Random thoughts…

Update: Jeremy called me and asked to take some information off the article. His main concern was having his home address in the article (it is freely available on the Internet anyway), but I have no problem to take it off. So this article was edited. This article was written some time ago, so please take it into consideration. It might need updating and feel free to add your comment. All I want to accomplish is little bit of critical thinking about “facts” you are getting from “celebrities” like Shoemoney:-)  

I have several friends who are constantly sending me articles or messages about Jeremy Shoemaker a.ka. Shoemoney. I even signed up for some period time to ShoeMoney blog, but didn’t find the information too useful. It seemed more to me like the motivational real estate people selling their proven systems on late night TV. There are also things which does not feel right and I think Shoemoney doesn’t tell the whole story. I am tired to see my friends following every word Shoemoney says with almost religious fanatism. Here are some thoughts…

AdSense check

It starts with his photo of check from August 2005 for $132,994.97. It seems that Shoemoney claims he is making even more now that that. I am also hearing that he didn’t make the money on check using PPC (driving traffic to his websites by PPC). This is the first thing which sounds very fishy to me.

1. What are these websites which brought the revenue? Did he ever list them somewhere?
2. Compare the earnings (approx. $4,400 or more per day) with case study on Weblogs.

Weblogs, Inc. is a publishing consortium of 100 independent bloggers who produce more than 1,000 blog posts a week across over 75 industry-leading blogs, including the popular consumer technology blog Engadget, luxury goods blog Luxist, and car-focused Autoblog.

Weblogs show in the above case study how they grew AdSense revenue from $200 to $3,000 per day. Read again how many blogs, how many bloggers and articles.

Shoemoney would have to own at least comparable websites. But which ones?

Shoemoney claims he made the money through SEO, while he is saying in interviews that his own blog has ranked very crappy in Google. His blog is the most visible site and he didn’t know how to do SEO?

My blog always ranked crappy in Google and still does. (2006-11-25)

Ringtones

One of my friends sent me another link to the articles asking me if I still think that Shoemoney is B.S. You can read the article here: 2006 Was The Year Of Ringtones - 100,000 Ringtone Leads

The articles says that Shoemoney made $977,178.15 in 2006 on ringtones affiliates. He also says that only 50% of that revenue were driven by PPC and it cost him total only $51,114 in PPC expenses. Shoemoney is also laughing when he hears people say they can’t get voluem PPC with longtail cheap keywords. Of course he will not tell us how to accomplish that.

Where the money go?

OK. So we are on $926,064 for ringtones.
Minimum $2,000,000 on AdSense
$4,500,000 in community forum income. See the interview here.

OK. We are talking at minimum $7.4 mil. income.

Does this guy invest in anything? Does he own any real estate? Stock? Where does he live?

Some legitimate questions for anyone who is making $7.4 million or more per year.

1. Would you buy hummer H2? If yes, would it be your only car? What about sports car or luxury cars?

2. Would your second car be Ford Explorer pick up? Again, you are making over $7.4 mil.

Pictures are courtesy of Shoemoney own blog photo album.

3. Lincoln, Nebraska the most beautiful place on earth
OK. Why not live somewhere where is a decent temperature in winter? Why live somewhere where you can actually do something or have decent airport. This is a huge question for me and I don’t understand why would someone making so much money will be still living in Lincoln, Nebraska. What about Silicon Valley or living somewhere on the beach? I know that’s none of my business, but think about it that you made the money. Did Shoemoney explained it somewhere? What would you do if you had such money? Does this guy have no fantasy at all? Why being rich if you have life like that. This doesn’t make sense to me.
4. OK. Let’s assume that you love Lincoln. Real estate is not expensive so why not having great lifestyle and live cheap. Is 2,175 sq. feet and 2 bedrooms good enough? Don’t forget that you have a kid. Wouldn’t you think that someone making millions will be living little bit more in luxury? People making 10% of Jeremy’s claimed income lives much better than he does.
5. Why not invest some money in real estate? I think it is just natural if you make millions and don’t spend them for living to invest the money in something. I did the search for real estate holdings and didn’t find anything. Got to Lancaster County Register of Deeds and do the search for yourself. Actually I found the house on xxxxxxxeditedxxxxxxxx which I mentioned above. But nothing else.

Jeremy not only doesn’t buy more real estate, but he quit claimed his house to his wife on 04/03/200. Also would you still have a loan on your house? Isn’t better to pay it off?

Few more notes from Shoemoney interviews:

My income from websites had been bashed a bit so I had to go on unemployment from 9/2004-1/2005 (yes I only started taking a salary in 2005). Here.

Unemployed 1/2005, started his own company while in deep debt $50k, borrowing $5,000 from mother and selling computers. Starting SEO early in 2005 and made just from seo over $132k in August?

I also do software. I just launched a new product called SpaceLook, which is a application that handles all messaging and stuff with MySpace in a nice gui windows-based app.

I also own a company that does nothing but resell computers.

I also own a company that deals in importing exporting data cables for wireless phones.

So ya, I do more than ringtones It’s just when something is really hot and SO EASY to make money from you can’t look the other way. Also, being I am a 3 person operation–1) business manager 1) shoemoney 1) dillsmack - my badass coder–we really have to focus. More

I do not outsource anything. I have tried that in the past and it just does not work for me. I think mostly because I am a really bad manager. I just tell people to do stuff and then leave them alone until I expect it done. I am kind of a jack of all trades, computer-wise.

All in one man show? WOW

ShoeMoney Media Group - The Delivery and Service Organization one of the fastest growing, privately held, technology companies within the United States is a solution provider of choice developing and marketing web hosting products and security services that offer ask-oriented, “know how” solutions for businesses and home-office entrepreneurs and professionals alike. The company is a privately owned corporation residing in Omaha, Nebraska. More

OK. So it is one man show, but the fastest growing privately held company within the United States?

ShoeMoney Media Group, Inc., was founded and “Incorporated” in Omaha (NE) in 1996. More

OK. But the owner and only employee was switching jobs & unemployed until 2005. Also if you check Nebraska Secretary of State the company wasn’t incorporated in 1996, but rather in 2005. I know you might say it is a small detail, but details like that are difference between truth and lies. See Nebraska Secretary of State.

I did some search, not comprehensive and there might be mistakes. I just want to put different thoughts on the table. I smell B.S., but it is up to you what you decide.

UPDATE: I just spent morning arguing with one of my friends. It is really unbelievable how religiously some of Shoemoney fans believe whatever he says.

I went back to one of the Shoemoney interview and read it carefully and found out that he is making even more than I wrote here. Just read the article carefully:

Shoemoney: Combined subscriptions alone we have almost 95,000 members paying 19.95 every 6 months or roughly 4.5 million a year.

…. I would say as a whole its about ¼ subscription ¼ contextual ¼ affiliate and paid placement (adbrite and other) and the other ¼ in donations or random other stuff.

So if subscription is making just 1/4 of income we are talking about $18 mil. of total online income. So all my computations are wrong, please change the $7.4 mil. number with $18 mil. This is all from one interview here. Whatever is Shoemoney saying is getting harder and harder for me to believe.

I am trying to figure out if Edgeio.com is bringing any traffic. I am always on lookout for inexpensive forms of advertising. Edgeio sounds like a good idea, but the question is if there any users who will see all their listings. It seems most of the listings are for cars and real estate. I did my test postings with beach cruiser for sale. Let’s see if it will bring anyone to my site.

 Tag for beach cruiser on Edgeio.

Are you selling on Internet and would like to achieve better results in natural search engine optimization? I am willing to consider interesting projects with potential to achieve hundreds of thousands in sales per month. Email me if you have the right business idea. Info@eastbiz.com

I am very happy today. Just purchased some additional land behind our Las Vegas office. It gives me great opportunity to build bigger office or do some other development one day. There are really great deals in any market. I already have over 1 acre in the area.

I got more phone calls from classified ad in Craig’s List then from $100 (4 days 4 zones ad) in Los Angeles Times. The shift towards internet is getting bigger and bigger every day. Once most of the people realize that classifieds ads or other advertising in offline media brings much smaller results it will get really interesting.

Google is preparing new infrastructure and way how search will work. You can see it in action on the two data centers: 66.249.93.104 and 64.233.179.104

It is not mere update in search algorithm. It is new infrastructure, which was named BigDaddy. So if you hear about BigDaddy, this is it.

From Matt Cutts’ Blog:
“Q: Do you expect this to become the default source of web results? How long will it take?
A: Yes, I do expect Bigdaddy to become the default source of web results. The length of the transition will depend on lots of different issues. Right now I’m guessing 1-2 months, but if I find out more specifics I’ll let you know.

Q: What’s new and different in Bigdaddy?
A: It has some new infrastructure, not just better algorithms or different data. Most of the changes are under the hood, enough so that an average user might not even notice any difference in this iteration.”

You can check how your web will be doing by going to the above datacenters and test for yourself.

I don’t know if I should be happy or said. Some agents from Century 21 Consolidated in Las Vegas registered domain name based on our company name. Is that a compliment? I have very small company and certainly not many people know the name MillionSaver, but Paul and Michelle Francis probably felt it will increase their business when using domain name MILLIONSAVERS.com for their website.

I had my office manager Ken give them call on Friday and they promised to take it down, but nothing happened as of this afternoon. This is really bad example how some agents think they will win the online marketing game. And this is one of the most stupid way how to do it. Register bunch of domain names similar as to other real estate companies and direct them to your website.

Even if you don’t get such companies going after you for trademark infringement, it will not help to have multiple domain names going to the same content.

I am doing small experiment by changing title on our website to see how quickly it can influence position on Google.com

Original title:
Las Vegas Real Estate. Search all new and resale homes for sale in Las Vegas and Henderson, Nevada. All new homes builders and MLS search. Houses for sale and real estate in Nevada

Google position for keyword: las vegas homes is #4 from 10,900,000 results on 12-22-2005 at 8.09 PM.
#13 for keyword: las vegas real estate.

New title:
Las Vegas Homes | Real Estate

Google position for keyword: las vegas homes is #3 (going up one position in 4 days) on 12-26-2005 at 8.47 PM. And to #11 for keyword las vegas real estate.

I did similar experiments with other sites and it really works so fast. You can do change in title and you will see change in position on google within days. Maybe even shorter for websites which are crawled more often. I noticed the homepage is crawled by google about every 3 days. This is definitively something different then I was used to in the past.

When I started my real estate website MillionSaver.com I was hesitating if I should spent about $60 per year for hosting. I hosted in on free web hosting and it seemed as enough at that time. I was extremely careful with expenses, and took the whole project as experiment. If someone told me that this websites will bring almost one million in deals (GCC - grossed closed commissions) to real estate agents in 2005 I wouldn’t believe that. Internet is very powerful tool to start great businesses with minimum investment. It allows anyone to be very creative and accomplish a lot without a lot of money and keep the freedom of doing the things they way you like it without venture capitalists breathing at your neck. I think there are endless options how to use open source or very creative programming to bring solutions to old problems. Creative thinking and small investment can achieve huge results, without too much hard work. That’s the way I like to do business and want to continue in 2006. The key is to work with like minded people and it is one of the reasons I started to write this blog. I hope that some of the new projects next year will be done with some of the smart people coming to read these pages.

Windows Live Local. Interesting application. I like the way it works with MSN and can show address of businesses. For example our company office in Las Vegas :

Add Pushpin - interesting feature for adding notes and pushpins on the map. Check it out here www.local.live.com