Shoemoney System Review & Overview

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!