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The bang is in blog
John Chow makes money by telling people how much money he makes online. Creator of www.johnchow.com, the Internet mogul is raking in the dough just by doing what he calls “rambling.”
The 42-year-old Richmond entrepreneur put himself to the test two years ago when he decided to monetize his blog. If websites could generate revenue from ads, why couldn’t blogs? Using Google Adsense, a program that allows website publishers to enroll text, video and image advertisements, Chow was able to turn his blog into a business.
In just a short time, his RSS readership went from just 1,000 to 14,000 . . . and as advertisers know, more traffic means more money. His blog increased 50-fold from $353 a month to an annual rate of $300,000. That’s $25,000 a month. Not bad for a part-time hobby.
Originally from Tunya, a small village in China, Chow applied what he learned from TechZone, his ad network business, to his blog. But his experiment has not been without its hiccups — not because he lacks skills but because he might be too slick for his own good.
By blending ads so seamlessly with his content, readers were unable to tell the difference, thereby exposing himself to accusations of misrepresentation and the wrath of Google, which told him to immediately cease and desist.
“Obviously I pushed it too far because Google got mad at me,” he said.
“I blended it so well — I matched the fonts, the colours, everything, right down to the point size.”
Chow is no stranger to pissing people off. As his blog gains more notoriety, so does the anti-Chow base. Some bloggers like Jim Kukral accuse Chow of becoming greedy and substituting quality content for money-making gimmicks.
But none of that matters to Chow.
“If I were to keep track of all the anti-sites and comments that pop up, I wouldn’t be able to get any work done because there are so many of them,” he said. “I actually enjoy them because some of them are actually pretty creative in the way they go about bashing me.
“I truly believe the main reason is jealousy,” he added.
Chow’s next challenge is in turning his e-book, about making money online, into a real book. Although the premise of his e-book is already being slammed by the blogger community, Chow says getting published in the real world will improve his image.
“A lot of people think [e-books] are scams because authors will charge $97 for 60 pages,” he said. “Being a published author will have a tremendous impact on my brand.”
If his blog is any indication of the success he’ll have with his book, he’ll be on the New York Times best seller list in no time.
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