buzzbishop
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7 years ago this week, Google revolutionized the internet - again. Already the search engine was dominating the internet landscape, but the dawn of Google Adsense changed the game.
Suddenly, the internet search engine put the power to earn into the keyboards of the people. Simply by applying for a free account and inserting a few simple lines of code anyone, and I mean anyone, could make money online.
Some figured out the system better than others. John Chow is one of the people who figured it out. He took a hobby blog and optimized it to make money - just to see how much he could make. In less than a year his personal blog - simple stories about fast cars, restaurant meals and tips on making money on the web - was making $40 000 a month.
The book talks about finding a "niche" and superserving it with content to maximize traffic and revenue. John's niche of money making advice was found by accident.
"The niche found me," he told me when I first discovered his story in late 2007. "My blog, JohnChow.com, started out as a personal blog I never started the blog to make money and for the first eight months of the blog’s life it made nothing. However, one of the topics I cover is making money on the Internet and it occurred to me that I should monetize the blog as part of a case study to show that you really can make money by blogging."
It's a bit of chase to try and make money the way John Chow does it. He makes money by telling other people how to make money. He makes a lot of it, so people want to do what he does. And what he does is a lot of affiliate marketing. Having people use offer codes that show he drove the traffic and provides himself a share of their revenue.
It's a bit of a pyramid scheme in the sense that John sits on the top and many are underneath, following his lead and funneling him residuals. To climb to the top and sit alongside Chow means finding a fresh herd of followers to listen to your sermons and type in your referral numbers. It's a hard row to hoe considering there is already a full choir, with much louder and meaningful voices, encouraging the masses to follow them.
The book is a quick and easy read and best done by people who have some experience with blogging and Wordpress. Ideally, you understand a bit of code and have been hacking out your own journals for a few years and are now ready to take the step to monetization.
I've read John's blog, e-book and have implemented some tips of his in the past and plan to take some lessons from this book to add "oomph" to my own sites. Still, I've never massed beyond making about $100 a month in combined revenue from any of my sites. Then again, I've never tackled any of my domains with the approach of being a master - blogging has been a hobby and I'm making hobby money with it.
Here are 3 simple tips John says can get you down the path to monetization:
1. Update your blog often. Ideally, you should do at least one new post per day.
2. Monetize your blog with multiple revenue source. Do not put all your advertising eggs in one basket.
3. Read JohnChow.com
If you're ever in Vancouver on a Saturday afternoon, I'd recommend looking up John Chow and his crew and attend one of his famous Dot Com Pho lunches. There's always an open invitation for anyone to attend the 2 hour plus meetup that usually sees web guys, bloggers, authors, money makers and fans gathering for vietnamese soup. It's an afternoon that always burns with laughter and great ideas.
catch the buzz ... pass it on.
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