Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills
By Jeremy Schoemaker

If someone was to give me a ton of money to start a new company and had to assemble a all star team of people picking the CEO would be easy - Andy Liu.

Andy Liu has had an amazing track record in starting companies and is one of the smartest guys I know in the industry. He spoke at the Elite Retreat last year and will be speaking again this year. His presentations were amazingly eye opening and I think I took more notes then attendees.

Andy has FINALLY started a blog and I think after reading a few posts you will see what I am talking about.

Head on over to inspiredstartup.com and say hi!

This is a guest post written by Justin Goff. Justin runs GymJunkies.com and also writes about Fitness Marketing at his personal blog.

This is the exact formula I followed to launch my new fitness site GymJunkies.com. Gym Junkies a website and blog about hardcore fitness training. We launched on November 18th and by December 18th we were averaging around 350 unique visitors per day.

Our plan for launching this site can be broken down into three parts…

• Make REAL connections with fitness pros and bloggers before launching
• Have awesome flagship content on our site before launch
• Make GOOD blog posts 1-2 times per week

Making real connections

Connections are the backbone of getting great traffic to your blog. You can read all you want about content and SEO, but when it comes down to it ….content doesn’t mean shit if you don’t know anyone.

In the past I always struggled with getting quality links to my good pages. But when I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point, and stumbled upon the idea of “connectors”, a light finally went off in my head. I needed to work with the connectors.

Connectors are the people who are at the center of the industry. They have a large audience and connect publishers with readers. Online these people are the popular bloggers. Popular bloggers are sometimes tough to get a hold of, but I used a few different strategies that worked very well…

• Do something for them first - This is so CRUCIAL when talking to bloggers. Popular bloggers get hundreds of emails everyday, and everyone usually wants something from them. By doing something for them first, you make yourself stand out and the blogger will be more likely to help you in return. So if you can send them traffic, or help them with SEO or help design their site, then do it!

• Try to connect with them on Twitter or Facebook first - If you can make a small connection on Twitter or Facebook that will help you get your foot in the door. With this you’re just looking for them to remember your name so they’ll be more likely to read your email later on.

• Get a referral from a mutual friend - If you know someone who has worked with the blogger in the past ask them to send the blogger an email on your behalf. This will help you start a conversation MUCH easier.

• Comment on their blog A LOT - This is probably the easiest one to do, but it takes a bit of time. If you post 4-5 REALLY good indepth comments on someone’s site the blogger is going to definitely remember your name. Then down the line you can send them an email and try to make your connection then.

One of the keys to doing this is to figure out who the top bloggers are in your industry. My favorite resource for researching this is All Top. Just type in your industry’s name and it will show you the top blogs in your industry. Start with them…

After you’ve made a small connection with the blogger, then you should send them an email and either ask them an important question you have, or appeal to their self interest in some way. This could be pointing them to a helpful link or recognizing them in a Top 20 type post, or just telling them how much you love their blog.

Just get yourself on their radar so that the next time you have a great post on your site, you can email/IM/call the blogger and they’ll link to the post.

Have awesome flagship content on your site

I like to think of flagship content as a piece of content that’s going to still be useful a year from now. Flagship content also can be updated with new information and tweaked regularly.

We made it a point to load up our site with flagship content like our articles on How to Build Muscle and How to Lose Fat and also our instructional videos in the Exercise Library. Flagship content works very well for a few reasons.

• It’s highly sought out information - People are always searching for the information that we’ve featured as our flagship content.

• It’s prominently featured on our site in the left hand navigation bar. This makes it easy for new visitors to find our BEST content right away.

• It gives bloggers easy access to our best articles and content so they can find them if they want to send a link our way.

Figure out 3-5 pieces of content that you can make that are highly sought out in your industry. If you don’t know what your industry wants, there’s a few good sources out there to figure it out…

• Yahoo Answers - Check out the category for your site and if a question continues to pop up time and time again, well its probably a pretty good choice for flagship content.

• Blog comments - Read comments in your blog and ALSO in other blogs in your industry. Figure out what people are REALLY looking for.

• Read your old emails - If you get a lot of email from clients and readers, make sure to put the pieces together and figure out what most of your customers need help with.

So once you have your flagship content ideas, then you should focus on making your first piece of content. Here are some pieces of content that work very well as flagship content

• How to and Advice type articles
• A resource list (ex… Copywriting 101 and Internet marketing handbook)
• Your biggest tip
• Frequently asked questions page
• A page full of videos you’ve made

Be sure to feature your flagship content in your navigation bars and also anywhere else that fits. I like to use something like “Popular posts” to title it so this gives new visitors a clue as to where they should start.

Make good blog posts 1-2 times per week

Being a top blogger doesn’t mean you have to write a new post every single day. In fact a lot of people (like myself) don’t like blogs that post every single day. It’s too hard to keep up with them and then you end up feeling bad for missing posts altogether.

My opinion is that blogs that post 1-2 times per week usually have much better content. They put up well thought out posts instead of just posting something because they have to.

Just think how much better your posts would be if you spent a whole week working on one post.

If you continue to write good content AND promote it well, the links will continue to come in. This will bring you more direct traffic and also increase your search engine rankings.

If you’re stuck for topics to write about, make sure you go back to Yahoo Answers like I talked about above to get some good blog post ideas.

How to promote your blog content

Promoting your content is as important as writing good content. Here’s what has worked for us at Gym Junkies…

• Email/Call the bloggers you know and tell them about your new post. Ask them to link to it in an upcoming post if they can. If not, ask them to Twitter/Stumble or bookmark on Delicious.
• Put a link at the bottom to promote it on Delicious and StumbleUpon. We’ve found that StumbleUpon works the best for us for bringing in traffic. If you’re not in a tech savvy market, a link for emailing it to a friend would be really helpful as well.
• Make a post on Facebook/Twitter about it. This usually fuels a lot of backend links and tweets if you’re friends with bloggers and website owners.

Ok so what should I do now?

Take action now and find the top bloggers in your industry. Start making your connections. After that draw up an outline of how you want the content on your site to eventually look. I like to start with big items and then fill them in….for example….

1. A page about weight lifting exercises

• A. Page about The Squat
• B. Page about Deadlifts
• C. Page about Shoulder Presses
• D. etc…

You can do this for any topic. Figure out the main flagship content pieces for your site and then fill in the details with more posts and pages.

Conclusion

These are the exact techniques we used to take Gym Junkies from nothing to 350 vistitors on average per day. If you have any questions post them below in the comments, I’ll be sure to answer them…

Last week on the History channel every day they have covered one of the seven deadly sins. Lots of people think they came from the bible but they didn’t.  Basically some smart dude sat down and made 8 (originally) things that hurts human kind and over time those became known as the 7 deadly sins.  So that started me thinking about where and why people go wrong with their sites and business plans.  So I came up with my own list.  Here it is;

Hope:

Do you get excited about thinking about doing something? STOP. Go do it. Its not going to magically happen. As soon as you get a great idea in your head  and BEFORE you start picturing all the awesome shit your going to buy with all the money your going to make, go to your computer and start putting it to action. AND I don’t mean to make a list of stuff TO DO. I mean start making progress.

A couple nights ago I got an idea to make the shoemoney marketplace (which I have yet to officially announce). I got out of bed and started writing code. I SUCK at coding. I am a marketer but I just can’t stand to have a idea about something and just sit on it. Is it perfect? No actually it looks like crap but I did it. If people start to use it more I will do more with it.

Envy - I know SO MANY people who are SO INCREDIBLY TALENTED but they just hate on others. The main difference between Envy and Jealousy is that with Envy you wish to take away what the person you are envious of has.

In the last few months more then ever you see TONS of SEO’s outing others techniques and affiliate marketing “hater” sites up making fun of those who have achieved stuff.

Envy gets you no where.  It doesn’t help you.  If it doesn’t help you, why do it?

I get so pissed off looking at forums or on IRC and hear people do NOTHING but constantly rip on other people and plot to take them down. If only these people had the same energy to help themselves =( .

Pride:

Do you go on forums or blog about how awesome you are? Well then you better suck it up when people make fun of you.

Listen up Chachi, its the law of averages, the more people who follow you the more haters you are going to get. Prepare to embrace negative press.  Most people can’t hack it.

Being so fat when I was a kid really makes me invulnerable to this stuff.  Its like I had training being made fun of most of my early life.

Satisfaction:

Did you just trip over a rock and fall into a profitable niche? Are you satisfied? If so don’t quit your day job. You better realize that tomorrow that shit is going to be gone!

5 years ago I tripped over a rock and killed it for years in the ringtone industry but without leveraging my position to start this blog, AuctionAds, the Elite Retreat conference and many other companies I would have to had to go back to work for corporate America and hate my life.

Showoff:

Did you just get major paid and you want to take a picture with you and a check? Did you just discover a profitable niche and you want to walk the world through it step by step and help everyone in . YOUR A MORON! Guess how I know?!?! Shut up and get paid. Feel free to help people and guide them but your a complete idiot if you walk people through it. Your profitable niche just went to shit.

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will steal out of your bucket” - Jeremy Schoemaker, SES San Jose, Contextual Advertising Panel.

I have this curse where I want to help everyone and I don’t just mean help…. like when I started hooking people up by doing their adwords accounts for them and making them 7-8x on their money.  Just ask Aaron Wall.

Why? Because I wanted to showoff. I think when I first started banking I wanted to show the world how smart I was to make up for all the years I was pretty worthless.

Fortunately now I am in a position now where I have a ton of responsibilities and it keeps me in check.

Anyway don’t be a showoff. Learn some humility. Trust me. Yes I am a hypocrite.

Inconsistency (AKA lazziness):

I have friends… close friends who wanted to learn how to make money online. They bust it out for a day or so… maybe every other day… then they take a day off, a weekend off, holidays off. WTF?

Hey Jerky - your biggest competition is busting ass because he sleeps on a mud bed in Nigeria. He is not only copying your exact stuff now but he is mass producing it.

You have to bust it out all day every day.

Excuses:

I don’t want to hear it.

I was 420lbs, 50k in debt, on my way to nowhere and somehow I pulled it off. What makes me so much better then you? Nothing!

I used to be an excuse master until I met my wife. Here was a woman who not only put herself through college/med school but put herself through HIGH SCHOOL because she wanted the best possible education and her parents could not afford it.   Do you need to meet a badass wife who shows you how to bust it out?  I did…

You can make excuses all day why you are not successful.   Just look at my comments.  Everytime I post on how to do something people always come up with reasons why they can’t do it. wah wah wah.

The blog traffic died about 50% in the last 10 days…  Checking with others they are seeing the same.  Glad to see lots of people were offline.

First of all welcome back,  hope you had a great holiday vacation!  Here is a quick recap on the 10 days at ShoeMoney.com

Raising 10k for Charity:

I raised 10,000.00 for charity by auctioning off my chest for Affiliate Summit West.  Train Signal one the bid for 5200 but wanted to do 10k

 
Hydra Affiliate Network / Google Money Tree Legal Issues:

Someone promoting the google money tree system through the hydra affiliate network illegally using my images.  We received tons of complaints from people disappointed we would endorse such a scam as the google money tree system which says it is giving you a free setup for only shipping fees the proceeds to bill you until you cancel.

To date Hydra has been completely uncooperative insisting instead to protect the person they have control of,  and are profiting from,  who has caused a lot of damage to our brand.  We plan to file suit this week and I will post more information as we go through the discovery process (as my legal council permits).

I would like to thank all of the people who have provided us with all the evidence we need to move forward.   All of your logs and screenshots are vital to bringing these people to justice.

New Computer From Intel and a Chance For You To Win It:

Intel sent me an amazing computer for christmas but after thinking about it and checking with Intel I decided ot give it away to a shoemoney.com reader!  There is still a few days left to enter to win this BEAST!

Believe it or not I am soooo excited that the holidays are behind us.  I had 4 christmases and lots of travel with kids.  It was fun but I am glad its behind us

Photoshop ninjary by BigDave.

After successfull predicting the subprime crisis and market crash along with obama being elected as president I have been getting droves of request for my 2009 predictions.  Here they are:

1) Google will find another decent revenue stream besides Google Adsense.  They have to.  They are running out of properties to stick Google Adsense and more people are wising up to the contextual deception.

2) The FTC will start to investigate some of these fake weight loss blogs and grant websites and make examples out of people.

3) “Professional” SEO’s will overtake lawyers and used car salesman in 2009 as most hated and joked about profession.

4) The market will market will bounce back to 11k+ by the end of 2009.

5) Facebook will get 2x more users then it currently has by the end of 2009.

6) Google’s Andriod operating system will be regarded as a flop and I will never even get to try it.

7) Yahoo will continue to suck at everything but flickr and delicious.  It doesn’t matter if Jesus Christ comes down to be their CEO.

Competition in the SEO/Affiliate conference space will continue to drive down prices making these conferences more affordable for those who could not before attend.

9) I predict a VERY litigious year for the affiliate marketing industry as a whole.  Affiliate companies are out of control turning a blind eye to what affiliates are doing.

10) My book will  finally come out after 2+ years in the making but nobody will buy it and I will be sad =(

After many months off the ShoeMoney show will begin its 3rd season the week following Affiliate Summit on webmasterradio.fm.   We should have a pretty awesome lineup this season!

Last Tuesday I originally posted this but that night got a little crazy with the db and lost it =(
I am often referred to as a "Super Affiliate" and its always kind of made me feel weird. As I have said many times on this blog I never have considered myself a "super affiliate".

In September I took a twitter poll on "what is a super affiliate?" and got some interesting responses. But not many responses from leaders in the industry. So I wrote to them and asked them what was their definition of a Super Affiliate:

NickyCakes, Reformed Blackhat - "Super Affiliate is a stupid buzzword used in the affiliate marketing blogging community by bloggers who want to make you think they make more money or are somehow better than you. When I had my first $1000 week at one of the very well known affiliate networks, they said I was now a "Super Affiliate," which showed me that it means absolutely nothing. Anyone using the term "Super Affiliate" in a non-joking manner, especially when referring to themselves, has no credibility, and is an idiot.

Zac Johnson, Professional Super Affiliate - "As for a term "Super Affiliate". I personally consider "super affiliate" status to be anyone making six figures a month consistently."

Kris Jones, President/CEO Pepperjam Network -"A Super Affiliate is anyone who makes enough money as an affiliate to quit their day job and become a career sustaining affiliate marketer."

Paul Bourque, Uber Affiliate - "Coining the term "super affiliate" in my mind is very dependent on the person defining the term. Someone making $1,000/day might say a super affiliate is someone who makes $10,000/day. To others, a super affiliate may be a person who makes $500/day. If I had to give "super affiliate" a definition, it would be this : a super affiliate is someone who is able to generate enough net profit to sustain their lifestyle without having to work any other job, over the long-term. To me that's what makes super affiliates better than an affiliate just promoting things for a hobby or some extra cash. The super affiliates are the ones that make a career out of it and can live off the profits. UBER affiliates on the other hand, well that's a whole different story ;)..."

Neil Patel, CEO, ACS SEO - "A super affiliate is someone who can make 5 plus figures a month in profit through affiliate marketing."

Michael Jenkis, Founder/CEO Marketleverage - "Industry wide a super affiliate is defined as a person or company capable of generating a substantial amount of CPA conversions via legitimate means. At MarketLeverage we apply the word "Super" to affiliates who create traffic the right way regardless of their current volume capabilities. We believe that these are the affiliates who will show the most sustained growth in revenues over the next few years."

Joel Comm - Author/Entrepreneur - "A super affiliate is a partner who drives large number of sales with one promotion. Whether through a large blog readership or sizable email list, they are the 1% of all affiliates who drive 99% of the sales volume in many case."

John Chow, Professor of Evil - "A Super Affiliate is an affiliate that is super. OK, I guess the term Super Affiliate means someone is making a lot of money with affiliate marketing. The exact amount of money to be classed as super has yet to be determined. But I would say $100,000 or more per month would do nicely."

Steven S. Richter, President Media Breakaway - "A Super Affiliate consistently generates $10,000 or more per month in net revenue for themselves. Super Affiliates are successful due to their ability to be creative and self disciplined."

Alex  Zhardanovsky,  Co-Founder AzoogleAds - "A super affiliate is not measured by the amount of revenue they generate or the number of impressions their sites generate, rather it is someone that is very in tune with the ever changing landscape of affiliate marketing; someone that works closely with their partners and is either first to react to new opportunities or is able to capitalize on new and emerging trends quickly. All of these things, will ineviatbly enable the affiliate to generate more revenue than others and be deemed what many call a "super" affiliate."

Pretty diversified answers eh? Even so I would have to agree with all of them.

Just sent out the January edition of the ShoeMoney newsletter this morning.   Thanks to @kenarmstrong1 for the suggestion  on the title!

In the newsletter I go into detail about all the new tools I picked up in 2008,  how I use them, and the impact they have made on my day to day work.

If you are not already signed up... WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!!??

You can sign up now and receive all the back issues too!

This post takes me a long time to go together but I know a lot of people enjoy the recap.

January:

Started off with a BANG. We were chosen Best Affiliate Marketing Blog, Best Contextual Advertising Blog and Best Conference Photo Coverage by the Search Engine Journal awards.

Google decided they were going to slap foreign web masters in the face by terminating the referral programs.

I made a post about why I do not like 95% of the SEO of "SEO EXPERTS".

I talked about the importance of getting out of your comfort zone.

On January 21, I predicted a stock market crash and explained why I did not have much money in the stock market.

Michael Arrington of Techcrunch sent me press credentials for the Techcrunch awards and I got to roll with some pretty big names like Kevin Rose (digg founder) and Mark Zuckerberg (facebook founder):

Rocketprofit sent me a badass Video Camera that I use a TON!

Danny Sullivan came on the radio show to talk about my recent comments about SEO People.

Rebecca Kelley wrote a great post about how SEO is like Guitar Hero.

Undermat company sent me some undermats that were super pimp!

February:

I wrote about how to approach people for interviews.

I made a post with a video showing all the free stuff we get from companies.

My post about Customer Support Does Not Matter In Online Commerce sparked a lot of debate.

I officially endorsed Barack Obama.

While driving cross country I answered some questions from readers.

Poetic Prophet performed a pretty cool SEO/SEM rap.

I talked about the power of negative press and why you should embrace it.

And I also explained what lead scrubbing was and how it worked.

March:

At the end of February, I traveled to SMX and at the beginning of March, I posted a video with Randy from SEOMOZ about blog monetization.

I listed out the top ten extensions I think are a MUST HAVE for Firefox.

Who could forget this? I also had a little screw-up when I accidentally ordered oh, let's say, an extra 30 iPods!

The first Shoeperstar, Aaron Kronis, headed to the SXSW conference with me and had a blast.

I also wrote a five part series about how to evaluate an Internet property. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.)

April:

Started off April Fool's Day with a little video.

The Elite Retreat 2008 was kick ass and I gave a nice wrap up about the event.

I also explored different ways to make money with the YouTube Partner Program.

Then I wrapped up the month by answering a bunch of questions. Round 5 baby!

May:

I really got some people talking when I said that I believed SEO has no future and that it would eventually die. I took the conversation a step further by emailing some industry people for their definition of SEO and here's what they had to say!

I also gave some advice on how to keep commenters and their comments in perspective followed by a sixth round of questions.

In May, my wife J and I celebrated our fourth anniversary.

I also decided to vent a little and list the 10 Reasons Why You're An Idiot.

And to kick the summer off, I also pimped out the ShoeMoney pool.

June:

My wife was about to have our second child so I was unable to attend the SMX Advanced conference. Instead, I recorded a video about buying sites for SEO purposes for all the attendees. I also shared it here with you.

From fear to motivation, I also gave my theory on why most people fail in business.

In June, I also looked at Google Trends compared to Alexa, Quantcast and Compete.com and people had a lot to say.

Joe Daley's start-up, BlingEasy.com, made for some interesting photos.

July:

It's a girl! I had my second child, on July 3, actually ten minutes before the fourth of July!  We named her Joslyn, and let's just say - this was one of the craziest (and scariest) week's of my entire life.

Here is my older daughter, Juliet, listening to baby Joslyn's heart beat:

Know the Internet marketer's drug of choice? If you don't remember, caffeine barely beat out...

John Chow also invaded the "Shoeplex!" - in other words, my office.

The .me domain registration got off to a crappy start (and almost 200 people had something to say).

I also gave a preview to the ShoeMoney Tools (which now has a ton of users and still growing!).

And at the end of July, the blog hit the 60,000 comment mark!

August:

The Board of Advisers for ShoeMoney Tools was announced. Pretty sweet list of people.

I revealed that I am a recovering addict of MMORPG games.

Tons of people signed up for the ShoeMoney Newsletter. (If you haven't done it by now, you can still sign up here.)

Jammed out at the CPA Empire Breakaway event. A little after hours fun.

At the SES San Jose Conference, I learned how to tip a maid. haha

Germany's greatest SEO definitely threw down some rhymes. Beatbox anyone?

Logo Samurai transformed John Chow and I into animation domination.

And Harrison Gevirtz gave some great insight on how to optimize PPC campaigns.

September:

Traveled to Denver, Colorado where Media Breakaway let us take a look behind the scenes of their company.

I wrote a post about how to get advertisers or sponsors for your website followed by a post on how to get users to your site.

Who could forget the quick approaching election and Joel Comm's launch of the Sarah Palin action figure? Hi-ya!

I also gave some advice on what sticking your "pecker" out there really means and explained why I don't respond to every email.

Shel Israel interviewed me!

I shared with you what I consider a successful blog.

I even explored whether or not affiliate companies could/should demand your Google AdWords account info.

Harrison made a follow up guest post about running an ad network.

Gave some travel info as to how I roll in Sin City and why I love the Stratosphere.

I also explained my SCREW GOOGLE! mentality.

October:

It was scary times for the economy and I talked about my investment strategies and take on the whole bailout.

TechCrunch revealed that Google's image search may include sponsored links.

I made a post on how to hold your own blog contest and answered the question we may all ask at one point - Is college worth it?

Nate Moller from MollerMarketing.com conducted one of the best interviews ever.

And I asked the question, "Have you ever lost it all?"

Traveled to Orlando, Florida for a "Behind the Scenes" tour of the affiliate network Market Leverage and gave some tips on how to get 80% off your own travel.

Interviewed Ads4dough owner, Jason Akatiff about blackhat SEO and affiliate network and his perspective from both sides of the industry.

In 2008, I not only started using Twitter, but at the end of four months - I had seen the Twitter light. (Actually, I think 2009 will be the year for Twitter and we'll see alot more users joining.)

November:

Originally part of the ShoeMoney Newsletter, I re-posted this article on how to make money online with local affiliate marketing programs. It's truly the new gold rush.

Google tells Yahoo! to stick it.

Joost de Valk did a great guest post on 7 steps to get more comments.

I followed that up with a post on how to incentivize users to get content.

My wife and I traveled to Vegas to see Madonna and had tickets for the wrong night. Whoops. Did a little social engineering to fix the situation.

My Website Magazine article, "Beyond AdSense", hit the shelves.

I announced the Elite Retreat 2009 line up and we were already 75% sold out on the first day.

I gave a recap of the ShoeMoney Tools and the tools we continue to add.

Traveled to my hometown of Moline, Illinois, and saw the festival of trees with the fam.

December:

I started off my holiday shopping with a $500 shopping spree at Kmart.

Then I posted video proof that the recession does not affect online marketers. haha

Used a story about undercooked shrimp to demonstrate the importance of quality.

Affiliate Summit West let me give out 20 FREE passes to the conference this January.

After a few months at it, I also reviewed the MySpace MyAds advertising platform.

I've done alot of things, but now I can add auctioning myself on eBay to that list. It was a great way to earn over $10,000 for the Affiliate Marketers Give Back charity!

In the spirit of giving, I also made a post on how to get others to donate to you through Amazon Wish Lists.

Intel gave me an amazing gift of an Core i7 processor and system. And now I'm giving one away, too! What better way to start 2009?

Our auction for me to wear your company's shirt at Affiliate Summit West 09 ended on Monday. The winning bid was $5,200.00. The winning bidder, Train Signal, emailed me and said they had allocated $10,000.00 for this and would like to donate the full amount.

So at Affiliate Summit west I will present a check to the Affiliate Marketers Give Back, who's chosen charity is Fighting Breast Cancer, on behalf of Train Signal for the amount of 10,000.00!!!!

You rock Train Signal! If you use twitter give them a shoutout @trainsignal

I am glad we pulled this off and were able to raise a decent amount for charity. The auction could not have happened at a worse time. Almost every major affiliate/SEO/marketing company told me they would love to participate but everyone who could make a decision for that much money was on vacation for Christmas. Also the fact that the auction ended at 8am on a Monday morning... blah.

There was every reason for me not to do this auction and also every excuse for you guys not to participate. Between the holiday season... this (alleged) recession... you all had every excuse in the world not to but you choose to help us raise money for charity and for that I thank you!