http://archive.aweber.com/shoemoneynlShoeMoney News LetterTue, 18 Oct 2011 16:13:13 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/shoemoneynl/E7GC6/h/2_Bulls_are_On_Top_A.htm Here is a really old joke told down from rancher to rancher. It's been adapted a lot and you might have seen it in movies or TV shows. The original story uses some graphic language which I will filter... but you will get the point. It's funny how it applies to Affiliate Marketing. Bare With me. These 2 bulls are sitting on top of a mountain. A son and a dad. The son looks down and sees all the cows grazing below. He looks up at his father and says, Hey Dad, lets RUN down their and F*!%K one of those cows!. His Dad looks down at him and says, No son, lets walk down their and F*%K them all. Ok so what does this have to do with affiliate marketing? Well right now you are running all around trying to get 1 commission. When you attend the webinar on Thursday I am going to show you how you can take your time, with the same existing traffic you have, but profit from it FOREVER! ==> http://shmny.me/qki8fC So what did the dad bull know that the son didn't. Well when you attend this webinar you will find out. And its ABSOLUTELY NOT what you think! You've never seen anything like this before - and yeah, I used a funny little story to make my point, but once you're on the webinar, you'll learn how to get up to TEN times more return on your money without WITHOUT risking any of your existing traffic. ==> http://shmny.me/qki8fC I will see you there! Jeremy Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:13:13 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/shoemoneynl/1VKHd/h/The_Accidental_Millionaires_.htm This is the October ShoeMoney Newsletter. As always you can republish, or forward to a friend. Just please keep the links intact for reference. When my father dropped out of high school in 1965 he was able to get a position as a welder for International Harvester and earn an amazing wage. Some kids went to college but it was not required for skilled positions. You either had the chops or you didn't. Much like my dad, I hated school. I only graduated because of one reason - My mother was a teacher at my high school and ADORED by her peers. I remember getting my final grade from my science class saying I finished with 38% for the year.... D-. "your mom is a wonderful person" written at the bottom. I am 100% certain without the invention of the Internet (thank you Al Gore!) I would have died years ago a very obese, lonely, kid. I would have never known anything about love, the amazing joy children can bring to your life, or the feeling of being financially secure. By the time you read this I will be back home... but to put this in context, right now I am writing this laying in bed at my suite at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I just finished eating 2lbs of room serviced king crab legs and was just checking into the airline where I see I am flying first class back home tomorrow. I am out here on a paid speaking engagement and in addition to getting paid to be here and speak for 15 minutes, the event is also paying all my expenses including hotel, airfare, and food. Now I am not telling you that to show off, I am just trying to put into context where my head is at right now. Life is fucked up. I started thinking about all my friends in the industry and how we all started out. Almost none of us had any formal business education, yet we are running multi million dollar companies. Running a multi million dollar company in itself has been a very painful education for me. When it comes to marketing I don't feel like I have any competition in the world. But one thing I really sucked at is being CEO. Last June I promoted Tigh - to that role in our company and our revenues have skyrocketed since. We will probably do more profit in q4 of this year then all of the first 3 quarters of this year and last year combined. Tigh is actually a perfect example and makes my point. When I hired him fresh out of college 3 years ago it was my attempt to build a real company. I decided that my days hacking and slashing were done and I was going to take a crack at running a real company. Get a real office outside the house and all that stuff. Tigh was my first "employee" in this venture. When he first started I just had him make twitter accounts for a thing I was *cough* testing *cough*. No shit he made like 300 twitter accounts until both of our accounts got banned. I pulled some strings to get mine back but @tigh was lost forever from him. (sad face). ShoeMoney Tip: If you are going to make 300 twitter accounts don't use the same email domain for them all and also use proxies to create them. I know what your thinking... I spammed twitter. Actually, no.. it was a VERY interesting case study that I shared results of with people like Michael Gray and some other folks who I knew would get off on the data I was collecting. Maybe someday I will post why I did it and what exactly I did... when the statue of limitations with twitter are up that is... =P. BUT I DIGRESS! So in less than 3 years Tigh has tripled his salary and is doing an amazing job as our CEO. We also have more employees and looking to expand the team with 2-3 more people in the next couple months.... and also move into a bigger space. The kid who started as a low hourly waged employee is now running the company I founded... and allowing me to really do what I am best at... marketing! Next week I will be doing the "Big Money Blogger" panel at Blogworld back here in Vegas. If you would have told me 7 years ago some day I would be on panel of "experts" talking about how I make money from a website that generates significant revenue... I would have told you, you were absolutely crazy. But I am not the only accidental millionaire on the panel. The other "experts" are: John Chow - Canadian, son of Chinese immigrants. Has the technical skill of a nat. Writes a blog about making money online, eating pho, and cars. Darren Rowse - Austrailian, ordained minister, much like me he first started a website about his true passion (digital photography) and then created a resource site about how to earn a living doing it. Anita Campbell - Sorry Anita I don't know your background =( Ok but seriously c'mon! Do you think any one of us thought this was our fate 10 years ago? Have you ever met John Chow in person!?!? Life is fucked up. For many years (about the last 30+) it was very hard for anyone to really get a good job without a 4 year college degree. But right now there is an amazing opportunity for anyone, anywhere in the world, of any social status to make a fantastic living and live out there dreams. I know because we put a lot of them to work! All you really need is to be in the right mental state and willing to do the work to make it happen. And really you don't HAVE to buy anything to learn how to do it. I certainly did not have the money to buy awesome products like the ShoeMoney System. (like how I did that? Sorry - ABC). Seriously though there is an amazing amount of free resources available to you if you can pull yourself away from farmville for a couple hours a day. Who knows maybe you will be an accidental millionaire?Sat, 09 Oct 2010 01:09:19 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/shoemoneynl/yzcS/h/Takeaways_From_My_Keynote_Talk.htm Checking in from Denver Today I did the keynote at Affcon 2010 affiliate convention in Denver Colorado. Instead of me standing up and talking for an hour I mixed it up a bit and asked my friend and Executive Vice President of Atrinsic, Aaron Baker, to join me in more of a open discussion about current issues that are on affiliates minds. I think it went pretty well. Tomorrow I leave to go meet with folks at Fox Audience Network (formally MySpace MyAds) in Los Angeles so its going to be tough but I will try to have our video guy get that talk up for you so you can watch the whole thing. Some key takeaways from the discussion- - The online sales tax (and affiliate tax) is coming one way or another. We need to band together to mitigate its effect on affiliates. - People who want to jump into the world of affiliate marketing need to have some basic salesmanship. Understanding things like association (and borrowed association), call to action, scarcity, and many other basic salesmanship techniques really help affiliates do well. (more on this soon). - There is HUGE opportunity in the local lead gen business. - Government intervention in our space is coming.... and in 10 years I suspect we will have talks about the good ole days when you didn't have to pay 15% state and federal tax and get a special business license to be an affiliate. We talked about many things in great detail. I think you will enjoy the talk. Also on a side note I just noticed my friend Jeff Walker just released his product launch blueprint. This is the guy I was telling you about the other day who architected almost all of the record breaking product launches. I just downloaded the PDF and am excited to check it out. Its only going to be available for a couple days so grab a copy now. =>Checking in from Denver Today I did the keynote at Affcon 2010 affiliate convention in Denver Colorado. Instead of me standing up and talking for an hour I mixed it up a bit and asked my friend and Executive Vice President of Atrinsic, Aaron Baker, to join me in more of a open discussion about current issues that are on affiliates minds. I think it went pretty well. Tomorrow I leave to go meet with folks at Fox Audience Network (formally MySpace MyAds) in Los Angeles so its going to be tough but I will try to have our video guy get that talk up for you so you can watch the whole thing. Some key takeaways from the discussion- - The online sales tax (and affiliate tax) is coming one way or another. We need to band together to mitigate its effect on affiliates. - People who want to jump into the world of affiliate marketing need to have some basic salesmanship. Understanding things like association (and borrowed association), call to action, scarcity, and many other basic salesmanship techniques really help affiliates do well. (more on this soon). - There is HUGE opportunity in the local lead gen business. - Government intervention in our space is coming.... and in 10 years I suspect we will have talks about the good ole days when you didn't have to pay 15% state and federal tax and get a special business license to be an affiliate. We talked about many things in great detail. I think you will enjoy the talk. Also on a side note I just noticed my friend Jeff Walker just released his product launch blueprint. This is the guy I was telling you about the other day who architected almost all of the record breaking product launches. I just downloaded the PDF and am excited to check it out. Its only going to be available for a couple days so grab a copy now. => http://shmny.me/bpehcY P.S. there is also a great walkthrough video that accompanies the PDF.... Jeff is really outdoing himself on this one; => http://shmny.me/bpehcY Talk soon, Jeremy Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:59:27 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/shoemoneynl/yPor/h/Congratulations_Ipad_Winners.htmSorry it took so long to get this message out. I was waiting on hearing back from all the winners making sure I had permission to publish their names and got their addresses. Here are your winners: Barbara Mendoza Michael Deleon Greg Robinson Nelson Riely Nick Weatley Amber Shoeinfeild Jason Hickson Luke Kling Al Patel Nitin Jorn Congratulations to all the winners! Each winner will recieve a 16GB Apple iPad. This contest was a great success for us. We enrolled over 28,000 new students in the ShoeMoneyX.com system. You can bet we will be holding more contests like this in the future. Maybe give away some of those fancy 3g models? Maybe give away my Google Fridge I still have in the box for like 5 years now since I got it..... Have an idea for a good giveaway? Hit me up on twitter @shoemoney and let me know what you think would be some good prizes! Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:49:13 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/shoemoneynl/1UHx9/h/What_Happens_When_You_Lose_1_5.htm This is the March edition of the ShoeMoney NewsLetter Part 1. As I always say I learn 100x more from my failures then from my successes. What do you find more scary? Getting dinged by the IRS for 1.5 Million dollars in fines and penalties or having the FTC break down your door and virtually bankrupt you? One story we will cover in this email and the other in another week. Mike Filsaime has been one of the biggest internet marketers in the world. His products have done millions in sales annually. Mike also has an army of affiliates that act as commission based sales people to sell products for him and he has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to them for years. I am sure many of you reading also pay people in some regard... maybe you have affiliates or maybe you just have contractors or other people you pay money to. All of you can benefit from hearing Mike's story. In Early 2008 the IRS conducted a random audit on Mike Filsaime's company. There was nothing Mike did to trigger the audit, well other then being in our industry and the crazy spikes we see in revenue setting off some Red Flags. Anyway... They went over all of his financial records going back 7 years and came back to him with a huge mountain of paper work asking where his 1099's were on all these people he had paid money to. Mike told me for years he had been paying money to affiliates via PayPal and figured that was good enough records to keep on them. He had no clue he needed to also get a 1099 on every person he was paying money to through PayPal. After all... PayPal has records on these guys right? The IRS told him it did not matter what PayPal had. It was HIS responsibility to have the 1099 tax forms on file for each of these people he was paying money out to. OUCH. Mike said they not only let him NOT deduct those expenses but now HE now had to claim that income on that money that was actually paid out to people. But here is where it really sucked.... bad... Since some of the people Mike paid were way back in the early 2000's... and he now had to claim that as income.... Guess what? That's right he had to pay the taxes PLUS a fine for each infraction AND interest on that money FOR THE LAST 7 YEARS. Now the actual money paid out to affiliates that he did not have 1099's on only totaled a couple hundred thousand dollars but Mike had to write a check to the IRS for back payments, fines, and interest for over 1.5 MILLION dollars.... ZOMG!!!!!!!!! So what did Mike do wrong? He always paid all his taxes and took proper deductions. He just did not have good paper work and that cost him 1.5 million dollars of his hard earned profits. Mike told me over a year later he still thinks about it at least once a day what he could have done with that money. Help family and friends... Build a school for children in a 3rd world country.... geez... But like most bad ass serial entrepreneurs Mike figured out how to turn his experience into an incredible positive. He created a service that completely prevent people from ever ending up in his shoes. Honestly I can't believe someone has not thought of this yet. The website is called Pay People Online and its pretty hot. Right now its 100% free to use. The way it works is you upload your payment file to it... then if it does not have someones electronically filed 1099 on record it emails them and tells them they need to complete it in order to get paid. Once this is done it lets you know. For users who use PayPal Mass Payment files (like 99% of us) its even easier. You just upload your mass pay file to it, it then checks to see if it has 1099's on file and if not emails people and lets them know they need to fill it out to get paid, then spits you back out a payment file for people you DO have 1099's on. Slick eh? I really like this site and I think its going to turn out to be worth MUCH more then the 1.5 Million that it cost Mike to have an epiphany about this much needed service. I say it all the time adversity is opportunity and this is a classic example of just that.Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:53:22 -0500http://archive.aweber.com/shoemoneynl/21_LH/h/The_Power_Of_Trust_ShoeMoney.htmThis is the January ShoeMoney Newsletter (yes a few days late... but I have been busy!) . You can feel free to republish it or redistribute it as long as you keep everything intact. Trust is an amazingly powerful thing. But with great trust comes great responsibility. Last week we had an amazing launch with the ShoeMoney System. We sold out the entire initial 500 seats in one day. Truly humbling. I should jump for joy right? I mean I just made 100k in a day. But instead I felt sick. Its the same feeling I get when people pay $5,000.00 a seat to come to the Elite Retreat or any other product I launch. 75% of the people who purchased the ShoeMoney System had already purchased something from us. They loved their previous experience and they trust we will deliver another amazing product. So yes, even I get a little queasy and nervous after selling to people that trust me. But then I think about the last year of work we put into the product, the 6 months of 20+ beta testers we had testing the product, our partners like Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and many others telling us what a remarkable product we have built and how they feel it's truly the first legitimate make money online offer out there... and once again I feel invulnerable. It's really majestic the way you feel when you really believe in your product. But this newsletter is about trust... not about me and I don't want to make it about me. Lets look at others who have earned a great deal of trust. Mike Arrington started a blog (he used to be the only writer) years ago called TechCrunch. Its now the largest blog in the world with almost 5 million RSS readers. I really like the way Mike Arrington writes and I connect with him on a personal level. I love the way he fights for what he believes in (as unpopular as it sometimes might be) and how he gives his raw opinion on stuff. I remember talking to Guy Kawasaki once about his alltop.com website and he said he asked Mike Arrington to write about it on his Techcrunch Blog.... Mike did... but not in a very nice way. The one thing you can trust about Mike is that he will keep it real. Mike Arrington has been earning my trust for years. And when last fall he announced they were going to be making a touchpad mobile computing device called the crunchpad I was all in. I would honestly buy a piece of cardboard with a techcrunch logo on it if they sold them. It doesn't really matter what it is to be honest. I trust that whatever Mike Arrington is going to put his name on is going to be a great product. Speaking of touch pads Apple just announced they are coming out with a multitouch mobile computing device called the iPad. Where can I order. We recently just had an internal discussion about the iPad and all of its shortfalls. Then I took a brief poll around the room and asked who is NOT going to buy it. Not one person raised their hands. We are all Apple NUTS here at ShoeMoney and despite a lot of public criticism and even our own personal concerns we will be first in line to buy the iPad when it is released. We trust Apple will make an amazing product. There are tons of public companies and figures that have built trust. Think Oprah has trust? A brief mention of your book on Oprah's show means you're going to the Best Seller lists. What about Google? Google could put its name on anything and people would buy it. They have been building trust with people for years. And now they are capitalizing on it big time with products outside their core scope.... products like the new Google Nexus One phone and the soon to be released Google Chrome operating system (and there's talk of a touchpad by Google). Why do you think celebrity endorsements cost so much and deliver such amazing results? Because they have earned the trust of their followers and their followers want to buy things that they recommend. So thats great and all but what about you? How can you earn trust? For years I had heard of a guy named Andy Jenkins. He was the brains behind a product called Stompernet (a 20+ million dollar company). I also knew that he had won an emmy back in his days working for NFL films and read somewhere that he was one of the core video editors on some mainstream movies like The Blair Witch Project. But I had never met Andy In person... until a couple weeks ago. Just as we were getting ready to launch the ShoeMoney System I got a call out of the blue from Andy Jenkins inviting me to this affiliate marketing event in Las Vegas. Now keep in mind I had already been in Vegas for 5 days that week... and this would mean I would only be home for 1 day before turning around and going back to this event that Andy invited me to. To make it even more complicated it would mean I would only be home for ONE day before we launched the ShoeMoney System. But I believe in fate and honestly I feel when moments like this happen you have to make it work. So I made it work and went back out to Las Vegas. From the minute I got there Andy started introducing me to some of the biggest and most famous internet marketers in the world. I was blown away. I was also blown away with the fact that a lot of them were ShoeMoney readers. But what really blew me away was that all Andy wanted to talk about was my upcoming launch of the ShoeMoney System. He wanted to know exactly how I was doing everything. He made me show him all my videos. And then he told me what I needed to do in order to really deliver on launch day. When I got home he had already made a 50 minute video where he went over our sales page and pointed out all the stuff we needed to change. He then created a video from scratch that we used on one of the versions of the sales page. After the dust settled from the launch and we got to look at the analytics.... would you believe Andy's video sales page converted 4x better then any of our other versions? I just wish Google Website Optimizer was not so delayed and we would have known this on launch day. But we still hit our max capacity so all is good (and I learned a lot for the future). After launching Andy kept calling me asking how things went and talked me though some stuff I had not thought of. Why was this guy doing this? Plain and simple he likes to help people. And guess what? He has earned my trust. Probably for life. Anything this guy ever needs I will be there for him. This week Andy is offering free video tips for regular people and small business owners. Its a series he is calling the Video Boss. Trust me you have to check it out. Its one of the most eye opening things I have ever seen about why video is so important. Go to http://bit.ly/videoboss right now and check out the free content while its still available. So how can you earn trust? Well I am sure you have something to offer. So start offering it! When I was thinking about publishing a book I would hit up Seth Godin for tips. I once asked him about pricepoints and stuff and he told me, Don't make a book for money... A book is a simple free way to tell the world how smart you are. Seth is another person who has earned my trust. Any book he ever sells you can bet I am buying. Hell I have a 800$ lithograph of the purple cow on my wall at work just to remind me to build products that are truly remarkable. So start building trust. And when you have it - Be responsible with it. Trust is an amazing thing.Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:47:58 -0500http://archive.aweber.com/shoemoneynl/1lk8U/h/ShoeMoney_Oct_NewsLetter_The.htm I am hearing a lot of great stories from people who have gone through my free shoemoneyx.com course and doing some neat things generating revenue. Please keep sending me your stories. I love hearing them! That is why I made the program! Now I don't mean to pee in your cheerios but I want to talk to you and share something with you. Something I feel is really important. Making money online is easy. Profiting from it over the long haul IS NOT. Eventually everyone's ship comes in. When your ship comes in what will you do? Maybe your ship just came in? This is my personal story and dealing with my first big success and how I was able to position myself for the best outcome. I hit rock bottom about 8 years ago. I was 420 lbs, smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day, about 60k in credit card debt, and just had lost my job. I also sleeping on my friends couch. Its important to know what rock bottom feels like. Its important to know what its like to really be hungry. Its important to know what it feels like to drive a 1990 rusty van with no muffler. Its important to know what having massive amounts of credit card debt and what appears to be no way out feels like. Its important to have that feeling that you are a failure at life and maybe that's all you will ever be. Now I say that its important but to me it was ABSOLUTELY crucial in developing my mindset for success. I am guessing you have seen the image of me and the Google AdSense check for 132,994.97 for one month. Its actually hard to search for anything related to making money on the internet and NOT see it... The one thing I have never really talked about was the back story on WHY I took a picture of me and that AdSense Check for 133k before taking it to the bank to cashing it. As I am sure you know Google AdSense is run on your website and you get money when visitors click on your AdSense ad. Almost all of my traffic was coming from Google so I felt it was really a house of cards. If Google felt my website was no longer relevant for the keywords they were sending me traffic then over night I was done! At the time I was totally new to making money on the internet and I never thought it was going to last. I took the picture because I always thought that if my websites disappeared tomorrow I could leverage that picture into a book or something... I didn't really know... I always had in the back of my mind what rock bottom felt like and I never wanted to experience that again. In hind site it was even more brilliant then I ever thought it was going to be. Especially that that month was the last month that Google ever sent out paper checks for over $10,000.00 so really nobody will ever have a check. But I never took my success for granted and I diversified my website income into many other forms instead of just Google AdSense. I learned how to make money from donations, affiliate programs direct banner sales, selling my own products, and subscription. Within a few months my subscription revenue, Direct banner sales, and affiliate revenue each by themselves dwarfed my Google AdSense revenue. So I have all this money coming in from the website im all diversified but I still did not really feel safe. So I started the ShoeMoney blog (originally on googleninja.com before I obtained shoemoney.com) basically just talking about the ins and outs of making money. Because I had the Google AdSense Check for 133k and some pretty other large screenshots of revenue that I could use to make points on what I was talking about the blog VERY quickly became an authority in the space of making money online. So much so that in its first year that we implemented advertising on shoemoney.com we did over 2007 $100,000.00 in revenue. In 2008 we boosted that to $490,000.00 in 2009 shoemoney.com will make over $750,000.00 probably closer to 1m in revenue. But lets take a step back. Because we had built this authority we were able to leverage our audience into starting our own conference called the elite retreat. We started the event in 2006 and have sold out events every year since. Even at a price tag of $5,000.00 per person. In 2007 we leveraged the blog audience and our contacts and started our own advertising network called Auctionads. Auctionads is truly an amazing success story and one of my proudest accomplishments. We took a company from 0 to 25k active publishers doing over 3 million per month in revenue in less then 4 months and sold the company. That is simply unheard of. It would not have been possible without leveraging our previously accomplishments and taking them to the next level. So what drives me to keep doing more things? I can remember that feeling of hitting rock bottom like it was yesterday. ONLY now the steaks are MUCH bigger. I am now married and have 2 kids. I also have 20 employees that I am responsible for. So why am I telling you all this. I want you to recognize what you have and not take it for granted. I had to hit rock bottom to find myself and really develop a work ethic and drive for more. Maybe you don't? Always be leveraging your current position and looking for your next thing. I have no doubt that everyone reading this will come into money/success eventually. If you love what you do and you keep trying then its just the law of averages. Eventually its going to work. But when it does what will you do? Until next month, Jeremy If you liked this email feel free to forward it to a friend or repost it. You have my permission. Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:55:52 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/shoemoneynl/y1OE/h/Special_ShoeMoney_Tools_Offer.htm Recently we have had many inquiries from ShoeMoney newsletter readers asking if we would be giving out another special offer for our ShoeMoney Tools internet marketing suit. Its the #1 Tools suite and there is absolutely nothing like it on the market. This is a special offer only available to you. Please do not share the promotional code!. If you want to try out the ShoeMoney tools system we are offering you a 9 day fully enabled account for only $1.95!! There is no obligation and you can cancel at any time. use promo code NEWSLETTER Go here to take advantage of this offer: https://tools.shoemoney.com/newsletter/ Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:03:03 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/shoemoneynl/bKVp/h/Myspace_presents_Myspace.htmHi guys, I will be short. Myspace reached out to me to say they are giving a webinar on Thursday about advertising on Myspace using the Myads platform. They will also be taking open questions. Anyway before I blog about this tomorrow I wanted to give you first opportunity to sign up (its free of course) before it fills up. I think its going to be pretty informative. If you are interested go here to reserve your spot: http://www.shoemoney.com/myspacewebinar Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:26:41 -0400http://archive.aweber.com/shoemoneynl/1JA9V/h/Local_Affiliate_Marketing_Guide.htmA couple months ago I wrote the local affiliate marketing guide in a newsletter. I had an overwhelming number of responses and questions. Instead of responding in a case by case basis I thought I would write a better guide. So here is the newest Local Affiliate Marketing Guide. It is now over 35 pages. I will also continue to update this so please email me, jeremy@shoemoney.com, and let me know where it needs improvement. You can download it here: http://www.shoemoney.com/ShoeMoney-LAMG-3-28.pdf Sincerely Jeremy Sat, 28 Mar 2009 12:46:44 -0400