If you are a blogger and you haven’t heard of Jeremy Shoemaker, aka. “Shoemoney”, then you have been lost in the abyss. His blog - www.shoemoney.com - is ranked 87 on Technorati and has an Alexa traffic rank of 1,486. Shoemoney.com started as a place for Jeremy to give advice based on his business experience but it has turned into a phenomenon. Advertising on his site can run in the thousands a month. Getting a review or mention in one of his articles can send a flood of traffic your way. I talked with Jeremy this week and this is what he had to say:

#1

jemmille.com: You were making money online far before shoemoney.com became a top blogging destination. In fact, shoemoney.com is more of an outlet for your experiences in business, not an attempt to create revenue. Are you surprised by the response and huge number of daily readers you have acquired? Did they just start coming or did you advertise?

Jeremy: I am really amazed at the popularity of the blog. I never planned that. The Adsense check has been posted all over the internet and people use it linking to my site which brings most of the users. (Note: You wanna see it? Click here.) That page of my site is the most visited. I do have adwords going but only for the keyword “shoemoney” and its just to demonstrate a ppc technique I use called the bold arrow.

#2

jemmille.com: Your new venture, AuctionAds, Inc., has gotten a warm welcome and tons of affiliates. Did you expect to receive such a big response? Are your investments already paying off?

Jeremy: Yes we knew AuctionAds would be successful although 7500 users the first month was about 7x the success I was planning on. It really was kind of a no brainer. Take the payouts from one of the most lucrative affiliate programs yet give users a easy to use cut and paste code.

As far as investments paying off we are passing on 100% of the revenue we are getting so it will be a long time before the investment is paid off ;). Unlike most companies we have zero development cost. Just bandwidth and servers (which really is a small cost). Our focus is 100% on growth since that will lead to higher payouts for our users. (Note: If you want to sign up, click”Ads by AuctionAds” on the ad on the right.)

#3

jemmille.com: In an earlier e-mail, you mentioned Review Exchange. You told me, “Instead of money it will work off of a point system. Like you get points for doing reviews then you can buy reviews with points etc…” Can you add anything more to this? Do you have a roll-out date?

Jeremy: Well, our main focus is AuctionAds right now. Also we are taking over Matt-hughes.com and redoing his site in the next few months. Between those 2 the resources of dillsmack and myself are pretty exhausted. I definitely want to do review exchange but i also have about 9 other things I want to do I am in no rush. There are many review services out there but none like what I want to do. Kind of like there was 7 different Auctionads type programs that attempted to do what we are doing but they never got off the ground. (Note: You heard it here first! Be on the lookout for the Review Exchange.)

#4

jemille.com: The Elite Retreat is a way for people like me to have one-on-one time with people that have experience in the industry. How did this idea come about? Is there any sign of interest dropping or is demand getting higher?

Jeremy: Lee Dodd approached me with the idea asking if we could go back to when we were getting started how great would it have been to be able to talk to someone where we are at now and use there contacts and experience to get ahead. I really liked the idea and we sought out other speakers/leaders. The San Fran event had 2x the attendance of the first one and I expect our next one to sell out.

#5

jemmille.com: Online, millions of people know your name. Has this web-celebrity transfered to the public sector? Are you recognized and/or bothered by fans as you try to shop, relax, etc?

Jeremy: Nobody has any clue who I am locally and I like that. Every once in a while, someone on a plane or in a airport will recognize me. That is weird but it’s cool.

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