John Chow, Dot Com Mogul
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Owner of The Tech Zone, John Chow also authors his insanely popular make money online blog.
John started monetizing his blog in September 2006 when it made a not so whopping $353. Since then, it’s sky-rocketed a more than respectable $11,700 in April 2007. The May figures are yet to be released but you can bet they will beat the previous ones as each month’s earnings have surpassed those of the past month.
While Chow has been known to be slightly evil at times, disrespecting innocent creatures and suggesting you cookie stuff your visitors; his blog can be hard to turn away from.
He may not win any popularity contests just yet but here sure is making a case as a steeple of how to make money with your blog, one of his favorite subjects.
Just yesterday, he released a free ebook that is a collection of his best money making posts accompanied by his commentary. In short it explains how to create and monetize a successful blog, something he is very much qualified to teach.
JohnChow.com is monetized to the extreme although it does a surprisingly good job of not seeming cluttered with advertising. The author uses everything from Review Me sponsored reviews to Text Link Ads, Google Adsense and Kontera.
There are also some methods that go a bit far and irritate some of his readers, such a special plugin he had created that allows you to pay a monthly fee to have “no follow” removed from your comments.
Recently, he also added a “buy me a beer if you liked this post” to each blog entry. Suggested prices for a beer is $3. This might lead you to wonder what a multi-millionaire will do with your $3.
The answer is that the site is John’s playground and the name of the game is to make as much money from it as possible, not because he needs it, but rather to prove a point, something that’s definitely been working so far.
One thing that can’t be ignored is how he came up with one of the smartest pieces of linkbait ever contrived.
Once upon a time, John noticed that the term “make money online” was getting some odd 40,000 searches monthly on Overture. Thinking it would be nice to rank for the term, he had people start reviewing his blog promising them a link back if they did things properly.
Since his blog is so heavily trafficked, he’s already had close to 800 takers, all of which have obligingly linked to him with the aforementioned term. Guess what; he now ranks #1 for one of the most desirable terms imaginable, something largely out of the league of the mere mortal…
You can play too if you want to review his blog and grab a link on his high traffic PR6 site.
And if ever he writes something that irritates of offends you, you can always give him a good kick in the butt. It made me feel a lot better…
on May 31st, 2007 at 2:08 am ¶
Once again you come up with another great lead - thank you, Alex.
People, you need to take a look at Chow’s book, if only to read the intro pages. I like this guy’s sense of humour already.
;)
on May 31st, 2007 at 2:13 am ¶
John’s a bit twisted but most people who go far in this life are.
I don’t agree with everything in his book but he does have some very solid pointers. Watching him go at it is perhaps even better in terms of education than reading the book…
on June 13th, 2007 at 7:18 pm ¶
Hi. I have written a list on my blog of other sites that offer links for reviews (in order of Page Rank). I thought you might be interested in adding yours or using the list to get some links from some high PR blogs. If its of use, maybe you would be kind enough to link to it on your blog. Thanks David
http://taxrefunds.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/blogs-from-pr7-that-give-links-for-reviews-update/
on June 14th, 2007 at 12:44 am ¶
Hey David,
Interesting idea. I’ll link it up in my next resource post.
Thanks for your comment.