Welcome Stumblers! I hope you enjoy this entry – if you like it please give it a thumbs up, hang around a little bit, and check out my other content. We have a very easy RSS subscription to keep you in the loop. Thanks for dropping by and I hope you enjoy your visit.

Now that I’ve got your attention (and, oh by the way, it’s got my attention too…) Let’s talk about how this works. I’m extremely leery of the whole “make money fast” on the internet stream of activities. This one is a little different.

Serial entrepreneur John Chow is the successful founder and operator of The Tech Zone (TTZ), TTZ Media Network, and a host of other activities. His part-time gig is blogging at John Chow dot com; a site focused on this subject:

John Chow dot com is a blog that helps you make money.

This guy has been around for a long time and I’ve come across his site many times, but for the first time, I’ve decided to pay a little bit of attention to what he’s doing. Why? Because in November, 2007 he documents income of $27,240.83 against expenses of $556.62 – a profit of $26,684.21. He also documents his growth from $352.94 in the first month of monetization (September, 2006) to its present lofty state. This begs the question, “how does he do it?”

After reading through a bunch of his material I conclude that this mix of activities in the right amounts at the right times have led to his success:

• Predisposed readership – Based on his earlier work at TTZ, he has a set of people who would read his blog. That’s better than starting from zero and allowed a faster ramp than could happen for someone without this “in”
• Experimentation – It’s pretty clear he’s tried over 130 different monetization techniques for his blog and has tumbled to a set that work well for his audience. It’s also clear that he’s pushed the envelope on each of these techniques (for instance, irritating Google greatly.)
• Single message – John Chow dot com helps you make money. That’s the blog’s tag line, it’s simple, it’s clear, and it works.
• Multiple harvest – By my count, John has 8 direct monetization streams and at least 3 indirect (not reported) monetization streams.
• Transparency – There’s nothing subtle about what John is doing, and he’s sharing real data with his readers. That is rare in this time of protecting Google’s AdSense performance due to terms of service.

So what does this all mean? I’m not quite sure. But one thing is crystal clear, this blog is not being monetized effectively. I haven’t experimented enough with monetization techniques, John has inspired me to do more as AdSense isn’t what one would call lucrative on its own. Scanners like me have a hard time being interested in any one subject, consequently, I write about many different subjects that interest me. I’m considering writing them all centrally like I do now then setting up separate venues that focus on each subject.

I’m a pretty transparent guy: November, 2007 this blog made $40.41 on 95,958 page impressions from 59,170 visits and 39,477 unique visitors. If I could muster 50% of John’s $0.08/page harvest number, the earnings from this blog would have been $3,838.32 – that’s $3,797.91 delta. And that’s money I’m not interested in leaving on the table so to speak. Expect periodic updates as to how the monetization is going, and expect to see some changes as the experiments are undertaken. If you are interested in advertising on this site, drop me a line.

If you liked this content, why not give it a thumbs up?