Category Archives: Insights

Shoemoney System Review – Week 9

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I’ve been using the Shoemoney System for about nine weeks now.  I’ve seen all of the videos up to the ‘Facebook Ads Results’.  I personally love Facebook advertising and it was a great experience seeing some of the training videos, because I could pick up things I hadn’t known about.  I consider myself a fairly advanced user and was still able to walk away from the Facebook series with some new knowledge of FBML and Split Testing.  If you don’t know what those are, you really should be a member. Jeremy does a pretty great job teaching you about it.

Other points:

  • The $50 Facebook coupon was released finally in week nine. This means you should expect to see your coupons about two months after you start the system.  We all look forward to seeing the other $2450 in coupons.
  • I can’t comment on the quality of their support, because I haven’t needed to use them yet. I’ll addend this post if I do need to though.
  • In week 9 I’ve seen 27 Videos. Of those videos, I found that seven were useless (i.e. they were how to sign up for something), 4 were entertaining but not really educational (i.e. interviews and tours), 3 were great for beginners, seven were great for novice/intermediates, and five were advanced.  Overall, I’d say the best customer of the Shoemoney is a beginner to intermediate user.

Looking through the comments from the last review I did, some questions came up that I’d like to answer here:

  • Do you recommend this course for a newbie? Yes.
  • Does anyone know if the people that were allowed to join yesterday [Week 7] are already caught up to the people that joined on day 1? No.  The content is slowly released over time, so people that joined on day one will always be ahead (until they finish).
  • …The ShoeMoney System is now permanently open from Jeremy, I thought it was a exclusive program only for 500 student[s]… The first 500 people were just a test group.  I’m sure he doesn’t want to limit his potential to just 500 people.
  • I am seriously thinking about joining the Shoemoney system but not too sure whether it is actually any good at teaching about Adsense? In week 9, Adsense hasn’t been covered.  If you’re looking for something specifically for Adsense, this may not be the program for you.
  • Do you guys have any idea how to cancel you shoemoney system account? I can find the freaking cancel-button…

Here you go dude. Its all handled by Clickbank:

The ShoeMoney System billing is handled by ClickBank. Unfortunately we have no way to initiate a refund to you from our end, but it’s very easy for you to initiate the refund request and get the funds credited back to your bank account in 72 hours.

All you have to do is go to http://www.clickbank.com/orderDetail.htm

Entetr your Order number (this will be in the email you received from ClickBank when you purchased the product) along with your email address and click ‘Submit’

Then follow the step-by-step instructions for requesting a refund.

  • So I guess it is not possible to just get the whole thing, all 12 months, right away by paying all the money up front? True.  You’ll need to wait for the videos to be released.  This may change in the future though.

Have more questions?

Ask them below.  We’ll get them answered for you!

St. Patrick’s Day Insights

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St. Paddy’s day is my favorite Holiday.  My birthday is in less than a week, and I still haven’t planned anything for it.  Hopefully someone throws me a surprise party.  Anyways – I digress.

I want to talk about capturing the attention of special days of the year – be them holidays, birthdays, etc.  People are in a purchase-friendly mood when they’re celebrating – especially when alcohol is involved.  When you’re thinking about your next affiliate project, consider what holidays are in close proximity.  You’ll want to be promoting things for that holiday up to two or three months in advance, because people often times buy their products early to get the best possible prices they can.

Brainstorming and Execution

Make sure you brainstorm as many monetization paths as possible when you’re beginning to formulate your first plans.  Here are some of my successful St. Patrick’s Day affiliate sites and how they were monetized:

  • A blog for hospitality businesses to brainstorm promotions for St. Patrick’s Day.  I directed people to offers for custom shirts, mugs, guiness, etc.
  • A holiday deals website giving out coupons for SPD schwag.  I all of the coupon offers I could find, centralizing a place where people could get discounts for all of their Paddy’s Day needs.
  • An Irish music website, complete with funny YouTube videos.  I focused on generating income from Audible.com, iTunes, and Amazon.
  • A website with the complete history of St. Patrick’s Day.  I just ran Adsense on this one – I’m not sure why it was so successful.

Conclusion

I hope this helped you decide what to do for your next affiliate project – or at least gave you a little treasure chest of ideas for projects you may want to do in the future.  The other thing that is great about holiday offers is that with a little tweaking, you can run with the same website next year.

Like any other project – the more insight you can give your customers, the better.  If you don’t know much about Easter, you probably shouldn’t build a niche site about it.  Luckily my birthday is so close to St. Paddy’s Day, and I have a little bit o’ Irish in me.  Hopefully this next week isn’t too blurry.

Have questions? Ask them in the comments.

Why [the] Web Won’t be Nirvana

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Cliffor Stoll is an astr0nomer and author.

Here is a Newsweek article published in 1995 by Clifford Stoll (<- Wikipedia). The original article is at Newsweek Here.  I’ve modified it to make more sense:

After two three and a half decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker spammer or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers (goToMeeting), interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms (Wikipedia). They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities (goToMeeting). Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems (eBay, Amazon, etc.). And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic (see: Obama and Twitter).

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper (New York Times, Newsweek, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher (College External Degree Programs and Online Degrees) and no computer network will change the way government works (Any .gov website makes getting info and forms a lot easier).

Consider today’s online world. The Usenet (Twitter), a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly (Twitter). The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen (Everyone Listens). How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc (iTunes, Audible, Kindle, iPad). At best, it’s an unpleasant chore (Environmentally friendly, easy, and you can do it while driving): the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can‘t tote that laptop iPad or Smart Phone to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet (hehe). Uh, sure.

What the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data Google indexed, relevant data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking With volunteer editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland utopia of unfiltered relevant data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805, Search time, 5.7 seconds). Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes seconds to unravel them–one’s a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn’t work and the third is an image of a London monument. Wikipedia was first and had the date in less that four words. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, “Too many connectios, try again later.” Fail Whale.

Won’t the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30 million. Not a good omen.

Point and click:

Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We’re told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you’ve got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult easy to use in classrooms and require extensive almost no teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames–but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? Yes I’ll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals.(eBay, Amazon, etc.) We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more fractions of the business in an afternoon entire lifetime than the entire Internet Amazon handles in a month hour? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t (PayPal) –the network is missing has a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople (Affiliates).

What’s missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate connect us from to one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who’d prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where–in the holy names of Education and Progress–important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

STOLL is the author of “Silicon Snake Oil–Second Thoughts on the Information Highway,” to be published by Doubleday in April.

Shoemoney System: Third Week Review

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Ok, so this is an update post to my original Shoemoney System Review.

First of all, I still haven’t learned anything new.  There is an eBay arbitrage set of videos coming up that I think I MAY learn something from, but still in week three, I have nothing more than when I started.

Hitting some of my original points with followup:

  1. I still have no coupons.
  2. I still have no sign up gift. I did follow up with them many times and they took my address.  I haven’t actually gotten anything though.  I know I’m in the top 100 now though.  That’s nice.
  3. The podcasts are still old.
  4. The videos still don’t teach me anything I didn’t already know. I think I may learn something, but I haven’t yet…

Here is a new point:

  • Their support isn’t very good. I’ve asked a few questions, and gotten some spectacularly canned answers.  The direct access to Jeremy is WORSE than just @replying him on Twitter and NOT being a member.

I’ve had some ideas for how videos should be released and I intend to share those with Jeremy or his team at some point, but I doubt they’ll care to listen.  Maybe they will though.  My big thought is that the user should get a video credit released every 2 days and be able to select from ALL of the videos which they want to see – that way advanced users can just skip the easy stuff like “How to sign up for Gmail?”

Other reviews I’ve found:

Negative

I have not found a positive review yet, but if you know if a REAL one, please let me know.

Positive

  • Neil Beck’s Shoemoney Learner – Of all of the reviews, this guy is a beginner and finds the system extremely useful.  I found this review the best of all so far.  Great job Neil. (Added 2/22/2010)

What are your thoughts?

Outlook for Mac Will Be Able to Import PST Files

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From BI: SAI:

Microsoft announced today that it will allow buyers of the all-new Outlook for Mac to import old messages and calendar events from Outlook for Windows, in the form of .PST files.

This is not a huge deal, and seems like an obvious feature. But for some, it — combined with the fact that Outlook for Mac will finally exist in the first place — could be enough to get them to switch platforms. Or at least to give them one less reason to stick with Windows.

Previously, Mac owners who wanted to use Exchange email — or other features Outlook does better than anything else — had to use Microsoft’s unpopular Entourage app, or more recently, the Mail app built into the latest Mac operating system. But only when Office 2011 ships later this year will Mac users finally get a — decent, we hope — version of Outlook.

No word yet on whether Office 2011 fixes another big Mac disadvantage that Microsoft has savored for years — the relatively lousy edition of Excel it offers Mac users.

What do you think about the change?  I don’t do ‘many’ conversions from PC to Mac, but I do about 5 or 6 a year, and this will make it much much easier.

Affiliate Offer I Stand Behind: Vermont Teddy Bear

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Vermont Teddy Bear is a company I can really stand behind.  1) I’m from Vermont, and 2) their business model and idea is awesome!

These folks are 30 miles down the road from where I live.  They’ve been in the business for 20 years and have an amazing idea.  I love going down to their shop and actually seeing the bears get built.  It’s a great idea to go down there and tour the place and then build a Valentine’s Day teddy bear for your husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/etc.

Anyways, here is an affiliate link for them (specifically to their Valentine’s Day deals): Vermont Teddy Bear

Disclosure:  I get paid if you buy something from their website.  I still stand behind their product.

The Twitter API

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I’ve been messing with the Twitter API for the first time in the last few hours, and I’ve learned a TON.  I know – I’m jumping on the bandwagon late, but oh well.  I managed to create a script to retweet “stuff” based on the search functionality and I made a script to automatically follow people that post specific things.  I also managed to get my account suspended in like 2 hours due to suspicious activity – whoops.  I guess you live, you learn.  Basically everything for status updates and following uses CURL, which looks a little something like this:

<?php
 $username = "<username>";
 $password = "<password>"; t t
 $message = "<message content>";
 $url = '<API URL>';
 $curl_handle = curl_init();
 curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, "$url");
 curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
 curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
 curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
 curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=$message");
 curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$username:$password");
 $buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
 curl_close($curl_handle);
?>

If you’re looking for more info on how to use twitter, check out this eSeries.  It’s a good resource.

So, have questions?  Let me know.  I’m hoping to do a twitter series soon!

Review: The Shoemoney System is Meh for Advanced Users.

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I’ve been checking out the Shoemoney System for the last few days, and I haven’t learned anything that I didn’t already know.  I’m hoping that it ramps up soon though.  The videos are basic basic basic, but I’m sure he’s just leveling the playing field for other users.

The sales letter when you first sign up seemed long and annoying.  Why not just do a buy button at the top?  I knew I wanted to try it, but still had to sift through all of that stuff.

The videos and coupons that he advertises are released slowly over time, so you can’t just buy a month, watch and download everything and then cancel (shucks).

It looks like the only complete content is the old podcasts that Jeremy did as Net Income and The ShoeMoney Show on Webmaster Radio, but I’ve heard all of those already.  It would have been cool if the did the work to edit them down into something more to the point.

I also haven’t been impressed by the promise that the first 100 signups for the system get a special bonus, but it’s been like a week and a half and we still don’t know who we hare.  I’m fairly sure I’m in the first 100, because I signed up in 3 minutes, but who knows.

Unfortunately, content is released so slowly that I don’t really have much to say.  One of the videos everyone can watch, because it’s public, and the other three are about things I know very well: setting up a Google account, what affiliate marketing is, and setting up a ClickBank account.

I also noticed that many of the users complained about the same things in the week 1 webinar, so I don’t feel completely alone with this.

My conclusion?  I’ll give it a little more time before I completely judge…

The Internet – A Small Town in Cyberspace

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Internet Cafe

Users at an internet cafe in China

The internet is a community like any other town in the world.  It has people, transportation, communication, media, and many other features of actual cities and towns.  The people that spend their time working and playing online have developed relationships with others in a way that people become friends in real life (I hate saying “in real life” too, because despite some arguments The Internet IS “real life”.  It just takes place in a different locale – anyways, I digress).

Transportation

Google is the backbone of Internet transportation, serving as the largest central hub for directing traffic.  There are other modes of transportation such as MSN, Yahoo, or the once defunct, rising once again Ask.com.  Unlike our physical world, we can transport ourselves directly to a new address.

We can also move fluidly from one website to another – each link becoming a road, moving away from where we were last.  I suppose some peoples’ goal would be to get as many roads leading to their house or place of business.  Others may even charge a toll to use their roads (subscription services).

Friends & Communication

The amazing thing about this new world is that the barrier for entry to communicate is extremely low.  Anyone can get their 15 minutes of fame by creating the next most popular viral video.  We can build relationships with people that we have never met in person before.  People even work for businesses from the other side of the world without ever setting foot in their physical offices.

We can build, maintain, and document our relationships with others on our websites, through Facebook, or through a much lesser known standard: XFN.  Sharing information with friends in our community is extremely easy – and almost overwhelming at times.  Many people blog, and those blogs can be aggregated to one place through RSS, putting so much information at our fingertips.

We talk through chat, web conferencing, and internet telephony like Skype.  Any person can stand at their podium on streaming sites like USTREAM or Justin.tv and talk to their viewers, not unlike a person standing at a podium in Central Park.  People can even get together for a quick soccer game in our virtual community.

Media

The new newspaper is Twitter and the new televisions are YouTube and Hulu.  Social media is adding new dimensions to media and news is being reported and shared at alarming speeds.  I find it amazing how quickly an Amber Alert can permeate Twitter even if it’s fake.

It’s interesting to see how traditional media is still having trouble keeping up and people that can adapt are taking advantage of that gap.  Internet performance marketers all over the world are stepping up and representing huge corporations and usurping advertising dollars from the traditional power houses.  This new media is so enticing for business, because compensation is based entirely on performance – much like 100% commission sales people.  No, it’s not like that.  It is that.  Businesses ALWAYS have an unlimited budget for positive returns on ROI.

So what other ways does the Internet seem like a small town to you?  or a big town?

Inspiration and Being Happy

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The video below is extremely inspiring.  Often times people don’t appreciate what they have and will complain: “things can’t get any worse,” “my life sucks,” or “what do I have to live for?”  Optimism, hope, and determination give us strength.  Next time you’re feeling down or need motivation, watch this:

Be happy with what you have.  Be happy with what you’ve done.  Be happy for what is to come.  Be happy.