Answers To Questions Round 14

Answers To Questions Round 14

shoemoney · · 24 min read
James asks:
When will you start doing some more helpful posts? Most of your posts nowadays tend to be interviews, seminars you've been too and pictures of yourself in companies t-shirts. Why not make posts giving tips and observations, helping new and even established webmasters?
ShoeMoney: I have never really been in the "Helpfull Posts" business. ShoeMoney.com has always been about me... its a blog and my personal blog at that ;). I think you must be new to the site... I have always done free shirt friday. I also open my blog up for open questions to things I have not covered. I can't read your mind to know how to help you =P
tom asks:
What is the best way to promote affiliate offers now that Google has hikes the prices for ppc on affiliates?
ShoeMoney: I think a lot of times people are quick to blame some FUD Google Rule for why their affiliate site no longer has cheap clicks. You really have to do a lot of testing but we have found the more interaction a user can have on the site leading to the offer the better. The days of getting cheap clicks directly going to the advertiser are over.
V-Strom asks:
have you ever ridden a motorcycle?
ShoeMoney: Yes, I used to ride in enduro races back in the day... and i mean way back in the day. I was pretty good considering how overweight I was. I love riding street bikes but could never own one. I can only ride normal for so long before I would want to try a ramp or something that would get me killed.
atlanta wedding photographer asks: Simon asks:
1 - Have you ever done usability testing on any of your sites? 2 - How do you plan to monetize Fighters.com? Regards...
ShoeMoney: 1) Yes 2) We are so focused about growth and scaleability right now and really not that of monetizations methods although we have quite a few plans I am really excited about.
Sean I. Mitchell asks:
What are your favorite sources of traffic. Rank your top 5 favorites... Muchos Danke, Sean
ShoeMoney: 1) Traffic that clicks on ads! OK seriously:
  • 1) word of mouth traffic
  • 2) refer a friend traffic
  • typin traffic
  • bookmarked traffic
  • search traffic
  • gaurav asks:
    What would you rather do: attend a good university with high fees to get a great degree before you start your venture or attend a normal university with a full ride scholarship and start during college?
    ShoeMoney: Since this is a magical question I would look into my crystal ball and determine which one would give me the best education/experiences and go with that one.
    Ben - frogstr.com asks:
    How do you prevent hacking, DOS attacks and all sort of hacking on your websites? Security is one of the most challenging issue when becoming a "popular" website with let's say over 5,000+ unique a day and at the same time most people ignore or don't care about this issue. This question is inspired by what happened today and it would be interesting to know how you prevent/deal with that problem/reality.
    ShoeMoney: Its difficult. The more popular you become the more you become a target. Fortunately we have a great team with a lot of experience in that area. There also is a whole balance... I know many website owners that have the most secure, redundant, lock-tight server environment but they move at a massively slow snails pace if at all because the security really hampers them. So ya its difficult.
    Adam - Creadiv.com asks:
    What blogs do you read and comment on? Or is it difficult to find time to comment at all? Adam
    ShoeMoney: I comment on techcrunch.com and 1938media.com
    Adergaard asks:
    What is your preferred business model when selling adspace via google admanager to companies/advertisers? - pageview (e.g. CPM they per $XX for each 1000 times their ad appears on a specific page or pagetype) - Time (the advertiser gets a specific slot for a given amount of time for a fixed price, no matter how many pageviews or clicks there are) - per click - other??? Grateful for any insight as to WHEN which of the above works best (what type of site).
    ShoeMoney: Sure I wrote a whole post about this. Search for it under cpm advertising
    Chris asks:
    Regarding your Shoemoney Tools, did you develop all these tools yourself or did you contract the programming out?
    ShoeMoney: ShoeMoney Tools is basically just opening up some of our internal toolsets to the public. We have about 1/4th of them currently available and just working the rest in that are good. All development was done by David Dellanave and me (mostly proof of concept by me).
    coderbari asks:
    I read in one of your posts that you did coding PHP. What was your first work in PHP? Do you still like to code?
    ShoeMoney: I love to code in fact if I was not such a badass marketer I would code full time. Dillsmack always lectures me on how much time I spend coding something that would take him minutes to do. Its very hard for me to lay off of coding because its a lot of fun for me. As far as the first thing I ever coded i dunno honestly.
    Tom Royce asks:
    How do you work through "The Dip" with your sites? I know Auction Ads was a great success from the get go, but I have to assume other projects get stuck in the gray area. Are you quick to ditch them or do you fight through to get them successful?
    ShoeMoney: We focus on services we want to use ourself. There really is never much of a dip when your building something because you want it too.
    QuickPWN asks:
    How do you promote CPA offers without making it seem like spam to your readers?
    ShoeMoney: I honestly have never had that dilemma. Putting in affiliate links to items is a after thought. Once I have written something I will look over it and see if there is an affiliate opportunity. Many times I mention books or movies so when I am done I will link them to amazon with my affiliate code and do not think twice about it.
    PPCblogger asks:
    Will you be at Pubcon in Nov? With T-shirts? ;)
    ShoeMoney: Not going to Pubcon.. Ive been gone 82 days at conferences this year and am done for the year.
    Scott asks:
    You have had experience with business partners - what was the most challenging experience you had when dealing with a business partner?
    ShoeMoney: At first I was wondering if you were asking about like employees who have turned partners or joint venture partners but I realized my answer is the same. I am very opinionated, stubborn, and have completely unrealistic expectations of my partners.
    Derek Semmler asks:
    What are your top three destinations for a family vacation? Either places you have been or places you want to go.
    ShoeMoney: For the family... Ok well im talking about the whole family here my wife, 2 year old daughter and 22 week old baby. Everywhere we go we get a 2-3 room suite and usually take a long a nanny or grandma. I would say my personal favorite is Orlando. That place was built for families. We stayed at the universal park area and had a blast. The Cove at the Atlantis in the bahamas is awesome as well. I took my wife there last fall about this time and we had a blast.
    Harrisburg Web Design asks:
    Is website one word or two? Is it web site or website? I always spell it website obviously from my first question. I have seen it spelled as two words more often lately. I have had some people try to correct my spelling of it too! Please clear up this very important matter ;-) Thanks Man!
    ShoeMoney: I always spell it as 1 word. Interesting how I am an authority on grammar =P
    Debo Hobo asks:
    Do you do memes? I tagged you for one on my blog....:)
    ShoeMoney: Not normally unless its something I am really interested in.
    Four20 asks:
    I tend to be very anal about the quality of the content that gets put on my websites. Do you have any advice on 'breaking away' from previous projects. . .and letting/paying others to do it for you. So that I can focus on other parts of the website(and future projects)?
    ShoeMoney: For fighters.com I hired a great editor in chief named Chad Edward and in my agreement with him I agreed to give him full editorial control and stay out of it. Its hard to let go but can be important for growth.
    RightStarter asks:
    What are your top 3 tips on building an authority "monster site" - like fighters.com?
    ShoeMoney: Great question.. Since you brought up fighters I will address it first. Lets be honest... the domain fighters.com is a hell of a start =P. And according to the shoemoney playbook I would say we are not doing a very good job of becoming an authority site. We have an incredible writing team and that has been our saving grace. We have had a lot of issues finding a developer to help with the site. We have incredible innovative ideas with the site but just not the development resources to carry them through. We are working on changing that. Now as far as my top tips go for establishing yourself as an authority.
  • 1) You HAVE to have a story and an edge. (search on here for "what is your edge")
  • 2) Separate yourself from the pack. What do you offer that you competitors do not ?
  • 3) Act as if you are the authority in the space even when you might not be.
  • Josh Smith asks:
    What do you think Kimbo Slice's future is with MMA?
    ShoeMoney: He has brought a lot of new fans to the sport but as far as his fighting goes... I do not think he will ever be in the top class of MMA fighters.
    Moneybites asks:
    With so many shows out there, how do you pick which ones you'll attend?
    ShoeMoney: Well lately most shows have been picking up my expenses and some even giving a speaker fee so that is pretty nice and helps with the process. Personally I like branching out to new conferences where nobody knows who I am.
    Vizio Guy asks:
    Do you outsource anything to other countries? Any good or bad experiences with that?
    ShoeMoney: We outsourced a iPhone application once to a chinese group that turned into a nightmere but now we are working with some iPhone devs overseas and they are great so far. Thats about my only experience with overseas development. BTW for outsourcing I highly recommend reading this
    Adergaard asks:
    "Everyone" talks a lot about how Google Adsense is the "lazy man's" approach to making money online. But I've found that it's practically the only thing that works for "non-review/recommendation" sites. Am I missing some info about other big advertising networks out there that are not affiliate based? My point being that affiliate marketing only surpasses google adsense if you have a recommendation site or review site since then the visitor would be there looking for products/services which is simply not the case in other sites e.g. news, community, social networks, gaming etc. Surely you must feel this as well for fighting.com?
    ShoeMoney: not sure about fighting.com thats not a site I own. I disagree with you about adsense and wrote a column in this months website magazine called "anything but adsense" where I detail all the reasons why you should not use adsense.
    Kyle asks:
    If you had a killer idea for a website, but it was related to porn, would you still do it?
    ShoeMoney: yes
    Goran Website asks:
    Did you pay for your blog's design facelift, or did UBD (Nate Whitehill) do for you for free as a marketing initiative for their company? I mean you and John Chow are one of the major popular clients in their profile. Just curious ;-)
    ShoeMoney: As written about many times Unique Blog Designs came to us originally and did it for free. We have used them for many different things since everything from little things to business card designs to print magazine spreads and we have paid them well ;)
    Scorpiono asks:
    Could you name several websites that you own, beside fighters.com? I'd like to have a look and learn without reading a blog post.
    ShoeMoney: We own about 2400 domains but not many are currently active. Pimpmyblog.com is something I think could still be a great site if I can find the right person to take that over. Otherwise we have belowabuck.com eliteretreat.info shoemoney.com tools.shoemoney.com etc..
    Alan asks:
    Do you think the days of all kinds of fancy headers on a blog are over ?
    ShoeMoney: No
    Johanna asks:
    We always wish we had extra time in our hands to either finish a project, relax, exercise. If you had an extra 8 hours a day. What would you spend that time doing and why? :)
    ShoeMoney: I would spend it with my daughters. Why? because they are growing up fast.
    Adergaard asks:
    Generally, how do you get the actual money from companies that want to advertise on your site. What's the process? Do you get the money by check or do you utilize paypal or how?
    ShoeMoney: Search for how to get sponsors/advertisers i have written a bout this a lot.
    Melvin asks:
    Whats the biggest advantage of being bald and its disadvantage (based on your own experience)?
    ShoeMoney: advantage - I dont have to comb my hair. Disadvantage - I dunno its been like 17 years since i started shaving my head.
    Jonclaude asks:
    What dou you think about mobile ads? It is the next big thing or not.
    ShoeMoney: Mobile ads are great and cheap right now too.
    Michael Phipps asks:
    Recently you said (in your keynote) that a strong work ethic doesn't come easy for you, yet you attribute your success to hard work. What do you do to keep yourself focused and moving forward?
    ShoeMoney: I have a wife that works 80 hours a week as a anesthesiologist plus manages our household. Its hard for that not to rub off.
    Dexter | Tech At Hand Dot Net asks:
    What could you comment about the News that Bloggers are just being paid with $25 as an Average ?
    ShoeMoney: I think the news of bloggers being paid only 25$ on average is probably pretty accurate. Its probably actually high. Most bloggers I meet at shows make less then 5$/month.
    Dave asks:
    Is fighters.com a little more difficult than you imagined? There seems to be other sites that have popped up that are similiar to yours, namely mmajacked which is owned by chuck liddell. How is the news aspect going to work with fighters.com? Are you just going to be a news aggregator or are you hoping to break news at some point? Just as a tip, the blog section needs some work. I think you need to hire an MMA guru similiar to jordan breen at sherdog.
    ShoeMoney: Have you ever seen the site ? =P. We have never aggregated news. Btw sherdog is pathetic. They have tried so much legal action against us... Someone sees us as a massive threat. I am guessing you are a sherdog shill ?
    Melvin asks:
    Seriously what do you think about the topcommenters here? I mean yes you're running a contest and its understandable but its just insane to see yourtop commenter has about 100+ in a week. Does it make the comments here more of a less value?
    ShoeMoney: There is over 1,000 names and ips currently blacklisted from appearing in the top commentors or from winning a contest. When we see someone abusing the system with comments that are not quality then they get nuked.
    BloggerTests asks:
    What's your stand on outsourcing of projects that you could do yourself, but if outsourced could save you your valuable time?
    ShoeMoney: I have not had much luck with it. I think mostly due to my lack of being able to micro manage people.
    mrkbsm asks:
    What affiliate marketing (or blogging) conferences would you rank as the most valuable for somebody new to the world of making money online? Perhaps the top 2 or 3 that stand out the most.
    ShoeMoney: geez tough one to answer. There really is no conference that will magically put money in your pocket but I would recommend Affiliate Summit, SMX, Pubcon
    Mr Funny Motivationals asks:
    Does leaving comments on popular blogs with your website and a key word useful for SEO?
    ShoeMoney: Yes
    José Sáez asks:
    If you could would you have started your business when you were younger? do you think it's a major advantage starting it from college/school or people wouldn't take you serious for being so young?
    ShoeMoney: I am SOOOO glad I never got into running my own business when I was younger. I had a BLAST and got into a lot of trouble and I miss those days. I think its sad to see all these young kids so concerned with trying to make money.
    Stanley Tang - 15 Year Old Entrepreneur asks:
    Hey Shoe, what's your view on the current economy recession? Stanley
    ShoeMoney: I think its great for the long term. Its made us think a lot more about where we invest our money and I hope a lot of Americans look at their elected leaders and ask them what we are doing about it.
    THC Times asks:
    How do I keep each paragraph in my posts from automatically indenting?
    ShoeMoney: probably something with css?
    tom asks:
    why do you think your mma picks are so bad?
    ShoeMoney: If you followed my blog pre 2007 my MMA record was like 90% but since launching fighters.com we have come to have a close personal relationship with many fighters so a lot of times I am picking with my heart and not my head. I profited about 2800$ betting on MMA in 2006-2007 but lost all that in 2008 and no longer bet.
    Bonsai Boy asks:
    How do you get around Google's Quality Score issues when driving MANY keywords to the same landing page? I have 210 keywords in 190 adgroups and they all goto the same landing page that is generally about the same topic.
    ShoeMoney: You can never get around google's quality score. Either you provide a good, relevant user experience or you don't. There are a few tricks you can use but Google is using a lot of toolbar data in tracking how fast a user leaves the domain (from our experiences).
    Edgar asks:
    You say Fighters.com will be your next huge thing, How would you profit from a sport website? I ask because I also own a sport website and running affiliated programs not related to the sport is hard to convert.
    ShoeMoney: We have not tried to monetize the site yet ask me in a couple months ;)
    Dexter Panganiban asks:
    In Making Money Online Point of View ... Will you suggest to make only 1 blog and make it popular or make a network of niche blog. ?
    ShoeMoney: From a Making Money Online point of view I would suggest not making a blog.
    John asks:
    When you started to make passive monthly income, how much did you know about making a monthly passive income?
    ShoeMoney: Not a thing.
    River Girl asks:
    Jeremy, Pls tell us all the equipment you use for making your videos and also the software. Do you use lights? thx
    ShoeMoney: For a camera i use a Cannon HG10 that rocket profit sent me. I do not use anything fancy. The microphones were some cheap wireless ones I found on amazon azden is the manufacture. Software I just use imovie that comes with the MacOSX operating system.
    Steve Thornton asks:
    Jeremy, Your blog seems to have shifted away from what made it so popular in the first place. So few who have been successful like yourself actually share good ideas and experience with those trying to work their way up. When will you go back to posting the kind of info about HOW you are making money like you did back in 2006 when you shared results of your ringtones PPC campaigns and other MMO activities?
    ShoeMoney: This comes up a lot (see above) and its interesting what brings people in. Some say I need to write more about MMA, Some say I need to write more about financial advice... some think I need to write more about making money online. Here is the thing... again... its my blog and I wrote bout things I found or I thought other people would find interesting. When I wrote about ppc and wrote my guides to it it was an amazing time to make money. I have personally not found anything like that since but I still continue to share experiences.
    River Girl asks:
    How about an updated pic of Juliet and Joslyn? :-)
    ShoeMoney: There has been a lot of strange messages threatening my family that we had to involve the FBI in so I will probably not be posting any pictures anytime soon.
    Matt asks:
    Have you ever come close to shutting this blog down? If yes, when and why?
    ShoeMoney: Nope. I have a lot of fun with the blog. I really enjoy it. The day I lose interest in it is the day it will stop.
    Dan Schawbel asks:
    Jeremy, where does your creativity come from? What do you do to get new ideas for your blog?
    ShoeMoney: Creativity just comes from me and studying what makes people tick. Ideas from the blog comes from seth godin a lot of times ;)
    Zurpit asks:
    How did you get into programming and how did you start learning it?
    ShoeMoney: I think I was like 8 when I wrote my first program. I thought it was pretty slick.
    teamray asks:
    how long did it take you to learn programming and what were your best resources?
    ShoeMoney: I pick a task and find a way to do it. Its not the best way to learn but there is so much help online its easy to learn new languages or find example code.
    Coolazice asks:
    What makes you say "This project just isn't working". meaning in the online business, when do you give up on it. I read before that you had failures, what made you just accept defeat? (time?, money spent?, etc) Right now I'm sure most of us are still busting our butts off to make it online. Any advice to when we should give up and move on and just charge it to experience? This would really help a lot of us :D
    ShoeMoney: I go into that in great detail in the shoemoney playbook.
    Tushar Dhoot asks:
    What is the single greatest reason you think most web entrepreneurs will fail? What can they do to succeed instead? Sorry...2 questions instead of one :)
    ShoeMoney: wow thats a wide question... I think knowing how to manage people is a huge thing and also being a leader.
    Tagliaerbe asks:
    The traditional “web metrics” are the number of unique users, and the pageviews. For the blogosphere, do you think there are other metrics? feed RSS subscribers? number of comments? inbound links?
    ShoeMoney: Yes
    Corby asks:
    What's your favorite flavor of Runza?
    ShoeMoney: I hate Runza's
    Affiliate Preacher asks:
    Do you type up your own posts or do you dictate them? You do an awful lot of long posts to bang them out.
    ShoeMoney: I type all my posts.
    Danny Cooper asks:
    In your opinion why do you think people threaten and try to ruin your businesses/websites.
    ShoeMoney: Well... I personally think its my looks.
    Sohail asks:
    What things you suggest for someone to know before trying PPC-Affiliate marketing?
    ShoeMoney: understanding you are going to lose a ton of money before making any.
    Saad Kamal asks:
    I have followed most, if not all of your interviews (audio/video/text) and it seemed like the key to your success was mostly because of your persistence, hard work and a bit of luck :) Now whatever you do or start is backed up with a lot of "cash" (thanks to the fortune that you have already built). I am wondering when you first started, how much money did you actually spent on your business? What was your initial investment?
    ShoeMoney: I have always operated on a very low budget. I handle all marketing, dillsmack handles development, tigh handles operations and susan handles financials. What do we need money for?
    ShoeMoney: Answer
    Tom asks:
    You mentioned in a recent post that you were 50k in debt before your ship came in. Did you incur a lot of that debt on failed business attempts before one finally worked out?
    ShoeMoney: only about 10k was in failed business attempt. The rest was other stuff over time.
    James asks:
    I've made $8.06 on my motivation website so far! Woohoo! But my question is, if I'm running a website that is all about teaching people the truth about health and fitness and also giving them guides, reviews, tips, etc.. Should I be letting companies advertise on my site with their gimmick diets and products that we all know are usually scams or just common knowledge with a good sales pitch? I do want to make money, but I don't want to give readers the impression that I'm trying to sell them something that I don't believe in... From your perspective as an experience person with advertising, does it REALLY matter what you advertise or do people understand that you only have the adverts there to make money?
    ShoeMoney: Why don't you sell them your product that you do believe in ?
    lazydrunk asks:
    What is your favorite drink?
    ShoeMoney: Diet Pepsi
    KeepingItReal asks:
    How much money do you make a year?
    ShoeMoney: My salary is set at like 100 some thousand a year I dont even know to tell you the truth.
    Joe asks:
    Do you still do PPC Affiliate Marketing? If not, why not?
    ShoeMoney: yes we still do.
    Peter Davis asks:
    How are you approaching getting good writers for Fighters.com?
    ShoeMoney: We have never had issues finding writers. We get about 10 applications a week.
    FixThePig asks:
    Do you have a daily "Must Do List" of the top things you try to accomplish each day with respect to your blogs? A set of repeatable tasks that you feel help propel your sites to the next level.
    ShoeMoney: I never have a set list of blog to do's. The blog is generally the lowest priority on my list of daily activities.
    Don asks:
    They say we're in for tough economic times -- how will you weather the storm?
    ShoeMoney: We are sitting on a lot of cash within the company. I restructured the company so that I take a salary and not empty the companies profits into my personal account. Currently we have the equivalent of 2 years of our payroll if all of our income streams stopped. We are not going anywhere.
    Raj asks:
    What vehicles do you own?
    ShoeMoney: I personally do not own a vehicle
    onetrouser asks:
    I also wonder do you work on longer term goals, i.e. 3 or 6 months on daily basis.
    ShoeMoney: I try not to have long term goals longer then 1 week after we establish the project. Its a great way for us to stay focused and not enter the dip.
    Tom - StandOutBlogger.com asks:
    'Do bald men wash their head with soap or shampoo?'
    ShoeMoney: I use shampoo. Soap drys the scalp.