Thanks to Jeremy for answering these questions. Your answers were very enlightening!
*Edit from Rebecca*: I cleaned up the grammar in Shoemoney’s responses so it would read easier.
What do you find frustrating in this industry ?
Here is something that pisses me off… I will give out advice or even lay out a path and people will say, “Ohhh, easy for you to say where you’re at…” Here is the thing: When I started my company I was in deep debt, like 50k+. I have been there and done that… You can come up with excuses all day as to why you are not successful. People need to be more action-oriented.
Also, people, like, want to know EXACTLY what you are doing and hold their hand and show them the whole way, but the thing is if they don’t learn on their own then as soon as that thing dies, they are stuck again. Many times people will read posts or tips I posted 6 months ago that do not work any more, and they actually have the balls to email me and tell me I should refund them ’cause what I suggested did not work. I always reply with, like, HELLO, 6 MONTHS AGO CALLED, STAY CURRENT. I know, I know, that sounds bad.
It seems like you really have to be careful who to trust in this industry. Who do you trust and why?
A few names come to mind…hard to pick just one. I would say the person I most trust in this industry is Jen Slegg of jensense.com. She has helped me in so many ways I can’t even begin to name them. Also David Naylor. I have trusted both of them with a lot of various stuff and I can say they are true friends.
While doing some basic searching on the internet, we noticed a couple of interesting things…
A) In 2004 you had a trademark dispute over a domain. It seems you lost. Any comments on that? Advice for other folks who are following in your footsteps?
Sure I can comment… I think you are referring to the tmobile domain? I did not contest that one. It was not the first domain I had lost, and I am sure it won’t be the last. I currently own almost 10,000 domains, and that grows every week. I have a very automated system, and it does register some sketchy domains at times. Win some and lose some. I do battle for domains that really matter to me. I have never lost a domain that I actually battled for, and I have battled against big companies. Apple, Nextel, Verizon, to name a few.
[I also had ipron.com, which Apple tried to get but failed.]
B) We’ve noticed a large number of the domains you have are suddenly getting 403 forbidden errors. Are you cloaking, or is there something else you’re up to?
I am always testing stuff. Not too long ago, I registered about 650 domains that had links and I 301’d all of them to 1 to see what kind of effect it would have. The results were super interesting. Also, I was hosting a ton of old stuff on the same server. Then my box got hacked.
Now I am enabling sites 1 at a time and only sites where I KNOW there is no bad code. My sister’s, dad’s, mom’s sites all are forbidden right now, along with about 700 other total domains that were going to various ips on that box.
For the budding entrepreneur, what would you suggest with regards to making money via Adwords – black hat techniques, white hat, or a mixture of both? And why?
Well, you can learn a lot from blackhat, but I would say blackhat is mostly for R&D purposes. I am pretty newbie when it comes to blackhat and I suck at it bad. Sometimes I will play a bit, but never with anything I care about.
Want to get started? Get off your ass and make a blogger account with niche-name.blogspot.com Run Adsense… run affiliate offers… run eBay links… I know that sounds blunt, but right now it’s so easy to make money. It’s like fishing with dynamite.
I did this for Aaron Wall to show him how sick it was to make money… he gave me his login to Adcenter. I uploaded keywords. He spent like $1500 to make $9000 in 2 months. (We split the profit.) You can read Aaron’s post here.
While looking around, I noticed one of your favorite topics (ringtones). Anyhow, it seems that you use this particular topic on a wide variety of your sites, regardless of whether it’s related to the theme or not. Is this common amongst all of your sites, or do you have stuff more on target with different topics?
Ringtones WAS the sickest way to make money… I mean, I was throwing nickels to make $12-$22 conversions… AND converting at 10-15%. That is damn good ROI. I do have many other sites. I also do a lot with software and other stuff. I have sites (like dropload.com) which have over 4 million users. Also, we launched dropcash.com 2 years ago and it did really well right off the bat.
I also do software. I just launched a new product called SpaceLook, which is a application that handles all messaging and stuff with MySpace in a nice gui windows-based app.
I also own a company that does nothing but resell computers.
I also own a company that deals in importing exporting data cables for wireless phones.
So ya, I do more than ringtones 😉 It’s just when something is really hot and SO EASY to make money from you can’t look the other way. Also, being I am a 3 person operation–1) business manager 1) shoemoney 1) dillsmack – my badass coder–we really have to focus.
What do you think of tools like http://www.googspy.com and http://www.spyfu.com? Do you think it will affect the industry in any particular way?
Do I like them ? Let’s say I want to affiliate skateboards. I can scrape together a keyword list from them and have a campaign running in under 5 minutes. I think it’s hot….
Now do I think they will stay? – I think it’s a matter of time before Google blocks them. We developed an application to do exactly what they are doing, only it works a little better because we are not caching hardcore to cater to users. It’s so easy to scrape competitors’ keywords… Google will fix it.
Going a bit deeper on question #4, you mentioned in a blog post that a month ago you had a way to find out the keywords that competitors were using. When you use tactics like this, do you think it helps to use the same keywords or come up with keywords that the competitors are NOT using?
Well, they can always scrape you back. There is a simple way to block it. Just lie about your display url. Yes, Adwords will catch it SOMETIMES. But I would say it’s about 50/50. Anyway, I heard that works. I would never try it myself because I think that is probably against the TOS 😉
How does the recent law against gambling sites affect you, if at all?
I don’t dabble in the porn, poker, pills area… I have nothing against it, I just have not gone down that road. The only way I have been affected is everyone is emailing me for Greg Boser’s phone number so they can sell their site to him.
If you were to rate MSN, Yahoo, Google, and any other PPC engines, what order would they be in with regards to how much you like them and why?
Google – I love Adwords for its API + volume. You cant beat Google’s volume. I also love Adwords for its SUPER CHEAP CLICKS if the quality score bot loves you. I hate Adwords because they have their quality score bot.
Yahoo – I think Yahoo search marketing is crappy. It’s really the red headed stepchild of all the big 3 ppc engines. Their quality control is so hit and miss. Basically, the key with Yahoo is you just have to hammer the piss out of it. Upload 10,000 keywords and 8,000 will get denied. Upload those 8,000 keywords and 6,500 will get denied. Upload those and, well, you get the point. I guess it just depends on who is looking at your keyword to see if it’s denied or not. Keep hammering away and you will get in tons of 10 cent keywords.
I love AdCenter for their lack of quality control (which is being tightened up daily) and cheap clicks.
Ok, check this out. I have a ringtone site that I log searches on (searches people do in the site); this is live data. I know what is hot in the ringtone industry in like 0 second time. I can automate this with apis so that it bids 0 second too on ppc->affiliate.
Any plans to develop sites and later sell them?
I buy and sell sites all the time. I purchased pimpmyblog.com and hope to make a very nice resource for bloggers…but I have done little with it. On the other hand, I just sold firefoxforum.com for $800 about 3 weeks ago. I am always wheeling and dealing 😉
How much time do you spend developing new sites vs maintaining old ones?
I spend maybe 2-5% of my time maintaining what I have and the rest of the time trying to grow.
What’s your favorite activity throughout the day?
The time I get to spend with my 4 month old baby girl, Juliet. One of the pluses of working from home.
Do you believe everything that industry figures like Matt Cutts’ say, or do you analyze and test to see if it’s accurate? I’m curious to see how much someone with your experience trusts industry spokespeople like Matt. (Note: It may sound as if I were picking on Matt, but I honestly wasn’t – he just happened to be the first person that came to mind)
I like and respect Matt more outside of talking search stuff. I have spent a decent amount of time talking to him at conferences and in emails, and I cant recall any of them having to do with rankings or even search.
Boy this is hard to put into words….I feel that a lot of what Matt says on his blog and at conferences is common sense in regards to search engine posts. I really like Matt’s non-search engine posts more than his Google seo posts. (Am I alone on that?)
I try to build websites/communities that people like to use, and I brand them. What people call SEO I think is just common sense….I do not think there are ANY hidden SEO secrets. The only secrets out there are blackhat, and I really enjoy reading syndk8.net and private forums like that, where people openly discuss blackhat theories and techniques. There is a huge wealth of knowledge there. I highly recommend it.
Any plans to add transcripts to Net Income episodes you do?
Well Webmasterradio has been saying since I started that it was “in the works.” I was going to pursue it and actually have had people offer to transcribe them, but…I dont want to step on WMR’s toes. They have been really good to me.
Do you outsource most of the work that needs to be done for your business now, or do you setup all your campaigns and whatnot yourself?
I do not outsource anything. I have tried that in the past and it just does not work for me. I think mostly because I am a really bad manager. I just tell people to do stuff and then leave them alone until I expect it done. I am kind of a jack of all trades, computer-wise.
Time to dazzle us with some stats…how many keywords do you bid on? How many campaigns/adgroups do you have in Google? How about MSN/Yahoo?
Boy…I have to be careful with this question….I got in trouble not too long ago when I found a loophole that let me upload over 20 million keywords into one of the big 3 ppc engines. Some bad stuff happened with that. I can’t really talk about it… Needless to say, they did not last long.
Thanks Jeremy!
G-Man
Update from Rand: Jeremy noted that he has a couple small changes with regards to the sites he mentioned. You can find those at his blog.
