Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Toren Ajk & Michael Sprouse on Today’s ShoeMoney.TV Show

Jeremy Schoemaker — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:16:55 +0000

Former Playboy and Epic executive Michael Sprouse is in the house to co-host todays ShoeMoney.tv show. Today my guest will be mobile advertising expert Toren Ajk.

Should be a good one don’t miss it! 1pm CST on ShoeMoney.tv

BTW you have a few more days to grab my latest video series – The Local Internet Marketing Blueprint for only $49!!

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Why You Should Make Your Own Product (And Not Be An Affiliate)

Justin Goff — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:00:47 +0000

Hey, Justin Goff here…

I’ve made a living as a product owner and an affiliate for the past 5 years. Now, one of the easiest ways to make money online is to be an affiliate for another product.

And while I recommend being an affiliate marketer to a lot of new people, once you know what you are doing you should really be making your own products.

Whether your product is something like a DVD, a vitamin supplement or even something common like phone chargers – having your own product gives you SO much more control over what you are doing. Along with that, there’s a few BIG reasons to have your own product.

1. Your affiliates build your email list

When you have affiliates that make sales for you, you’re collecting a buyer’s email address everytime they make a sale. This is the KEY to having a long term business online. Once you have a customer, you can make new products to sell to them, and continually market new stuff to your list.

2. You have a “backend” for every sale you make

Every sale you make as an affiliate is usually a 1 time payment for you if you’re an affiliate. But when you actually own the product, you can make the same sale and then you can also make more money on the backend since you have a new customer. This allows you to spend more money on advertising, which can get you even more customers.

3. Affiliate marketing without a list is NOT a business

If you have NO email list or no way to contact people who have bought products through your affiliate links, then you really don’t have any REAL assets in your business.

People who have emails, physical addresses, Facebook fan pages etc… all have real assets that allow them to continually market to the people who buy their products.

If you’re just starting out, affiliate marketing is a great way to get started. But once you understand what you’re doing, I would definitely look into making your own product.

This is the best way to build yourself a real business that will last.

- Justin

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FTC Scores Big Court Win Against DRTV Veterans

WilliamRothbard — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:00:20 +0000

In a much-awaited decision, a federal judge has granted summary judgment in favor of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against DRTV veterans Gary Hewitt and Doug Gravink and their company, Family Products LLC, in the case FTC v. John Beck Amazing Profits et al. Hewitt and Gravink sold “John Beck’s Free & Clear Real Estate System,” “John Alexander’s Real Estate Riches in 14 Days,” and “Jeff Paul’s Shortcuts to Internet Millions” through national infomercials. The FTC obtained a preliminary injunction in 2009 but failed to get an asset freeze, which allowed the defendants to keep advertising under the strictures of the preliminary injunction and, equally importantly, to continue to pay for a defense – all the way to trial if necessary. The court did not need a trial, however, summarily ruling that all challenged ad claims and marketing practices were deceptive and a violation of either the FTC Act or the FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR).

The gist of the accusations was that the business falsely advertised the income potential of its products and failed adequately to disclose the negative option terms for its continuity program. The FTC claimed the infomercials created the false impression that it would be “quick and easy” for anyone using the products to make money. The John Beck show, for example, said consumers could purchase homes at government tax sales “free and clear” for just “pennies on the dollar,” and would be able to profit by renting or selling them, and the John Alexander show claimed fancy earnings awaited users of its real estate system. “Jeff Paul’s Shortcuts to Internet Millions,” in the name itself and in endorsers’ earnings claims, suggested similar riches for users of that program.

On every score, the court held these claims were false – that, in fact, only a few people made money and the vast majority lost, including on expensive coaching programs. Further, the court said that disclaimers, such as ones stating that results would vary, and that time, effort and “common sense” would be necessary to be successful, were ineffective to dispel the misleading “net overall impression” that handsome profits could be made, quickly and easily, from the programs.

In perhaps its most legally significant finding, the court also ruled that defendants violated the TSR by failing to disclose the terms of their continuity programs not just before the customer agreed to the sale, but even before the customer divulged credit card information. The text of the TSR states only that terms must be disclosed before a consumer “consents to pay,” but the court, citing FTC compliance guidance on the TSR, construed the text to require that disclosure be made even earlier, before the seller or telemarketer requests account information.

Since the start of 2011, Internet sellers of negative options have been required by the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (“Rockefeller Law”) to disclose terms before billing information is provided. Now, with the decision in John Beck Amazing Profits, there is case law to back up the FTC view that this requirement should extend to telemarketing sales as well. DR marketers of continuity programs should take heed and review their scripts (and websites) to make sure all material disclosures are made not just before the consumer says, “OK,” but even before he pulls out his card.

As for the case itself, it’s not quite over. The parties have been asked to tell the court how much it should order in consumer redress and whether it should ban Hewitt and Gravink from infomercials – for life. The FTC is seeking more than $450 million, and it goes without saying that it is pushing for a ban.

The Local Marketing Blueprint is live! (save 75% off limited time)

Jeremy Schoemaker — Sat, 12 May 2012 13:28:58 +0000

Back a couple months ago we surveyed our list and blog readers as to what they were interested in more. Learning internet marketing for their companies or offering services to these companies.

We received over 5,000 responses and it was split pretty much right down the middle. So I created a course that was tailored to both parties and for a limited time its ONLY $49!!!

Check it out on Udemy now – there is a free video in every course if you would like to demo before purchasing.

==> http://shmny.me/localmarketingblueprint

This course is designed for 2 people.

Business owners - The world is changing VERY rapidly and what people are trying to sell you is often times years old! In this course I am going to walk you through everything you need to not only prepare for the future but also be light years ahead of your competitors. The udemy platform is perfect for this course whether you are going to do the tasks yourself or have someone on your team do it. The content remains forever!

People looking to start their own business - The local small business space is the largest untaped resource on the internet. Many small business owners know they need this service but have no idea where to start. In this course there is a special section about how we have had success approaching clients, figuring out the pricing structure, contracts, and about everything else.

In this course I am also going to walk you through how we:

Turned a local sandwich franchise into the top 1,2, and 3 highest grossing stores in the world!! (in Lincoln, Nebraska no less).
Filled a dentist office with clients for 90 days with the exact core demographic they were looking for (they had to call us and tell us to stop!).
And many more case studies.

So as you can see, no matter if you are a small business OR a person looking to offer local businesses these services, this course is a **MUST HAVE!!!**

I have sold over 3 million dollars in informational courses. Most of which at the $2,000 price point. I feel this is probably the most valuable one I have ever put out. The content is amazing and the opportunity is HUGE.

Chapters Include:

Working with the client
Step by step walk throughs to optimize your web presense (SEO, Tracking, etc)
Reputation Management (Don’t wait until its too late!!!)
Search engine optimization
Case studies
Walk throughs

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==> http://shmny.me/localmarketingblueprint

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@unclecreepymma – Free Shirt Friday Future UFC Champ Ian McCall

Jeremy Schoemaker — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:00:31 +0000

Today I am happy to feature Ian “Uncle Creepy” McCall who sent me this legit shirt:

Ian is currently ranked the #1 125lb fighter and will be fighting for the UFC Championship soon.

WAR CREEPY! and the UGCTT!

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

Trying to increase your Google rank that is like no other?

Do we really want SEOMoz’ Rand to decide what is and isn’t spam?

seobitch — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:16:29 +0000

Ah, Rand. With one simple Google+ post (but worth noting that he didn’t put it on the official SEOMoz blog) he sets off a firestorm about whether he should be deciding what is and isn’t spam, and effectively, whether he should be giving webmasters the ability to put a big rubber stamp of “Hey, our SEO tactics are Rand & SEOMoz approved!”

It is just wrong on so many levels. What is happening with the data from the results? Is it being stored in a database to be published later? Is it something the Mozers are going to pull out at one of their conferences on a big show and tell screen so they can show of the good, the bad and the ugly? Or post lists in the members only section of SEOMoz? Actually, as you keep reading through his follow up comments and you will discover it is actually far, far worse. But more on that shortly.

What about how secure this data is. Is the secret sauce according to Rand something hackers could get – I am going on the assumption that Rand will consider it is trump card and never publish the factors he decides make up the criteria in the spam or not game. And could this database be hacked and records of all submitted websites and their scores be obtained? Hypothetically speaking, if Shoemoney had used the tool, I am sure many people would give their right leg to see exactly what sites Shoemoney was looking at.

Now imagine what a rogue SEO company would pay for a list of websites who all had the top score for what Rand decides is perfection? If he requires you to submit the site for them to check, and he keeps a record of your site and score, what if a spammer got a hold of all the sites your IP submitted? Ouch.

Or how happy would you be if you if someone plays connect the dots with all the sites labeled as spam and outs entire networks, not just the spam ones, but the carefully crafted sites that are being fed from the spammy ones?

Really, who does this benefit besides Rand himself? Rand makes up the criteria for ranking, based on what he thinks ranking criteria is. Even worse, webmasters will be basing their entire SEO on what Rand thinks are the ranking factors, NOT what Google’s are. And because of his close relationship with Google (you don’t have to look further than his homepage where he has a testimonial from Google’s Avinash Kaushik), many webmasters could take it as gospel, because of that relationship.

Rand also mentions it will be included in Mozscape. Nice for SEOMoz, since that seems to imply that only basic access to the spam tool will be free. So for the low, low price of $99/month (minimum) you can have access to it too. I don’t know how many people pay for SEOMoz Pro currently, but I would imagine people would sign up in drives thinking that Rand is revealing the Google secret sauce in his tool.

Oh, but wait, want to start learning the secret sauce sooner? Rand drops a little tidbit that

“+Luella Ben Aziza Our data scientist, Matt, will be presenting on his findings at Mozcon, and hopefully building something thereafter, so my guess would be sometime in Q4 2012 or Q1 2013 for a launch.”

So, yes, paying to also attend to Mozcon means you can get early data on the project.

But now onto the part I find even more disturbing than Rand playing God mode with what is and isn’t spam. Rand says something even more disturbing:

“My hope is that it is providing broad value, though, and that we’re doing it in a balanced, universal way (outing millions of sites, not anyone in particular, and certainly with no motivation other than making information the engines already have more accessible).”

So he has confirmed the intention of outing all discovered websites with this new tool – millions of them! What has given him the right to publicly tar and feather any site, let alone millions of them. It’s like he is creating his own unethical circus sideshow event where you can point and laugh at the baddies. And what if it goes further with a “for your convenience we have added a report spam to Google button” so you can quickly report those spammy sites right to Google so you can be a Google hero too!

And on the flip side, spammers keep at least one step ahead of Google, and yes, Rand too. So Mr. Spammy Scammy Webmaster with his cutting edge spam can say “Look at us, we are doing what we are doing and ranking #1, and hey Rand says we are all good with his spam detector tool.” Yeah, that is going to go over well when Rand finally manages to catch up with that spam.

That said, there could be value in it if it was used for good instead of evil. Why not make it a tool for webmasters only, requiring site verification, so people can get the data for their own sites? But we know Rand will not do that, because then it really isn’t sexy enough to sell, after all, we want to be able to see and out all the spammy things our competitors are doing.

I just want to add that I think Rand is a great guy in the industry. And I get that he wants to do something big and flashy with that $18 million dollars in funding they obtained. I just think this is a really, really bad move for any industry company to be doing outside of a major search engine, especially when it could be mistakes as the word of a search engine. It’s just unfortunate it is Rand that has decided to go forward with something like this. I honestly would have thought better of him – and from the Google+ comments, many others do too L

Trying to increase your Google rank that is like no other?

Elite Retreat 9 Recap

Jeremy Schoemaker — Wed, 09 May 2012 23:37:09 +0000

Another Elite retreat in the books! Another amazing year.

This year we decided to move the event back to the Clift hotel in San Francisco where we went a few years back.

Monday morning could have started off a little better. Flight time was at 6 in Omaha so that means my Intern had to pick me up at my house in Lincoln at 4 in the morning.. way too early to say the least.

Our connecting flight from Salt Lake City to San Francisco was delayed several times for a total of four or so hours due to the heavy fog in the Bay Area that morning. We did manage to get into San Francisco at a decent time around 2:30 Cali time. From there my staff had meetings with the hotel staff while I, the talent, rested up for the long week ahead.

Tuesday was another pretty chill day for me.. after all I do need my beauty rest. The highlight of the day definitely was going out to eat at Water Bar. I friggin love that place. Introduced my Latvian buddy Andris to crab for the first time, as well as some of my staff members to oysters.

At night we officially kicked off the event with a cocktail reception and horderves. Unfortunately not all the attendees flights had arrived yet so the numbers were a little slim. But hey, that didn’t hold us back any.

Wednesday morning.. when it really gets going.

The attendees rolled in one by one and grabbed their t-shirts and backpacks filled full of other cool stuff, which I will get to in a sec, and then settled down for an awesome breakfast sponsored by Boost CTR.

But back to the gifts we gave out. This year I wanted to give out gifts that I felt people would actually use a lot when they travel. We started off strong by giving out Swiss Army backpacks that Chitika was generous enough to sponsor for us.

In the bag was another tote bag given to us by Retargeter, a Steve Jobs book, a portable charger, and a Power Squid that Affiliate.com sponsored for us.

After everyone was done eating my staff rounded everyone up to get situated in the conference room to listen to our awesome line up of speakers we had that day which included Jason Nazar, David Greenbaum, and Toren Ajk.

And as always open bar started at noon.

At night we meet in the Clift lobby and walked over to Fleur De Lys for an amazing five course meal which included Kobe beef and Swordfish. We were also treated to six different wines throughout the dinner as well as the horderves at the start of the night.

When dinner was over we had a table reserved at The Redwood Room in the Clift for anyone who wanted to continue the night. Some of the more brave individuals joined Gene for a night on the town.

Now on to Thursday, last day of speakers which included another All-Star cast of Tim Mayer, Issac Saldana, Dave Snyder, and my man Vik Duggal who stepped up to speak in place of Jeremy Hermanns who was too ill to make it.

And again.. open bar started at noon.

After all the speakers had given their presentations they had to bring in the closer, me, to finish them all off and send them up to their rooms to get rested up for the night ahead at Ruby Skye.

Ruby Skye was a pretty sweet setup. We had dinner served to us on our own private room afterwards, however, world renowned Dj Markus Shulz performed in the room next door.

As also when you’re with ShoeMoney we were rollin like big shots with two of our own V.I.P. booths with bottle service throughout the duration of the night.
After Ruby Skye well just say the Intern had the night of his life with some of the attendees around San Francisco and just leave it at that..

Friday, the final day.

How everyone managed to get up in time to go to StumbleUpon is still a shocker to me. Nonetheless they all did it and we had a great time exploring the studio and picking at their brains for a little.

Once the StumbleUpon tour was over at 2:30 it marked the end of Elite Retreat 9 and left me time to unwind in my room thinking about how we are going to to it even bigger next year for the big number 10!!!

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