Normally, the blog income report is the first post of the month but it was April Fools days yesterday and that meant I had to do a few tricks to take advantage of the linkbait fest. Now that it’s done, I can get back to business as normal and present the monthly blog income.
These reports started out as a case study to see if money can really be made by blogging. The original goal of the case study was to make full time income with part time blogging. That goal was achieved within three months of starting the study. Since then, the goal has been changed to how high I can push the monthly income.
The blog income has seen amazing growth since the case study started in September 2006. I watched it go from $352.94 to a record $30,616.35 in January 2008. Last month, blog income was down a bit to $29,643.01 because of fewer days in the month. March is a full 31 day month so there’s no excuse not to beat the February figure. And I don’t have any excuse to give.
Total Blog Income for March 2008: $31,441.24
The blog was able to maintain its $1,000+ per day level and registered another record breaking performance in March. In the first three month of 2008, the blog has made $91,700.60, or $30,566.67 per month. At this rate, the blog will have no problems beating the $300,000 goal I set for it. Here is the income breakdown.
- Private Ad Sales: $15,230.00
- Affiliate Commissions: $7,729.37
- ReviewMe: $5,000.00
- Text Link Ads: $2,031.90
- Kontera: $1,000.00
- TTZ Media: $384.24
- FeedBurner: $45.73
- Subscription: $20.00
- Grand Total: $31,441.24
Blog traffic for March was 282,424 page views from 152,523 unique visitors, according to Google Analytics. This help achieved an insanely high eCPM of $111.33. The means this blog makes over $100 for every 1,000 page views. The blog RSS readership grew at a great rate by going from 20,000 to over 23,000 readers over the course of the month.
Blog expenses for the month were $520.45 for contextual advertising on Google AdWords and Bidvertiser. Hosting for John Chow dot Com is sponsored by BlueFur Web Hosting (that means I don’t have to pay for it). BlueFur provide this blog with great service and amazing uptime. I highly recommend them. Use coupon code JohnChowRocks to get 15% off any BlueFur hosting packages.
Want To Be a Six Figure Blogger?
Everyone thinks there’s some secret to making money by blogging. There isn’t. Making money from blogging requires you to do only two things: drive a lot traffic, then maximize the income from that traffic. Everything I do on this blog either helps drive traffic or maximize income. Maximizing income is achieved by running as many advertising options as possible while still providing a good user experience. Too many blogs run Google AdSense and nothing else. If I had stuck with AdSense only, this blog would be making about $1,000 per month instead $1,000 per day. Check out my recommended money makers to see what ad networks I used to produce my blog income.
I also recommend you download my free eBook, Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com. The book explains the methods I used to create content, drive traffic and make money online. You can get it for free by signing up for my free newsletter at the top center of the page.
If I were to believe all those “I’m going to unsubscribe from your blog because you Rick Rolled me!” comments, this blog is going to hit a record low for April. I guess we’ll find out next month. 
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{ 152 comments }
I bet a lot of readers completely forgot about your monthly earnings report after the Rick Roll Extravaganzas of yesterday
Congarts on the new record!
I bet most won’t even read it because of that annoying flashing “Free Lessons” banner!
I came to John Chow dot com to try to find his comedy video about taking a shit … and all I got was this stupid income report.
At least it’s something to think about.
“Where there’s muck there’s brass” … an old English saying, I believe!
What exactly does that mean?
Sorry, JohnCow.. you didn’t get the top spot this time! Good try!
John Cow claims he made $3000 a month.
Now he’s selling the farm! I guess $3k per month is not enough!
Wow:D Thats all I can say. That eCPM is pretty insane good job!
haha yeah! Congrats! again! I saw a lot of blog’s decline in income last month.. good to know not everyone saw massive losses!
I didn’t … I kept updating the expected URL but i missed it… damn! I can’t believe I had to get some sleep. Anyway I haven’t done mine yet… it won’t be impressive either.
congrats john, you will become one of the legendary in make money from blog..
Great income report again John. That really happens to lucky guys and maybe your one of those lucky guys in the blogosphere. Lol.
Looks like you’re right on track to earn 100k per month at the end of the year
I think one of the most important thing if you ever comment on johnchow.com is to comment on the income report i think it’s the most read post in this blog probably the most commented but if your one the top comments your sure to get read and visited
Yeah, but when some people do it, you can tell they’re spamming. I think you should only comment if you really have something to say.
Now, Cow, that would be a great deal of money! 1st thing I’d do: hire someone to run my blog(s)! 2nd take a vacation… then I’d go right back to blogging! It’s fun…
Amazing! Investblogger, i might have retired with just 3 months of his income. read my blog and find out what i meant….
Nice work John. Now let’s get back to the Rick Rolling…LOL!
How about random rick rolling every month. Just to mess with people.
Totally awesome.
I want to earn $30k a month.
I’d settle for $5k/month
Congrats John, thats setting the bar pretty high for the rest of us
Yeah, any 4 digit amount a month would make a lot of people happy I’m sure. I wonder if John will hit the $40,000 mark?
~Terry
P.S. I’m sure $30,000 can buy a lot of John Chow cola
Another good month for John!
Nice work John. New record is always a good start
John;
I’m new to the site. I’m using many of the same methods to monitize my site (not quite at your level, however). I noticed your single biggest item is “Private Ad Sales” – how do you get these private ad sales? Do they just come in to you through word-of-mouth or do you or someone who works for you go out and actually sell ads on your site?
I’m doing around twice as much on text-link-ads as I am with “Private Ad Sales”, but I just basically wait for people to email me asking for ads.
Ashley
I’m curious about this as well. Unless I’m completely missing something, in his “make-money-online.pdf”, John doesn’t mention private ad sales. This might make a good post in the future for John (I’d read it anyway
)
- Dave
PS – I like your website Ashley. I’m a big NBA fan (The Sixers are my favorite team. They’re really overachieving this year. I think Mo Cheeks deserves some votes for coach of the year)
Private ad sales are something you can only get once you have a lot of traffic. The things in the ebook are designed to get a blog off the ground and successful. I guess an ebook part 2 will explain private ad sales.
He also mentions that his website has a PR 6 … but now Johnchow.com has a PR3.
Maybe he should update his ebook and also mention private ad sales
I didn’t even realize his page rank dropped from PR6 to PR3.
~Terry
Thanks for the props on my site. I’m actually in LA and I saw the Clippers play the 76ers a month or so ago – man the Clippers are terrible! But yeah, the 76ers are making a good run.
When you get enough traffic, you can contact the big companies & see if they’re interested in advertising on your site.
If I were you Ashley I would approach anyone you think may be interested in placing a private ad on your site. I think you have to be pro-active. I imagine when your blog is as popular as this one you’ll get offers like John’s blog.
Why not just fill up any unsold ad spaces by offering free trials for a month as a teaser? They can then see the performance of the ad and from there you can start charging. I imagine it’s difficult to gage exactly what to charge at first. However, if their willing to pay a price, it obviously means theres something in it for them.
Another idea would be to simply exchange ads with others in your niche to help drive traffic to your blog. If there are a couple of good quality blogs in your area why not trade an ad on your blog for an ad on theirs?
In the long term, once you’ve got a lot of traffic, the private ad sales will grow.
That’s probably good advice – I think I will try and approach some advertisers and see if I can pro-actively bring in private ad sales. It’s worth a try. I guess my hesitation is that it’ll be time consuming and not really result in too many sales. But there’s only one way to find out. We’re all in sales I guess!
Keep at it.
Ya,is quite hard to earn from adsense,”Don’t put all eggs into one basket”,this is what John Chow did.Impressed!
Congrats on reeling in $30k!
I am very impressed. I am glad I started reading my daily dose of John Chow when it was hitting records. $30,000 per month is amazing. With your average you should hit about $360,000 for the year. My goal is $2000 per month. Not so I don’t have to work, but in case I don’t find another job here soon, then I can still survive. If I made that much I would work at McDonalds or something.
Why work at McDonalds when you can stay at home and increase your earnings like John does ?
Yeah, I don’t get why you would work at McDonald’s if you were making that kind of money?
in malaysia, we will say your re sult in expression way “Walau A!!!”
means very exicted=)
The Rick Roll was a lesson. If John Chow listens to Rick Astley by choice, then you should too!
congrats john
I want to earn like you. I hope I can do it [-o<
Really great… congratulations for your success!
I just don’t get why this blog is so special?
The irony is that it’s not really that special. People come here BECAUSE it makes so much money and as a result of this extra traffic, it makes even more money.
A case of the rich getting richer!
The rich getting richer? Puh-leeze. John has worked hard to make this blog a success. He doesn’t have any secrets and disclosed everything in his ebook. The tools are available to make money blogging. It just takes some effort and dedication to duplicate this blog’s success.
Your here aren’t you?
JC doesn’t get my click through but he gets my traffic, and why well because of Scott Wainner
Mr Chow isn’t saying his blog is special he’s telling you right from the start he’s making money off of telling you what to do! thus the title “I Make Money Online by Telling People How Much Money I Make Online”
Why would you even come here if you don’t find it special? Maybe you wish you were making that much?
Thats some impressive stats this month too
Can you tell me more where i can find things about the Pepperjam network and how to join them as a publisher.
Excellent income there John. It looks like your traffic is down a bit from 6,000 per day to 5,000 per day, or am I wrong? Oh, I see that your eCPM is way up…that explains it.
Wow! I’m so impressed with the monthly income. Congratulations!
*trying to use the Law Of Attraction here* 
I’m still struggling to make money online. It’s really nice to get an income of $30,000 a month in April
Thanks for sharing your income info. It gives me some motivation.
Chetz Yusof
http://www.chetztv.com
Congrats !
Very impressive, for sure! Congratulations, John!
John, you’re always spending about $500 per month on pay per click, what landing page or pages are you sending people to?
I send them to this blog. I have other adwords running but it’s not related to this blog so I don’t count it in the blog expenses.
How much do you pay for 1 click John
? If you are allowed to mention that
I would like to know the same thing … How much do you pay for 1 click?
I was going to ask the same thing. Also, don’t you buy advertising on TylerCruz.com as well every month?
That is a TTZ Media ad, not the blog.
I dont even make $500 from my blog.
Please give some affiliate tips.
Read his ebook!
Worth it!
I agree. John’s ebook is the best thing I’ve ever read. It is so helpful and practical. Everything in there is designed to help you drive traffic to your site and make money off of it.
I dont find any affiliate tips in his ebook.
Holy jeez! That is an insane amount of money. I’m just starting this blogging thing out but I’m sure I will be able to make a few bucks. Thanks for the report John. It really inspires me to work harder at this.
Seeing these numbers just makes me believe that it is possible and that I can do this.
Great Going John!! How is the dog-ear ads doing?
Another thing i had read in one of the marketing sites was that internet ad income is at a low this month…LOL..doesn’t look so from this report..
How are the others doing? Have your incomes dipped?
TYPO:
so there’s no excuse not be beat the February figure
– should be -
so there’s no excuse not’ to’ beat the February figure
Truly awesome, hopefully my little site will one day grow. But it’s refreshing to come by here and get your outstanding growth results keep up the good work.
If you read John’s ebook you should know that “hopefully” is not a good word for you.
You should be more optimistic … My site will grow in the next 2-3 months for sure. I will take care of that.
Since I started thinking like that and working not only that I got a lot of visitors but my income also increased to about 200$ / month
This Blog is special in my mind.
You actually write good content that I find useful.
Plus I always like to look at the life of a rich person!
Keep going!
failureblogger-16 year old blogger
Way to go John. Your eCPM is really sick.
Your joke yesterday did suck, but I’ll stick around.
BlueFur sucks!
They just suspended my account and says one of my site is phishing. Actually, there is only a PayPal hiding affiliate link. They probably don’t know about what is redirect and what is phishing
My monthly earning report is getting closer to yours every month. I have already earned my 100$ and I’m gonna catch you soon you evil one
And here is my humble report:
http://www.bloggerdollar.com/2008/04/02/monthly-earnings-report-march/
Re-read the whole post, and realized like WOW just $500 in advertising on other blogs through ppc programs. Thats still more impressive.
great income. Take a look at my Income Report. I earn only $170 a month.
The Chow seems to be doing ok with this blog at the moment, but I have always wondered, Does He Want To Blog Forever??
Wow, all of that with just $520.45 in expenses? That’s amazing. I’d like to add some advertising on my blog (Biz-tone.Blogspot.Com). Any suggestions? Anyone?
Nice figures John. Congratulations!
I hope that I can achieved the same someday!
congrats for the money.
I hope taht i can reach you
and it’s the first time for me to know that Feedburner also pays
Well done John on maintaining that 1k USD a day level. You da man!
I am as green as “Kermit The Frog” with envy
http://bookierant.com
If Kontera only gives you $1000/month, is it even worth it? Obviously, reviews and affiliate marketing are the way to go.
“If Kontera only gives you $1000/month, is it even worth it? Obviously, reviews and affiliate marketing are the way to go”
My response to this would be of course it’s worth it. Ok it might not be much to John when he’s pulling in over $30k. However $1k is still $1k, it all adds up and over a course of a year that’s $12k.
Of course the private ads, affiliate commissions and ReviewMe make up 90% of the blogs income ($28k), with Text Link Ads, Kontera, TTZ Media, FeedBurner, and subscriptions making up the remaining 10%.
10% doesn’t sound like much but in terms of $$$ it’s still approx. $3.5k a month which, if you think about it in terms of annual income forgetting any fluctuations (and I would say with John’s track record they are likely to increase), is $42k a year… Would you happily forget about an extra $42k a year?
It’s all about MAXIMISING income and you’ll be surprised how the little things add up.
For sure $12,000 a year from a single source is nothing to scoff at. I would take that right now!
~Terry
I too was wondering Robert.. The no. of visitors and alexa doesnt match the earnings from kontera. The payout for this big blog should have been higher.
Well, I remember someone on here once saying that they thought John was getting screwed with Kontera & should be getting paid much more.
That saying might be true actually..
Nice Stats, man, congratulations! While talking about money: Here I have a post about making money with digital photos and images. It’s pretty easy to make some money if you know how to use photoshop or other graphic programms.
http://www.screenfrog.com/cash
Congrats John. Which do you think will happen first? You reach $50,000/month or I reach $5,000 a month? I’m putting my money on you…
John, every month you earn a flat fee of $1000 from Kontera. Could you explain that one?
Yea, I ‘ve kind of wondered about that to. It’s like that’s just a fee they pay him every month.
What explaining do you need? I don’t get it.
If you’ve ever used Kontera (or any other cpc ad) you would know you don’t get the exact same, rounded payout every month. I was interested in the arrangement as it couldn’t be a cpc payout.
Kontera pays me a flat monthly rate to run their ads.
Why do you settle for a flat fee from them?
Thanks for the explanation. I had often wondered about that.
I just swapped out Kontera for Vibrant’s Intellitxt. One day last month I had 1200 Kontera clicks and earn about $30. Yesterday I got a little over 100 Vibrant clicks and got ~$70. The CTR is much lower as they don’t flood my pages with tons of links, but the ppc is far higher.
Again, congratulations John!
Good luck in the coming months.
Yes..I too observed that..Seems like JC has struck a deal with Kontera where he gurantees them a fixed no of impressions.
$50,000/month is not possible.
I bet $100 that April income will be much lower
Of course it’s possible!
Only the people who have attempted this & failed say that.
Hey John!
Good going! I missed getting into that April Fool’s Day mode and take maximum advantage of that linkbait festival that occurs once every year. Being only 4-months into blogging, guess this was expected of me. But now that i have started following dotcompreneurs like you, i should soon start earning $1000 a month if not a day like you. But anything is a good beginning! So I shall start small and aim high!
Pls wish me luck!
Zahid
congrats john
my question is how will you be racking in 1million going along this rate
I wonder when will I ever hit $500 mark!
Congrats on your earnings!
Congrats on your figures!
I always wonder where the peak will be! Your Blog income seems to be steadily increasing, but I personally think that you can STILL optimize it further! My suggestion is to put up a couple of posts each week recommending an AMAZON product. I know that you do not like the Amazon Associates program much, but if you just dedicate a few posts each week to it….over time you will see a very steady increase in PASSIVE income from Amazon! Problogger wrote about this a while back and I have followed his advice on my blog. Check out how I do it, I’m already at a few hundred a month…but like your blog it will be a steady increase over time:
http://www.GangsterVideos.com
Nice money making.Looks like you are making record after record each month.
I wonder when you’ll break the 100.000 $ barrier.
Good job John.
I’ve been following your (and other SEO folks, some of whom are your competitors
) advice to drive traffic, using my largest site http://ww2db.com as the guinea pig, and I was able to achieve more monthly page views than your website by last month, March 2008. Now, I just need to start deploying some of your monetization advice and hope to make half of what you make… 
Keep up the good work, John, I enjoy visiting this blog every couple of days.
Fantastic!! Hope you will contribute some to poor family …heeee
Speaking of contributions John … have you ever done charity
?
Congratulations. great ebook. Have you ever thought about to tranlate it to other language. How about Spanish?
and French for us fellow Canadiens!
Merci, John!
John, Thanks for the excellent update! I look forward to it each month.
Wow… that are amazing figures … it just surprised me why dont you give a try for adsense ?
Awesome work this month John. I like to see your blog’s continued success, and your earnings are definitely quite impressive and an inspiration to other bloggers. Keep it up!
I feel if you can dice your private ads into days, that may increase more revenue and we get to see different ads every day. $500 for a square ad for a month may be expensive but people can try it for a day if it costs $25. For big guys, it is very cheap avertisement. If you implenet projectwonderful kind of stuff for few ads, then whoever bids high gets it for that day. Still $30K monthly is dream for lot of people
That is AWESOME. Your blog was literally 10,000 times more profitable than mine for the month of March. And you are SOOOO right about Adsense. I totally laid out their poor performance last night.
Congradz John. Looks like another successful month.
And another record
.
Anyway, if they unsubscribe or no, its their business as it is yours to “bash” kinda with sarcasm on them, but the fact that it was not a nice joke remains.
It’s interesting to note the ad spaces John offers for private ad sales are priced in the $2-3CPM range, which is pretty hard to obtain without offering a good ROI to advertisers. A plurality of the ads I’ve seen so far belong to a mixture of pyramid schemes and Forex Trading related sites, while still another good portion of them are affiliate links.
The amount of income is truly commendable, but I really wish John would make a more concerted effort to screen his ads and stop taking money from these scam/MLM sites. They have enough overexposure as it is.
Nice going, John. I can see you hitting at least $32,000+ with the rampant growth of your blog.
especially with the increase in subscribers he shouldn’t have no problem doing that this month.
Wow very good John! I wanna be just like you when I grow up.
That’s a lot of comments in one day.
I’ll challenge it soon…
Man,
here and has decided to start a money online blog (Will mention your name somewhere for sure)
I am turning green
Btw, which affiliate net is fetching you that much money? Could you provide the break up??
Regards,
Ajith
All that revenue from private ad sales, and yet you still refuse to use OIOpublisher to manage it all. Time is money John.
hehe Simon… John I agree that plugin is pretty sweet.
It is excellent result.
So much he earns or less (if its rank not 6, but 3) – it is necessary simply to aspire to earn so much or even more
Therefore I also aspire to make money online on the my site.
Finally blog crosses the $30k mark in a month. Nice too and wondering when will i
damn john another monthly record … You are just setting records after records.
It will be interesting to see if Jake Pitt (www.jakepitt.com) actually passes John in earnings by the end of the year. Might be hard with John still making this much money!
I earn $0 a month
Truely inspriation. At the moment I’m on course to make about $10,000 a year, a third of what you make a month.
But reading this makes me want to beat you… someday… hahaha
I am so jealous of John. My blog makes nothing, zippo, zilch. I can always dream, though.
your traffic doesn’t make any sense. your alexa rank is 5k.
大哥是我们的榜样啊
You’d better use English.
“eCPM of $111.33.”
That’s an extraordinarily high eCPM. If mine was that high I’d have made 500 dollars from my website already. Too bad my website’s earnings are more like zero at the moment.
Apr. 9, 2008
I am glad to know your website.
Wow! Great money! Great cash! We love money! Good job. Congrats!
Almost fainted when looking at that amount $30K, mine one is just 10% of it and some are even less ….
I would not mind a John Chow review to give me site a boot up the backside….also, looking to exchange links with other sites…This blog income report is very impressive
Always good to see the success to inspire other bloggers out there. Each time you post earning reports it always will motivate others to do big things online
That’s really nice income. I think you could make 50k a month if you tried really hard
I am newbie to blogging. This is one of the best sites I have seen about making money. I still learning about making money using blogger.
Thank you for your good information.
I will come back to read more articles from your site again.
A ver challeging earning,I vow to compete with you i a matter of time!
Just would like to say that this website so far has been a great resource of information to help me and my fellow nerds grow our blog . Please take this seriously!!!! Thanks John for the all your help so far.
Congrats on your success. One day, my new online marketing blog http://www.davionwong.com shall hit that. I started it this year. Let’s see where it will reach in 1 year’s time.
Do you disclose/explain anywhere on your blog where the Private Ads Sales come from? Is that like the 125×125 squares and stuff, or does that include things like stuff sold through TTZ media?
Or is TTZ Media considered “Affiliate Sales”.
Is there a post anywhere which explains what each line includes?