It’s been a long week of spoof posting here at theNetFool.com. I’ve ripped on many of the familiar faces in our niche, and definitely put in my hard time to making effective videos that had tasteful humor and relevant slams. I know that I brought a lot of attention to Jimvesting by doing so, and many people have given some powerful feedback. After a long sabbatical (of sorts), it looks like Jim is back in the game, eh?

I had a lot of fun researching different blogs to a greater extent than I have done before to pull out all of their worst material, in order to highlight it on a bigger stage. One thing I have learned is that a spoof video can serve as a powerful bit of link bait to draw extraordinary amounts of traffic to your website or blog. Because of this, I think that it’s time to turn the tables around and offer you guys a chance to put out your own spoof video on Jim (that’s me) from theNetFool.com!

The Stakes Are High

Understanding that a few of you might jump at the chance to mock me without consequence, I wanted to provide an incentive for the rest of you to get out your digital cameras, your webcams or whatever you are working with… and record a one-to-five minute video on your own blog. That’s right, I’m giving away a $25 Visa Giftcard! This is a prepaid card that I can have delivered to you over the internet, or sent to your mailbox at home… the choice is yours. Sounds like something worth playing for?

In addition to the grand prize, I am going to ensure that anyone who puts up their own spoof video of Jimvesting goes home happy. That’s right, you will get a free copy of my $15 eBook “Work Smart, Get Rich!” just for submitting a video! Crazy? I think so.

Rules and Regulations

Everyone wants to do this in as fair a manner as possible, so I am going to stipulate exactly what will be required to get your entry sent in and eligible for a prize in Jimvesting’s Spoof Video Contest. First and foremost, I don’t want any last-minute ten second videos sent in. This is why I have made the minimum video length to be 1 MINUTE. You can make it as long as you want, but the upper boundary that I recommend you keep under is 5 minutes. Remember, this needs to be in it’s own spoof blog post, not just a video all by itself (that’s no fun!).

I will be judging the “best” video solely on a basis of personal opinion. If you are funny and creative, you probably have a good chance at winning! I don’t want to mess around with drawing systems… because I feel that whoever puts in the most work deserves to walk away with a nice $25 in spending cash for the holiday season (assuming, of course, that there are multiple entries and something for me to “judge,” haha). Or, at bare minimum, a nice way to MAKE some  spending cash with my eBook.

In terms of the actual post, there needs to be a link back to my blog somewhere on the post itself for tracking purposes. You will get bonus points if you link to my site using the anchor text “make money online” and point it to “http://www.Jimvesting.com/make-money-online/”. But this is not required specifically and won’t “hurt” you in the judging. Oh and one final thing: please be an email subscriber on my blog so you can get credit for winning.

Jimvesting’s Spoof Video Contest – A Recap

Okay, so this contest is pretty straight forward. I will run this until 11:59pm on December 5th. So, once the clock hits midnight and things change to Dec. 6th… you are too late! But don’t worry about that, the sooner you get it in, the more press you will receive from my readers seeing your best stuff. The winning video will receive the $25 gift card and will also be featured in a winners post here at theNetFool.com… how cool is that?!

No restrictions on the video-upload website that you choose (I recommend Viddler.com), and don’t forget that link back to my website to get your credit. In addition, you can comment with a link to your video spoof post in my comment box for the world to see.

Good luck!
-Jimvesting

This Contest Is Now OPEN!
Ends December 5th at 11:59pm

I had a pretty interesting weekend over these past few days. After cashing a few of my latest internet marketing checks off at the bank, I had to sell my old Hummer and get a used Hummer H2 model to save some fuel. I really racked up a lot of costs over the past few years in the economic boom time, from a sweet outdoor pool to my old gas guzzler. Before that even happened, I got a call from MTV… they wanted to interview me on “MTV Cribs” this week!

My New (Used) Hummer H2

The newer Hummer H2 was noticeably bigger than the used model I picked up from Craigslist. The seller, “tnetfool” told me that he had only driven the car once, and it was fresh off the Hummer lot. Because I am broke after the recent market crash (I had everything invested in Lehman Brothers), I really didn’t have a choice but to hand over the keys to my old ride and step into the luxurious used H2.

It’s going to be a tough year ahead financially… I’m just glad that I can still ride in style down main street, picking up girls in the “ShoeMobile” as I like to call it. The transaction went pretty smooth; so while I was hesitant to buy a car using Craigslist… everything turned out for the best.

ShoeMoney on MTV Cribs!

This is pretty exciting news, as I definitely wasn’t expecting to be featured on MTV any time soon. Moreover, I feel like most of their other celebrities were dead broke after the recent market collapse. Unfortunately for them, I’m pretty darn poor now myself. Regardless, here’s the call transcript when I first heard the good news.

MTV: Hello is this Jeremy Schoemaker?
Me: Yes, Can I ask who’s calling?
MTV: This is MTV, with MTV Cribs.. how are you today?
Me: Oh great, great… I’m doing well, and you?
MTV: Fine. I wanted to know if you can guest start on MTV Cribs this weekend?
Me: Hmm… that’s going to be awful tough to fit in between the two one-paragraph blog posts that I promised myself I would write over the next couple of days.
MTV: I understand that you are busy, but we are prepared to offer you $600k to do the show.
Me: Cool! That’s almost as much as I make in a day online!
MTV: … I’ll take that as a yes?
Me: As long as I don’t have to dress up in normal-people clothes… fine by me.
MTV: Thank you Jeremy, we’ll be there at 6pm for shooting.

Sounds like a good time, right? Well as it turns out, MTV has been cutting their staffing budgets and camera technology as well… so the show really isn’t as good as it used to be. In fact, they made me film it myself… which was pretty difficult to pull off. At any rate, it turned out pretty well and i got to showcase all of my neat ShoeMoney gear to the world. Check it out and leave a comment!

Disclaimer: Jeremy Schoemaker is a great blogger and one of the most successful online entrepreneurs of his time. He blogs (as if you didn’t know) at ShoeMoney.com.

This post is a guest post by Bradblogging.com, a site that aims to help you blog better with personal blog tips and blogging help. Subscribe to my feed if you like my tips!

If you’re anything like me, you would have been reading Jim’s blog for a while now, learn some pretty unique tips on how to make money and definitely of had some laughs along the way. I was reading his latest “spoof” post when I thought of the post that you are now reading.

I’m sure you’ve heard of people that make thousands of dollars a month on the internet through their “Get Rich Quick” scheme landing pages. They usually want you to buy something at the end, and you simply [x] out of the page, to be stopped by a stupid javascript popup that promises 50% off of the original price and get redirected to a “live” chat agent. It is just a bot.. believe me, I’ve tried to talk to it.

Now, what if I was to tell you that you could make some decent money – not off Ecourses or Ebooks (they are over saturated as it is), but off of referral commissions. Now how would you do that? Read on.

How To Make Money With Referral Commissions

It’s actually pretty simple to do. Simply find out about startup programs or affiliate networks (Marketleverage for example.. there is a newer network that I read about on Tyler Cruz’s website called Amped Media) and sign up for them.

You will then go through the “approval” stage and then most likely be accepted. Then, instead of trying to promote the offers that the networks or product website offers, promote the actual network or website through your referral link. Paste it on your blog, website, email signature, articles that you write, RSS Feed, etc.. As many places as you have access to. Chances are that people will wonder what the link leads to and will sign up under your referral. For most affiliate networks, that’s 5% of what they make forever. Other websites will offer you a set rate for your referrals.

The ideological theory around this is generating the buzz about it before the bigger sites do. The more time you promote it before the larger sites get their referral links in there, the more people will be signed up and locked into your name – earning you a passive income for doing absolutely nothing. In other words, they will be doing all of the work for you!

Sit back, relax, and watch your wallet get fatter. I hope you’ve enjoyed this guest post… and thanks for reading!

-Brad “BradBlogging.com”

Another week in the record books,
before we turn the page… let’s have a look back!

This week was infamously my “spoof” week, an idea I came up with last weekend and something that I had a lot of fun doing. We are going to get a bit more into that later, but I’ve still got one more spoof video in the works… so stay tuned for that finale. I managed to post quite a bit last week, and finally got my traffic numbers back on track so that was great to see. It’s Thanksgiving break for college students, but before we move on, here are the best articles for the week:

• The University Kid – How to Send Your RSS Count Through The Roof
• Click Consultants – Building a Following on Twitter
• Ian Fernando – Day Parting: Finding the Best Hour to Sell
• Tyler Cruz – Complete Domain Flipping Walkthrough
• Winning the Web – 8 Jobs You Can Outsource on the Internet

Seems like the self-proclaimed “big guns” of blogging are back to work! Jason put out one of his best posts ever (in my opinion) that can really help you drive your subscriber numbers. Derek from Click Consultants put out one of the best pieces on Twitter marketing that I have seen to date. Ian Fernando got into the marketing realm this week with an awesome case study and intro to “day parting.” Tyler Cruz generously shares his wisdom of domain name flipping in a lengthy, but worthwhile, video post. Finally, Gyutae talks about the wonders of outsourcing, where you can do it, and how it can help. Very nice guys, keep up the good work.

Stock Market Update
Rocky week once more, as investors long the market again had their tails handed to them. More uncertainty and a supreme lack of drivers led the market lower, in a week that created new bear market lows for this recession… scaring more investors out of the markets. The Federal Reserve added to the fears by negatively changing two readings: GDP and unemployment. Getting specific, real GDP growth in 2009 was lowered from 2.0% to 2.8% to -0.2% to 1.1% and the projections for the unemployment rate were raised from 5.3% to 5.8% to 7.1% to 7.6%. Ouch.

One of the more notable happenings this week was the problems over at Citigroup, which lost 60% of its value last week on extreme balance sheet concerns. On top of this, they released news that they might be selling a unit or the entire firm, so they took a hit when they said they would not be selling their investing branch, Smith Barney, later in the week. This year hasn’t been kind to financials.

Inflation is no longer an issue. Producer prices declined 2.8% in October while consumer prices declined 1.0%. But let’s get serious here, I believe strongly that everyone is discounting the possibility of deflation… which is clearly being signaled now and would wreak havoc on the economies around the world. At any rate, smaller news items include a positive earnings preview from Hewlett-Packard and a comical mishap with the three big auto makers going to ask for a bailout in their private jets… oops!

Blogosphere Update
I had a lot of fun this week getting back into the groove of posting every day on theNetFool.com. I know that you all loved my “spoof week” idea, and I think that I had some great success. I decided to target some bigger names around the blogosphere, and decided to go with IMWithJoe.com, TylerCruz.com, JohnCow.com and JohnChow.com. For the fifth and final video, because I promised to do one a day this week (or 5 videos), I left it up to a vote. It seems like ShoeMoney is the most popular response, so I will hopefully be able to get that video out Monday or Tuesday of this week for you all.

You can check out all of the spoof videos from the week here!

Fitting, I had one of my favorite readers, Tushar Dhoot, do a little spoof on me himself. I can tell that he definitely put a lot of work into this one, and it paid off. I thought it was pretty funny, so definitely have a look at it if you have a spare minute. I think I am going to run a small competition for spoof videos this week, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for that announcement if you have some comic brilliance brewing up inside of you.

Other than that, it was a pretty good week all around on the blogosphere. I noticed a real change in posting habits, as a lot more people started to get back into their old updatin’ ways once more. Blogging Idol 2 is still alive and kicking, though I haven’t heard much from that other than some random participant Suzanne Franco getting featured on JohnChow.com for a video plea she sent in, haha. Not to sure what to think about that one, but heck, it worked. Nothing mind-blowing, but definitely a notable pick-up in quality for the week.

Jimvesting Update
As I hinted at, I am going to put out that final video this week, and I am going to do ShoeMoney as my target. After I get some reconnaissance work in this afternoon, I’m hitting the Speilburg Studios to whip up another masterpiece. Other than that, I have a nice guest post that a buddy wrote that should be going up this week. That’s 3/5 days filled already, and Turkey Day is Thursday so maybe we’ll do something nice for you dedicated readers that day, eh?

Stay Bullish on the Net!
-Jimvesting

This week was definitely a different approach to blogging, eh? I saw big jumps in traffic as people flooded back to theNetFool.com to check out all of the parodies that I have done. I planned on doing five of them total, and I have done four. For the fifth, I want to put it to a vote to see who you guys want me to rip on!

A Recap

1. IMWithJoe.com
Although Joe has one of the lesser followings on the internet, those that know Joe absolutely loved my spin on things. The best thing about Joe is that he is charismatic and tries to film a video blog each day. Because of this, he was an obvious target.

2. TylerCruz.com
Tyler is a pretty prominent blogger now with over 2k readers. The dude can definitely earn his way around the internet, but the videos that he shoots are sometimes overly-personal and extremely awkward. Naturally, he was a good target to exploit on my blog… though I would have loved for him to link back to me as a thank you.

3. JohnCow.com
Jason K. from John Cow is a good friend of mine to this point, and after taking over JohnCow.com… things have been a lot different. Most notably, he uses his wife Audrey in his “John Cow TV” segments… which are always fun and easily exploited. I wrote up a clever post and tied it into the “next episode” of the series. Again, would have loved a link back here.

4. JohnChow.com
The master of all that is blogging? Maybe. John Chow definitely has his good sides and his bad, but overall he is a fantastic entrepreneur and an inspiration to newbies. People love to rip on John, so it was almost too easy to do it myself. Check out the post I wrote up on John, because I definitely served him up a can of you-know-what on his viral video post that went live over the summer.

5. You Decide!
That’s right I want you to decide the fifth blogger! Consider first, that I would prefer to do a video on said blogger, as that is typically where I get my best cuts in. Additionally, this should be a writer that has a significant amount of RSS followers (750+) and has a bit of charisma that I can joke about. Just leave a comment below with who you want me to spoof next, and I’ll take what I feel is the best idea / most requested.

As I said, leave your comment below to vote on who you want spoofed!

It’s going to be arbitrary on my part, as I don’t want a beginning blogger to post his name 100 times and win. However, I will be weighting the number of requests for X blogger in my head, so definitely re-suggest what has already been suggested if you like the idea. You can vote for a maximum of 3 bloggers. Voting will close whenever I feel like closing the polls.

-Jimvesting