Back in September of 2006, I made a decision to see how much money I can make by blogging. Before, the blog served as a personal journal to ramble about whatever was on my mind. Since one of my rambling topics was about make money online, it made perfect sense to use this blog as a case study to show what one can achieve when all the stops were pulled out.
The blog has seen some amazing revenue growth in the past nine months. Starting in September, John Chow dot Com made $352.94 (all of it coming from Google AdSense) and went all the way to $11,702.66 in April. However, the income dropped to $10,559.40 in May.
June is the start of summer. Advertising revenue generally slow down during this time. Add in the fact that Google put me in their dog house half way though the month (June 16 to be exact) and you would expect income to go down again. However, I’m happy to report that summer and Google hasn’t done much to stop my rise.
Total Blog Income For June 2007: $12,569.61
The original goal of this case study was to create full time income with part time blogging. I think everyone would agree that we are well beyond full time income. However, John Chow dot Com is still a part time venture for me (it’s really a hobby). Here is the June income breakdown.
- ReviewMe: $3,800.00
- Affiliate Sales: $3,213.02
- Text Link Ads: $1,506.71
- Private Ad Sales: $1,440.00
- Kontera: $1,000.00
- Google AdSense: $778.90
- TTZ Media: $339.85
- Buy Me a Beer: $219.39
- FeedBurner: $201.74
- Subscription: $70.00
- Grand Total: $12,569.61
Blog traffic was 315,827 page views from 165,805 visitors. That works out to a site wide effective CPM of $39.79. In other words, I make nearly $40 for every 1,000 page views. That is NYTimes.com level rates. Most blogs are happy if they can pull down $1 to $2 CPM.
Looking at the revenue numbers, you can see Google AdSense took a big drop from last month. This is due to the summer advertising slow down. The blog is still getting the same level of clicks, but the income I earn from those clicks have gone down because advertisers lower their bids during the summer months. Luckily, I have many flat-rate ad setups that are not affected by seasonal changes.
The above income figures illustrates why you should never pull all your eggs in Google’s basket. If all I did was run Google AdSense, I would have made only $778.90. You should run as many advertising systems as you can get away with while still offering a good user experience. Check out my recommended money makers to find out more about all the ad networks I use.
Blog advertising expenses for the month was $467.05 for SiteMatch Google ads and $278.32 for normal Google ads. Hosting for John Chow dot Com is provided by BlueFur web hosting. The blog is hosted on a BlueFur Xlite dedicated server which cost $169.95 per month. Use coupon code JohnChowRocks for 15% off.
Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com E Book
Every time I post a monthly blog income recap, I get a ton of email from readers asking how I did this and how I did that and how can they do it too. Most of these questions I have already answered in the blog. However, not many people want go through 100+ pages of blog posts or use the blog search feature. To better serve readers wanting to make money by blogging, I have created an E book on the subject. Best of all, it cost zero dollars (and comes with a 1 million times money back guaranteed).
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