This years April Fools was by far the most fun for me. I posted about my rules and kind of hinted at what I was going to do only a couple weeks ago so I was pretty sure people would be watching for it. And that added to the fun.
I love April Fools day stuff because its super challenging. Its like selling cars to car salesman or picking up strippers in a strip club. Everyone smells a rat. And being the shoemoney.com audience is mostly marketers who lie tell creative stories for a living its even that more difficult.
My friends at BuddyTV hooked me up with a Dharma Initiative suit from my favorite TV show LOST. In LOST they have these training videos where some guy talks with really bad video editing and oldschool lines going through it. Thats what I went for.
So if you missed it here is my April Fools day post
It is now the most visited page for a 24 hour period with about 90k uniq visitors.
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Normally ShoeMoney.com only gets about 30k uniques to the entire site so to have that many to the root url + post url that is pretty cool!
It also is now officially the most commented post on ShoeMoney.com with almost 600 comments!
So was it a success or a waste of resources? Hell I dunno! All I know is I had a blast doing it.
Why was it so successful?
Well being a marketer you have to understand what makes your customers (audience) tick. People LOVE to be recognized for being the first to point out something or just have their voice in general.
So what I did was I set my blog to make it so an adminstrator had to approve every comment then I ONLY approved the people that fell for the joke. Then I replied to the people that did fall for it thanking them and engaging normally with them.
OMG PEOPLE LOST THEIR MINDS. People were going absolutly apeshit like ITS A APRIL FOOLS JOKE YOU IDIOTS!!!
Then when I did not approve their comment…. they went to forums, twitter, and made blog posts pointing out that I was doing a April Fools day joke. It worked like magic 
So it was kind of a April Fools double cross. While it looked like the 30 commentors had been fooled…. it was actually over 500 people that were in que calling April Fools that had been fooled.
Ahh what fun!!!!!
I cant wait until next year!
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 67 comments… read them below or add one }
Thats clever
Good to see it was a sucess unlike google joke cadie
You cheated by posting it before April Fools day.
If its posted on April 1st, the email readers would get the mail next day and that would delay the whole joke!
When he posted it, it was already April 1 on other countries
IT WAS LAME LAME LAME LAME …. Like most of your posts these days …
Missing the old days … !!!
haha…hilarious. You sure created a buzz.
Very clever and interesting, but those that know you, had to know it was coming
Lol great april fools
Certainly you know the nerve of your audience and treating them in that manner only. This is really interesting and unique I must say.
Of course, your really should move to Portland…it’s a lot nice than Nebraska :.)
There were a lot of people like 10 hours after the post came out commenting that they were the first to figure out it was an April Fools joke. Very funny.
Shoe talks about Strip joints an awful lot…I would be worried if I was his wife…
That was a good joke that many did buy…hopefully out of the increased visits on that day, there was subsequent increase in revenues and possibly more followers on the regular…
Hehee, excellent! Just excellent.
Can’t wait for next year either
Congrats on your win. Looking forward to next year.
at first when I looked at the April fools post I thought it was somewhat real, but then when I watched the video you posted along with the post i realized it was April fools
. Can’t wait for next year!
LOL. Excellent work on the April Fools Day!
Good April Fools day jokes are always winners! Good job
you so pissed me off
… when you approved my comment about revealing that it was april fools day, I was sounding like an idiot trying to shout at people where everybody knew it already
The submarine to work every day was great. You had a little flinch in your mouth before that though that kind of gave it away for me.
Did you profit from it all? Is there a stat you can share from the ads, tools, increased subscribers, etc. that sold because of all that traffic? Just wondering – The Profitability of a Joke. Sounds like a blog post title.
It was only the mouth flinch that made you question going to work in a submarine?
Wow
Well executed plan. Just goes to show if you know your audience!
Let’s see what you can come up with next year….
yes!!! Google joke was not joke any one can guess they are making joke.but u did good job. well dome. by reading your post i came to know u really love April fool
And he make most of us a fool. Although many people will not accept this. But if they have made us fool and we enjoyed this than we should accept this.
Very clever strategy! I was really wondering why everybody fell for the joke…
That was pretty funny
Yeah. I will definitely going to try on my blog next year.
Marketing is really a nice word for manipulation and control.
You certainly manipulated and controlled some of the best!!
Well done.
Brilliant on the part of not approving commentators who realized it was an April Fools joke, until later, lol. It’s so simple, yet I never thought of that, hehehe.
You’re absolutely right, people love to point out things like this. Especially when 30 people fell for it.
Now, my only question is – did 30 people fall for it, or was that 30 of your friends pretending to fall for it as bait? Hmmm… how far would an Internet Marketer go for traffic?…:)
-Paul
LO Shoe, You mean to say we should have reacted as if we have been fooled, when we weren’t fooled, so in the end we wouldn’t look like fools?
nice joke. i ill wait next year to see what idea do you have
It took me two post to see you were not letting those who seen the obvious april fools joke. This one compared to last year was a bit too easy to figured out.
Lol great april fools
Nice job shoe. After I saw that my comment didn’t go through I kinda thought you didn’t want to ruin the post…didn’t think about the fact that people would go ELSEWHERE to brag about how they knew your joke. ha.
good stuff!
I still hope you enjoy Portland & your new job.
Kidding….brat!
You and my son were the only ones that caught me off guard, but ya got me!
Yeah.. I was so shocked reading the first few lines of the post too.
Classic….ignore the naysayers…just bask in the glory of catching some people on All Fools Day!
don’t be so proud to yourself …because you are their hope that’s why people keep visiting you to get your comment…
But it’s good ideal that you doing that way to see a excellent result!
Sounds like you had a lot of fun
Blogging should be a lot of fun
Great to see you doing so well from it
Very well done Shoe, i kept up following the comments from 18 to 600. It was definitely incredible.
Awesome marketing.
I am sure you will keep getting comments on April Fool post till the next year’s April Fool.
90K visitors in 24 hours is not an April’s Fool joke.
Well done!
Not only was the april fools video genius, but blocking people so it’d go viral is one of the best april fools joke / viral marketing ideas I’ve seen in a long time.
I imagine you got tweet-spammed to death about it?
I’ve never really understood why we pick out one day a year to pull pranks on people.
Why can’t we do it all year round?
If we do it all year round, they may call us scammer or xxxxxx…
It was funny right, but next year before the end of March people will be more carefull
But it’s good ideal that you doing that way to see a excellent result!
Excellent! Just excellent.
I have to followup again, and say that this april fools day trick was one of your best Shoe! Once again congrats!
Dinono.com
The submarine made it easy to spot…for me anyways….C’mon people…..a submarine????
lol, see you next year then !
lol.. nice post… lets see how next years goes…
I think I will do this steps next year on my blog too.
hmm…that would vain.
Great joke men. When i saw your post and Chow`s i was almost sure that were a joke, but seems that JC is realy going to work with ML
LOL! I think I was one of the first fooled but not until I saw some of the first few comments! Nice one shoe! Next time, I would be more alert!
I was fooled too when he said, he will sell this blog and move to one area.
Nice!
I was wondering why my post wasn’t showing. Besides, who takes a submarine to commute?
Haha damn look at that stats
Really good work with coming up with such a post 
Very good post.you want to make april fool.but you are not success it..hehehe
I think you made some interesting topic in the joke post there.
Lot of people knows about this.
You know what made ALL the members of Pinky Arcade become ticked? My boss decided to mass message ALL 13,000 members notifying they have won a prize when in fact only 1 prize per day is given.
You should have seen the messages coming back…lol.
-Mike
Lol, that was pretty classic
When I first saw your post, I thought it’s a lame april fools joke this year – but now that I see the results, I have to say it was very clever!
Good One Shared
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