ShoeMoney.com Worth, Rand’s SuperProposal Scandal, And Other Misc Questions
Kind of a boring Sunday so I went ahead and posted monday questions today.
Shoe this site says your site (shoemoney.com) is worth $618,240.00. I am curious what do you really feel this blog is worth?
This is a great question I would really like to avoid…. but I will answer it (and im sure ill get flamed in the comments).
WARNING EGO ALERT:
I would say the blog without me is probably not worth much. Everyone has opinions on Affiliate Marketing and making money with AdSense but actually very few that are talking about it have achieved the level of success that I have. I blog about my experiences as they happen. The shoemoney blog is not a news blog its a journal really from my experiences in the industry. People come here because I am pretty frickin transparent about it too. My PPC experiments made a lot of money but I also saturated the crap out of the market. I don’t think I have been to a show since when a person has not come up to me and thanked me for being so open about exactly how to make money ppc to affiliate and told me they are making good money STILL doing it.
I had people come up to me at Pubcon and ask me why I was not a speaker. I told them its cause Brett Tabke hates me. Then they told me thats to bad cause I come and listen to all these speakers but you are the only person who has actually taught me something I could start making money from. I actually do get that a lot & it makes my head HUGE so if you see me walking around like my head was just inflated thats what happen…..
Ok back on to answering the question:
Now if you take into account the shitload of links its gotten (over 1100 unique domains alone from the mybloglog crap a while back) over the 18months I have been doing it mixed with the fact its listed in about every list ever about people making money on AdSense or affiliate marketing or other stuff like that…. I would say its pretty authoritative in that space. (although I am not a SEO)
Also you have to take into account the fact it earns about 10k a month right now without actively seeking out advertisers. I would imagine if I ever really got a fire under my ass I could get up to 15-16k/month in direct ad placements. So mix all that together + the HUGE hockystick growth and I would estimate it to be worth about 300k. There it is.. I had to come up with a number so I did.. flame away h8rs 
Yea its about half of that estimate but hey its not THAT far off compared to some of the things that say the blog is worth like 2 million.
Jeremy you seem to be a guy in the know, I heard that there was a huge company that agreed to actually pay for Rand Fishkins Superbowl commercial/proposal but backed out when they found out other parties were involved or something weird like that? Just curious if you had the scoop.
Interesting time for this question to come. In the past month or so ive heard the story from atleast 5 different people.
(this is from the rumor mill so far)
Evidently Target …… yes THE TARGET was going to pay for Rands Commercial to be aired during the superbowl with the agreement rand would do some promotional commercials. Evidently the deal was all set until Target learned that SEO Playboy Joe Morin had a contract that any money that was made off of the deal would goto him. At that point Target backed out. I am not sure if Joe Morin had a bad past with Target.com or what but that made them jump ship. To be fair to Joe he has always told me because of his super close relationship with Matt Cutts he never ever did anything shady and even showed me he had him on speed dial on his cell phone a few times so I doubt it was a question of SEO ethics. Now then evidently Rand wanted to go public with this story and how they backed out (remember he was in it for love.. not money… all the money was going to Joe Morin) but when Target heard of it they threaten to sue Rand (who never was going to profit from it anyway).
I reached out to Rand and asked him these questions and he wrote me back saying he could neither confirm or deny because of possible legal issues.
Thats all I know from the rumor mill at this time. I am sure there will be a lot of talk about it at SES NYC.
I’m sure you get a lot of those Monday questions now, but what the hell, here’s another.
I have several ideas for projects every day, whether it’s improving one of my existing sites or creating something from scratch. I take action on a lot of my ideas and end up with several things going at once. I know you say your wife tells you to focus on the most profitable projects, but if I knew which projects would be the most profitable before I begin working on them, I would be pretty special. I instead work on projects with the most potential and still end up with several things going at once. I’m sure you get into the same situation with all of the things you’re doing. My question is:
1. Do you prioritize and work on one thing at a time until it’s complete? or do you multitask and manage several projects at once? If the latter is true, how do you manage your time so that you don’t end up with several near-finished projects and none that have gone live (Iike me)?
2. You were once new to making money online like everyone else. Back then, what percentage of your time did you spend learning and what percentage did you spend acting on your ideas? How about now?
I seem to spend more than half my time trying to learn everything I can about all the different aspects of internet marketing. I learn so much every day and have to force myself to stop reading so I can work on my projects. I know that learning and doing are both pretty important, but I’m trying to find a good balance.
Thanks!
Mike
Hi Great questions
1- I am super obsessive compulsive and stick to one thing until its complete or as complete as its going to get. As far as multi-tasking goes that more has to do balancing family and work
2- When I started I spent ALL my time learning. I went to borders constantly and purchased programing books constantly. I really only had one idea then and that was to make my ringtone community site a better place. Now I have a incredible programmer (known as dillsmack) so now I am transitioning more into a CEO type position and less as a developer. Its been a really wild learning process for me and I have a LONG way to go!
Thanks for your questions all!
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Wow that is interesting with Fishkins Superprosal. I never heard of Joe Morin before this though. I cant wait to hear the scoop!!!
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???? Why ???
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Probably cause I call him out when I think he does things wrong and don’t kiss his ass. I think of the 5 total posts ive ever made at webmasterworld only 2 were not deleted.
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How can you be a female and not know who Joe Morin is? He tries to sleep with every female at every SES
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heh tries I know hes slept with xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx
EDIT ShoeMoney: not cool to name girls names when you do not know or even if you did its still not cool
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Interesting of today. It is always fun to gave answers i feel good when i was interviewed by Local Newspaper.
The questions you answered today are in poping in my mind aswell. I myself wont able to balance now-a-days. So reading this i am feeling fresh thanks to shoe and thanks to the person who asked these questions.
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Joe Moron is a retard! He acts like a pimp and talks a lot of trash.
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lol at SES London a year back my mate daveN said he needed to take a shower after talking to Joe Morin
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So what happened to the charity thing he was going to do? Did he give all the money to charity instead?
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Gary - we sent Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital the ~$10,000 that had been raised. I really can’t comment on the accuracy of Shoemoney’s other statements
Joe Morin is a great guy. He may have a tendency to like the ladies, but he is not only an excellent businessman, but a genuinely good person.
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Oh, I would say that the dnscoop is pretty accurate, however it figures out its totals. I just wouldn’t sell at the price it gives for my websites.
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These Sunday/monday Q&A were the best so far great info.
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“Probably cause I call him out when I think he does things wrong and don’t kiss his ass.”
He does not like to be criticized? and/or Has a little attitude problem?
I give kudos where kudos are just and appropriate, but the same is true for criticism if you make mistakes IMO.
Most people don’t have a problem with giving Kudos but to criticize. They say rather nothing than something bad.
It’s not how I see it. If I criticize somebody I see it as doing them a favor, because how do you know if nobody tells you. You are wrong from time to time, just because you don’t know better and would die stupid if nobody ever told you where you screwed up and thus missed out opportunities.
Same thing the other way around. I appreciate criticism and I appreciate it even more from somebody who does not know me well, because those types of people are rare, unfortunately.
“Do you prioritize and work on one thing at a time until it’s complete? or do you multitask and manage several projects at once?”
This is an excellent question and you Shoe have a little advantage there over me, but I don’t know if being “super obsessive compulsive” (as in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) is a good thing. Depends on the degree I guess. I multi-task and can finish multiple things parallel, but It happens again and again that I multi-task beyond my “biological computers” available resources. When I realize that, I switch temporarily into a “different mode” and finish one at time prioritized based on current status of the project, time needed for minimum completion (you can most of the time phase out projects, unless you are overly obsessive-compulsive hehe) and finally urgency (e.g. If I don’t have it done by X, does it then still make sense to do it at all?).
Nice post.
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i always make a wrong step.Time management is important when doing online business.After read your post,now i’m considering myself to retune my work time.
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LOL! He can’t be THAT bad.
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I think 300-400k, but that is the value for you. That is the strange part about blogs, since they are so personal it would be difficult for a 3rd party to perceive the same value. Say you sell the blog one day, I guess that 50% of the traffic and rss readership would drop the day after, if not more.
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/ego boost start
I see myself being worth at least $50,000 by the end of the year and hopefully $250,000 by the end of 2008.
/ego boost finish
The only way to make money is to learn from others how they made it and do it your way.
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it’s it internet, there are haters and then are lovers.
everybody has somebody that hates them and loves them.
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Hmm..
Well, I’ll say this. Every now and again its a good thing to toot your own horn. If only to measure peoples reactions.. and I think your pretty much on the money.
Firstly, you are your own brand - thus your own currency. It would be a bitch to try and sell your blog unless you continued to contribute, regardless of value.
I’ll admit too I read it because you are (seemingly) transparent about your experiences, and your ‘experiments’ did ring true for me.
Lets not forget its not all about money either. You feature aspects of your own life that most others wouldn’t, in a way celebrating the broader picture. It’s more balanced.
Its because of that balance I’m not surprised you’re lettin the ego out - just dont do it too often, depression doesn’t suit me
Oh as for the inflated head - dont worry about it. Just go get 2 Shoemoney hats in XXXL. Put one on your noggin, and send the other one to ME !!!
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Why would people give you crap for saying this blog wouldn’t be worth much without you? I don’t know about everyone else, but that’s the only reason I visit. :p
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How did I get pulled into that story?
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Very interesting and introspective on your part! We love the honesty and down-to-earth answers without the fluff and bullshit. If you owned a small forum website without specific product involvement nor current advertisers where would you begin to generate income?
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I love this “series,” thanks for answering more than one question!
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it’s only an ego boost if other people tell you that and you repeat it… it’s just chest puffing otherwise, but good luck!
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It scares me to think how much money a blog such as TechCrunch is making considering Shoe’s numbers for this blog. And I agree that this and every other blog are worth $0 if sold; once the original blogger is gone so is the blog’s value.
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I think you are always the fall guy
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Sometimes when blogs “sell” the original owner is kept on to write some posts here-and-there. So while I agree a lot of ppl would “drop” it would remain decently popular if they kept Jeremy around
(I don’t plan on him selling anyway)
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I agree Noseoguru, if shoe ever sold the blog what would be the point of visiting ? Though I suppose there would be a temporary benefit to the buyer until everyone realised oh ya.. he’s gone
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I don’t think you should sell.. i love the blog.. once you sell most people might not be interested anymore
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You know too much people or the other way around
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I have taken Shoemoney to task before but he means well and tries to act honorably. That is why people visit this blog. We see his faults but his strengths overcome them.
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Nice, love the mail bag
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dnsscoop is so weird though - generally the value it gives is equal or a bit less than what I pull from each site per month.
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I liked this post. Mix of gossip, righteous bragging and beginner’s tips. Starting and finishing is very important when it comes to websites… I don’t know how many half ass projects I have that are imperfectly monetized or half-profitable because I lost the interest to complete them.
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Great post. Thanks for answering more than one question!
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$300k, huh? Too rich for my blood…
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I dunno I’m all about the attention, link baiting and stirring up trouble, but if hypothetically there was a lawsuit connected to my marriage proposal I can’t say that’s something that I’d want everybody talking about, analyzing, dissecting and monday morning quarterbacking.
Maybe you feel that’s a price he has to pay since he went public with it, but for me at a certain point you can cross a little too deeply into someone’s personal life, and that’s not a spot you should be unless you were invited there.
Ask yourself how would you feel if a bunch people you didn’t know were talking trash about you, your wife, your finance, your kids or your family. How that would make you feel. Sometimes you gotta man-up and admit you made a mistake, and do the right thing and fix it.
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Oh wow, that’s quite the comment
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Huh? What’s this comment all about, Michael?
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nosoguru, I think I remember Business 2.0 having an article about 4 or 5 months back where Michael Arrington claimed TechCrunch was bringing in about 60k per month. Not sure if that was just the blog or the whole brand. And I think he has stepped things up a notch since then.
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I ran the same toll and my blog’s value is 300 bucks. Back to the drawing board
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That’s the danger of running a top commenters section in the sidebar - people will comment just to get on the list. Then again, if your goal is to increase interactivity, then that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
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Um, yeah. Did we read the same article?
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I guess the comment is a some kind of advanced link baiting technique
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yeah I am also looking for the complete story here
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These Monday question answer sessions are awesome Jeremy! I too want to hear more!
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Sorry man I don’t see a problem in replying to people’s comments. I especially don’t see a problem replying when what I say are not one word answers or spam.
Jeremy most likely installed (or you did) the top commentor to increase comments and it has increased my comment reply to others. If you check previous posts (before it was installed) I still commented pretty often
Why do you get after me for commenting?
I’m pretty sure the purpose here is to discuss, and I’m sorry if I keep the discussion flowing.
-Todd
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Most blogs are of value due to the content and the people behind them. Remove the people many times the blog will die off which is usually the case because people arent just reading because of ONLY the content but partly over time they somewhat feel connected to the person. They feel they know them since they know about them.
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Not everyone is like that… some people don’t want to know they’re naked because thinking you’re wearing the emperor’s clothes is so much better.
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Repeating things like self affirmations could work…
or you could try this innovative technique from Dilbert creator, Scott Adams that involves writing essays in support of a random point of view that you do not hold. After a while people can start to believe it.
Althought Scott does suggest a much more nefarious end goal.
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Not sure I get the context here, but I agree with you. In fact, like so many others, I go to great lengths to preserve my privacy.
I know Shoe cast the comments in his post as being from the ‘rumor mill’ and so evidently people are talking.
But as much as I agree with you - its the (unfortunate) price Rand ends up paying for going so public with it. The real problem i suppose is mixing business (ie who profits from what) with something as personal as a marriage proposal.
I have only 1 problem with it all - I wish I had thought of it (and been capable of it) back when I proposed to my wife.
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You obviously dont know him, hes always a complete gentleman around me and my friends, very generous and he throws great parties
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My site isn’t worth much
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Ya who is this Joe Morin and how much does he love the ladies? More importantly does he have a ebook I can buy that will teach me a step by step method to get super models to like me? err sounds like an interesting character though.
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Espically if you run a successful blog and speak your mind
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I wouldn’t say its accurate.. Alexa Rank and Pagerank are mostly useless.. if you want to buy a site based on the numbers it gives all I can say is …
let me know because I’ve got around 50 odd content sites Id like to get rid of :p
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Some people are just full of themselves.. personally I often go a little nuts when someone criticizes me even if its justified.. have to breathe and remind myself not to over react.
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Our blog is worth $666 … Im not sure how comfortable I am with that..
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nice worth, i think it is not worth that much since it has personal matters, but some of the articles will fetch a pretty penny
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yea i think the blog is worth $0. If some buys it and pretends to be shoe than maybe you can value it haha. I think the real value is what is worth in the market like everything in life. What is the highest price someone would actually pay for this blog.
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TechCrunch is making some serious $ and I think you could pretend to be the guy there and continue running that blog where here you can’t pretend to really be Jeremy to easily!
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funny I know both of them and Dave’s comment would have been a joke…. there are plenty of people who would say the same about Dave and for that matter a pile of them that say that about me too…
Joe is a great guy… as is Dave…
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Okay guys I hope you are all attending the charity event the Monday before SES NYC…. $40 open bar for three hours in Manhattan… and help raise money for Ronald McDonald House… and we are looking for people to donate things to raffle off at the event…. pony up boys and girls…
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You are just a big fat comment whore…. lol what a joke…
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Hey, glad to see I’m not the only victim of webmasterworld deletion. I don’t bother with that forum anymore. If the stuff that I’m posting over there gets deleted, I can only imagine the other stuff that I and other webmasters might find valuable that’s not making it…
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I too love the Monday questions. I look forward to them every week.
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Hey Shoe. I don’t know if you knew this or not, but I made dnScoop.
$618,240.00 might be a little high, but probably not by much. The value that my little algo attributes to a site, is for all of the elments that make it what it is right now, including you as the writer. So I definitely agree, that without you, it wouldn’t be worth nearly as much.
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Well the value might decline if the original writer is gone but it’s hardly a foregone conclusion that it would be worthless. Once someone has shown the way, so to speak, and built up all this brand loyalty and link love it would certainly be possible to have it as a going concern going forward.
Remember what happened to Joey after friends!
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$618 grand is amazing!!! Honestly, i thought it would be more but….
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Do you know who he is? I’ve never known Joe to be anything but a complete gentleman. At my first SES he took me under his wing and introduced me to his friends whom I have become quite close to. He is a fantastic friend, always there when I need him without ever asking for anything in return.
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Seriously, your comments have gotten out of control. Stop posting just for the sake of racking up your comment count.
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nice clean up Rand.
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[...] “I had people come up to me at Pubcon and ask me why I was not a speaker. I told them its cause Brett Tabke hates me.” - Jeremy Shoemoney on his blog. [...]
[...] reading Shoemoney’s blog yesterday and saw that he mentioned he never spoke at PubCon because Brett Tabke hated him. He also mentioned that all but two of his posts over there had been [...]
[...] this post, Jeremy Schoemaker ponders the value of his personal blog, shoemoney.com. The person who asked him [...]