3 Reasons Shoemoney is a Damn Hypocrite
|
| |
 | |
While I have a great deal of respect for Shoemoney and his business ventures(the man is excellent at making money) I find it a more than a little bit hypocritical that someone from the “Make Money Online” niche is calling 95% of SEOs “slimy” and comparing us to “used car salesmen”. Yes, I’m aware I’m responding to blatant flamebait, but whatever.
So here, I’ve put a list of what of the top 3 reasons why ShoeMoney is a hypocrite. There are more out there but honestly, I didn’t feel like reading through all of his posts to pick out a few. Before someone whines, yes, I’ve nofollowed all the links in this post.
- While he refers to ringtones as a “Scam” (source), he has absolutely no problem spending $40,000(source) to promote them. In fact, it appears he promotes them A LOT. SEOs are “Slimy” you say? I believe there’s a trail of slimy sludge leading right to you wallet.
- One of the “slimier” tactics that many SEOs use is flamebaiting linkbait. That is to say, you blatantly insult a person or a group, knowing that when an argument breaks out, you’ll get a lot of links and traffic from people talking about it.(all links are no-followed in this post)
Not only does he do this, but he doesn’t even think of his own tactics! Take a look at this post on notorious SEO flamebaiter, and all-around crappy human Jason Calacanis’s bait for the SEO community. For those outside the know, Calacanis said “SEO is Bullshit” at a popular SEO conference, and went on to explain that all content containing an affiliate link is “spam” and blah blah blah.
Shoemoney has just used the exact same tactic.
Come on Shoe. At least be original. This is just pathetic.What Shoemoney really needs is some decent commotion to get people to listen to his radio show. In fact, the entire WebmasterRadio site is in a large traffic dive. Take a look for yourself. - He is a member of the”Make Money Online” niche, and he’s calling SEOs slimy? That’s like someone with leprosies saying someone with a cough is infected. Let me define the “Make Money Online” niche for you. It’s largely a bunch of guys talking about how wealthy they are, leading inexperienced newbies on, pretending like someday they’ll reveal their “big money” secrets, and you’ll be wealthy too. In reality, they just use their blogs as newbie traffic channelers, selling it off to the highest bidder. The newbies take forever to realize that they ARE the “big money” secret the author has. At least I write things of [what I believe to be] substance on here.
Any Response are welcome. And no, I’m not planning on making posts like this a habit. There are only 2 people I dislike enough within the entire internet marketing field enough to do a post like this unprovoked. And no, Shoemoney’s not one of them. I like most of his entries. But this is just a pathetic attempt on his part to boost an ailing radio station by soliciting an angered SEO into a debate.
Adios,
XMCP
January 19th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Actually I could not agree with you more. I was pretty pissed myself when I saw that post where I called all SEO’s for car salesmen. Even if he’s not selling an SEO service, does he think that doesn’t make him an SEO?
January 19th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
When I saw the post by Jeremy on his site, I thought it was a joke. Then I came to the same conclusion as you did. He needs to boost listeners to his radio show and is grabbing for straws. Writing a post blasting SEOs and trying to inflame enough people to participate is a sad way of going about it and it will be interesting to see how the event turns out.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:36 am
“Even if he’s not selling an SEO service, does he think that doesn’t make him an SEO?”
He does sell an SEO service. He was pumping Internet Marketing Ninjas on his blog not too long ago http://www.shoemoney.com/page/2/, and he is a part of that service because he did 7 hours of interviews for it. So his name is attached to an SEO product. So typical of him.
His blog is hilarious because it’s so loaded with hypocrisies you can watch him bash something and then literally the next day watch him praise it. The guy goes to search conferences, so basically he’s like “I think 95% of SEOs are full of crap, now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be at a search conference.”
And now with his flamebait, it’s just the WWE over there, with well-known SEO’s like Rand Fishkin getting sucked into his pointless debates.
January 20th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Assbag
You stole my post.
January 20th, 2008 at 6:25 am
I didn’t actually care about what he said - it didn’t insult me. It wasn’t on my radar until I read i in blogs I actually put some value in - and generally seeing people talk about it disappoints me.
There are a lot of seo out there (especially companies) who proclaim an expert status and patently are not.
These people rely on the ignorance of the reader, much like his post. It was pure linkbait - but he’s entitled to do it with the amount of sycophant hordes he commands.
His game is as much a pyramid selling scam as the shady / elite seos, so I see the hypocrisy you claim.
He made money, probably by being an passionate and obsessive blog junkie. To follow in his footsteps, you’d need to be the same. You can’t just take his ideas and make a fortune.
It really is pointless.
Get your black hat back on shady!
January 20th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Very honest and true post. Yet, in the process you got tagged into the flamebait. I am awaiting a response from ShoeMoney…Do you think you would respond?
January 20th, 2008 at 11:26 am
@Jack Rack: Bravo for sniffing that out!
@TheMadHat: Apologies! I’m sure dozens wanted to say it
@Hobo: Don’t worry, it will be back on shortly.
@Social.Puppy: I’m not sure. Apparently over on sphinn this went hot, so maybe that will be enough of a nudge. I’m not counting on it though. Besides, I don’t see really how he can defend most of this.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:58 am
brilliant I am propelling this right now
January 20th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
“It was pure linkbait - but he’s entitled to do it with the amount of sycophant hordes he commands.”
Yea, why do these people exist? I can’t believe how many idiots there are who praise him everyday on there. “Another awesome post Shoemoney! You rock!” What is wrong with these people.
Hey Shoemoney, I’m willing to bet you’ve probably seen this post by now. You do hang out at Sphinn. I have a thousand dollars on you not having the balls to respond.
January 20th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
While I disagree with Jeremy’s post and am none too thrilled to see the negative linkbait angle once again, I think posts like this simply feed the fire. Honestly, Jeremy is a good guy with a lot of good, solid experience in affiliate marketing, online advertising and SEO. He’s simply creating an extreme argument to further discussion like this.
On your points - Using Alexa data is a terrible, terrible idea. Webmaster Radio might have grown 10X over the last 6 months - Alexa is simply a useless source. And calling the “make money online” sphere “slimy” isn’t a particularly persuasive argument, either. It’s one of those “I Know You Are, But What Am I?” kids games - there have to be better ways to defend the position.
January 20th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
@randfish: I suspect you are correct. I’m a bit of a hot head at times.
As I said, I’m well aware that he has a lot of solid experience in advertising. He is exceptional at it.
I mean, looking at this realistically, I responded to his linkbait, while acknowledging it was linkbait.
While I maintain the accuracy of my points, I’m going to admit that I probably should not have jumped into the fray.
I’m going to try and stay concentrated on SEO and Marketing in this blog in the future.
Thanks for stopping by.
January 20th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
“I’m going to try and stay concentrated on SEO and Marketing in this blog in the future.”
You can, but it’s posts like this that will really increase the blog’s popularity. People are more interested in spats than information unfortunately. That’s why Shoemoney’s blog is more popular than Randfish’s.
January 20th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I wrote a post on this the day he posted it. I then put it on Sphinn (ever so shamelessly), and a discussion started there. After a day, Shoe made a comment at the bottom of the Sphinn post. http://sphinn.com/story/23487 and today I read your post. Damn good catch sir. Maybe Alexa isn’t the best, but seems viable to me.
On another note. I’ve been a subscriber for a while, and started going through some of your older post over the last few days. Damn fine blog you have here, sir.
January 20th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Yeah, that part is true Jack. I suspect every so often I’ll give into temptation, but I want it to be a rarity.
I got the readers I’ve gotten by putting something out there that’s different, not the same.
We shall see though.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
“a bunch of guys talking about how wealthy they are, leading inexperienced newbies on, pretending like someday they’ll reveal their “big money” secrets, and you’ll be wealthy too. In reality, they just use their blogs as newbie traffic channelers, selling it off to the highest bidder.”
Dude that is freaking GOLD!
This has to be just about the best summary of the “MMOL” field ever!
January 20th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
[…] had one of those lightbulb moments yesterday when reading SlightlyShady’s bitch about Shoemoney being a hypocrite for slagging off the majority of the SEO […]
January 21st, 2008 at 6:08 am
“It’s largely a bunch of guys talking about how wealthy they are, leading inexperienced newbies on, pretending like someday they’ll reveal their “big money” secrets, and you’ll be wealthy too. In reality, they just use their blogs as newbie traffic channelers, selling it off to the highest bidder. The newbies take forever to realize that they ARE the “big money” secret the author has.”
Absolutely true. Right on. Well done for having the balls to post.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
My response is tangential, because I’m not part of the insulted community. I’m the person at a small business who does SEO for the catalog. (A techno-savvy young friend told me, when I complained that our online store wasn’t doing as well as our brick and mortar one had hoped, to google the letters “SEO” and get indexed, and that was my training.)
Without SEO, legitimate online businesses are invisible. People wanting to find us cannot. SEO is to ecommerce what putting up a sign is to physical world commerce. There are misuses, of course, and there are certainly oddities in the system, but it is a valid service. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:15 pm
I love the post and the hatred but you can’t judge traffic by alexa.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Hahah, you love the hatred.
Rebecca, you said “Without SEO, legitimate online businesses are invisible.” Not necc. true. Totally depends on the niche. Note the fact that Facebook doesn’t even let Google crawl its internal pages, and it’s worth $15 billion according to Microsoft.
XMCP, it’s funny you pointed out that Shoemoney is in the make money online niche because he just said on his blog that he’s not in that niche. He obviously read this post. http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/01/21/making-money-with-niche-wordpress-blogs/
He says, “I never really considered myself a ‘learn how to make money’ blog/blogger but I get thrown into that a lot.” That’s the exact same thing he said about SEOs! So he doesn’t consider himself to be an SEO and he doesn’t consider himself in the “make money online” niche.
What the hell is he then?
January 21st, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Alexa? Your credibility on this article went down the tubes right there. I don’t know you other than having read a bunch of your stuff - most of which is outstanding, but this post sucked.
Also, Shoemoney is a showman. That’s his gig. You know that. I’m surprised so many people Sphunn your post. Clearly you have a bunch of friends.
On a final note - there’s a lot of SEO scum out there. If you throw in the bunch in EurAsia and Eastern Europe and 95% slime is probably a pretty close figure.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:26 am
@seanmag: I know alexa is not a credible source. It’s intended as a supplement, not the entire point. I think it was pretty transparent he was planning on hyping his radio show from before he even made that post.
And yes, I’ve awknowledged I probably should’ve kept my cool in this situation.
I ignore eurasia..and I dont think when he mentioned “experts” he meant them. As for eastern europe, while some are crappy, some are the absolute most incredible coders I’ve ever seen. More of a mixed scale over there.
Don’t sweat it seanmag, this isn’t the kind of entry you’ll see a lot here.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:51 am
great bluddy post
i enjoyed reading that, some one speaking truthfully for once.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:18 am
I actually think it’s a little silly to write off Alexa in this circumstance.
Clearly the graph show a rapid declie in ranking. Whilst there’s no doubt that the Alexa figures have an inherent bias toward the webmaster crowd, the demographic for that graph has remained the same. It’s called WebMasterRadio for goodness sake.
So whilst there’s little point using Alexa rank to compare a webmaster blog with a poodle blog, in this case, the apples have remained apples. There’s just less of them apples coming to the site.
January 25th, 2008 at 7:20 am
[…] complaint about Shoemaker being a hypocrite is interesting regardless of your take on it, but this particular quote I vound via Stu really […]
January 25th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
[…] like to admit, and some of the big names who never share even a smidgen of their methods actually can’t tell us how to build a huge online living honestly… because they didn’t. They lied and misled and said one thing while doing […]
May 5th, 2008 at 9:04 am
[…] 31: 3 Reason’s Shoemoney is a Damn Hypocrite […]
June 17th, 2008 at 9:08 am
i agree with you, i have been reading shoemoney for long time but sometimes few things he mentions is hypocrite.