ShoeMoney gives you ‘skills to pay the bills.’ According to AdAge, ShoeMoney is now the 5^th highest trafficked web marketing site. Since its launch in 2004, it has grown into a multi-million dollar business. 35,000 daily readers, named Best Affiliate Marketing Blog and ranked in Technorati’s top 50 blogs for three years running. It topped $1million in 2009 and will better this in 2010 thanks to the phenomenally successful Shoe Money System And remember, this digital empire is based in Lincoln, Nebraska, not from Silicon Valley or New York.

Who is Jeremy Schoemaker?

Jeremy Schoemaker is ShoeMoney. Let’s look at his background first and then drill down into how he developed this multi-million dollar empire. Jeremy Schoemaker, 36, grew up in Moline, Illinois. As a child he struggled with poor health, most notably weight issues – he was 300+ pounds at age 14 – something he addressed in many blog posts. His solution to constant teasing and the flak that comes with this was typical Schoemaker/ShoeMoney: ‘work that much harder to be that much better than my competition’.

ShoeMoney Timeline on Google News

ShoeMoney Timeline

Before we look at his business philosophy and marketing strategy, let’s look at how he’s developed his business in this timeline.

• 2003 – Started ShoeMoney.com and expanded his ringtone community company, Next Pimp. The site was originally called googleninja.com. This is where he shares information on his life, web marketing, and new projects, such as The Shoe Money System.
  ShoeMoney.com has a very distinct design, especially the logo which is featured on all ShoeMoney products, marketing and TShirts. The site is 100% free to read. Advertisements were added in 2007.
• 2003 – Discovered Google Adsense. One check for $130,000 (one-month earnings from Google AdSense) is the most linked to pages on his blog. His became ‘famous’ in web terms anyway after this check showed his Google AdSense earnings. This photo launched ShoeMoney into the greater public domain and established him as an authority on affiliate marketing and online subscriptions business models. Detractors argued that the photo was digitally altered (e.g. in PhotoShop) and have went to great lengths to prove that he could not have earning this amount from his site. And they’re right, well, up to a point.
  It seems that ShoeMoney runs multiple sites (e.g. networks of automated sites) which have been fine-tuned for Google Adsense. The sum total of these earnings I assume explains the figure. Personally, I don’t care. Even if he didn’t make that amount, kudos for having the marketing smarts to get it out there.
• 2006 – ShoeMoney, with Aaron Wall, Lee Dodd, and Dave Taylor, started a conference called the Elite Retreat. Limited to 30 people and costs $5,000 per person. In 5 events over 4 years (20 events) it has sold out every event. That’s $100k for twenty days work.
• 2007 – With business partner, David Dellanave, launched AuctionAds, an eBay affiliate marketing service that serves eBay auction ads on contextually relevant sites. It won multiple awards and within four months, marketing company Media Whiz purchased a majority stake in it. ShoeMoney says that it made a lot of people a lot of money and “I risked a ton of my own money to start this network and never made a dime off of it until we sold it to Media Whiz.” When sold, it had 25,000 active publishers generating over $2,000,000 a month in revenue. That’s $24 million per year.
• 2008 Launched ShoeMoney Tools – An advanced suite of PPC (Pay Per Click) and SEO tools. Clients include Intel, Microsoft, MTV and Google
• 2008 Launched Shoemoneyx.com — Free 12 week course on internet marketing. This is excellent and I recommend you try it out.
• 2009 Launched The ShoeMoney System — Step by step guide on making money every which way on the internet. This site is targeted at those who want to make money online, not from low-paying blogging activities, but using their site as a platform to run a real web business. There is some overlap with Yaro Starak blog Mastermind system.
• 2009-2010 – ShoeMoney.com generated $1 million dollars from multiple income streams.

How ShoeMoney Really Got Started

Let’s step back a minute and see how he went from a small town in Nebraska to top of the pile.

In 1987, his mother bought him an Apple computer. That was it. From there on he was hooked. Fast forward to 1995 and he landed his first IT job at a local Internet Service Provider. He made one dollar more than he had made in Sears. The pay was irrelevant. This was a chance to work – every day & all day – with all types of technologies.

At the ISP he was thrown in at the deep-end and soon learnt how to use servers, program systems, and built websites. Then, while returning to college, he started to get calls from companies wanting to advertise on his sites. The penny dropped! He could make money doing when he loved.

What ‘s important to note here is that like many successful IT entrepreneurs, for example, Bill Gates, Schoemaker knows how things work ‘under the hood’. John Chow, a business associate of Schoemaker, is similar. Instead of getting other people to teach them, they make the deep dives into the technology, figure out how it works and then get people to teach them how it works. Essentially, that’s it.

‘But many people use AdSense and don’t make a penny’

That’s right, but reading through their sites and you’ll see that their knowledge of PPC, AdSense, Banner Advertising and other monetization strategies is backed up with deep technical knowledge. Web marketers looking for the latest hack, trick, or insight to squeeze the most from AdSense (as an example) read ShoeMoney, John Chow and Neil Patel as they show how they do it.

And, of course, when you see how they do it, you come back for more. This article, for example, shows how to increase AdSense/Adwords click throughs rates with a very clever trick.

Look at the comments under this article and you’ll see why ShoeMoney is so highly-valued. These readers are all experienced web marketers and developers but this Google Adwords trick was totally new to them. High impact articles like this generate incredible traffic, backlinks, live long on the web, and drive subscription rates through the roof.

‘How does this help me?’

#1 Takeaway: instead of writing content that has been discussed 1000 times elsewhere (in some shape or form) create something that really makes your readers go WOW!

This will have a huge impact on your subscription rates and drive repeat traffic to your site, especially if you network on DIGG, StumbleUpon or Facebook. Follow Seth Godin’s suggestion: develop content that is remarkable – something that others can remark on. If it’s not worth remarking on, well…

Ok, back to ShoeMoney…

The dotcom crash in 2002-2003 hit his business very hard wiping out most of his savings. At 28, he was 420 lbs, $50k in debt, and struggling for direction. Luckily, he met his future wife, who, in his own words, ‘showed me that you can get whatever you want if you are willing to work for it.’

#2 Takeaway: ShoeMoney’s business model at this point was based on Google Adwords and other types of advertising. While these business models can be lucrative in boom times, when the economy takes a hit, advertising budgets get cut almost immediately. My reading of this is that when ShoeMoney saw how fragile the advertising business model was, he started to look at other revenue streams. This has come to fruition in the runaway success that is The Shoe Money System

ShoeMoney’s Philosophy & The Coke Theory

His business philosophy centers on three key areas:

1. Embrace New Trends & Exploit Opportunities

His ‘Coke Theory’ best sums up his approach. He gives this example, ‘SMG entered the ring tone market early, captured traffic and has monetized it. Finding angles and exploiting them for profit is a key aspect of SMG. Maximum and diverse revenue streams are built on fairly narrow marketing concepts that are then diversified.’

With the ‘The Coke Theory’, you take an existing product, give it a new twist and then find ways to leverage its position to generate parallel, non-competitive income streams. It’s the same approach Coke use with Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Coke Zero – at the end of the day, it’s just Coke.

How you position the product – and create insatiable demand for its new features – is what matters.

2. Focus On Core Strengths

ShoeMoney’s focus is on product development, marketing and site design in that order. Unlike others who’ve invested in expensive site designs (and re-designs) first, he ‘built his sites on those natural marketing principles while running the backend. Web design was a secondary skill, so he focused on the marketing of the sites, which then built revenue.’

Once these were running successfully, he invested in a professional looking web design.

Since then he has launched other sites all of whom ‘expand their income potential by building a network of sites centered on a central theme.’

3. Small Changes Create Big Revenue

ShoeMoney loves to experiment and this comes through in many articles. The purpose here is to look for ways to fine-tune small areas which, when optimized, generate higher returns.

‘Once the traffic is there, small changes in design and structure can make big changes in revenue. Ad placement, recurring subscriptions and affiliate marketing can add value to a site without disrupting the base of revenue.’

What he’s doing here is classic process improvement. He (and his team) look at areas of the site, make adjustments, perform split tests, and then compare the results. Most of us don’t reach our goals as we don’t do the comparisons, testing and analysis. So, for example, while your AdSense campaigns may be ‘successful’, the hard data isn’t there to refine the campaigns. If you’re interested into this type of in depth analysis, get his free newsletter. And, if that impresses you (and it will!) try out the ShoeMoney system.

Remember the ‘Coke Theory’

He’s not shy about discussing his turkeys (i.e. sites that bombed). See My Top 10 Worst Ideas To Make Money

which, of course, makes him (and his business) more human. After all, most of us have up and downs, so seeing his failures helps us relate to him.

#3 Takeaway: Why ShoeMoney talks about his business failures

He does this for several reasons.

1. You can see his progression over the years. He’s not a flight-by-night operator. He’s here for the long haul. Knowing this, you feel that bit more comfortable and more likely to sign up. Compare this to sites where the About Us page is not about anyone, just generic marketing guff.
2. You empathize with him. Why? Because you’ve been there too. Maybe you’re from a place like Nebraska, have been over-weight, had health issues, or some other disadvantage. Some of this is psychological. If you had a choice between buying from someone you can relate to or some slick perma-tanned type with an achingly perfect lifestyle…
3. We all root for the under-dog.
4. We root for the under-dog because, at some point in your life, you’ve been the under-dog and know what it takes to overcome these obstacles. Maybe you also feel that if he can overcome these obstacles (e.g. poor health), then you can and it encourages you to frame your own efforts.

Why You Should Write The Story of Your Life

Before I forget. Yaro Starak suggests that you write a very detailed life story (his is 5 very long pages) so your readers (and prospective customers) can enter into your world and really connect with you. You can read his life story here.

• John Chow’s life story
• Neil Patel’s (Quick Sprout) life story
• Yaro Starak’s life story

I was skeptical about this until I wrote my own. It’s a very liberating thing to do – and remember, you don’t have to publish it — and based on the emails I’ve received, it does make a difference. Try it.

Target Audience

From a marketing perspective, ShoeMoney.com is an interesting mix. Scanning through the comments on his blog/forum, his followers are made up of newbies (asking how do I type questions) and experienced web marketers looking for very detailed tactics, seo hacks and marketing strategies. While he caters to both, the long-term fans are the hard core marketers & developers than he offers that most value to. These offer detailed information on Pay Per Click (PPC), Click Through Rates (CTR), advertising strategies, and Split Testing.

What You Can Learn From The ShoeMoney Brand

If you’ve seen the T Shirt, you’ll recognize the brand. ShoeMoney has invested in developed a strong brand, great logo with nice clean artwork, and some very sharp packaging. Look at the polished quality you see in his videos here and compare it to most other blog sites that comes to mind. Don’t be fooled by the ‘Home Grown in Lincoln, NE’ folksy feel. ShoeMoney and his team work hard to make this look easy.

Next Steps

The The Shoe Money System should keep him busy for this year. Reading this article on why he chose Clickbank, it’s clear that this was a major investment of his time and the focus this year will be in developing this further.

New Product Launches – Brian Clark (CopyBlogger) released the very successful Thesis Theme last year. Part of the success was due to the select band of A List Blogger recommending this very slick WordPress Theme and pushing it in their marketing campaigns. Chris Brogan has had it on his home page since it started. Others have drip-fed the recommendations to readers since launch.

For ShoeMoney, linking up with fellow web marketers in his space, for example, John Chow, may be on the cards. Both of these are high-trafficked sites with similar audience profiles and demographics. John Chow’s revenue streams are mostly based on advertising (which he’s very successful at) so there may be tools that compliment his and ShoeMoney’s readers.

Books – I don’t see why he won’t publish a book as he has the traffic and following. Most of his peers, such as Chris Brogan, Brian Solis and Darren Rowse have done so with great success. I’d assume this is in the pipeline.

However, one reason he may not do this (for now) is that it could cannabilize his ShoeMoney site and distract prospect customers from signing up. ‘Well, I just get the book and then see…’ Saying that, specialist book, such as ‘Facebook Advertising Models’ might find an audience as this micro-niche has very little quality books or blog on it to date.

If you know of some, please add them below.

Conclusion

That’s how he does it.

What are the key points for you to note about ShoeMoney’s site? If you’re considering developing a real web business, something more than just a blog with AdSense, then consider the following points:

• Product Development – make this central to your business strategy. Developing a suite of tools insulates you from the ever-changing fortunes (and budgets) that undermine advertising-based models.
• Brand Development – invest X percentage in creating a memorable brand that works both online and offline. The T Shirts are a good example of how you can cross the divide between off and online. They work on pretty girls, geeks and cute puppies. ShoeMoney has developed a cult following of sorts; his site is slightly counter-culture, geeky (see his Theme Song competition) and not trying to please the mainstream.
• Engagement – ShoeMoney writes most of the articles on his site. But, unlike other high profile bloggers, he engages with his readers most every day on the blog and in the forum. He’s posted over 4000 comments in the forums. The rewards are obvious. He has developed a rabid fan-base (not actually rabid, of course) who follow him across all Social Media networks. His YouTube page has 745,583 views and 10,000 subscribers.
• Business v Blog – ShoeMoney runs a web business. It’s not a blog. And he’s been at it for 6 years. I need to stress this as you could be forgiven for thinking this is a successful blog with a few cute tools thrown in. It’s not a blog. This is a real business, with real employees, offices, and a defined business strategy. The blog is the axis around which the business is built – but it’s important to see the difference.
• Your Story – Share your story. Everyone’s story is interesting. Read mine. Yours is just as interesting. It’s the one thing people can’t take away from you. AND it’s your one true USP. Add a link to your story below. I promise to read it!

What I’ve learnt.

I didn’t ‘get’ ShoeMoney until I stopped thinking of myself as a part-time blogger and decided that I wanted to run my own web business. That was the turning point. I wanted to run my business, reap the rewards of my own efforts and enjoy my life. Something I knew I would never feel working 9-5 for someone else.

Sound familiar? Do you feel the same way?  If you do, then look at his site from a business perspective.

Ask yourself:

• Why did he build these products?
• What pricing strategy has he adopted? Why does he charge X for his tools but X for his courses?
• Could I develop elite conferences? For example, get ten people in a room at 5k per head and discuss advanced Facebook advertising techniques. 5k is peanuts for Fortune 500s. They just want the proof you can deliver.
• How did he build these products?
• Why does he focus on four main products… and not more?
• Who helped him get to this place? Tip: connect with like-minded folks and work together.
• Where did he get this information? Look at the conferences he attended and go there.
• Why is he so successful? Ask him. Visit the site every week, contribute, and then ask a few questions. He’s a people person. He’ll get back to you.
• How can I catch up? Immerse yourself in one technology or Social Media platform. Don’t be a jack of all trades. Make yourself the absolute authority on one subject. Then, you’ll have a guaranteed following.

Go over to ShoeMoney now, bookmark it, get the newsletter and hang out in the forum. You won’t regret it. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I did writing it. Please let me know what you thought below.

PS – Remember to sign up for our free newsletter and give us a tweet.

This article shows you can increase your Google AdSense earnings by at least 12%. I’ve started to use video-based ads in Adsense (not the text ads) and the results have been impressive.  Split testing showed us that websites with video ads 1) keep viewers onsite longer, 2) increase repeat visits and 3) generate significantly higher AdSense payments than standard plain text ads. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to setup AdSense video, look at different sizes and formats, test the ads, examine the risks and benefits, and also show you how it increased our earnings.

Why Use Google AdSense Videos Format

The first benefit that videos offer is that they increase Google Adsense payments. In our tests, it increased earnings by more than 12%.  When you’re designing your site layout, consider dropping the text ads and insert one large video ad instead. Do some split testing and check the results. Video ads, or video units as Google likes to call them, lets you enrich your site with relevant video content, which can be embedded in a customizable player.

What is Google AdSense Video?

Google AdSense videos are user initiated ads that run on sites that are part of the Google content network. These ad formats provide users with a rich and engaging advertising experience.

How to get Adsense Videos

Sign in to your AdSense account and open the AdSense Setup tab. Click the video units link and setup up your video unit. Add it to you site and see if it compliments your content.

Risks of Using Video Ad Formats

• Risk #1 – the ads may not compliment your product offerings
• Risk #2 – the ads may be too slow when downloading (not everyone has broadband), which will leave the reader with nothing to see but a blank space, i.e. where the ad should be
• Risk #3 – your AdSense earnings will drop. In our tests, they don’t but your experience may be different.
• Risk #4 – while using video ads should lead to increased sales, especially in the short term, web users may try the video ads and then reject the regular text ads resulting in lower sales.
• Risk #5 – video ads may have a negative impact on your Adsense earnings if do not match your sites look and feel, i.e. the overall color scheme. You can’t control the appearance of video ads as you can with text ads.

Which Video Ad Formats are available?

Video ads are currently available in several ad formats:

• 336 x 280 (Large Rectangle)
• 300 x 250 (Medium Rectangle)
• 250 x 250 (Square)
• 200 x 200 (Small Square)
• 728 x 90 (Leaderboard)
• 120 x 600 (Skyscraper)
• 160 x 600 (Wide Skyscraper)

How to Get Started

To display video ads on your site, make sure you are using one of these supported formats and that you are opted in to image ads for that ad unit. If not, the video option will not be displayed.

How to Enable Image Ads

There are two ways to enable image ads. You can:

1. Enable image and text advertising for all of your pages or
2. Enable image ads for individual pages

Warning - Enabling image ads for individual pages overrides account-wide level selections.

To enable image ads across your account:

1. Sign in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the My Account tab
3. Click the edit links next to the Ad Type Preference header
4. Select Display text and image ads in all ad units

If you’ve already generated the code, you can change the ad type of your AdSense unit using the ad management feature:

1. Log in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the AdSense Setup tab.
3. Select the Manage Ads sub-tab.
4. Click Edit settings for the ad unit you’d like to update.
5. Under Format pick your desired ad type.
6. Click Save settings.

Adding YouTube Ads – How it works

If you’ve embedded video from YouTube into your site before, you’ll know what to do. Once you’ve configured the options in Adsense, embed the code as per usual, which display the relevant YouTube content to your site. When selecting content, you can:

1. Choose video categories to target to your site or blog
2. Select content from individual YouTube partners
3. Get video targeted to your site content

Configuration options allow you to blend the YouTube player into your site, customize the color scheme and layout, and choose different player sizes.

How to Test Video Ads on Your Blog

You can test the ad from inside AdSense as follows:

• Enter the URL of a page where this ad unit currently appears to see what the ad unit that you have designed will look like.
• Click Preview on this page
• The test add appears and you can see what it looks like. Pretty impressive!

Tip: If you enter a URL that does not display the code for this ad unit, you will not see any ads in the preview.

Why Can’t I See Video Ads on my Site?

You might not see video ads for a number of reasons.

1. Are you using one of the ad formats that support video ads?
2. Have you opted in to image ads for that ad format - otherwise, your ad unit will not display video ads.
3. Even if you are using supported ad formats, and you are opted in to image ads, video ads may not be targeted to your content for the time being.

Make sure that you are opted in to both text and image ads for these ad units to maximize competition for your ad space.

Split Testing & How Video Increases Your AdSense Earnings

This table shows the AdSense earnings before I added the videos units. Note that 210 clicks generated $77. This is an average for the site performance in March 2010.

Page Impressions – 99,219
Clicks Page 210
CTR – 0.23%
Page eCPM – €0.77
Estimated earnings – €77.14

This is $77 per day across all of March, which is approx $2,310 for the month.

Google AdSense – Search Earnings Without Video ads

This shows the AdSense Search results before I added the videos. Search always pay better. We had 80 clicks which generated $20. Again, this is the average return for the site in March 2010. The eCPM is $26.

Queries – 830
Clicks – 80
CTR – 9.64%
eCPM – €26.51
Estimated earnings – €20.20

This is $20 per day for each day in March, which is approx $600 for the month. Google AdSense earnings for both Page Impressions and Search was $2,900 approx. We also had some small payments from the RSS feeds, but not much.

Google AdSense – Page Impressions Earnings With Video ads

We added the video ads formats across three sites in April. So, these figures are for the first 15 days of the month. Earnings increased by 12%.

Page Impressions (15 days)- 46,986
Clicks Page 118
CTR – 0.24%
Page eCPM – €0.79
Estimated earnings – €43.01

Google AdSense – Search Earnings With Video ads

This shows the AdSense Search results after I added the videos. Its earnings increased by approx 10%.

Queries – 410
Clicks – 39
CTR – 9.84%
eCPM – €27.15
Estimated earnings – €11.88

Conclusions

There are a few things to note. Adding the video formats to Google AdSense made no difference to traffic or at least not yet. We didn’t expect it would. It did increase the earnings though, but about 12%.

1. Page Impression earnings increased by 15%~.
2. Two ads formats performed very well. The first was the Skyscraper video down the right side of the page. However, we also placed Google Ads (with video) embedded inside the article near the top-left. Looking at the heatmaps, it’s clear that visitors ‘enjoyed’ these ads as they clicked on more of them as the month progressed. More testing over the next 6 weeks should give us better feedback.
3. Search earnings increased by 7-10%~. This increase may be related to the close proximity of the video ads to the search box.
4. The Search box is placed in two places on the site. At the top right of the page and also in the Footer. Tests have shown that many users scroll to the end of the page (seeking more information, perhaps) and use this Search box to look for the information rather than scroll back up to the top or hit the Back button.
5. Total earnings for both page impressions and Search increased by 12% approx. Is this good enough? Well, our tests were for a 15-days period in April. As we use video more, our earnings should improve
6. 12% over twelve months should generate an extra $4,000 revenue, which isn’t a bad return for 30 minutes work!

Over to you.

Have you tried the AdSense video formats? If so, what results did you see? If you didn’t, what was the obstacle or issue that stopped you for using video? Let us know below.

PS – Remember to sign up for our free newsletter and give us a Tweet!

Posted via web from ivanwalsh’s posterous