Blogging Elite Retreat :: ShoeMoney
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Live blogging from the trenches, I’m here in SF as Jeremy Shoemaker is wrapping up the first Elite Retreat presentation on SEM, PPC, Branding and Arbitrage.
Jeremy is well known for his success making money off of pushing ringtones. He pulled up his sites and walked us through how he buys keywords, filters the visitors through his custom-built sites, and then sends them off - for a huge profit.
What I loved was his down to earth approach - and he spoke well to our questions in regards to when you build sites to send away traffic vs. building sticky sites to keep traffic. It was a good eye-opener to me (more like a big “DUH”) to realize that the site I’m building here hasn’t monetized as well as I had hoped BECAUSE I’m building it to be sticky. If my AdSense click-through increased, I’d be losing potential long-term readers.
So Jeremy has given me a ton of food for thought as to how to build sub-sites or build separate pages in different, but related niches that are built for a completely different purpose than what I’m doing here. Realizing I’ve been a bit too hyper-focused on creating compelling content, what I’ve learned is that there are times when it pays to create just good content, and send people away. Of course, this would never work on pages when you’re building your brand as a writer/blogger.
Keeping this short but sweet; I want to get back to listening. This conference has been amazing so far and we’ve only just started! 
PS :: Kris is blogging this too!
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Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Kelly McCausey is an internet marketer, blog publisher, podcaster
and web business coach. Host of 
Bill Parlaman is owner of 
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Wendy - I hope you are taking good notes;-) I would love to be there getting all that great information.
My best Adsense site is not a blog and I find that if I update it too often, its earnings go down. I walk a fine line with it on attracting new search traffic and then sending them off to other sites because they didn’t quite find what they want. But I also want to keep adding more content to make it better…
Hope to catch up with you soon.
Wendy - no more posts - I want you to be taking notes. If you like, you can take notes in Microsoft Outlook and just send them to be periodically. =)
Just wait, ya’ll just got started. Now get back to listening!
I’m glad you’re getting lots of great info - and again, am so excited that you’re there!
A gentle suggestion for opening your blog up to non industry in-crowd readers - this is from my tech writing background - you might want to use fewer acronyms, or explain ‘em. SEO, SEM, PPC are all things that a new blogger would not know and have to google to understand your blog.
The classic convention is to spell it out and follow it with the acronym in parens the first time in an article - and then acronym only thereafter. And then do that in each article, so it can stand alone.
It’s a pain, but it makes you more accessible…
Happy mental sponge mode!
Hey Wendy!
Girl, take the breaks to breathe-baby-brathe!
With guest posters in queue, we’re not expecting you to share all your nuggets of gold! [Though, of course, we know your nature doesn't prevent you from doing so
]
Anyways, like you said “Duh” to niche, smaller sites. I, too, do this and not only do I generate Google Adsense dollars from more content-driven niche-sites, but I’m able to attract particular affiliate programs, books, information products, etc. that are specific to that one target market as well.
You need to see this ’sticky’ blog, as your audience eager to learn from your success–and, now, you and us (your readers) need to apply these skills, time and efforts to apply the techniques to non-blogger-dominated niches, that you’ve discussed here numerous times, as well as have set the foundation for elsewhere.
Now, get back to chillin’ out during your “free time” girl!
Peace-out
BTW: Alex, you are such a toot!
I’m not sure how to respond to that Ponn - choo choo?
Wendy!
You’re there getting all of that information for all of us! I hope you’re also having the most wonderful time of it!
I can’t wait to read full details! So what’s it like to be under so much pressure to come back and teach the minions?
Hope you’re having a wonderful time hanging with the bald guys we all admire most
Gayla, I also noticed there is a lot of baldness going around over at Elite Retreat. Makes you wonder if Websuccess leads to Hair loss.
Or is it that hair loss leads to web success?
Hmmm makes one wonder.
How did you style the photo in this post so fast? There are many reasons to keep a blog sticky - techcrunch.com is a great example, and Arrington is making tons & tons of money off it.
Gayla… shave your head and keep us updated on your progress =)
Hi Wendy
Thanks for sharing this information from the retreat. I look forward to hearing more. It all sounds very exciting. Enjoy!
Yvonne
I didn’t know that Shoemaker was started from selling ringtones.