Site Review: John Chow or how to earn $12000/month from a personal blog
Posted on June 20, 2007
Filed Under Site Reviews
Initially I wanted to review Tyler Cruz’s blog this week, but I have seen today that John Chow started a contest to win some links and, seeing the prize is a 24″ wide screen LCD monitor, I decided to make this review now, since it was already programmed for the next week. I didn’t win the Jackpot at the lottery last week, but I might have a slim chance of winning that monitor 
John Chow dot Com started to barge into my life something like 6 months ago, from all the blogs I could read: my Romanian friends, bloggers around the world, Agloco pitches… everyone was talking about how much John Chow earns. That was when I started reading his blog. Of course, I took several weeks to read it from the first post.
And I liked what I read. Sometimes I think he uses a way too patronizing style of telling the story, but the information he writes really worths taking it for the time you read the posts.
How to make money on the Internet was not something new for John Chow since he already had a successful hardware technology site and, along with it, a successful advertising network, so the blog was something of a hobby to him.
Well, that is enough of a introduction. What is so interesting about a one and a half year old personal blog? Well, almost an year ago (September 2006), he started a case study to see if he can make money from it. And he started to show earnings that dazzled anybody reading: starting from $300-400 in the first month to a whooping $12000 in March.
So, what is so special about his blog? Well, I have found information on the subjects I was looking then: social news sites, especially Digg. How to get a story on the frontpage (the algorithm change in the meanwhile), how to survive a digg effect, what you earn in Adsense from Digg users and more. More, his success story on earning money from blogs was something I need to rediscover, since my online projects at that time were not targeted on blogging (they still aren’t, but it was nice to be able to keep in touch).
But the most important thing I learned from John Chow’s experiment was that I was underachieving: I only used Adsense and some other small monetization methods. Though I knew you can earn a lot from other sources, there is something about the numbers that surely make you want to try and test. So I did and right now I am earning money with methods starting from Adsense to affiliates and donation, but not only that.
Finally, what I like and dislike about John Chow dot Com?
I like: the information he writes, that comes from his own experience, as he finds it out
I don’t like: His patronizing tone and the fact that lately there are too many ReviewMe reviews.
My advice: read the entire archive. It is full of information not only on blogs, but on the life style of a Dot Com mogul, as he says, on the ways you should think about the internet and about life around the online business in general.
P.S.: here is the final link for the contest: hosting Canada. And, another thing, the guys at Bluefur (those hosting Canada ) have a contest of their own, where they ask you to vote for them at Bloggers Choice Awards. You can win another monitor there. Who knows, in a short while I might have a dual monitor setup for my laptop, either, aside from the one at my desktop at the office. So, what are YOU waiting for? Go take the monitors (and give me a beer if you win one of them ) and start to make money online.
Earn money with direct advertising: this is how Tyler Cruz did it
My first post
9 reasons to have a personal blog even if you blog for money
Site Review: Self Made Minds – The $100K Success story
Affiliate Blogs and PayPal Romanian issues
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5 Responses to “Site Review: John Chow or how to earn $12000/month from a personal blog”
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About
I've chosen to work on the Internet because I wanted to be able to earn my living the same way everywhere I was in this world.
Up to now, I still have failed to blog from the Carribean Islands, but hope is not lost.
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What exactly does “a patronizing tone” mean? Do you think he’s too confident, too self-suficient, or what ?
http://www.johnchow.com is really interesting to read. Thanks for the tip. I’ve already picked up some interesting stuff from there.
Cheers.
Yeah, wow!
I really dig the idea of the prize-winning review thing. A very good strategy. Maybe I will use something like that in the future.
PS: The amount of links in this article is… well, intimidating.
Yeah, but most of them are not related to the competition. The posts I underlined are quite interesting and well deserve the mentions.
I’m not arguing about their connections with the article, all I’m saying is that for MY eye, there are too many links (21 of them).
This John Chow guy is simply amazing at marketing and human relationships… almost like a god of some sort.