Shoemoney Newsletter

*** Republished with permission; below is the Shoemoney Newsletter in an unedited format:

Trust is an amazingly powerful thing. But with great trust comes great responsibility. Last week we had an amazing launch with the ShoeMoney System. We sold out the entire initial 500 seats in one day. Truly humbling. I should jump for joy right? I mean I just made 100k in a day. But instead I felt sick. Its the same feeling I get when people pay $5,000.00 a seat to come to the Elite Retreat or any other product I launch. 75% of the people who purchased the ShoeMoney System had already purchased something from us. They loved their previous experience and they trust we will deliver another amazing product.

So yes, even I get a little queasy and nervous after selling to people that trust me. But then I think about the last year of work we put into the product, the 6 months of 20+ beta testers we had testing the product, our partners like Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and many others telling us what a remarkable product we have built and how they feel it's truly the first legitimate make money online offer out there... and once again I feel invulnerable. It's really majestic the way you feel when you really believe in your product.

But this newsletter is about trust... not about me and I don't want to make it about me.

Lets look at others who have earned a great deal of trust.

Mike Arrington started a blog (he used to be the only writer) years ago called TechCrunch. Its now the largest blog in the world with almost 5 million RSS readers. I really like the way Mike Arrington writes and I connect with him on a personal level. I love the way he fights for what he believes in (as unpopular as it sometimes might be) and how he gives his raw opinion on stuff. I remember talking to Guy Kawasaki once about his alltop.com website and he said he asked Mike Arrington to write about it on his Techcrunch Blog.... Mike did... but not in a very nice way. The one thing you can trust about Mike is that he will "keep it real".

Mike Arrington has been earning my trust for years. And when last fall he announced they were going to be making a touchpad mobile computing device called the crunchpad I was all in. I would honestly buy a piece of cardboard with a techcrunch logo on it if they sold them. It doesn't really matter what it is to be honest. I trust that whatever Mike Arrington is going to put his name on is going to be a great product.

Speaking of touch pads Apple just announced they are coming out with a multitouch mobile computing device called the iPad. Where can I order.

We recently just had an internal discussion about the iPad and all of its shortfalls. Then I took a brief poll around the room and asked who is NOT going to buy it. Not one person raised their hands. We are all Apple NUTS here at ShoeMoney and despite a lot of public criticism and even our own personal concerns we will be first in line to buy the iPad when it is released. We trust Apple will make an amazing product.

There are tons of public companies and figures that have built trust.

Think Oprah has trust? A brief mention of your book on Oprah's show means you're going to the Best Seller lists.

What about Google? Google could put its name on anything and people would buy it. They have been building trust with people for years. And now they are capitalizing on it big time with products outside their core scope.... products like the new Google Nexus One phone and the soon to be released Google Chrome operating system (and there's talk of a touchpad by Google).

Why do you think celebrity endorsements cost so much and deliver such amazing results? Because they have earned the trust of their followers and their followers want to buy things that they recommend.

So thats great and all but what about you? How can you earn trust?

For years I had heard of a guy named Andy Jenkins. He was the brains behind a product called Stompernet (a 20+ million dollar company). I also knew that he had won an emmy back in his days working for NFL films and read somewhere that he was one of the core video editors on some mainstream movies like The Blair Witch Project. But I had never met Andy In person... until a couple weeks ago.

Just as we were getting ready to launch the ShoeMoney System I got a call out of the blue from Andy Jenkins inviting me to this affiliate marketing event in Las Vegas. Now keep in mind I had already been in Vegas for 5 days that week... and this would mean I would only be home for 1 day before turning around and going back to this event that Andy invited me to. To make it even more complicated it would mean I would only be home for ONE day before we launched the ShoeMoney System.

But I believe in fate and honestly I feel when moments like this happen you have to make it work. So I made it work and went back out to Las Vegas.

From the minute I got there Andy started introducing me to some of the biggest and most famous internet marketers in the world. I was blown away. I was also blown away with the fact that a lot of them were ShoeMoney readers. But what really blew me away was that all Andy wanted to talk about was my upcoming launch of the ShoeMoney System. He wanted to know exactly how I was doing everything. He made me show him all my videos. And then he told me what I needed to do in order to really deliver on launch day. When I got home he had already made a 50 minute video where he went over our sales page and pointed out all the stuff we needed to change.

He then created a video from scratch that we used on one of the versions of the sales page. After the dust settled from the launch and we got to look at the analytics.... would you believe Andy's video sales page converted 4x better then any of our other versions? I just wish Google Website Optimizer was not so delayed and we would have known this on launch day. But we still hit our max capacity so all is good (and I learned a lot for the future).

After launching Andy kept calling me asking how things went and talked me though some stuff I had not thought of. Why was this guy doing this? Plain and simple he likes to help people.

And guess what? He has earned my trust. Probably for life. Anything this guy ever needs I will be there for him.

This week Andy is offering free video tips for regular people and small business owners. Its a series he is calling the Video Boss. Trust me you have to check it out. Its one of the most eye opening things I have ever seen about why video is so important.

Go to http://bit.ly/videoboss right now and check out the free content while its still available.


So how can you earn trust? Well I am sure you have something to offer. So start offering it!

When I was thinking about publishing a book I would hit up Seth Godin for tips. I once asked him about pricepoints and stuff and he told me, "Don't make a book for money... A book is a simple free way to tell the world how smart you are".

Seth is another person who has earned my trust. Any book he ever sells you can bet I am buying. Hell I have a 800$ lithograph of the purple cow on my wall at work just to remind me to build products that are truly remarkable.

So start building trust. And when you have it - Be responsible with it. Trust is an amazing thing.
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