51 Grand dot Com
Watch me make 51 grand on internet!

My plans for week 4 (April 6-12) are:

• learn inside the Wealthy Affiliate,
• explore article marketing,
• explore Pay Per Click marketing,
• promote my blog and get visitors,
• read blog archives of my idols.

My plans for week 3 were:

• learn inside the Wealthy Affiliate,
• promote my 51 Grand Blog,
• read blog archives of my idols,
• find and join Top Affiliate Networks.

Here is what I was doin from March 30- April 5th

• I am learning a lot every day inside Wealthy Affiliate. There is really a lot information to read and things to do. I posted a quick update on WA.
• I discovered and joined 4 Top affiliate networks and suggest you do it too.
• Trying to find out more about Jeremy Schoemaker and how much money does he make online and how.
• I did not promote my blog yet, so this will be my first priority for next week. But more and more people are following me on Twitter. John Chow is following me! Yay!

Technorati Profile

Hey Everyone!

As you may know, I joined Wealthy Affiliate on March 18th and I am still learning the very basics. There is so much information to read that I am hardly following everything that happens.

On 8 Week Action Plan

I am currently following the 8 Week Action Plan. Every 7 days a new tutorial unlocks. I am on week 3 now, but yet have to learn some things from week 2. I decided not to rush, so I complete each weeks tasks before starting another week.

All I can say of this 8 week action plan is that it is excellent . There are no magic secrets in there. But  it is written in a way that even a total beginner can learn and implement things.

First Affiliate Campaign

Following a free guide from one of the fellow WA members I created my first campaign promoting WA program. Important thing about promoting things is you have to know the product. I am sure Wealthy Affiliate Program offers extreme value, so I have no doubt about promoting it.

I registered a domain name with keyword “wealthy affiliate” in it, and redirected it to my affiliate link. Here it is: www.123wealthyaffiliate.com . How does this benefit me? I can use this domain name to promote WA program everywhere on internet (forums, email, 51 grand blog) and I don`t need to worry about my affiliate link being broken.

What now?

I am seeing a lot of progress every day and I am 100% positive joining Wealthy Affiliate was a good decision. In fact I signed up for the whole year, because I just know it is probably one of the best investments I have ever made online.

Until next update.

Who is Shoemoney?

Shoemoney, also known as Jeremy Schoemaker is a successful internet marketer and an inspiring blogger. He is one of my top internet marketing idols and surely industry’s opinion leader. I hope we meet some day.

Name: Jeremy Schoemaker
Location: Lincoln, Nebraska
Bio: ShoeMoney Biography
Nicknames: Shoemoney, King of Ringtones
Skills: Search Engine Marketing, PPC, and a lot more…

How much money does he make online?

Adsense Earnings

I am sure you have seen his Adsense check for $132,994.97. That was August 2005.

How much do you think he is making right now?

Blog Earnigns

According to an interview from 2007, Shoemoney was making about $10.000 per month back in 2007, alone from his blog. This was only from direct ads.

Shoemoney Blog Earnings for:

• 2007: $108.000
• 2008: $514.000
• 2009: $750.000 – this are projected earnings (March 2009) – Source: Shoemoney Webinar (March 11th, 2009)

Affiliate Marketing

But his real income comes from affiliate marketing – Commission Junction and Azoogle.

His blog earnings account only 3% of all the profit he makes online (Source: Business Week). If this is true, than he made over $ 3,600,000 in 2007 with affiliate marketing or $300,000 per month on average . Yep, this is $10.000 each day.

And if we follow the trend of his blog – the earnings for 2008 are 5 times higher and 2009 even 7 times higher than 2007, then Shoemoney could be earning $50.000 each day or about $15 million per year.

Shoemoney`s websites:

http://www.shoemoneymedia.com – Shoemoney Media
http://www.shoemoney.com – blog
http://www.nextpimp.com – Ringtones

Shoemoney Fan?

Buy Shoemoney T-shirts.

Get in touch with Shoemoney

Blog: www.shoemoney.com – Skills to Pay the Bills. Jeremy`s Blog.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/shoemoney – Shoemoney`s Twit
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/shoemoney – YouTube Shoemoney`s Channel
Google Video: http://video.google.com/ – Shoemoney on Google Video
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/shoemoney – Shoemoney`s LinkedIn page
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ – Shoemoney on Facebook
Digital Point: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/ – Shoemoney`s Digital Point Profile

Today I was spending some time researching affiliate networks. I found 4 established networks that I plan to make money from. Commission Junction and LinkShare are the biggest ones with large merchants, ShareAsale is focused on mid-sized merchants and ClickBank is specialized in digital products like ebooks and pdf guides.

These networks are recommended on several forums and by Wealthy Affiliate members.

Commission Junction

Commission Junction is the largest affiliate network in North America. It was founded in 1998 in Santa Barbara, California with offices in UK, Germany, France, Spain and Sweden. It was aquired by ValueClick in 2003. Some of their advertisers are: Buy.com, Home Depot, Circuit City, Experian and Yahoo!

Commission Junction University is an affiliate marketing conference organized by CJ. This years will be held September 15-17. Maybe this year I am coming too (if I make enough money:)).

CJ was the first affiliate network I joined and the first that sent me a check. Thats when I knew affiliate marketing works! It felt so good.

• Typical commissions: 5-10%
• Benefits: Lots of products, Well known brands.
• Downsides: Not very user friendly reporting system.

LinkShare

LinkShare is another big affiliate network founded in 1996 and aquired by Rakuten in 2005. Some of their advertisers are American Express, McAffe, At&t, TigerDirect, iTunes and others.

LinkShare holds several events including LinkShare Affiliate Summit which will take place on August 9-11 in NY.

• Typical commissions: 5-10%
• Benefits: Lots of products, Well known brands.
• Downsides: ?

Join LinkShare!

ShareAsale

ShareAsale is an affiliate network targeting small and mid-sized merchants. It was founded in 2000 in Chicago, IL. It is probably the most respected and most trusted among all afffiliate networks because of their high ethical standards.

• Typical commissions: 8-15%
• Benefits: Most trusted and clean of adware.
• Downsides: Not so many merchants.

ClickBank

Clickbank is worlds largest affiliate network for digital products. It was founded in 1998 and is owned by Keynetics Inc. They provide over 10,000 informational products for every niche you can think of.

• Typical commissions: 30-50%
• Benefits: High commissions up to 75%
• Downsides: There is lots of fishy products so carefully select the products.

I joined all of them to see which one works best for me. Hopefully I will see some results soon.

This year Shoemoney did it. I mean really did it.

His Aprils joke attracted eyes of the blogosphere. 75,000 uniques and 560+ comments in less than 24 hours.

And for those of you who believed it: He is not moving to Portland and his company was not aquired by Hanso Foundation…:)

My plans for week 3 (March 30-April 5th) are:

• learn inside the Wealthy Affiliate
• promote my 51 Grand blog
• read blog archives of my idols
• find and join Top Affiliate Networks

My plans for second week were:

• explore the Wealthy Affiliate Club,
• read blog archives of my idols
• learn the basics of affiliate marketing, gather and post the best resources,
• learn more about copywriting and how to write for my blog,
• research how to promote my blog,
• prepare a media kit and advertising page,
• set up a contact form.

Here is what I was doing from March 23-29:

1. I was spending a lot of time at Wealthy Affiliate Forums and following the 8 Week Action Plan.
2. I started with Problogger.net and copywriting and created a checklist for my writing workflow.
3. Found great ways to promote my blog. I joined Twitter, but have to do a lot of work on promotion.
4. Affiliate marketing is becoming clearer to me every day. I created a post on Affiliate Marketing Basics.
5. Found some great affiliate tips by Shawn Collins.
6. Check out what have Top Blog Designs in common. I analyzed 7 very popular blogs.
7. Created a contact form with Cforms. I am looking forward to hearing from you.
8. Set up an advertising page. For the first advertisers I am offering a dirt cheap price – $10 for 2 weeks for 125×125 ad spot!

How are you doing?

…in 15 seconds

If you only have 15 seconds here it is:

1. Provide extra-useful information for your readers.
2. Write attractive headlines with your keywords in it.
3. Create scannable and highly readable posts.
4. Reveal your points at the beginning, explain them, then sum up.

in 5 minutes

Writing Great Blog Content is a science that takes a lot of time and mistakes, but can be learned.  Darren Rowse`s problogger.net provides great advice on writing for blogs. Another superb author is Brian Clark at copyblogger.com.

After reading Darren`s first article in series “How to craft a Blog Post?” I immediately identified myself. I found I am rushing to get things published. And the problem with hurrying is, that I overlook things that are important and make mistakes. So TAKE YOUR TIME and read Darren`s complete series called. I recommend it. Next thing you should do is read a series called Copywriting 101 from Brian Clark. It is an introduction to Copywriting for beginners.

The post below is a checklist for my writing process compiled from the series above.

Crafting a Blog Post

Darren suggest taking a pause at the following key moments of crafting a Blog post:

1. Choosing a topic.
2. Crafting a post title – Title is extremely important!
3. The opening line.
4. Your points.
5. Call to Action.
6. Adding depth.
7. Quality control.
8. Timing of publishing.
9. Post promotion and
10. Conversation.

This actually make sense. If I take more time I will produce posts of better quality and this means people will more likely read it, like it and recommend it.

Structure of persuasive Copy

• Focus on the reader and make a promise early.
• Each part should have a idea and purpose that support main idea and purpose.
• Be specific and give reasons WHY!
• Demonstrate credibility and authority.
• Get back to the reader – what`s in it for him?
• Make an offer.
• Sum up, restate original promise and show how it is fulfilled.

Presenting Content

Content needs to be scannable.

There are several techniques for making posts more readable to the eye and mind:

• lists (I am already using lots of lists. Thumbs up!),
• text formatting (bold, italics, – use them consistently),
• headings and subheadings,
• pictures,
• get to the point and don`t burry your points,
• stick to only a few ideas in one post

Post length

Post length is a common question when it comes to writing for my 51 grand blog.

One long post and a few short posts along the day. There is no rule for this one, but posts need to be short enough to deal with readers short attention spans and long enough to decently present the topic. I guess I will experiment with this one a bit.

Creating Titles

Titles are probably the most important element of my blog posts. They are the first thing my visitors (Yes, that’s YOU) see even before they reached my blog. Titles are seen in Search Engines, RSS feeds and on my blog.  According to Brian Clark the purpose of copy is to get the first sentence read. And then the second, and so on, step by step to the sale. Here is what title should be like:

1. Keep it simple.
2. Grab ATTENTION!
3. Meet a need – promise a benefit.
4. Be useful.
5. Use KeyWords.
6. STOP! Carefully evaluate your Title before you hit publish button!
7. Half of entire time writing should be spent on crafting a title.

Organizing the Writing Process

Posting Workflow

• Create drafts when you get ideas and.
• Review these drafts when you want to writ new post.
• Do some more research or combine your ideas.
• Start writing.
• Review it. Double check title!
• Post.
• Get feedback.
• Update.

Post Frequency

Try to find your own pace. Posting every day can become overwhelming. Posting just for the sake of posting can also hurt your blog.  I think it is ok to write posts ahead of time and develop a consistent posting frequency.

Motivation for Writing

How to overcome motivation problems?

• Starting a series.
• Invite questions from your readers.
• Revisit old posts.
• Keep an idea Journal.
• Develop a posting schedule.
• Get a Guest blogger.
• Take a break.
• Short posts.

As you can see, blog copywriting can be very extensive. But again you can`t go wrong if you remember only these 4 things:

1. Focus on your reader and make him a promise.
2. Title is the most important element of your copy.
3. Make your content readable.
4. Perform the promise.

Rerefences:

http://www.problogger.net/how-to-write-great-blog-content/
http://www.copyblogger.com/copywriting-101/