Great SEO Book

Joe Lieberman - A sellout or a racist?!?

Gore has done great things with his life since "the split" - Joe, what have you done?!?

Shoemoney Hates SEO In Hypocritical Fashion

I attempted to post the following in response to a recent post at Shoemoney.com. I'll be curious to see if it gets filtered out. Nonetheless, it's here for your enjoyment.

So let me get this straight Shoe, you (a superstar affiliate marketer among other things) pride yourself on making money in “gray areas" (to the point of bragging about it in your podcasts) yet feel justified in accusing 95% of SEOs of being "21st Century car salesmen" and "slimy"? So when you killed it in ringtones, which is really the only reason your blog ever became successful, did you feel guilty for tricking teenagers into signing up for “free services,” knowing that they or their parents would later receive anonymous charges on their phone bills as a result of your “marketing” efforts? Think of the confusion, hurt feelings, and family arguments that must have caused. But just to clarify, that type of behavior isn’t slimy, right?!? Yet, helping a company: clean up their directory structure; use 301 redirects instead of 302s or meta-refreshes; remove duplicate content; create a logical navigation structure; improve internal linking; buy directory listings; and find external links from related sites is slimy? Hmmm, I see your point.

Quality loses its quality when it no longer provides value. I've been reading your blog for about two years, and aside from being mildly entertaining, I'm not sure it exemplifies quality or provides any real value. Nonetheless, I have to find something to kill the time during my breaks from SEO.

Black Friday Arbitrage - Smoley Style

It's been a week since Black Friday, which means only 51 weeks before I can kill it again. So what is Black Friday arbitrage – Smoley Style? It involves finding a great deal, purchasing a product, and then reselling it at a higher price. O.K., so how is that different than the regular Black Friday bullshit? Here’s the twist:

1. Do a Google search for Black Friday deals Monday or Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. By this time stores have usually leaked information about their Door Busters. For example, this year Toys-R-Us sold the Microsoft Zune 30 GB Digital Media Player (Brown)for $79.99. It normally retails for $200…but can be found on Amazon for about $140 - $150.



2. After creating a list of products you might want to buy, identify local competitors who carry those products but who are not running Door Buster sales on those specific products. For example, in the case of the Zune, I visited two local Wal-Marts, as well as Staples and Office Max and discovered that both Wal-Marts and Staples had Brown Zunes in stock (two days before Thanksgiving).



3. Identify when those stores open and plan on arriving about an hour later.



4. Fight your way through the crowds and check to see if they still have the product in stock. If so, take as many as you want/can and then check out. During check-out, show them the competitor's ad and ask them to price match. Based on my experience, Wal-Mart, Staples, and Best Buy will price match competitors' Black Friday ads; however, Target will not.



5. Keep what you want and sell the rest on Craigslist, Ebay, or Amazon.

Shoemoney's Friend Laura Martin Wins Party Like a Rockstar Contest

Shoemoney's Party Like A Rockstar contest is finally over. Thank God! Was it rigged? I think so, but I'll let you be the judge. By consensus, six judges arrived at three finalists. SEO Loser, Party-Like-Rockstar.com, and Laura Martin (a friend of Shoe's who has been a guest on his podcast as well as a contestant on Who Wants to Be The Next Internet Millionaire - An internet reality show that Shoe has plugged on multiple occasions).

Anyway, once the finalists were announced, Shoemoney added a poll to his blog asking his readers to cast their vote for who they would like to see go to Las Vegas. Initially, the week-long poll was neck-and-neck between Party-Like-Rockstar.com and Laura Martin. However, after a few days it became a race between Party-Like-Rockstar.com and SEO Loser (with Laura Martin trailing by dozens of votes). This would remain the case until the final evening when one of Shoemoney's readers noted:

Comment by El-Chupa-Nebra 2007-11-18 00:11:46
Laura pulls 70+ votes in a few hours? Sus much? lol

The next morning Shoemoney squashed the contest and added the following disclaimer to the his blog post:

EDIT: Poll removed. (I think people thought the poll was the official contest so there was a lot of trying to game it or send whiney emails to me (which isn’t going to gain any points)). We more just wanted to hear the opinions of who people wanted to win. The judges will decide today and a post will be made tomorrow.

Shoemoney may have "wanted" to hear our opinions, but did he listen?!? Our opinions indicated that Party-Like-Rockstar.com should be going to Las Vegas. Because it's Shoemoney's contest, he has the final decision. That's fine. The contest is subjective, we get it!

But why waste our time with a poll? After all, although "...people thought the poll was the official contest" it really didn't have any weight, right?!? Oh wait! According to the poll (that didn't count), Laura Martin was the last minute winner after a surge of 70+ votes (likely cast via anonymous proxies - or maybe Shoe just tweaked the results;-). Never mind the poll, it doesn't count. Yet, when the judges announced "their" decision earlier today, Laura Martin emerged as the winner.

Congratulations to Laura Martin! In Shoemoney's own words, "Success favors the prepared."