One of the most anticipated panel’s during Day 2 at SES - Chicago was the speaking debut of Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker. For those of you who don’t know Jeremy he is one of the most successful internet marketers in the world - Jeremy bursted onto the .com marketing seen about a year or so ago - I’ve known him personally for a little greater than have of that time - he’s got the star power and following of a burgeoning celebrity, but it’s not the fact that he is a multi-millionaire times over; it’s the fact that he is one of the most open, honest, and smart people you could ever meet. He’ll tell you that he doesn’t have a college degree and it’s true…however, he’s got tenacity, drive, and marketing skills, in combination with a whole lot of moxy that makes him a thrill to watch in action. By the way, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, the kid who started digg and many others never got their college degree either.

Jeremy spoke on a panel with another well-known internet marketing superstar - Jennifer Slegg or as she’s more commonly known in the blogosphere - Jensense. The title of the panel was Earning Money from Contextual Ads. jen started out wih a 15 minute formal presentation that was very, very instructive and detailed - she’s knows this stuff cold and she offered a number of tips and insights that will definitely make a number of the people in the audience more money. Shoemoney was up next - there were a small army of Shoemoney’s closest friends there in support, including myself, Dave Dellanave (Shoe’s Programmer & Business Partner), David Naylor (UK SEO Anvil), Shawn Hogan (DigitalPoint), Mike Jones, Shoe’s sister Andrea, Cshel, Crazy Egg guys, Rusty Brick from SEO Roundtable and many more.

At first I thought Shoe seemed nervous, but within about two or three minutes I witnessed someone transform into a very articulate, charismatic, and intelligent speaker - Jeremy’s presentation was an A - it was really that good…he basically discussed how money can be made through contextual advertising (Google Adsense & Yahoo Publisher Network) using either “good,” “bad,” or “gray” techniques. The good and the bad were obvious, but the gray area, where Jeremy admits he makes most of his money, was fascinating. He was so dead-on about the fact that most internet marketers don’t make tons of money bec/ they do what everyone else is doing; instead, they are innovators and they constantly push the envelope as it relates to terms of service and what’s allowed and what’s not allowed by Google and Yahoo - Shoemoney correctly argues that the “gray” area is not only where the millions can be made, but also where the rules and policies are written and re-written. Great stuff.

Jeremy offered tons of interesting examples of some of the stuff he uses, such as strategically using images next to ads and better integrating ads into the look and feel of your website - both Jeremy and Jen added that more ads don’t mean more money. In fact, jen suggested that using more ads could actually reduce your average CPC payout. Shoe talked about how some innovators have pushed the boundaries of contextual advertising by creating made-for-adsense (MFA) only websites and by doing things like creatively bundling google adsense ads with popular software installs.

Shoe made some great points about how arbitrary Google seems to be when it comes to terminating adsense accounts - he gave the example of his father, a very accomplished fisherman, who has a fishing-related website that once hosted Google Adsense ads - his father was contacted by Google and terminated from the Adsense program for allegedly clicking his own links - the irony was that his father admitted to clicking on some links, but said he did so because he was actually interested in learning more about some of the products promoted…Shoe said that his father purchased products from several of the ads he clicked on. Regardless, Shoe’s example highlighted the fact that Google’s policies are arbitrary and inconsistent. By the way - Shoe also showed examples of Adsense publishers who were clearly violating Google’s terms of service, yet their accounts weren’t banned and they were clearly making serious money. Jeremy also quoted Dr. Eric Schmidt - Google’s CEO - who while being interviewed by Danny Sullivan during SES - San Jose - admitted, even boasted about clicking on Google Adwords ads - now if Eric Schmidt admits to it and Jeremy’s dad does it and loses his ability to use Adsense, the system of terminating adsense publishers needs to be revisited by Google.

Congratulations Jeremy on an excellent presentation - I’ve been speaking at SES and coming to these shows for some time and your presentation today was one of the best I’ve ever attended.

By the way - Shoemoney posted earlier today from SES about the fact that he would give $100 to anyone who could beat him at thumb wrestling - well…guess what, Michael Jones (pepperjam COO) - aka, the thumb wrestling champion of the Wyoming Valley West Middle School & High School (those were the days!) kicked shoemoney’s a** - big time earlier tonight when we were all out for drinks. Not sure if Mike ever got that $100?

The rest of the gang is at the Chicago Blues House Bar - TrueLocal is throwing a ripper. I’m off to bed since I have two consecutive presentations tomorrow - first at 9:00am on Search Arbitrage and then again at 11:00am discussing Dealing with Affiliates.

I’ve taken several hundred photos of SES events and sessions but I’m having difficulty uploading and may not post them until Friday. Mike also got some interesting video footage and interviews with people like Danny Sullivan, Vanessa Fox from Google, and international SEO Guru and programming genious Mikkel deMib Svendsen - when we get back to the office we’ll get Social Media Dean to post the videos…stay tuned, we may actually break some news!

For those of you who want to see some photos we hired a professional photographer at the SES - Chicago Pepperjam - Hitwise - Performics - Range Online Media - Vintage Tub party last night - the photos were posted by Allan Dick on flickr HERE. I’ll talk more about that when I can upload some of my own photos.

I would like to rant for a moment before I get to the glorious purpose of this story. In many countries internet access and web content are controlled by the government. China, North Korea and Syria seem to be the top offenders that practice this ungodly act. The internet is possibly one of the greatest achievements of mankind and in recent history. It should not be censored, it has a wealth of knowledge, media, news, information and a place to voice your opinion. Which might be why countries like this (commie bastards) have censored it in the first place, perhaps they do not want their people to find out what the outside world is like.

Anyway an article over at BBC News tells us that researchers at The University of Toronto have found a way to bypass the web through, you guessed it, social networking. The way the program works is that a user in an uncensored country downloads the program which transform their computer into an access point for people from censored countries.

They can then give contacts in censored countries a unique web address, login and password, which enables the restricted users to freely browse the web through an encrypted connection to the proxy server.

It protects from the government spying on you as well by only letting them see that you are connected to another computer. One word of advice though, if the penalty of looking at censored web content in your country is death or imprisonment, be careful.

Last Thursday (Thanksgiving day) I flew to Riviera Maya, Mexico with my girlfriend Robyn and her ultra cool parents - the place is amazing! We stayed at the very luxurious Aventura Spa Palace, a great adult only, romantic, and relaxing resort.

Anyway, I went sport fishing with Len Martin (Robyn’s Dad) and unexpectedly caught a monster sailfish!!! For most fisherman, including myself, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity…I couldn’t believe it. She was about 6 ft. in length from the tip of her nose to her tail. I was absolutely spent by the time the mates grabbed the nose of the fish and pulled it into the boat. Because the fish I caught is out of season and therefore was likely a native to the Riviera Maya waters I decided to release the fish once I caught it - she swam away and I hope somebody else has the thrill I had catching her sometime in the future!

Here’s the pic - note that I placed my faceover the sail since if it was pulled up the entire way it was over my head.