Why do I want to win a trip to Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West?

I wrote a little post the other day about a guy whose blog I follow, Shoemoney, and the fact that he was giving away an iPad.  No word yet if I won but he is having another contest and this one is much more valuable than an iPad.  He is giving away a free trip to an Internet marketing convention in Las Vegas, plus a bunch of other goodies.  All I have to do to be entered in his contest is to write a blog post about why I should win so here I go...

I would obviously like to go to the conference to network with people in the field and get to meet guys like John Chow and Shoemoney.  I feel like I already know them from reading their blogs over the years but I would love to shake their hands and hang out a little.  

I have no allusion of ever getting rich by making money online.  I instead create sites that I enjoy and maybe one day I will make a few bucks off them.  Who would not love to make a living doing what they enjoy?  If I can create a resource that people enjoy using, eventually the money will come.  It would be nice to go out to Vegas and meet others who have already made that dream a reality (and hope that some of their influence rubs off)!

As for the Internet marketing industry, I am not an insider.  I have no desire to become the next Joel Comm.  I would love to be there among them, trying to pick up some tips on how to relate their successes to my own endeavors.  Great minds think alike and I want to be a sponge amongst all of those great minds!  That is why I want to win the trip to Vegas.  (It also does not hurt that I have some vacation time from my job saved up and that the weather is freezing here!)

Review of Free SEO Report, a new service by Shoemoney

I do not usually write about it much but I have always been fascinated with making money online.  I have never really figured out a way to make a bunch of money but that has not stopped me!  It would be awesome to stay home, work on a web site for a few hours, and then do genealogy all day.  So far, it has not panned out for me but that in no excuse to give up!

Over the years, I have followed several gurus in the field of SEO (Search Engine Marketing) and PPC/PPA advertising (Pay Per Click/Pay Per Action).  That may sound foreign to you but it all boils down to creating a good product, in this case a web site, that is optimized to bring in viewers who in return may buy your products, sign up for your services or click on the ads that you show.  In the case of Virginia Family Tree, I do show ads to help support the site.  I also will occasionally throw an Amazon link in for products that I write about.  If you thereafter go to Amazon and buy that product, I would get a cut of the money to use on the blog here.

Well, in this case, one of the guru's that I follow is named Jeremy Schoemaker and he goes by the name Shoemoney.  He is a pretty smart guy and has literally gone from working at a bank years ago to now practically printing money.  The reason he is so successful is that he is dedicated, personable and fairly open about what he does.  If you read his blog, over time you will see that he pretty much spells out all of the ways he makes money and his advice is ripe for the picking...by anyone, for free.  His blog is his personal outlet for venting, testing things out and communicating with his peers in the outside world.

Shoemoney's latest venture is called Free SEO Report.  Remember when I stated earlier that SEO stood for Search Engine Optimization?  Well, that is what Shoemoney is helping you do.  You provide him with your e-mail address, website address and the keyword your website is about.  In my case, the word I focus on is genealogy.  When I provided the information, his system generated a report for me that showed how my site stacked up against other top genealogy sites.  It also provided me with a list of items I could fix or change to make my site better optimized.

Why would I care if my site is optimized?  You never want to build your site to cater to search engines.  If you do, it starts to look and read silly because people and search engines see things differently.  If I wanted to rank higher in Google for the word genealogy, I could write sentences on my blog like.  "Genealogy is my favorite hobby.  I love genealogy, genealogist and doing genealogy research.  I consider myself to be a genealogist among genealogists in the field of genealogy."  Who would want to read that?  However, search engines may think that my site is REALLY an authority on genealogy....because I used the word so many times!  With that in mind, it is key to optimize your site for search engines without doing silly thing like keyword stuffing...writing a word over and over again, just to trick a search engine.

Examples of SEO practices would be making sure your site has a good title, that you are using the proper META tags, etc.  You may not know what that means or how to fix it, but the report helps to guide you along that path.  It does not cost anything for your first report.  I signed up this morning and received my report in about five minutes.  It will give me a lot to think about this afternoon and I am sure I will be tweaking my site this evening.  The better optimized my site is, the better it will rank in Google. That means more people will come to my site and maybe I will make a few dollars off my advertising and get to meet some new, interesting people!  Think about it...you probably found my site in a search engine originally.  I want to increase the number of people who are able to find me.

As for cost, Shoemoney's Free SEO Report seems to be free for the first report and you have to pay for future reports.  It looks like a monthly service fee.  I would imagine that it is like a free credit report type service where he will update your SEO report monthly and let you know how your site is improving.  You really only have to accept your free report and then you can cancel.  I did not have to provide my credit card or anything, it truly is no strings attached.  Shoemoney is a good guy and I trust anything he puts out.  He is not out to scam anyone.  He puts out good products that people actually want.  I would feel totally safe in telling you to sign up for his free trial if you have a web site and you want to make it better.

So what is in this for me?  Well, I really respect Shoemoney and what he has done for the Internet marketing community.  He also does a lot to help out the little guy.  He gave away a bunch of iPads at a recent trade show and he has one left over.  To help promote his new site, Free SEO Report, he offered that anyone who write a review would be entered into a drawing for the remaining iPad.  In this case, not only do I get to tell you about a product that I find helpful and a guy who I admire, I also have a shot at picking up a free iPad.  That would be a great asset in my genealogy toolbox.  I would look sweet at the archives, rocking my iPad!

Thanks for taking the time to read this and maybe give Free SEO Report a shot.

  


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My stab at a review of the Apple iPad

It has been awhile since I decided to review a new product that hit the marketplace. I suppose nothing has caught my eye lately but I feel as if I should throw out my two-cents when it comes to the new Apple iPad. It hit the stores earlier this month and I have had two opportunities to play with one. After some time to digest it, here are some of my thoughts...

The iPad struck me as being a little heavy but the overall size is nice.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, the iPad is basically a big iPod Touch.  It is caught somwhere between a cell phone and a laptop.  You cannot make phone calls on it and you cannot install software on it in the traditional sense.  In that way, it is nothing like a cell phone or a laptop!  Confused yet?  Think of it as a portable way to do all of your social networking.  It is great for surfing the web, listening to music, sharing photos, writing email and watching movies.  It is not so great for word processing or other heavy functions.

(Going forward, I am going to pretend that you are at least somewhat familiar with the concept of how it works and skip any additional, generic descriptions.)

The screen on the iPad is beautiful...the picture is great.  The touch screen works well but it seems to me that the rate sensor (or gyro) is a little slower than that of the iPod Touch.  In other words, when you flip the iPad from vertical to horizontal in your hands, it is sometimes slow to chnage format or does not change at all.  That is quite annoying...the most annyoing thing that I have found to date.

Other facets of usage seemed a little sluggish.  I though the map application was a little slow and the email system had a little lag to it.  Now, don't get me wrong, all of these functions run well, but they did come across as slightly less than blazing to me.  I might be expecting too much!

The current version of the iPad has Wifi capability only.  At the end of the month, they are coming out with a no-contract 3G version where you can connect to the Interent thorugh the ATT network.  That will be neat becuase you could sign up for one month of service at a time, with no contract.  You can also sign-up and cancel right for the iPad itself and not have to call or visit an ATT store.

Other impressions...I thought that YouTube videos played back alittle grainy...but that could be their poor quality and not that of Apple.  I also do not like how small iPod Touch apps show up on the screen...they are tiny!  I would hope that most app vendors would make full iPad-sized apps in the near future.

All-in-all, I really like the new iPad but I do not feel that it would do more for me than my iPod Touch already does.  It might be neat with the 3G function though.  You could sit in a cemetery and upload data to Find-A-Grave in real time (although witthout photos becuase there is no camera on the iPad).  That would also assume the cemetery is within ATT's coverage area.

For now, I will probably not buy an iPad because of its price tag, ranging from $499 to $849 based upon size and 3G capability.  I would gladly accept one as a gift for my birthday but would probably not buy myself one right now...it's nice but not so nice that I would spend my own money!  If the next version comes out with a camera, I would probably jump all over it...but that would be a few years down the road.