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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(21 votes, average: 4.19 out of 5)
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Very nice.
congrats, john
that’s some decent income
WOW. CONGRATULATIONS JOHN. You really inspire me with your evil genius ways. Good luck! for July.
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Dear John, I downloaded your book a couple of days ago; not only does it contain *highly valuable* information, it’s also written in an entertaining, easy-to-read tone. Congrats, very nice work!
Wow! Wow! Wow!
I am amazed. Really. I know your secret John! I know How You did it John! You Built slowly but surely for almost 10 months now. That’s the way to go. Gaining natural link love from search engines and the bloggers community, in a natural fashion. And Bingo, traffic, momentum, authority etc with hard consistent work. Nothing Overnight.
And most of all, you apply the Mother Of All The Make REAL money online Secrets, what I call “HYOPOF” which means ”Have Your Own Product Or Fail!”. John, You have your own product which is This blog johnchowDotCom and that way you will not fail. “HYOPOF to all of you guys !!!” Now I also have my Own Product which is http://www.blogadollar.com and that way I will not fail. I get there slowly but surely too.
Beware John! I’m coming.
Wow, I wish my hobbies paid that well.
NICE ONE JC
yeh very nice 12k is quite the accomplishment. Keep up the good work.
I find the $40 CPM to be the really astounding figure…
Well done JC…hope one day i can make such money from my blog
same here, but it’s difficult
He’s been a role model to us all — cheers, John!
Well done indeed!
You’ve become a mentor to thousands John!
Wow!(What a great hobby)
I´m going to read you’re book.
Maybe there’s a chance for us (the beginners)!
I have read it. Lots of good stuff there.
Yes, I agree it is very informative. I actually read it when I had just started blogging and it really helped a lot.
the book is very good, but i felt its too hard to get a user click on a particular advt to get revenue. Even if one follows all the advice in john chow’s ebook still revenue comes only on clicks. I still trying hard to get traffic to my site which is a big task
i read part of it too
informative indeed, but i’m sure it’s difficult to replicate john’s success. we just have to add our own tweaks in order to make it work to our advantages
Yup, it’s a really good book! It got me started on it on my site…
The ebook gives readers a great head start.
Grats!
Cool income report. I wonder %25 percent of it
what do you mean?
Congratulations for your performance!
But how you get traffic? and people who wish to visit again?
It is a problem that my blog isn’t written in english? Thank you for sharing you experience and knowledge!
i think after you get the words out, it’s all down to quality and informative contents.
it’s not a problem that your blog is not written in english, there are plenty popular blogs out there written in different languages for different group of people
quality sells!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
that’s true; but not completely. My blog for example is written in German, that decreases the potential visitors base enormously. If you run your blog in English, you can not only count on all the English native-speakers, but on plenty User from other countries too, who can read and write English very well.
But speaking personally, I can only say that translating everything is drag… I haven’t decided to do that yet, but may I’ll switch to bilingual some time in the future.
Great report as always John!
Congrats John, would sure be nice to see where your traffic came from though, is it mostly repeat visitors? Google traffic? What?
all of above and traffic from digg, stumbleupon…..
Nice stats!
I wonder if you change your “Buy me a beer” to “Buy me a coffee” if that will increase or decrease your donations?
Let’s face it, John seems more of a beer person than a coffee person. Beer is probably his best bet for those “donations.”
Yah I remember he drank a really tall beer in Taipei…
lol, maybe the few prohibitionists that are still around? I’ve also seem someone change it to buy me a root beer
That’s it?
Hehe, nice going, John! I wouldn’t mind making that much in a year from my blog!
It does sound like a pretty decent annual blogging income, doesn’t it.
yup it really does! He’s my goal I am working towards!
Very great job! Did you get any donations this month? I really think you should include that in your reports
.
Thats Called Buy me a beer in the List…
I’m shocked that he’s pulled in that much from that plugin… Wow.
Gz John. Keep it up so the next car you may buy will be a 911 and not some Acura
I’m reasonably confident that John could have afforded something more expensive, but just because you HAVE money doesn’t mean that you have to SPEND it all.
Nope, there are also more expensive cars than a 911 but the 911 is just a beauty.
And when you become a parent, I guess most often than not you think about the family first before splurging on the next extravagant thing that comes to mind.
Congrats John! I am going to try and optimize my blog with other advertising networks this month.
John,
Just curious, what percent of the 165,805 visitors came from Search engines, namely Google?
Thanks a lot for this, I have searched your blog and seen most of those in posts, but some I have not. Thank you again for this E-Book!
congrats on the income
you are definitely making a killing on reviewme
Time to rename the blog to Make Money With ReviewMe!
if it would make him more money he might just do that
Indeed… my site is in German, that’s a big problem with ReviewMe.
[...] simply wow. John Chow just released his June stats for his blog and he made a whopping $12,569.61. And he calls it a part time job, a [...]
Out of interest do you pay Michael Kwon to do the ReviewMe’s? If so have you accounted for that?
Best wishes, truely impressive!
Michael Kwan is Canadian. He works for food.
It