Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Link to ShoeMoney Internet Marketing Blog

Posted: 22 Aug 2012 08:38 AM PDT

About a year ago I decided that I had enough of the fly by night affiliate business. I have had a REALLY good run with it and it was a LOT of fun. I worked out of my basement and made a ton of money. You know the story… from “unemployment to eight figures”…

There is a lot to how the evolution took place to where I am now but long story short – lets say I am in a much different place in life. Wife, Kids, and just kind of growing up (but I will still out party all you bitches so don’t get cocky).

So I am about to tell you about how I went hard, lost a lot of money trying to build a “real” company, then found the sweet spot.

Every time I have spoken at a conference for the last 6 years I have had a line of people afterwords and in the hall giving me their cards and asking how we could work together… I never had an answer for them cause I never wanted to work with clients. I always thought client work was crap and for grinders who can’t make it in affiliate marketing.

But now I want a better quality of life. I don’t want to spend half the year fucking off then in 2 months killing myself to try to make a few million bucks. Sometimes we hit it big sometime not so good. The massive spikes in revenue throughout the years have been insane. Sometimes I can’t believe that in 12 years in business I have never had a year that I lost money.

Elite Internet Solutions:

Hey I have an idea! Lets build a full service marketing agency that does everything from email, social media, PR, SEO, PPC, directory submissions, reputation management, and 8000 other things!! And lets keep our staff of 3 people to DO IT ALL!!!

Fantastic idea… After all there is nobody who has accomplished what we have right? I mean I have dominated SEO for the most profitable niches, been the largest advertiser on all of FaceBook’s self service network, sold millions in my own products and others. Who wouldn’t want to hire us? Well getting clients was no problem…. servicing them was a bit.

We had all these things we *could* do. But we really were not doing any of them really well. That is except for one. We were doing a email conversion system for clients which was one of the 15 different things that came with your Elite Internet Solutions Package. We pretty much got the same feedback from everyone. We did 14 things that were completely immeasurable and unquantifiable…

But there was one service we did that was amazing and people could see exactly what they were spending and exactly what they were getting back. Our lowest client using the email acquisition portion was getting 300% return. The highest getting between 1300-1600%.

So one day I am sitting in George Avery’s kitchen… We were both drunk as rats. He was like, “Listen Shoe, get out of that affiliate mind set and build a real company.” I told him about how great the email component of EIS was working for companies so he was like well you dips shit why don’t you just do that… and do it amazingly well.

He was right. The problem with trying to do everything is with each component your drastically taking on more competition and getting more prejudice judgements.

For instance – “Oh you do SEO. So do 500 other companies here”. Repeat for everything else (PPC, SEM, Affiliate Management, etc. )

The PAR Program is born

So I regrouped, canned all other projects and focused 100% on the PAR Program. PAR stands for people acquisition and retention. The bottom line is if your company offers a product or service then we are the perfect company for you. We will take web site visitors and turn them into long term customers via email, social media, and even direct mail…. All from just obtaining their email address.

And we do it amazingly well. Not only do we have zero competition…. there is no competition in site. and we are implementing new features monthly.

All of this with 100% full transparency. You see what you spend. You see how much you make. Period.

And revenue? We launched in Mid June and have been doubling revenue on average weekly. This is on a faster pace than AuctionAds and if you have been reading this blog for a while you know how that went from zero to 2m/month in revenue in the first 4 months.

So wow. I can’t tell you how eye opening this experience has been for me.

I have always heard the term don’t work harder work smarter…. I always thought that was something lazy people said to feel good about themselves.

So whats changed really?

Now I know what some of you are thinking… and Yes I have built many multimillion dollar companies… and promptly sold them. 3 in the last 5 years I have owned each less than 8 months each and sold for around 10m. But I sold them as they were really blowing up.

Also, sadly I have had many properties that launched with a rocket but due to poor management (myself) craped out over time.

I have seen companies I sold grow into as much as 50x as big as they were when I sold them. Sure I cashed out good but still…

Even with that said though I gotta tell you mentally I was out of those companies.

So what’s different with the PAR Program? Well to start with each client is really like launching a new company. I totally immerse myself when I am writing their email copy or consulting with them on their internet marketing. I literally am the difference between a company making it or failing (in some cases). I am not going to digress about how awesome the PAR Program is. It speaks for itself.

The other big change for me is that this time I am bringing in people to really take this company to the 100m+ level. I can take a company to 1-5m with a couple people but after that, it requires building a team and infrastructure… which I am not good at. I think I have found the right company who is not only putting in capital but also bringing all of the infrastructure to insure this company continues to grow at the rapid pace it is now.

I am very confident the PAR Program is something that I have been training for… so to say. I love it and really enjoy working with clients on it. (god i never thought I would say that).

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