I have been burned 3 times in last couple years trying to help promote free affiliate conferences. So far not one actually happened. The last being the Midwest un-Conference.

I was approached last year by Jon Fisher, owner of wickedfire.com, that he was going to have a conference that was free. He also told me Webmasterradio was involved and it was going to be awesome. Sounded good to me and I said I would be happy to help promote it.

Fast forward to now… Wickedfire is no longer involved but the conference is going to happen. Lots of details are still unclear but the site is up and the date is June 17th - 20th in Denver Colorado.

Webmasterradio has assured me that this conference IS going to happen. They have also published their attendee list which is kind of weird because it says only 60% of attendees are from the United States and only 70% speak english.

UPON further review a couple people have noticed its where they MARKET TO not where they are. Thanks for pointing this out as I have had numerous affiliate companies who wanted to sponsor the event think its only 60% english speaking.

NO MATTER!

I am booked and ready to go AND I know how to say “hi, thanks for reading my blog in 9 different languages”.

And no matter what happens we are working with affiliate.com and getads.com to throw one of the biggest, most amazing parties ever.

So if you haven’t yet go and register for the affiliate convention and book your trip to Denver. Its only a couple weeks away so get to it!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Can A FREE Affiliate Convention Really Happen?

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

A lot of people ask me how I find the time to do all that I do. The blog, the radio show, the conference, running 6 companies, all the business travel, being a father to 2 young kids, and a husband. Well time is all we have.

As I have taken more family and business responsibilities I have taken away personal and fun time stuff.

Things I have given up:

Being A Sports Fan

I used to be a sports FANATIC. I could tell you any players name on any team in any sport. My TV was glued to ESPN Sportscenter 24/7.

Gaming

I used to love to play console games. I purchased the UFC game when it game out over a week ago and still have not unwrapped it =(. Its becoming a trend… I have about 8 of the latest big titles that have never been played =(.

Going Out With Friends

Friends? What are those? The only time I hang out with friends is when I travel for business. My closest friends live all over the world.

If you eliminate all the stuff in your life that does not matter its amazing how much time you have. Being a sports fan was a lot of fun but even when my Green Bay Packers won the super bowl…. I still had to goto work the next monday morning.

A.D.D relevant sidenote: Some of the poorest people I know are the biggest sports fans. Thats weird but anyway…

Having children ironically showed me really how much time I have. And how I need to manage it.

Today our nanny, Carly, is on vacation and my wife is working all day so I am responsible for the children.

I woke up at 5:30 am with our 10 month old crying. Got her and coddled her until about 6:30 then gave her a bath and dressed her.

Then I started making lunch for my 2 year old. She (the 2 year old) woke up about 7ish and I got her bathed and dressed for school.

Fed both breakfast then loaded them up in the car to drop the 2 year old off ad school.

Once home from school gave a bottle of milk to the 10 month old then put her down to rest.

Now I have 1 hour or so until she wakes up. No time for instant messengers or social networks just time to get shit done.

In this 1 hour I will write this blog post, respond to all emails, and check in with my employees who have only been at work for about 30 minutes.

Anyway we all have a TON of time. We just need to eliminate the bullshit and get after it

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

Time Is All We Have

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

Anyone who has followed me for the last 6 years knows one of the core principals of ShoeMoney Media Group INC. is to find a service that is needed and fill that void.

Right now with tons of people out of jobs due to the economy and with the making money online niche being the new “cool thing” to do; tons of people ARE filling that void by selling informational products on the real *secrets* of making money online.

This all started because last fall I had a conversation with one of my childhood friends who recently lost his job. He called me up and was like “Hey man, I really want to get in to this making money online stuff and it seems so easy. I was checking out these online courses but they are like thousands of dollars. Also I saw your Elite Retreat conference and thought about going to it. I just want to know if I can handle it.”

The last thing in the world I would recommend to a person looking to see what internet marketing is all about is to buy a product. But unfortunately there is nothing I could recommend to him.

So we started cracking ass on a 100% FREE 12 week course that covers about every possible topic on internet marketing. I call it the ShoeMoney Xtreme course because that is what it is… it’s a massive crash course in the world of making money online complete with info, real life examples and weekly assignments.

I have also teamed up with MySpace, Facebook, and Microsoft. They’re going to give you free money to spend on their advertising platforms so you can test them out without spending your own money.

Why would I release this amazing content for free?

Giving away great content has always paid off massively for me. This blog is a prime example. Without it, neither my Elite Retreat conference or the ShoeMoney Marketing Tools would be successful.

Let me be VERY TRANSPARENT.

I want to teach you the basics of internet marketing and educate you on how the online marketing world works from my 13 years of experience.

This course is for the extreme newbie.

All this course requires is that someone works hard.

I am going to take you through the ins and outs of how all of this works and also give you free money to try some of the advertising venues.

If you feel making money online (or my course) is not right for you at anytime, simply hit the unsubscribe button. No cost to you.

My hope is that by the end of this course, you have found out whether or not this is the right industry for you. I also hope that you’re encouraged to take your ideas to the next level. Who knows - maybe you’ll even sign up for my marketing tools or internet marketing conference (of course, these things aren’t required :P). So if you’re ready to dive into the Internet marketing world, I invite you to sign up the ShoeMoney Xtreme course.

To get started with the 12 week free training course, go here to sign up.

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

How to Make Money Online for Beginners

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

Today my post is courtesy of CrystalOccasion.com. They sent me some nice crystal glasses with what other than the ShoeMoney logo. Crystal Occasion has a pretty wide selection of gifts and glasses - and obviously they can customize just about anything. Thanks to Crystal Occasion, I was able to pour myself a refreshing beverage - hehe. It’s Friday and it’s the ShoeMoney office - what else do you expect?

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

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

CrystalOccasion.com - Free Shirt Friday

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

All serious affiliate marketers doing substantial profit margins always have 1 major thing in common and that is a central “Dashboard” of all of their earnings among all the networks. Most marketers have several accounts, some even with the same company. And most of the affiliates doing 6-7 figures a month are 1 man shops.

So you can either build your own dashboard which shows you all of your earnings or you can purchase software to do it for you.

The guys at StatsJunky pinged me to check out their product and I gotta say it looks pretty sweet.

So what makes StatsJunky different from all the open source/hosted tracking applications?

Less Points Of Failure:
With hosted/open source tracking apps, you have to invest tons of time setting up your dashboard and generating tons of links for every campaign. Not only that, but running software like this can be risky. If the hosted server is down or delayed, this is going to drastically cut into your revenue - which is a HUGE point of failure.

Security:
If you use StatsJunky, all of the data stays on your computer. You don’t have to worry about a hosted application having all of your campaigns/keywords.

Plugins:
All major affiliate networks are compatible with StatsJunky and if there’s something you want - they will write a plugin for you.

Education They conduct DAILY webinars for StatsJunky users.

So StatsJunky sounds like something you need? Well, I’ve talked StatsJunky into giving away THREE FREE StatsJunky accounts with 1 year access. Want one?

To enter to win:

1) Comment Below
2) Tweet This

Good luck!

This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog

StatsJunky Looks Pretty Sweet

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

Here’s what you might have missed last week…

eLearning Learning Hot List - May 15, 2009 to May 22, 2009

Top Posts

The following are the top posts from featured sources based on social signals.

1. The Challenge of Training the PlayStation Generation- The E-Learning Curve, May 15, 2009
2. Metalearning- eLearning Technology, May 20, 2009
3. Presentation: Blogs in Education- Don’t Waste Your Time, May 22, 2009
4. Aligning Learning Theory with Instructional Design- The E-Learning Curve, May 21, 2009
5. List of System Variables in Cp4- Adobe Captivate Blog, May 15, 2009
6. Presentation: Wikis in Education- Don’t Waste Your Time, May 19, 2009
7. How I use social media to learn- Adventures in Corporate Education, May 17, 2009
8. Implementing New Learning Technology? Choose the Right Pilot Group- Kapp Notes, May 22, 2009
9. Presentation: Social Bookmarking with Delicious- Don’t Waste Your Time, May 15, 2009
10. Discovering Instructional Design, Part 1- The E-Learning Curve, May 19, 2009
11. Meeting icebreaker-How to get a group to acknowledge differences in perceptions.- Business Casual, May 16, 2009
12. Discovering Instructional Design 3: A Systems Approach- The E-Learning Curve, May 22, 2009
13. Shifting to Adobe eLearning suite – reuse existing Articulate Engage and Quizmaker content- Adobe Captivate Blog, May 19, 2009
14. Social Learning Podcast Transcripts - Top Objections Webinar & Twitter Troubles- Engaged Learning, May 21, 2009
15. MOBILE LEARNING - eLearning Tour Part 1 - Hosted by Corporate Learning Trends and Innovation- Discovery Through eLearning, May 21, 2009
16. Learning, Extended Brain and Topic Hubs- eLearning Technology, May 18, 2009
17. Road to Learning now featured on elearninglearning- Road to Learning, May 17, 2009
18. Do not go quietly into the classroom- Don’t Waste Your Time, May 17, 2009
19. Should students be allowed Internet access in exams?- ThirdForce Blog, May 15, 2009
20. US Army Using Interactive Videos- MinuteBio, May 15, 2009

Top Other Items

The following are the top other items based on social signals.

1. A List Apart: Articles: In Defense of Eye Candy, May 16, 2009
2. Facilitating Online | Centre for Educational Technology, May 19, 2009
3. Are Your E-Learning Courses Pushed or Pulled?, May 19, 2009
4. 25 Tools: A Toolbox for Learning Professionals 2009, May 19, 2009
5. Learning 2.0 and Workplace Communities - 2009 - ASTD, May 18, 2009
6. Sensemaking, PKM and networks, May 17, 2009
7. The Mobile Learning Engine (MLE) for Moodle, May 18, 2009
8. Learning Management Systems 2009 - 2009 - ASTD, May 21, 2009
9. The Twitter Book, May 15, 2009
10. Mashups for Learning - 2009 - ASTD, May 21, 2009
11. Wolfram Alpha, May 21, 2009
12. A landscape of influences, May 18, 2009
13. E-learning: How to Perform Mime | Personal Cyber Botanica, May 21, 2009
14. Educate - iPhone ipod Touch App for teachers, May 20, 2009
15. 1,000+ Learning Professionals to follow on Twitter, May 16, 2009

Top Keywords

• Learning Management System (8)
• Knowledge Worker (4)
• Social Media (17)
• Social (45)
• Social Networks (29)
• Industry (19)
• Pattern (6)
• Mobile Learning (9)
• Forum (11)
• Management (28)
• eLearning (41)
• Learning (85)
• Knowledge (35)

---

eLearning Technology
Browse eLearning Content

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

Should learning organizations make a financial investment in new forms of learning?

A fantastic comment by Bill Brantley on my post Metalearning:

Before you start defining metalearning, you need definitions for:

1. formal learning
2. informal learning
3. social learning
4. collaborative learning
5. personal learning

that are more than just marketing buzzwords.

What is the difference between these five concepts? What are the strengths and weaknesses with each? How does one know when they are practicing one form or another?

Before you start shutting down training departments, hiring Chief Learning Officers, and coining an umbrella term for different learning methods, you need to establish what you are actually talking about and why it is preferred over other methods. And you need to back this up with some empirical data.

I would love to have a discussion with him because I think he’s missing the point about the importance of metalearning and metacognition and their implications on learning organizations. 

Important Challenge

That said, he’s expressing a really important challenge.  Before a learning organization recommends to make a financial investment in any of these methods, they really want to know:

• What is it?
• What will it cost and what’s the expected return?

When you look at various training methods such as classroom instruction, virtual classroom, courseware, online reference, performance support tools, they all have fairly well understood size, shape, characteristics.  There’s enough body of knowledge, history and expectation that you can safely propose financial investment by a learning organization in these methods.  Yes, your budget is being cut, but it’s way safer to propose on-going financial investment in a tried and true method than it is to propose shifting budget to new methods. 

In Corporate Training, I suggested what might happen if you shifted budget right now without having a solid backup as wonderfully explained by Dilbert:

If we want to really change where learning organizations spend time and dollars, the key ingredient is to help get more concrete about these terms and to be concrete about financial investment proposals.

Not a Short Answer

I wish there were a set of business cases that we could point to that would exemplify what a VP Learning/CLO should be presenting to their executive team.  Why not?

It’s partly that these kinds of solutions are highly fragmented.  Look at the breadth of Examples of eLearning 2.0.  Add to it all the investment that could go along with Tool Set and Work Literacy. 

What should a VP Learning / CLO present to the executive team?

Related:

• The Paradox of Informal Learning (Form of Informal?)
• Informal Learning is Too Important to Leave to Chance
• More on the Form of Informal
• Formalizing and Investing in Informal Learning
• Numbers Behind Informal and Formal Learning
• Internet Time Blog: ROI is toast. Use EVA instead.
• ROI and Metrics in eLearning

---

eLearning Technology
Browse eLearning Content

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

These pocket-sized projectors get a big picture out of a small device–and future technology will shrink them further.

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post 

An ultrasound lens could be used for high-resolution clinical imaging.

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post