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Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Link to ShoeMoney

July Recap & a decade blogging

Posted: 04 Aug 2014 04:52 AM PDT

In July ShoeMoney.com celebrated its 10th year of blogging.  I suppose every blogger goes through this but I have gone in and out with my love of the blog.  Not that I ever did not like it but my enthusiasm to blog at times just was not there.  Part of it because I was so focused on other things and part just in general being lazy.

I switched to the Thesis theme in 2010ish and that was a mistake.  Thesis makes it really hard for someone who has a TON of custom stuff.  Being the awesome,  innovative,  yet sloppy (and generally deprecated)  programer that I am,  I had written tons of custom plugins,  functions,  and code that were in line with normal wordpress standards but the Thesis framework makes these things MUCH more difficult.

When Thesis 2.0 came out and I upgraded everything broke.  I continued to run with it for a bit with the 1.7 version but was constantly frustrated spending hours to figure out theses hooks and editing custom_functions to try to make shit work.

So last Friday I decided to take the 2012 theme and start from scratch with a new child theme.  I set it live on monday and have been fixing/adding stuff to it sense.  Its been a lot of fun and has really invigorated my love of blogging again.

Also I have been accepting way to many guest posts and some I didn’t even like.   Some guys like Taewoo,  Justin Goff and SEOBITCH are always great but I got a bit lazy in letting others post.   I am going to be a lot more strict going forward.  I will probably follow probloggers policy on guest posting.

Traffic to the blog,  since my book release last year, continues to grow.  Its all the way up to almost a million unique visitors per month.

If you are ever curious you can see the live stats on the blog here.

Bare with me with the look and feel of the blog a bit.  I cowboy code on it,  which is a no-no, but its so damn efficient.  Especially the way I run 0second backups incase I mess up.  I will post about that sometime.

Anyway have a great August!!!  We will be launching the beta version of our new self service email platform in a couple months so keep an eye out to get in on that beta.

Here are the ShoeMoney.com posts from July:

Jun-02 09:32:42 - Why Local Marketing is Scarier than Osama bin Laden (16 comments) Lately, I’ve been working more and more with local clients (thanks to this one blog post about lean startup dentist that went viral). Some of them are what you’d consider the upper echel…[more]

Jun-03 08:30:35 - Why I Don’t Recommend Entrepreneurship to Everyone Anymore (16 comments) When I got started in …[more]

Jun-04 08:30:37 - Heading to Denver for The Performance Marketing Summit @affiliatesummit (11 comments) [more]

Jun-05 09:31:15 - Melamed Style Marketing – Establish Your Authority By Caring About Your Prospects (23 comments) I was only 7 years old at the time. My brother’s friend scored field passes to the Denver Broncos training camp…[more]

Jun-06 08:30:59 - Free Shirt Friday: Falcon Asphalt Repair Equipment @HotBoxRecycler (13 comments) This week’s Free Shirt Friday comes to us from Falcon Asphalt Repair Equipment. Falcon Asphalt Repair Equipment (aka Falcon Road Maintenance Equipment) manufactures portable, affordable asph…[more]

Jun-09 09:23:45 - ALG Google Employee Responds After Google Dismisses Publisher Theft Allegations (17 comments) [more]

Jun-10 09:39:36 - Do NOT miss Elite Retreat 10! (14 comments) Ladies and Gentleman – …[more]

Jun-11 08:30:34 - How to Sell Globally Locally (21 comments) I grew up in Queens, NY. I hated that place at the time. If midwest is the heart of America, Queens was definitely the anus of America. Dirty, dangerous, crowded. Not quite the slums, but not quite what you would call pleasant either. I remember st…[more]

Jun-12 08:30:43 - (late) May recap and and an exclusive interview dropping 2 big bombs (16 comments) First off, I did an …[more]

Jun-13 08:30:51 - Free Shirt Friday- Freelance Hour @48hourslogo (19 comments) This week’s Free Shirt Friday is brought to us by Freelance Hour. The company is an online marketplace for freelance services. They are a community of handpicked designers and developers ready to work. Whether y…[more]

Jun-16 08:30:56 - Why Affiliates Make The Worst Entrepreneurs (17 comments) TaeWoo wrote an article on Why Affiliates Make The Best Entrepreneurs. And I agree with a majority of the arguments, as I probably fall into every thing he said about…[more]

Jun-17 07:36:43 - Join Top Affiliates at the A4d Meet-up June 21st In San Diego (13 comments) [more]

Jun-18 08:30:38 - Ensure You Never Send Paid Traffic To a 404 Page or Broken Link (25 comments) Paying for traffic is expensive. There is nothing worse than sending traffic to a broken link or page that is down. …[more]

Jun-19 09:15:29 - Affiliate Meetup Denver 2014 Recap @affiliatesummit (15 comments) [more]

Jun-20 08:30:41 - Free Shirt Friday- FaviconWebsite.com @faviconwebsite (14 comments) This week’s Free Shirt Friday is brought to us by FaviconWebsite.com. A favicon also known as a shortcut icon, Website icon, tab icon or bookmark icon. It is a file containing one or more small icons, most commonly…[more]

Jun-23 08:30:28 - Does it Work? Another Email How-to (14 comments) [more]

Jun-24 08:30:57 - Yelp Rapes Businesses (28 comments) How did Hitler massacre Jews? Gas chambers. How do some southern animal shelters get rid of unwanted dogs & cats? Gas chambers. …[more]

Jun-25 08:30:47 - Canada’s New Weird Ass Spam Law Goes Into Effect July 1st 2014 (16 comments) [more]

Jun-26 08:30:37 - 404 Error Pages Can Hurt Your SEO Rankings; Here’s How To Use Google Analytics to Monitor and Track 404 Errors So You Can Fix Them (29 comments) [more]

Jun-27 08:30:06 - Free Shirt Friday- WP ALL IMPORT @WPALLIMPORT (8 comments) This week’s Free Shirt Friday comes to us from WP ALL IMPORT. You can import any XML or CSV File to WordPress using WP ALL IMPORT. They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can easily import data to any plugin …[more]

Jun-30 08:30:44 - How to Exploit World Cup for Profit (14 comments) The World Cup is here. …[more]

Jul-01 08:30:26 - PAR Program Helps Bugsy’s Box Double Customers and Revenue @ParProgram @BugsysBox (3 comments) I…[more]

Jul-02 08:13:15 - Help me and win a grand for yourself (1 comments) Not about 2 years ago we launched a marketing platform called the Par Program. Functioning at an agency level, which included state of the art email, social integration and high level ROI tracking, we also did al…[more]

Jul-02 08:30:28 - Personalizing Automated Emails (6 comments) [more]

Jul-03 08:30:36 - How To Choose The Perfect Name For Your Blog plus 3 Bonus Tools To Get You Started (5 comments) Whe…[more]

Jul-04 08:30:51 - Free Shirt Friday- PPC Consulting.com (4 comments) This week’s Free Shirt Friday comes to us from PPC Consulting.com. They are pay per click consultants that manage results-driven PPC campaigns that focus on client goals such as: web leads, phone calls, sales, …[more]


Jul-08 00:51:21 - Adjusting Your Content Strategy to Suit Multiple Digital Devices (3 comments) Making adjustments to your web content strategy to suit multiple digital devices is no longer just a good idea ? it?s become a necessity. With smartphones users tipped to total 1.75 billion in 2014 and tablets also rapidly increasing in profusion ?…[more]

Jul-08 07:00:27 - Pt 3 – Raising Money For My New Company – How it ended up (4 comments) This is Part 3 in my adventure in raising money for my new company – The PAR Program.  If you missed the other parts you can see …[more]

Jul-08 08:30:51 - Why Again Should I Keep An Email List? (18 comments) [more]

Jul-11 08:30:54 - Free Shirt Friday- Toothbrush Subscriptions @ToothbrushSubs (6 comments) This week’s Free Shirt Friday comes to us from Toothbrush Subscriptions. The Toothbrush Subscription process is very simple. The first thing you do is choose from one of their three tooth…[more]

Jul-14 14:26:52 - Who do I look up to as far as a mentor/guru (5 comments) A great question that recently came in through our contact us form. KingJamesCodpiece - Thanks again for the AMA ShoeMoney! Who are some people in the industry y…[more]

Jul-15 08:00:53 - What was it like to make my first million dollars? (14 comments) Stubjj844 - Where did you learn to do….whatever the hell it is you do lol?? Do you remember your first million and what was that like?…[more]

Jul-17 06:19:04 - How to Plan an Executive Workshop that WON’T Fall Flat (2 comments) Workshops in general are designed to inspire the people that attend them. They foster an environment where you can tear apart ideas and try to figure out how they work. In a sense, a corporate workshop allows you to tinker with ideas and?if everything g…[more]

Jul-18 08:30:54 - Free Shirt Friday- Navilytics @Navilytics (4 comments) This week’s Free Shirt Friday comes to us from Navilytics. Their goal is to truly optimize your website, whether you want to increase sales or just make it easier to use. Their philosophy is that you have to underst…[more]

Jul-22 08:08:09 - How I Landed a $25k/mo Client with Cold Email (8 comments) I LOVE emails. (And I’m sure ShoeMoney does too, otherwise he wouldn’t be building this kick ass PAR program.) Never in the history of mankind has it been SOOOOO easy to connect with anyone on the planet. …[more]

Jul-25 08:30:08 - Free Shirt Friday- Vapor Zone @VaporZoneMIA (1 comments) This week’s Free Shirt Friday isn’t a shirt; it’s electronic cigarettes/vaporizers from Vapor Zone! Vapor Zone is an online hub coupled with brick and mortar location…[more]

Jul-29 06:18:04 - @Wishpond – What service do you use for landing pages? (7 comments) I been playing with several different landing page services. Some have some really cool features but they always seem to have something missing. A couple days ago, after asking on FaceBook, several people recommended that I checkout …[more]

Jul-30 06:51:12 - Branding 101: Considerations For Logo Design and Slogan Writing (2 comments) Last week I wrote a post about how to choose a name for your b…[more]

Jul-30 07:22:30 - Shawn Hogan Is in Federal Prison (14 comments) I first met Shawn Hogan in late 1994 on Internet Relay Chat (IRC).   Anyone who knows him well knows that he is one of the most giving people on the internet. You probably know him though from his internet marketing forum at …[more]

“Facebook Theme Week: Organic or Paid?” plus 1 more

“Facebook Theme Week: Organic or Paid?” plus 1 more

Link to @ProBlogger

Facebook Theme Week: Organic or Paid?

Posted: 03 Aug 2014 09:05 AM PDT

At a recent team meeting at ProBlogger HQ to plan the theme for our next ‘theme week’ here on the ProBlogger blog I nervously suggested that we should create a week long series of posts on the topic of Facebook.

As the word came out of my mouth I found myself almost involuntarily shuddering because I know that there’s a lot of mixed feelings among bloggers about the network right now and I half expect that we’ll get our fair share of ‘I’ve given up on Facebook’ comments on these posts.

However… while I know many bloggers and businesses owners are feeling the pain of changes of Facebook over the last six months I still think it’s a topic we could do well to explore in more depth.

Facebook remains the biggest social media network on the planet and continues to grow its active user numbers at a steady rate. According to Statista it had 1.317 billion monthly active users in the second quarter of this year and it’s still adding tens of millions more every quarter.

Screen Shot 2014 08 01 at 1 57 10 pm

While I would never argue that every blogger must be actively engaging on Facebook (each to their own) to ignore it as a source of traffic, brand building and community engagement would be almost as risky as to ignore Google (Alexa ranks Facebook as the #2 ranked site on the web behind Google).

So – as Stacey mentioned yesterday – this week we’re looking at Facebook here on ProBlogger.

Much of what we’ll be doing is ‘case study’ based by looking at the organic and paid approach of bloggers on their Facebook pages but before we do I thought I’d write a few thoughts to keep in mind as we tackle this polarising topic.

Organic, Paid or Both

Facebook have certainly been making changes of late to push page owners towards paying for reach and results on their pages.

This change in approach has caused many of us pain and left many bloggers disillusioned.

Interestingly I’ve seen bloggers respond to this challenge in a variety of ways.

  1. For some it has meant an abandonment of Facebook
  2. Others have persisted with their previous strategies to get organic reach but have adjusted (downwards) their expectations for what can be achieved
  3. Others still have taken Facebook’s changes almost as a challenge to work harder than ever on their organic strategies
  4. And lastly some bloggers have decided to not fight Facebook and begin to pay for reach

I totally understand each of the responses and over the last 12 or so months have at least considered each option.

As longer term ProBlogger readers would know the decision I made was to go with option #3 – to work even harder on growing our organic reach on Facebook.

Our Approach to Organic Reach on Facebook

Just under a year ago here on ProBlogger I shared some of the strategies I was using to increase the Digital Photography School Facebook Page reach and engagement organically.

While things have changed a little since then I’ve continued to experiment prolifically with that Facebook page and continue to see decent organic results.

If I had to summarise my approach on the dPS Facebook page 11 months later it would be:

1. Be useful – provide those who follow your page with content that is going to enhance their lives in some way. For us this is about providing helpful ‘how to’ content as 90% of what we do.

2. Be visual – I spend a lot of time thinking about the images that we use in our status updates. This is partly because we’re a photography site but mainly because Facebook is a very visual place. A great image will lift any status update a lot!

3. Be interactive – We recently had a week long period on our page where our page slumped both in terms of how much traffic it was sending to our site, how much reach we were getting and how much engagement there were in posts. I realised that I’d not been focusing as much on ‘interaction’ and follower engagement and resolved to add a few more ‘discussion’ oriented posts into our schedule. This definitely saw us lift but up our of our slump – to some extent.

4. Be Inspirational – While the majority of our updates are ‘how to’ or ‘informational’ in nature I find that throwing in the occasional purely ‘inspirational’ or ‘aspirational’ posts works. This might be adding in a quote that is meaningful, sharing a great photo, telling a great story. These posts may drive no traffic at all to your site – but they get people engaging – which has flow on effects.

5. Experiment – I treat each status update that I do as an opportunity to learn something about what works and doesn’t work with our readership. Try different types of updates (images, text based, link posts etc). Watch what happens when you do.

Overall the organic reach of the dPS page is decent, although I’ve definitely noticed the last month has been less consistent.

We Now ‘Pay to Play’: To Some Extent

The change to our Facebook strategy that we’ve not talked much about here on ProBlogger yet is that alongside our organic strategy, we’ve begun to experiment
with small paid campaigns.

Shayne will be sharing with you some specifics of the type of campaigns that we’ve been running on our page later this week but I will say now that we’ve had some success with the paid campaigns that we’ve run.

I know not every blogger will be in a position to pay much (if anything) for a Facebook ad campaign but if it is any encouragement to you the amount of money we’ve put into Facebook advertising to this point is not exorbitant (it has been in the $200 to $500 per month range).

Our campaigns have ranged from promoting our eBooks, to campaigns to grow our ‘likes’. Some of our campaigns have worked brilliantly – others have not – but the beauty of Facebook advertising is that you can set up limits on how much you spend on each campaign and can start small and then ramp up what is working and kill of what isn’t.

The ‘return’ on our investment has well exceeded what we’ve spent. The 2-3 experiments with selling our eBooks with ads have generated over five times what we’ve spent and we’ve also benefited in other ways (more traffic to our site, more ‘likes’ on our page and a flow on improvement in our organic reach and engagement).

I’m still cautious about investing too much into advertising but it is certainly showing some great results for us so far – more on this topic later in the week.

Never Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

Before we get into some case studies for the rest of the week let me finish with a simple reminder to not put all your eggs in the one basket when it comes with driving traffic to your blog.

I fell into this mistake in the early days of my own blogging by relying too much upon SEO to drive traffic from Google and have seen many instances where bloggers have obsessed about a single source of traffic (either from search, social or referral) only to find that source of traffic dried up and left them with nothing.

Facebook could well be an amazing opportunity for your blogging but the opportunity is unlikely to be an indefinite one.

Experiment, leverage what you can, ride the wave as long as it’ll last but keep your options open and always use it to build the things you have ultimate control over.

Keep in mind the ‘home base’ and ‘outpost’ model that I’ve been writing about here on ProBlogger since 2008. Don’t abandon your blog for Facebook – rather use Facebook to help you to build your blog (and email list).

Ultimately Facebook will do what is in their best interests and will change the rules of engagement there to suit them. This will at times present you with opportunity but at other times will mean you need to adapt your approach.

So this week as we talk about Facebook I encourage you to read along with an open mind – but also resisting the temptation to obsess. Doing so in this balanced fashion will hopefully lead to some great opportunities!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Build a Better Blog in 31 Days

Facebook Theme Week: Organic or Paid?

Theme Week: Your Guide to All Things Facebook

Posted: 02 Aug 2014 08:50 AM PDT

Sam Surname

 

Facebook – whether you love it or hate it, there’s no denying that huge numbers of your readers are on it. And although it can be confusing, frustrating, and increasingly a “pay for results” platform; with a bit of knowledge up your sleeve, you can really make it work for you and your blog.

This week we are delving into all things Facebook – from organic to paid reach, we will cover what you need to know to get the edge and be successful on the world’s biggest social media hub. We will be looking at case studies of successful Pages, breakdowns of what kinds of interaction garners the most engagement, the lowdown on Facebook advertising (Advanced Facebook Marketing guru Jon Loomer stops by with a packed-to-the-brim webinar), and what Darren and the team have been doing over on the Digital Photography School Facebook page that have seen real results in ad campaigns.

It promises to be a doozy, and you will leave with plenty of advice to make the most of Facebook. Check back each day for the next installment. We will add them here as they go live.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Build a Better Blog in 31 Days

Theme Week: Your Guide to All Things Facebook