Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills
By Jeremy Schoemaker

The Elite Retreat is still 3 months away, and is shaping up to be the biggest and best one so far! The response for this years retreat has been phenomenal, and we are happy to announce there are only 4 seats left!

Kris Jones of Pepperjam is having a great contest for 2 tickets to this years Elite Retreat. In addition to paying your entry, Pepperjam is also going to cover either your flight or hotel for this event. That’s a pretty sweet deal. The contest details and rules are all listed here, and the winner will be determined based on affiliate commissions.

So if you are still undecided about attending the Elite Retreat this year, make up your mind quickly. A sellout is inevitable, so reserve your spot today!

I also want to give a shout out to our sponsors for this years event, they make a lot of this possible.  From the great hotel, to the 5 star dinners, and a few surprises for the attendees, many thanks to:

Our Platinum Sponsor

Azoogle Ads

And our other great sponsors:

Surehits

Pepperjam Network

XY7.com

GetAds.com

Market Leverage

Searchme

(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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Stanley Tang asks:

Ross asks:

Bondox asks:

Donny asks:

Did you eat a lot of candy too for Halloween?

Ren asks:

Dave asks:

steve asks:

James asks:

D. Psyko asks:

xcelent88 asks:

Jay asks:

ShoeMoney: I wish it was all done tomorrow I think fighters is already more interesting then Sherdog. Sherdog to most MMA fans is pretty obnoxious.

ITF asks:

Brandon asks:

David asks:

Andrew asks:

AffiliateObsession.com asks:

Funny Chix Dot Com asks:

Pedro Infante asks:

meethere asks:

one more question - is the comment contest continuing this month too ?

Rajaie AlKorani asks:

Steamy Kitchen asks:

JC asks:

Mr. Cranky asks:

Craig L asks:

ShoeMoney: Probably Sawyer. He is unpredictable

Debo Hobo asks:

Deano asks:

Steven-Sanders asks:

teamray asks:

Cigar Inspector asks:

Patel asks:

lawrenceq asks:

James asks:

Craig asks:

funkysouth asks:

Patrick asks:

Önder asks:

TheAnand asks:

I am currently in college but I have no interest in studies. Do you support dropping out of college and persuing full time web money online (which i am moderatly successful.). Hope this is not the question I should be asking some agony aunt!

Debo Hobo asks:

therealdeal asks:

Derek asks:

Dan Schawbel asks:

browie asks:

Tushar Dhoot asks:

coderbari asks:

ShoeMoney: Those are the easy things Running 4 different corporations takes up a lot also. All we have is time. I quit playing video games and watching sports and work a lot

(8 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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There is a post over at Techcrunch about a Microsoft/Yahoo deal.

So the deal is really that Microsoft would put up $5 billion to help a new management team buy preferred shares and warrants that would give it a 30% stake in Yahoo. In return, Microsoft would get a 10-year operating agreement to run Yahoo’s search business.

The numbers do not really make sense (as tc points out). According to this Microsoft is now ready to spend more for Yahoo’s search but will not have any control.

One thing I feel pretty sure about is that a MS/Y! deal is going to happen. I just don’t think the original source of this story had the right numbers.

(8 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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NewHomesSection.com is a site that is trying to ease the stress of purchasing a new home, and is trying to become a comprehensive new home resource center, synchronizing the efforts of all interested parties in the purchase of a new home.

Thanks for the shirt!

If you would like to see your website or company featured on Free Shirt Friday click here

(14 votes, average: 2.93 out of 5)

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I get this email all the time… maybe 1-2 times a week.  I am sure you all get it something similar too:

From: <mweeks@rogers.com>
Date: November 27, 2008 8:00:23 PM CST
To: <jeremy@shoemoneymedia.com>
Subject: I’ve visited your website http://www.shoemoney.com/2006/09/04/my-top-10-worst-ideas-to-make-money/

Hi,

We’ve seen your website at http://www.shoemoney.com/2006/09/04/my-top-10-worst-ideas-to-make-money/
and we love it!

We see that your traffic rank is 88919
and your link popularity is 3153.
Also, you have been online since 5/20/2004.

With that kind of traffic, we will pay you up to $4,800/month
to advertise our links on your website.

If you’re interested, read our terms from this page:
1stsite.ca

Sincerely,

Marie  Weeks
The ContactThem Network

So in every email it says I could earn up to $4800 per month.

This is one of those things that make me go “hmmmm”.

I wonder why the 4800 price point. I mean why not say 5000 ? Normally 4800 would be a good price point if someone was buying something but here you are trying to drive home how much I can earn right?

Anyway ….

(11 votes, average: 3.82 out of 5)

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One of the most popular commercial themes is having a 20% discount for black Friday.

Check it out here

(7 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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Last weekend on Saturday night I was invited to go out with a bunch of my friends.    We went out and I had way to much to drink got behind the wheel of my car and ran someone over.  Just like that some stupid decisions ruined what I had worked so hard for all my life until that point.  Then I woke up.  It was a bad dream.

It really made me think how easy something so horrible like that can happen.   I don’t think I have operated a motor vehicle under the influence since college but in my dream the situation seemed to just happen.

This holiday season please don’t put yourself in a situation where you end up driving drunk.

And on that note.  Happy Thanksgiving!

(45 votes, average: 2.69 out of 5)

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Wordpress has just released version 2.6.5. This contains security fixes and you need to upgrade now.

Official Announcement

(12 votes, average: 2.25 out of 5)

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This is a guest post by Levi Thornton. Levi is a serial entrepreneur who has built multiple successful technology-based businesses from the ground-up over the past 10 years. Levi’s background is strongly planted in internet based application development with a light touch of humor and a side of sarcasm. To learn more about Levi Thornton visit his LinkedIn profile (http://www.linkedin.com/in/levithornton).

If you have not already heard, cross marketing is big business, and if you’re not doing it already then you’re missing out on a large segment of customers.

When you hear people talk about cross marketing, your mind may conger up a marketing team that is developing a new product line for your current customer base, or maybe you have a wild imagination and envision a company opening up another gas station on the other side of the street. Frankly, this type of cross marketing has nothing to do with tagging your current customers with a new product or launching a large advertising campaign.

Cross marketing is a very cheap and lucrative method of marketing that allows two companies that have interests in each others customers, and can come to an agreement where each party advertises the other company’s service or product in exchange for the same amount of advertising or access to the customer base.

While the rules for cross marketing are wide open, there are a couple of things you must always keep in mind when reaching out to other businesses.

One of the first mistakes you see is small companies reaching out to competitors for their cross marketing. This is, will be, and has always been a bad idea. Your competitors have zero interest in sending you their customers, and if you happen to strike up some type of deal, they are really clueless or see an opportunity to swallow up your business overnight.

The next most common mistake your will run into is zero value. Many companies get an idea that they are providing a great value to other businesses, so they reach out to very large companies and try to pitch them the idea that their small customer base will somehow be good for the other business when their reach is 20x larger than the offering company.

As you reach out to pitch your cross marketing ideas, you need to find companies that fit your market, or have a customer base that has a high opportunity of buying in. Once you understand your customer profile, you need to analyze what it is that you can offer the other company and how they would see the value of the opportunity.

Your offer could be anything; advertising, data, technology, or a sponsorship. Just ask yourself what the other company would value the most. In most cases you should be able to develop an offer that has a higher face value to the other company, so that they feel they have a win-win and not another company trying to leach off of their customer base.

For example; many years ago one of my old competitors TheKnot, Inc (NASDAQ:KNOT) launched a cross marketing campaign. Their method was simple; they had traffic and plenty of content, but they wanted to grow their network and insure that they would be the first wedding site that brides used when they got hitched.

Their cross marketing plan was to offer articles and local vendor services to radio stations and news papers. In turn for the opportunity, the media outlets would have more content on their websites to sell advertising. Each media outlet would advertise their new service to their customer base through their normal operations in radio and print while the brides would use the content then follow links to TheKnot’s website.

In another example, Doggyspace.com did a cross marketing deal with the SPCA that helped raise awareness about the SPCA on a local and national level. In turn, the SPCA would attach Doggyspace to its marketing, press release, and give out media about the social network to the owners of people that adopted pets from the SPCA. Because of this, the organization and the social network helped each other reach their goals through cross marketing.

As you have seen in both examples, the rule is simple; help each partner reach a goal through their natural daily business operations. That way the expense of the deal does not outweigh the value of the opportunity.

While small businesses may think that cross marketing is too expensive and is only for companies with large bank accounts, it’s not. Even the smallest of the small companies can work out deals with companies of greater or equal size to their advantage.

Search engine experts can provide seal of approval programs to SEO software developers, social-based sites can provide brand awareness or a platform interface, while bloggers can provide professional Q&A for content rich sites. If you can dream it up and find a partner then you could have a great cross marketing plan that could grow your business as large as you want.

(15 votes, average: 3.2 out of 5)

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The Book All Marketers Are Liars is my second most favorite marketing book behind The Dip. This book is amazing and taught me how important having a great story is. Having a good product is no longer enough. You also have to be able to tell the story of your product and gain trust of your customers in a world where nobody trusts anything.

From the book:

We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior to a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better-and look cooler-than $20 no-names . . . and believing it makes it true.

Again I HIGHLY recommend this. Its one of the many books I put on the Elite Retreat ipod Touches.

(19 votes, average: 2.95 out of 5)

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