Lets do some maths shall we. Because most of my visitors are American (thank you Google Analytics) lets put a 1 day dollar value on this keyword.

USD Amounts = $1410+$48=$1458
GBP Amounts = £22.73+£41.40+£14.40 = £78.53

Exchange rate on the day was 1.56 so overall on that one day I made $1580 from 1 web page optimised for 1 keyword. That’s not bad is it? It’s better than a kick up the ass anyway. That would pay for a whole 7 months of the Shoemoney System. My total income for that one day was…errr…a wedge.

The truth is I only held the top spot for a couple of days (perhaps only 1 full day) and then was Google danced to mid-bottom of the first page. It’s still making good money but not as spectacular as that one stand out day.

So what am I trying to say here, or am I just showing off? The lesson I want to get across is that you just don’t get results like that from general blogging, certainly not in my experience anyway. Maybe I’m a shit blogger? You can write fluff about any old nonsense and how “it’s all in the mind”, “buy this course” all you like and you will not make that money. The real money is to be made by doing your keyword research, building high quality relevant content for your chosen keyword and then legitimately link building your way to the top. I’m not going to pretend it always works out that well, because it doesn’t, but it is a numbers game. Research, build, promote, repeat, research, build, promote, repeat etc etc etc

I know it’s not as exciting as pretending that there is a magic bullet out there with your road to internet riches written all over it but it is how the vast majority of people are making real full time incomes online. I was a solid 2 hours digging around with Market Samurai until I found that 1 phrase the got my water tingling (when you’ve done this enough you do get those feelings, it’s like when you first climbed the rope in PE ), not the most exciting way to spend a Friday night I know. A $9 article from TextBroker re-written to add my own style, opinions and a couple of programmed interactive elements that took a morning to write. The link building was easy. Overall it’s not a massive amount of work for the return, it could have only made $0.50 and I wouldn’t have cared. I would just have started over again with my next keyword.

If you’re somebody that spends all your time reading blogs or writing your own MMO blog in the hope that some magic system is going to fall in to your lap then I’m sorry but unless you are very very lucky you are deluding yourself. You’d be much better getting out there and actually working for your online dollars.

The great thing is that I know 99% of people will totally ignore this, woo hoo, less competition for me

ps I forgot to add the second lesson. Don’t always rely on Adsense. I would have only made £22 that day if I’d stuck to Adsense alone.

1. How To Make Money For Beginners – Grizz is a super star. Not because he is popular, because he knows his shit. Not in a “buy this and you’ll make money” sort of way but in a do this, do that and you’ll get better rankings and more money. I was introduced to John Chow’s blog by a friend, in all the time I’ve been reading the nonsense the great man himself comes out with and testing out the products he recommends (at my own expense) I doubt I’ve made $5! On the other hand spend a week reading what Grizzly says (read the archives, I bloody dare ya), learn from it, take action and you will make money. Targeted search engine traffic does make money. Fact.

2. Passive Income Online – What do you mean you’ve never heard of it? Lis is somebody you should listen to (and not just because she was born in my dads neck of the woods). You will start to see a mantra repeated in the blogs I’m mentioning but here goes again – how to get targeted search traffic and how to make money out of those visitors. Read all her posts and learn.

3. Ways To Make Money Online – Keywords and back links. I also like the way he writes, very straight forward and to the point.

If it’s not clear enough yet my philosophy is about selling to people that are already actively searching for something. Be it via an Adsense click or through an affiliate program, I don’t care, as long as what I show them is relevant to what they were looking for. I don’t have a mailing list, I don’t post ads to Twitter and I certainly don’t create fan pages on Facebook. Read those 3 blogs above and start copying what they tell you and you will start to make money, and in the process not feel like a complete tw@t doing so.

I’m going to write this post straight from the top of my head. I’ll apologise in advance if it starts to wander but I find that when I just write things down this way without too much extra thought the result is a much more honest opinion. So I’ll write down what I’ve thought of the first month of the Shoemoney System and then try to judge if it’s positive or not at the end.

Generally speaking I like Shoemoney, I like the way he talks about the whole industry of making a living online, I like the way he always seems very approachable, I don’t like the way he pretends to be some sort of gangster. I had massive hopes for the Shoemoney System, the build up videos made so many promises that even with being a bit hazy on detail it would be enough to convince most people that this was going to be “the system” to change their lives. As I told a lot of people, I was in to try this from a very early stage.

Once signed up early impressions were not so good. The advertising credits, there were none that you could use. The videos, I think there were only 1 or 2 available, neither of which taught anything practical. There was also no sign of any exclusive tools or a forum (did I imagine somebody mentioning a forum?). On the plus side the bookmarks list is great, the radio sessions are very good (even though I’m sure these are available for free elsewhere online?). Overall then not a whole lot of bang for your buck. Bookmarks are nice but not $197 nice.

That was 1 month ago and the system has moved along since then. After several feedback sessions the really basic videos have all now been made available in a separate section. We have been assured that from now on it’s all guts and glory stuff. I must point out that I wasn’t somebody calling out for a change in the way the system was delivered. Videos slightly more often perhaps but not a radical change to the order. I believed Shoemoney when he said about all the testers he had used and the results they’d seen. On the other hand I have no doubt that a lot of people who signed up for the Shoemoney System were using it as a gamble with their last few bucks. I bet their bums were twitching at the speed/nature of the content that was being delivered! My daughter is doing the course with me (to give a total beginners point of view) and for her, having things delivered in a step by step course from the very basics is probably best, perhaps there needed to be 2 systems – beginners and advanced? For somebody like me who is only really interested in 1 or 2 elements of what Shoemoney is going to cover I fully understand that it’s a waiting game till the content I want appears. I don’t mind that at all, I REALLY make enough online anyway to not worry about it. Having the opportunity to earn a wedge more and any other interesting tit-bits is just a bonus.

Anyhoo the guts is just starting to arrive (note to self – clever Shoemoney, splitting part 1 and 2 over a monthly payment renewal ). Ebay arbitrage which was much hyped in the preview videos is now being talked about. This is fine except I thought we were going to be told some sort of hot secret, not that it’s possible to arb on ebay. Surely everybody knows that already? It also depends on where you are based, the Shoemoney System was available globally and the arbitrage he shows is very limited as to where it can be utilised. E-bay arbitrage opportunities vary hugely from country to country*. There’s also the small point that there’s no guidance on how to find your own arbitrage opportunities. Maybe that will be in part 2 of the video, for Christ’s sake I hope it’s just not going to be a video showing how much they made from video 1! Yes there have been 1 or 2 tips on how to lay out your e-bay listing but once again nothing earth shattering. Then again if you’d never even heard of arbitrage I can see how all this would seem so exciting. It also doesn’t go along with the notion of not needing to spend money which I’m sure was part of the Shoemoney System hype. EVEN if you are guaranteed to get the money back arb’ing still involves an initial outlay** and it’s commonly known that you need a lot of money to make a lot of money with these opportunities. It’s just the nature of the beast.

*Just to add some value to this post I should add that there are opportunities in the UK to do similar. Any UK Shoemoney System members might want to check out Play.com and the Amazon.co.uk marketplace for opportunities that can be played of against Ebay.

**The actual method Shoemoney teaches involves getting money before spending it. Again, depending on where you are based in the world this can be both inpractical (in terms of delivery times) and still carry risk.

That’s about as far as we’ve got after one month. There have been some nice basic videos, an opportunity to sign up with Azoogle Ads and I can’t see anybody knocking the production value that has gone into the system. The videos are not painful to watch which is a huge bonus when you think of some of the IM video courses that have been released. My gut feeling is that perhaps the system wasn’t as tested as much as I’d like and that the first month has very much been a work in progress. It’s obvious that a few videos have been made late and thrown in to the mix as a result of feedback that you would have hoped would have come from the testers. I don’t mind testing, but not when I’m paying a decent chunk of cash each month for the pleasure. I absolutely still have high hopes for the system, it’s just going to have to deliver a lot more in the second month in order to deliver the sort of results that the testers have shown.

So Was That A Positive Or Negative Review Of The Shoemoney System?

I’ve just read back through and overall I’d say it was more negative than positive. One month in and it hasn’t delivered on the income side yet. Then again I can’t remember ever reading anywhere that it would so maybe my perception of what the Shoemoney System would do was a little twisted. It’s supposed to be a 12 month course, not a quick fix. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if a lot of people start whinging about when are they going to make enough to cover the monthly fee. As Mr T would say “I pity the fool”. This could become the biggest trouble with the Shoemoney System, a bunch of desperados baying and screaming resulting in all sorts of random content coming out completely out of sequence. I’ll keep you posted.

Finally, my daughter thinks Shoemoney is great, I’m trying to get her a t-shirt if Tigh would ever reply to my e-mail!

I’m signed up to so many things at the moment that have ALL promised to make me rich beyond my wildest dreams that it wouldn’t be fair of me to take up a place on another one. Yes you guessed it, Video Boss has strictly limited places available. Especially not when the people promoting this latest course are the same people offering their OWN services/courses that are promising to make you rich. Doesn’t make sense does it?

Or perhaps they’re just saying how great this is in order to get another recurring Clickbank commission for what is essentially bugger all work. Sign up for the Video Boss affiliate program, send out link to mailing list telling everybody how good it is (even though they’ve never even seen the course) and also promise the best bonus ever in the history of bonuses, if you can be arsed. Frankly I’m sick to death of the lot of it, spamming, bullshitting bastards the lot of em. You’d have to be a fool to trust anybody marketing “make money online” products and services. If they promise “killer”, “secret” and mention the “industry” over and over then run for the hills. Fact.

1. Number 2 spot is better than number 1. When I sign in to my GMail account I noticed that they’ve put the Buzz button second in the menu. Why isn’t it at the top? I don’t believe Google do anything by accident.

2. Full page adverts work. Want to get people to sign up for something, go full page! When I sign in to GMail I get a full page advert for Buzz. This goes right against Google’s notion of inconspicuous blended advertising. It’s right in your face, whallop.

Anybody else notice anything else they are doing?

What has got me hooked on this is the chance to learn how Shoemoney is profiting from Facebook. My experiments with Facebook have been little more than a catalog of disasters, if I can get some insight on how to get things converting with Facebook it will be money well spent. The Shoemoney System isn’t going to be cheap, $197 a month is a fair chunk of cash that may see it appealing mainly to those who are already making some money online. On the other hand if it only gives a small insight into exactly what Shoemoney is doing on a day to day basis (it promises much more than that) then it’s got to be worth it.

If you’re interested in giving the Shoemoney System a go then you can find out more information here:-

Check Out The Shoemoney System – Now how’s that for an affiliate link? No cloaking, no disguise, no domain redirect, just a plain old link with my affiliate ID in it Obviously if you follow that link and do sign up then I’ll profit from it. However, that makes no real difference to me, as long as I can get one of the places available I will be signing up for the Shoemoney System and more than likely writing on here how I’m finding it.

The site was left as a forgotten part of my inventory until a few weeks ago when out of the blue something turned up in my inbox. It was from somebody called Chris and went along the lines of “You’ve ripped of our concept and content”. Was a bit of a surprise for sure. I was going to just ignore it but there were a couple of things Chris said that immediately got my attention – “I see you are an internet marketer” and “I’m not going to go on a big rant and threaten you with lawyers and all that nonsense”. This was important to me because first of all he’d actually gone to the bother to look me up beyond an e-mail address and secondly he’d bypassed the quoting US law at me stage. I digress but if there is ONE thing that really pisses me of it’s being spammed by somebody who then goes on to quote the “Can The Spam” act as justification that their message isn’t spam. Back on topic – so how did I react? Nicely of course. I’m a nice person and unless I have a reason to be pissed off then I’m generally easy going. So I shot Chris an e-mail back saying I certainly wasn’t intending to steal his concept/content* and that I’d happily forward the traffic from the domain on if he gave me the URL of his site. Turns out that Chris owns www.carsforagrand.com

*This is a real danger of using article services. Most use Copyscape checking but authors are generally clever enough to alter an original to pass the check! You should really do a manual check before publishing the article online, I certainly should have.

A quick look at that site reveals that Chris has obviously invested a huge amount of time and effort into his site (not to mention that whoever wrote my opening paragraph was certainly heavily “influenced” by Chris’s), at the end of the day you’ve got to respect that. I’m not out to impact anybody elses efforts online or for a free ride. The end result is a 301 redirect for as long as I own the .co.uk domain. He’s more than welcome to it.

Since this all got sorted out I decided to run this past a local IP lawyer contact just to see where things stand, of the record opinion seemed to be that there wouldn’t be an issue – opening paragraph aside the sites were very different. However, and here’s the thing, the fact that I need somebody like that in my list of contacts is what is really pissing me off with working online at the moment. Over the last 2 years there has been an explosion of online litigation, originating mostly from you know where. I always have and always will work well within the defined laws of where I choose to live. Lately I have begun to question whether working online really is worth the grief, but that’s a post for another day.

1. How I stepped on somebody’s toes by accident and the RIGHT way to sort out a domain name dispute.

2. Bux.to is shit. Guess how long I’ve been waiting to get paid, go on?

3. The truth about some of the link buiding “services” out there that I’ve been trying for the last 3 months. Here’s a clue, they don’t work as described (but with a bit of fudging they can be magic).

4. How I could afford to wreck my most profitable website and what I replaced that income with.

5. Why I’ve considered packing this whole game in and getting a normal job. More importantly how I motivated myself to keep going.

All sit in my drafts folder and all will be finished soon. Promise (OK, I admit I had my fingers crossed behind my back).

Top 3 Tools/Resources

1. ConnectContent – Now I know this isn’t for everybody, it’s no fire and forget method but it’s been a revelation for me. In short ConnectContent is a service that allows like minded webmasters to share links. By like minded I mean webmasters who have multiple websites and who realise that placing a couple of relevant one way outbound links won’t kill them. The more you put in the more you get out and the benefits to webmasters in a world where everybody either wants paying or a reciprocal link can be enormous. Google friendly (no link exchange or link farm) and highly effective.

2. 7Search – Just one of the many small search engines that I assumed would be a waste of time. I’m really glad I persisted with 7Search and I’m STILL getting a 300% to 500% ROI on the PPC campaigns I’m running. Sure the traffic levels mean it’s hard to scale a successful campaign but the key with 7Search is not running 1 or 2 huge campaigns but running 10-20 profitable small ones. It’s low risk, easy money.

3. Shoemoney Tools – When I first tried Shoemoney Tools I wasn’t impressed. The whole thing felt a little bit unfinished or maybe perhaps too advanced for me? Either way I gave up for a while. However when I started to see some results with 7Search I decided to go back and try the Shoemoney Tools keyword suggestion tool (I remembered that it seemed to generate a lot of very good long tails). Plugging these extra keywords into 7Search really pushed a few of my campaigns on.

Top 3 Surprise Money Makers For 2009

1. Promoting Bookmakers – I’ve been mullered in the past promoting bookies. Most operate on a profit share basis and I assumed that all worked with a negative rollover. If punters win in a month your loss rolls over, does that make sense? I changed 2 things towards the end of 2009, first of all I stopped promoting any sort of bookmaker on the same page where I tell people of various systems that people use to ensure a good win percentage (school boy error). Secondly I sourced a couple of bookmakers that although they pay out slightly less (25% profit share) have no negative rollover. The result has been some very good months and fingers crossed passive income for life.

2. Ebay Partner Network – With the announced change from CPA to PPC I was expecting my eBay world to fall apart. Shock horror then that I ended up making more money after the change. The CPC I’ve been getting has at least matched Adsense which I just wasn’t expecting at all. Who knows how long it will last but for now I’m happy to just take the money.

3. Adsense – With all the changes that Google have implemented over 2009 I think it was widely accepted that publishers would see massive decreases in earnings. Sure there have been dips but in general my vital stats have held up well. I still think that Adsense is the single easiest way of making some very quick money from a new website and can be an excellent gauge for profitability of a niche.

My Top 3 Mistakes Of 2009

1. Working On Websites That Make Me Little Money Whilst Ignoring Those That Are Top Of Their Game – The title says it all with this one. I do it constantly. It’s like I have some strange affliction where I must challenge myself to push the websites that aren’t doing so well, all the time ignoring the websites that are making me the most money. If there is one thing I have learnt in 2009 it’s that there is always more money to be made from a website – and more to the point it’s easier to make more money from a successful website than waste time on a website that is struggling.

2. Making This Post – My mistake was assuming that people would take the information I gave them and apply it in their own way. Nope. A load of people implemented what I said into the exact markets I mentioned and surprise surprise killed the whole thing. Cue some grumpy e-mails and me wondering why the hell I bother. The thing that pissed me off most was that the method still works if you put in the work and think of your own niches, maybe not quite $100+ a day but nor far off, I’m still making good money with Adsense.

3. Not Writing Enough Software – It’s the whole reason I got involved with computers at the age of 6. It’s the reason I built my first ever website and it’s also the reason why I can afford to be self employed now. I also enjoy it a lot. Yet 2009 has been the year where I’ve written less lines of code than any year in the past 20 years. I blame my obsession with making websites a success (See point 1). I have wasted so much of 2009 on websites that I’ll never make much money from.

And finally, because 2009 was the year where I got CPA to really work for me:-

My Top 3 CPA Networks Of 2009

1. ClickBank – This will come as a big surprise to most people, but in the last 6 months I have fallen in love with the much maligned ClickBank. Of course it has lots of crappy e-book products on there but it also has lots of really good quality products to promote. It is these quality products with real benefits where I have made my money – not e-books. The reason I’ve put ClickBank top is two fold. First of all the variety of products available fits in with what I do much better than the more traditional dental, diet, smiley etc etc offers that the other CPA networks concentrate on. Secondly it’s very rare that products are dropped. Most of my CPA work is done through organic traffic and I don’t care what anybody says, it’s impossible to manage this type of CPA when offers are being dropped and added every few days.

2. Market Leverage – Big network, lots of offers and unlike 1 or 2 of the other BIG networks I’ve used in the past offers from Market Leverage convert. In 2009 I swapped out numerous offers numerous times and consistently it was the offers from Market Leverage that paid out. In fact you switch between the same offers with different network and it would always be Market Leverage that converted best. Strange that.

3. PeerFly – Small network, great customer service and offers that convert. PeerFly were a new addition to the CPA Network scene in 2009 and have grown steadily throughout. I don’t really do a lot with paid traffic but the success I’ve had has been partly down to PeerFly. The big selling points with PeerFly are their welcoming approach to foreign publishers and the fact that they don’t use DirectTrack. I’ve got so much on at the beginning of 2010 but once things settle down I’ll be all over PeerFly.

As I mentioned right at the start 2009 has been a hell of a year. I lost a number of profitable money makers that I’ve relied on for years. It really was the year of change that left me scrambling around more than a couple of times. I’ve managed to keep a steady income but the amount of work I’m doing to earn my money has increased exponentially. It’s easy to blame the economic environment but in reality online advertising spend has increased. There is still a lot of money out there waiting to be made it’s just that we’re all going to have to work harder for it. It’s either that or get a normal 9-5 job, and nobody wants that!

The problems aren’t only with affiliates though. What about publishers who big-up their stats in order to get more money for banner ads, or who have totally untargeted ads. There are plenty of big name bloggers out there who advertise RSS feed counts knowing fine well that thanks to e-mail subscription services a lot of their subscribers may be counted twice. Where does the responsibility fall with this? This is even trickier than the affiliate example. For example I know of one local website (very local to where I live) that accepts banner advertisements from numerous companies whose services aren’t even valid to our locale. We couldn’t use their services if we wanted to! Yet this very big local firm is more than happy to accept the advertising cash. Surely the advertiser should be doing the research? But shouldn’t the publisher tell them “Your service can’t be used here”? It’s tricky, is anybody even doing anything wrong?

2009 has been a breakthrough year for those of us looking to make a living from the internet. It is the year where a clear divide has appeared between those people in countries that can do whatever the hell they like without fearing the consequences and those who find themselves always looking over their shoulders. Much like taxes, you regulate too heavy in one area and people move to a more “friendly” place. I think 2010 could be the start of an internet marketing migration.