook by comparison is a closed network by default — which of course offers more privacy. People can’t see you or be a part of your world unless you invite them to. Facebook also offers real-time status updates, whereas MySpace does not.

Like many of the earlier videos, this one is a basic step-by-step process to making a Facebook account. Jamie inputs her details and voila! Facebook account done! As I’ve had a Facebook account for some time I didn’t need to go through this process at all.

While Jeremy did mention that he will show us exactly how to leverage Facebook to make money, he also talked a bit about some of the cool things that Facebook was useful for — such as connecting with old school chums, friends and family (Jamie was a little excited when she saw some of her school buddies). Thankfully he didn’t mention all the annoying applications that prevail on Facebook! I mean some are good, but most just want to suck your precious time away (though it’s not quite in the YouTube league!)

Once again it was a simple, yet effective, tutorial and fine for those who are just starting out. No secrets or tips and tricks, but that doesn’t bother me at all.

Until tomorrow…

Wednesday 3rd March, 2010

I’ve retitled the “Shoemoney System Live Chats” to “Webinars”, as this is the name they’re now under in the System Dashboard. All the webinars from now on will be under their respective weeks (Week 1, Week 3, Week 5 etc.)

Once again I expect the webinars to be chock full of information, tips and tricks — especially now that we’re getting further into the guts of the system. Unfortunately for you, Dear Reader, this means that you’ll probably get less and less information each time. Why is that? Well, basically it’s because I’m not gonna be able to say that much without giving too much away. In fact by the end of the 12 months this blog may end up being like those Government documents you see in the movies, where most of the type has been “blacked out” and censored with a thick marking pen. I hope it won’t quite be like that, of course, but this is not a “kiss-and-tell-all expose of the Shoemoney System. You’ll have to go elsewhere for that, I’m afraid!

Perhaps what might happen instead is that there will be less about what the System is about and more of what I’m doing. That’s a definite possibility.

Anyway, on to this week’s webinar. Once again we have Jeanne reading out the questions and Jeremy answering them. The first question is about eBay and arbitrage, which was featured in a couple of the videos from Week 4. The user wanted to know the exact steps that Jeremy used to pick items out. Unfortunately it’s not that simple as each item needs to be looked at and approached individually, which is basically how Jeremy answered. The idea of the system is to not necessarily copy EVERYTHING that Jeremy does with each item, but to do some research and come up with your own list of items to buy and sell for profit.

The next user seemed to have some difficulty with the emails that are sent out every few days or so, not linking up with the videos on offer. I’ve not experienced this particular problem so I can’t comment on this from a first-hand basis, and Jeremy said that it seems to be a problem with that user’s particular account and that the Shoemoney techs would look into it.

There were questions about just how fast the content was going to be rolled out and what affiliate offers were good and what weren’t so good (a lot of that depends on what your site is about, really), more questions on eBay arbitrage and what categories perform best, exactly how CPA campaigns work, and problems with slow shipping times and high costs between distant countries (something that I have issues with as well). Jeremy answered all of these reasonably well, I think.

One user wanted to know about how to make a website from the ground up, and then how to sell affiliate products on it. Jeremy said that that was something that would be looked at “in Week 3″, but I’m pretty sure he meant “in Month 3″ instead (I’ve just noticed that later on he does say “month”).

Some of the questions were repeats of earlier questions, such as the eBay arbitrage thing. That’s not so bad actually as it does give Jeremy a chance to go over the question in more detail — kinda like learning something through repetition. Likewise there were a couple of similar questions about AzoogleAds and how to implement them.

One of the things that became apparent in the webinar is that there are people doing this System from all parts of the world – England, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Europe etc. While there were many people asking basically the same question about market imbalances, each of them seemed to miss the point and continually talked about playing eBay U.S. off with eBay Canada (as it was demonstrated in the arbitrage video). They didn’t then make the same jump and compare the imbalances between, say eBay Spain and eBay France. In fact Europe would be a huge market to trade between countries — some right next door to each other — but some of the people asking questions didn’t seem to pick up on this fact.

One user asked Jeremy just how to go about streamlining your time and being more efficient, another asked about incorporating a business or business name and how to go about it (there’s a video or two just on this alone), and another asked about what sort of websites needed to be built to make the system work (almost anything really, though some would be easier to monetize than others).

One of the scary things — again with eBay arbitrage — was that one user kept on getting his listings banned by eBay before he was able to sell the product. Jeremy immediately said “Woah!!” and asked that the user contact him and show him one of the listings. I don’t know what the guy was doing wrong but it needed to be looked into quickly.

There were more questions about the affiliate managers from AzoogleAds and how to use them, whether it was a safe option to try dropshipping at this stage of the program and one or two other things.

Jeremy finished off this video by talking about some of the things that they were probably going to try out over the coming weeks and months. These included a forum for users, another survey or two, various competitions (with prizes) etc. Sounds pretty good to me. Bring it on!

Until tomorrow…

Tuesday 2nd March, 2010

First up, I want to say that I think this blog is a little too plain looking so I want to spice it up with a bit of color from time to time. With that in mind I’ve included a random picture of a chipmunk for no apparent reason other than it was on my hard drive. I have no idea where it came from (I think someone sent it to me), only that it was there. So here it is! Enjoy!

Now back to what this blog is really about. I just wanted to say that the Shoemoney System has been re-opened for new users to join up and start making money. Now normally there would be someone, such as myself, telling you how ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS this system is and that you should USE MY AFFILIATE LINK to sign up immediately and, therefore, generate GREAT WADS OF CASH for me! Well, that’s not what this site is all about, Sunshine! There are NO AFFILIATE LINKS (well, not on this site anyway) and, instead of telling you how great it is, I’ve written extensively about it so that you can MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND about whether or not it’s a worthwhile thing for you to pursue.

I have my own opinions of course. So far I think it’s been a good thing and I’ve learned one or two tips along the way. Keep in mind that the first month-and-a-bit has been aimed at beginners, whereas I’ve been around for a little while and I’m already making money online, so much of what’s been covered so far I’m already doing and/or have some knowledge about. It’s the coming months that are going to be much more interesting to me.

Oh, and the fact that I’ve already made more money so far than I’ve paid out is also a good thing, so I’m not complaining at all.

So read through this blog and make a choice. If you ARE interested and you miss out on getting into the course this time then there’s always the next time. Otherwise, don’t worry about it.

Till tomorrow…