It’s the start of a new month and that means it’s time for the highly anticipated blog income report. Way back in September 2006, which seems like forever in Internet time but it’s really only 10 months, I made the decision to use this blog as a monetization case study. I wanted to see if it was really possible to make money by blogging and since John Chow dot Com was the only blog I own, it made sense to use it.
Starting with just Google AdSense, the blog made $352.94 in its first month, went up from there and finished off April 2007 at a record $11,702.66. Income dropped to $10,559.40 in May but set another record the follow month with $12,569.61 in total blog income. That was extremely impressive because half way through the month, Google decided to re-rank me in their SERP.
July is the heart of summer and the slowest time of the year when it comes making money online. It was also the first full month of living in the Google doghouse. How did the blog do under these conditions? Not bad at all!
Total Blog Income For July 2007: $12,406.76
A ReviewMe review came in at 1AM on August 1st. I thought for a minute about adding it to the July results but decided against it. Had the review request came in an hour earlier, the blog would have set a new income record. Here is the income breakdown.
- Affiliate Sales: $4,344.82
- ReviewMe: $2,600.00
- Text Link Ads: $2,056.63
- Private Ad Sales: $1,130.00
- Kontera: $1,000
- Google AdSense: $661.73
- TTZ Media: $349.44
- Buy Me a Beer: $114.33
- FeedBurner: $79.81
- Subscription: $70.00
- Grand Total: $12,406.76
Despite the efforts of Google, blog traffic for July increased from 315,827 page views to 319,165 page views and 167,105 unique visitors. Furthermore, full feed RSS subscription took a huge jump. At the start of July, it was sitting at 5,600. By the end of the month, that number had increased to 7,381.
Google AdSense continued its downward slide. I am getting the same number of clicks as before, but the CPC for those clicks has gone down because of the summer advertising slump. You can really see the effects of summer in the FeedBurner numbers – it dropped over 60% to just $79.81. I expect Google and FeedBurner to remain low until the fall. The blog continues to do well because it has many flat-rate ad setups that are not affected by seasonal changes.
If anything, the above numbers illustrates the importance of spreading out your income sources. I started with Google AdSense. If I had stuck with them and added nothing else, the blog’s income wouldn’t be nearly as impressive. I like to run as many advertising systems as I can get away with while still offering a good user experience. Check out my recommended moneymakers to find out more about all the ad networks I use.
Blog advertising expenses for the month was $195.55 for SiteMatch Google ads and $425.65 for normal Google ads. I also spent $50 for a review on CashQuest. Hosting for John Chow dot Com is sponsored by BlueFur Web Hosting, who recently set this blog up with a new dual-core Xeon server. Use coupon code JohnChowRocks for 15% off any BlueFur hosting packages.
You Have Questions, John Chow dot Com E Book Has Answers
Every time I post an earnings recap, I get bombarded with emails from readers asking how I did it and how they could do it. Many of these questions I have already answered in the blog. However, not many people want to go through 100+ pages of blog posts or use the blog’s very limited search feature. To better serve readers wanting to make money by blogging, I have created an E book on the subject. Please download it and read it before emailing me your blogging related questions.
Summer is very hot in Vancouver. It’s a great time to fire up the BBQ and settle back with a nice cold beer. Unfortunately, my buy me a beer fund seems to be running low. Good thing I have nine other income sources to make up for it.
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{ 155 comments }
Damn!
What else can I say?
You can say the #$%# word lol
John, do most of your affiliate sales come from your ebook or does the bulk come from posts etc on the site?
Hard to say since I made the links the same for both Ebook and blog. I should have separated them. My guess is, they come mostly from the blog post. The Ebook is just re-enforcement.
Do you not have analytics on the site? I’d think you’d at least be able to track which generated more traffic to your go pages right? Although really that doesn’t tell you all that much. Oh well, thanks anyway.
Seperating them would have been a good idea but its still not too late to change and re-upload. Theres still going to be a lot of downloads over time and will make for an interesting blog post for sure
Hehe, nice, you just discovered John’s secret. Its like “Can you play poker if you don’t have cards?” The same is with monetizing a website, you can’t make money if you don’t have visitors, and of course only someone really dumb would try to monetize his website only through one way. John has already passed the hard way, which marketing and promoting his blog (as you can see on the post he stated how much he has spend in advertising), and he has also spend the other thing that everyone is trying to figure out, where ads perform best. Now he can just write…write…write..and try to not piss off his readers
Not really a secret considering the fact that he reinforces this in almost every other post.
But its good that you discovered this “secret”.
Possibly the worst kept “secret” in history.
that’s a good question
Wow. another cash making month! Good job.
Way to go John. How is the income per rss reader and per site visitor trending?
Do you make money from each RSS reader?
Feedbuner ads
You can see it at the bottom of JohnChow Rss
funny how the topics change back to blogging and blogging revenue, due to previous comments about the tax avoidance…
Watch for a bunch of car posts next.
and then of course food and agloco after that
nothing wrong with the cars
I like car….
Well, I love lamp.
I Love BMW….
I don’t think the comments had much to do with it. John always posts his income from the previous month early in the new month.
I do wonder if John’s income posts (or anyone who posts their blogging income) could be used against him when it comes to tax time though.
He only lists his income, not his expenses, so it would be difficult to be used against him (I would think) unless he lies on his tax returns.
Then again, I am not a lawyer or tax specialist or accountant or anything.
He does list his expenses as well (Site match ads etc) but true, as long as he doesn’t lie on his taxes he wouldn’t be in trouble. From the sound of his tax posts, he does everything he can under the law but doesn’t lie.
Dam you John dam you lol
As in like a river?
haha..i understand what u trying to say…
Those are certainly impressive numbers. What I would really like to see is how many hours of work you put in on this blog for the month as well. Not just blog posting but all the link exchanging, number cruncing, you know, general obsessive behavior that blogs tend to cause.
I’m willing to bet it’s become less and less time. With all due respect, I think it shows in the posts as well. I probably hold John to a higher standard but someone who makes this much money online per month has a lot of info to share.
John, whats with the results for the 24″ monitor?
I haven’t drew the name yet. BlueFur and I will do it sometime tomorrow.
can’t wait
oh man.. i got to wait till tomorrow now.. i hope you pull out my name!
Hihi can know who is the winner by soon
Awesome. I made almost $100 in July. Not bad considering I get .0002% the traffic you do.
Michael
I think the reality is, if your blog is generating *any* income, you’re going in the right direction. I believe John made a post about it, but it’s amazingly difficult to make those first few bucks. Do you average about $100 a month?
DevDad
Canon SD750 Giveaway on DevDad.Com
Nice month John. Way to plug the buy me a beer feature at the end
Great Work John.
What about Azoogle? Are they grouped in Affiliate Sales?
Yes they are.
Jealous.
I jealous too
You done it again John, congrats. By the way, why is Kontera always consistent at $1000?
I would imagine this is part of the affiliate deal John has with Kontera. They probably guarantee him at least $1000 per month in exchange for advertising the Kontera system. Presumably, if it generates more than $1K, he probably receives that amount. John, can you verify?
DevDad
Yes, you are correct.
So John, your actual kontera earning is less than $1000?
Well no, his earning is exactly $1k. However, the amount he would have earned had he not had that deal in place would likely have been less than that. Kind of splitting hairs there but it’s an important distinction.
Oh Ic….
That’s fantastic John. Your an inspirance to us all. Hope you don’t get taxed too much on the extra income
however, i just quit Google Adsense for Content:
http://www.awflasher.com/blog/archives/1009
it made me so disappoint
anyway Cong, Chow!
It is pretty amazing that you are making $10,000+/month talking about how to make money online when your only successful website is an old computer review website. You know what they say, appearance is everything….
I guess the same thing could be said about the founders of Google and Yahoo. That is, if they started blogging.
How many successful websites does one person need? While I don’t see anything wrong with diversifying your income streams, if you’ve got one or two really hard-hitting websites, there isn’t much of a reason to go beyond that. With that said, I would imagine that John is a part of more sites that we’re aware of.
DevDad
Canon SD750 Giveaway on DevDad.Com
Typo:
*more sites than we’re aware of.*
Goonie
Me too
Good job John. I wish I can go halfway with what you got. Can you give some of your evils to me?
If you’re reading regularly, you’re getting more and more evil. That’s the beauty of John’s blog!
DevDad
Awesome earnings John! Way to give us something to admire and work towards.
Congrats on the great numbers. It sucks how little money feedburner makes you. I would like to see you make atleast $300 with that, since you have so many readers now.
I agree. I wonder if it is worth dumping it for awhile, and then adding it back in. It could have something to do with “banner blindness”, although they are all text links. If nothing else, it may be worth a try, considering it only accounts for
You done it again John, congrats.
http://www.technobuzz.net
US$12,400? In Brazil that’s the monthly salary of some top executives. Only without the suit, tie or office politics… Sounds a lot better to me
There isn’t much more that you can ask for than making $400 a day sitting in your underwear! I’m sure all of us throw a suit on every now and again to remind us how much it sucks!
DevDad
I like this post a lot better if you’d just buy me an Xbox 360 already!
Keep working it, John…nice work!
Excellent.
Dang!!!
Those numbers talk for themselves
John could you go into more detail (write a blog post) about the affiliate sales you are doing and that you plan on doing?
Also, a break down on how many hours you spend (in total) on the blog… including the reading, writing, editing, posting, link baiting, and ANYTHING blog related? Thanks!!
Agreed. That would be some good information.
If you guys haven’t seen it yet, John obliged and posted some more information on this month’s affiliate revenue.
John’s Biggest Affiliate Earners
DevDad
This is amazing. I know people making this much money who work 60 hours a week… and they never even have the time to spend it. Great job.. keep up the good work! You truly are an evil genius, whether Google likes it or not! *=)
I can’t say anything but just say excellent! I have been finished read your ebook make-money-on-line. Well, I learnt a lot, and I’ll try to make a new weblog. Thanks for your ebook and….you.
I think this is the fourth month John is making exactly $1000, that’s kind of odd.
If it’s rounded to the closest value, why only Kontera number is rounded not the others?
Check out the comment above.
Kontera guarantees John $1K per month, and if his actual Kontera ads make more than that, he gets the greater of the two.
DevDad
Ha! You beat me to it! Shame on me for reading the comments off and on as I do other things.
That’s explained above, lost in the sea of comments.
He has a deal where he gets a minimum of $1,000 per month.
About Google adsense, i think you must add more ads here John, the adsense ads to less in here, dats why there are less clicks
How did u do with Review me!!! I still cannot do Review now, i dunno how!!
Actually, putting more ad blocks on the page will allow lower cost ads to appear. That’s not what you want at all.
So about other bloggers? How much your income in July?
What really impresses me is how John didn’t go on a major ass kissing campaign to get Google to give him back his rankings like some of these people recommended http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/blog/john-chow-can-get-his-google-rankings-back/
Way to give big ‘G’ the middle finger and move forward without missing a beat.
It wouldn’t have to be an “ass kissing” as you put it. He’d just need to make a few changes and submit a reinclusion request. However, that would also probably cost him $2k a month (since I believe selling links is part of the problem) and I’m not sure it’s worth it.
He should put his AdSense on the left
.
Wahh..so i’m so jealous.
so, this is john.Congratulation man
I like to made 20% per month from $12,406.76.
Nice income John, all the johnchowletts will be linking too it soon
Congrats John. Hope august will be the next record month
John, what was your biggest affiliate in terms of sales? TLA?
From TLA sign-ups alone, John posted in his affiliate update that he made $2175. That doesn’t include TLA ad sales, only new affiliate sign-ups. That is pretty amazing.
Check out the whole thing here: http://www.johnchow.com/my-biggest-affiliate-earners/
DevDad
I can’t believe that you make more from Kontera than Adsense. Kontera really doesn’t perform that well for me. I have a lot more clicks, but the payout is less 1/4 of my Google income for the month. Do you make money from the Kontera affliate program still? Like a percentage of how much the people who signed up under you make, or is it all just from clicks on your ads?
Check out the comment above.
Kontera guarantees John $1K per month (because of the promotion for Kontera he does), and if his actual Kontera ads make more than that, he gets the greater of the two.
DevDad
Hi John,
Congrats to you!
Your income is so good
Thank you so much for your ebook and your effort to share your knowledge for us. You are one of the best inspirators I’ve ever known.
I definitely want to see less tax/nanny posts. I’d actually be happy with more picnic posts.
I vote we get rid of Blog Dollar.
I second that vote
It’s Bloga Dollar and if we start voting people off, I think I’ve got a few in line before him… *cough*Tyler Cruz*cough*
We just had our first month over at JohnCow.com and we cracked the $1000,00
That’s 3x better than your first month!
You pesky cows.
I just checked out your blog, and it is amazing how much traffic you’ve had in your first month. No matter how cheesy the domain or original idea was, it really is brilliant. Similar to BootMoney.com, but with real information.
DevDad
Not bad…….Only one month
jesus, bloga dollar sure is whoring it up in these comments
Great income … I have download your free e-book .. thanks
tantalizing, i will make more money than you john chow, that is my will and there is a way.Its only a matter of time. Dude send me an email if you wanna discuss a business prospect, but like i said, watch me closely. congrats on the $$$ bills, must be nice
I certainly admire the way you diversify your income with multiple payment sources. It’s also a good rule to never depend on one site for your entire income either!
The ebook is great
wow, nothing i can say.
John Chow: you earn $1000 from kontera every month?
Another SUPER STRONG month! Cant wait to see what you come up with in August…
Hi John. I got a question for you… Or a challenge/experiment… a new journal series to write about for this blog.
I know you’ve done a fantastic job, and that is obvious. However, I would like to know if you could start up new project(or experiment)… to startup a blog on any topic (without revealing it here – but you can detail your entire journey just not the actual name) without using your ‘famous online’ name to back it. What I’m trying to get at is… is it possible for a regular ‘nobody’ to start a blog (today) and earn a living online? It probably won’t earn as much as johnchow.com, but even to make 3 or 4 g’s a month). And to start it now… not five years ago. You know… someone that isn’t already known for being successful.
What I’m trying to get at is that people follow succesful people… but to start a blog as a ‘noody’ today and make it earn a living wage is pretty hard… not impossible, but hard. If you could prove to us that even you can indeed start one TODAY from scratch as a ‘nobody’ like the rest of us, that would be the ultimate in motivation and a really neat blog experiment about making money online which may help get this blog back on topic.
In this experiment you would detail your strategy, hardships and successes at starting this new blog (an experiment) but never mention the actual blog url/name. You can always sell it off at the end, or give it away on johnchow.com as massive super challenge/reward… to gain a ton of publicity for john chow dot com. After all, its only an experiment and it would make for a really interesting series I would love to read!
While my blogs are nowhere near as successful as this one, I am doing something similar. I am document the launch of DevDad.Com on my older SEO/business blog called Mindables.Com. The goal is to see how the process works, step by step. One think to keep in mind, however, is that the DevDad.com site is much more personal at this site. It’s more about traffic generation than monetization for now.
DevDad
That is insane! ahaha you are my idol john! i seriously wonder how great it is to be you.
Oh for goodness sake. IS anybody who has money going to fall under the category of being your idol? How do you know it’s great to be John? What has the man ever done that made him worth of such an accolade as being someone’s idol?
I’m not saying John is a bad man, but he’s just some guy exploiting ways of making money on the internet. That’s it. He’s not exactly a bastion of human rights or anything… not that I know of anyway.
Very cool and encouraging stuff, I like reading this
It’s also fun to show off to other people and see what they think about it.
“Really? $12k/month from a blog? No way.
”
Then you show them this post.
”
”
I’m relieved to see that my AdSense wasn’t the only one that dipped in July! It only dropped ~25% as opposed to your ~50%, but it’s still kind of scary given the absolute numbers and lack of other strong income streams that I have (I only have 1 other). Then again, in June I had some incredible, record-breaking days so the fact that it came back down to Earth is not surprising. Can’t wait for it to go back up of course!
Great job! One question why did you switch from Intellitext to Kontera? I have read in a lot of blogs that Intellitext offers better payouts than Kontera and you had mentioned that in one of your blog articles months ago before you switched… that was one of the reasons why we decided to go with Intellitext instead.
Where have my comments gone?
Ok. It’s fair.
Hey John, I understand. I was just testing your tolerance. Although I haven’t seen your mybloglog avatar on my blog, I think you’ve been visiting me.
I arrive John.
I was waiting for this to happen. Anyway, I’m sure you have plenty to offer, comment-wise. Glad to see you back!
DevDad
Really?
I hoped it would not happen but it happened.
Common man, showing you income report is like broadcasting yourself to the world. Yes it good to be earning that much money but what about the if …….later? This guy is….. this guy has plenty of money… you know… they must be another way instead of disclosing your income.
If he doesn’t disclose it then how will we believe anything he tells us?
Damn u John, you’re good
btw whats that plugin ur using for “buy me a beer”?
Great earning man…
Um … can you loan me $5 ’til Tuesday?!
Great stuff John … I follow this blog everyday since I discovered it.
- TRENDS
The most amazing thing about you is that, while adsense is the major income earner for most bloggers, your total income is almost 19 times your adsense income. And who are buying these 400 dollar reviews
I’ve been using all of you advice on this site, maybe one day these kinds of stats will be about my site!
Well what is the chance of John reading this comment, past 148.
Oh well as I am here as a regular reader I will post. It is interesting to see your figs for Google adsense and like many we see the revenue drop, as a result I have dropped Google from two of my blogs. I just hated advertisers getting quality candidates for next to nothing.
I really do not want to pick on Google as they have offered us so much, but if I was in business and I was you I would drop Google. Harsh maybe but on a purely commercial point of view Google is costing you a small fortune.
And I bet with a good client rather than Google adsense you would infact be giving your readers more value.
There I have said it, sorry Google but I think you need to be careful
ah, i want $+10k/month too!! now, i’m trying to get traffic to my blog, being unsuccessful at the mo.
i’ve downloaded your book.. thanks
John, where’s the graph with your previous income months?
Is it not marketing wise to show a graph where the numbers aren’t growing that much anymore, or is it another reason?
no doubt that john deserve that reward.well,i work towards his yardstick!
It looks like that the buy ne a beer is decreasing a bit.
Can I suggest contextual program that you might include next time since it is very promissing.
http://www.webmaster-money.org/out_MediaText.html
Please use that link. So I might hope in some referral revenue. They are looking for high traffic sites for their advertisers.
Ok… fair enough. To believe you have to see it for yourself. I suppose there are pro and cons in everything we do. The question is, are you prepare to face the consequences? I’m just concern that all. Keep it up john.
With hundred thousand of visitor each month, you just got $600++. It’s quite a really big drop from Google Adsense.
Only $600++ from Adsense, that too little.
That’s not as easy as that to get a sufficient revenue with Adsense as it may seem. So under all of the other conditions it’s pretty good.
This is great! I had no idea that you had a free ebook. I have read through alot of your archived posts in the past but this is excellent that you have it all in one place. I will be sure to spread the news. Thanks again!
Good job! Keep up the good work!
Wow you have become a rich man!
If you wouldn’t be very kind to give out the E-book for free you could sell it and be even richer. But I guess the money doesn’t matters for you, just the bloging?
Keep up the good work!
Your income … Fantastic.. Congrate John..
Great work John! Did you checkout JohnCow.com. I first thought it was derogatory; but you know what, eventually it would only build you more traffic and make you even more popular. You have to be really something to have parody sites made for. Wondering if went ahead to make that site?
That is amazing. If you add a couple more 0′s to my earnings I’m right there
What program do you use to track page views and unique visitors?
Are Kontera paying you a flat monthly fee?
They impressive, amazing how people don’t seem to click anything in feed burner.
Wow, you are my hero!
Wow, you must be a pro! Soo many comments in such little time. And you made over $1,000 in a month.
I’m jealous.
There’s a fine line between self promotion and whoring yourself out. I think you’ve crossed it.
For some reason, your comments seriously piss me off. The vast majority are complete crap, and it’s nauseating.
DevDad
I’ll take two milkshakes and a banana.
What’s wrong with you dude? Add something to the discussion or get out of here with your spam.
60 comments?? All by yourself? impressive.
What do you mean they aren’t SEO friendly? If you don’t want to link out to feedburner they allow you to keep your feed on your domain. If you don’t turn on click tracking or whatever it’s called they don’t touch the links within your feed etc.
I’m not sure what you’re seeing that isn’t SEO friendly.
He’s trying to drive traffic to his site obviously as well as get the Top Commentator link. However, he’s annoyed me to the point that I will specifically avoid his blog and it sounds like I’m not alone.
Commenting a lot is one thing (I’ve been commenting a lot here recently) but I’d like to think that I at least offer some substance and contribute to the conversation rather than just piss people off.
You are hilarious yet annoying.
Yeah, a lot of people aren’t happy with his comments mainly because he is trying to get his blog the most traffic and it almost looks like comment spam.
First Chinese comment in johnchow.com?
I ran it through google’s language tool, and this is the result:
这是新的一个月的开始，也意味着该回报上个月的博客收入了。从2006年9月份开始，看起来是个久远的互联网年代，但实际上只有10个月，我那时候开始决定通过这个博客来研究博客赚钱的情…
means :
“”This is the beginning of the month, also means the return last month of blog income. From September 2006, appears to be a long era of the Internet, but only 10 months, I then decided to start this blog by blog to study the situation to make money.”"
Greetings from France.
Lova Of BlogaDollar.