John Chow dot Com Income Report - September 2007
One Full Year of Monetized Blogging
In September 2006, I decided to try a little experiment to see if it was possible to make money by blogging. Before that date, John Chow dot Com made zero. The blog was just a place for me to post my miscellaneous ramblings. However, one of the topics I like to ramble about is how to make money online so it made sense to do a case study on that by monetizing the blog.
John Chow dot Com finished September 2006 with $352.94 in blog income, all of it coming from Google AdSense. It’s amazing what can happen in only one year.
Total Blog Income For September 2007: $20,512.17
If someone would have told me in September 2006 that a year from now, the blog would make over $20,000 a month, I wouldn’t have believed it. Yet, here we are. I can only imagine where this blog will be in another year. Here’s the income breakdown.
- Private Ad Sales: $7670.00
- Affiliate Commissions: $7,244.94
- Text Link Ads: $2,047.23
- ReviewMe: $2,000.00
- Kontera: $1,000.00
- AuctionAds: $500.00
- Subscriptions: $50.00
- Grand Total: $20,512.17
Blog traffic was up slightly at 338,859 page views from 176,354 visitors, according to Google Analytics. If you take the blog’s page view and divide it by the blog income you will get a site wide eCPM of $60.53. That means for every 1000 page views, this blog makes over $60, or 6 cents per view. It’s an astronomical number. Most blogs would kill for this eCPM rate. How much would your blog make if you could get $60 for every 1000 page view?
RSS subscriptions continued to trend upwards and should break the 9,000 reader mark within the next week. The competition with Shoemoney over who can get the most new RSS readers will help drive the RSS count. Please subscribe if you haven’t already done so.
Private ad sale overtook affiliate sales to become the blog’s number 1 money maker. The best performing affiliate program for September was Text Link Ads, accounting for $1,850 of the $7,244.94 affiliate income. TLA has been a consistent money maker for me and I highly recommend them.
If you look at my blog income reports from the past year, you’ll see the revenue mix has changed a lot. This is one of the keys to the success of the blog. Making money from blogging is a constantly moving target and you can never stand still. This blog started with Google AdSense. It no longer runs Google AdSense. You have to keep experimenting with your revenue mix to get the maximum income out of each page view. Check out my recommended moneymakers to find out more about all the ad networks I use.
Blog expense for the month include $602.43 for Google Adwords advertising, $25 for a private ad and $90 for a page on the Million Euro Wiki. You can get a wiki page for $90, instead of $100, by using coupon code JohnChow at checkout. Hosting for John Chow dot Com is sponsored by BlueFur Web Hosting. Use coupon code JohnChowRocks for 15% off any BlueFur hosting packages.
Sign Up For The John Chow dot com Newsletter
If you haven’t already done so, I high recommend you sign up for the John Chow dot Com newsletter (sign up form at the top of the page). Not only is the newsletter free but you’ll also get my ebook, Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com, for free when you sign up. 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 have already been answered in the ebook.
We are about to enter the Internet’s biggest advertising months. I cannot stress enough that NOW is the time to set up that website or blog so you can take advantage of the Q4 advertising bonanza. $20,512.17 is a great record income but I have a feeling it’s about to be broken.
- Posted in Make Money Online, The Net
- 210 comments what's your take?
Is that all?
Reply to this commenthaha. you wish, and so do i, that we made that much off our blogs.
btw john, you should have a waybackwhenmachine post of how the site used to look and how it looks now. would be interesting.
Reply to this commentfigured i would do it myself:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.johnchow.com/
seems like john had some joke sites too. goes all the way back to august 2000.
Reply to this commentI think those are not from john already.
Reply to this commentthis means that even if you don’t have adsense account, you can really earn money
Reply to this commentYou make more Cow? lol
Reply to this commentWhy do you believe in everything John Chow tells you?
Reply to this commentI dont see any reason why someone who makes money in blogging would lie on his income.
Reply to this comment
Reply to this commentTake it or leave it. So simple…
Reply to this commentCongrats - now it is time to pick a good charity and make some donations as well!
Reply to this commentWhen is the last time John did one?
Reply to this commentMake Donation and you income will be more
Reply to this commentIs this the only blog website you run? Have you thought about running several sites? More sites = more money making opportunities. Great figures though! Rather stunning
Reply to this commentCow, go away from this blog, will you?
) i’ll scan my own things - no need for another RankXerox 
If I want to read something from a scanner (or maybe “m”
See if someone else came up with a new concept to copy
Cow-uhh-boy
Reply to this commenthaha….nice one…
are you doing better?
Reply to this commentIts amazing to see how far you’ve come. I remember when you first put Adsense on your blog. My how this site has evolved.
Reply to this commentNice work John!
Reply to this commentYou put me to shame.
Quite impressive. I’ve been following the blog since early 2007 and you’ve come so far with monetizing it.
Reply to this comment
20,512.17 $ that`s realy nice !!! i hope to be there soon to make some bucks by blogging soon. keep on motaviting me like this.
Reply to this commentIf i can make 1% of what you are making now, I will surely be a happy man! ^^ Congrats for another month breaking the record. I am sure you will go much higher.
Reply to this comment$200 is a realistic target for any blogger, it’s amazing how your income can snowball if you just stick at it and keep doing the right things.
Reply to this commentI only make $366USD in September.
Reply to this commenthttp://adsense-tw.com/archives/801
Indeed $200 is not a hard task. With a decent traffic and a nice mix of ppc and affiliates you should easily manage, the hard part is the traffic
Reply to this commentJohn, in retrospect, if you knew today what you knew then, would you have given the blog a different name?
Reply to this commentTom,
Great question.
A domain name with money in it would help with SEO. However, that is a moot point now.
What is important to note is how John understands the internet. Most would have rolled over when Google de-listed their site. Not John, he took it in a different direction.
Evil or Smart? I vote smart.
Reply to this commentIn retrospect, I would have used a different name and kept John Chow dot Com as my personal blog.
Reply to this commentJohn,
Reply to this commentWe haven’t seen any updates regarding Agloco. What is the status on that?
agloco sounding more & more lika scam … no news on the payment
Reply to this commentI guessed many bloggers including me had followed your footsteps of using our own names as our main blogs.
Reply to this commenti think its about branding
find a focal point and work on it
john is evil, so he did ‘evil’ stuff on his blogs
Reply to this commentWow! Great job on the income! Your 1 blog makes more than all my affiliate sales combined ($15,000/month)
Congrats on the success.
Reply to this commentWhat have you done to have such good affiliate performance?
Reply to this commentIt’s interesting how the reviews dropped to 4th place over the last months. With the new theme taylored for advertising, it’s not surprising that Private Ads took over the first place.
Reply to this commentJohn, are you willing to share some more of your affiliate numbers? This month there’s a LARGE chunk that’s left in the dark.
Reply to this commentthat’s amazing income!
you really inspire all of us john
you’re living the dream!
Reply to this commentcongrats. Thats amazing
Reply to this commentNow that’s a lot of money coming from just 1 blog. Imagine if you would start out some more blogs, just like Daren from problogger. Good luck with this new month that is just starting. Try to beat the $25k mark this time. Also you will have a competition that you have to deal with.
Reply to this commentCongrats! 20k in a month is quite the accomplishment!
Reply to this commentWow, great job John! You are really inspiring.
Reply to this commentLet this be one example of “the dream enabler.” Dream about replicating John’s success for yourself, and see it through. Great stuff, John.
Reply to this commentIt is certainly impressive,
but i don’t see the ‘Make Money Online’ articles anymore… only advertisment for other companies (reviewme) or promoting for your own benefit(milliondollarwiki) and some off topic posts.
This may sound like a bashing comment..but it’s just a request for you to begin writing again TRUE ‘Make Money Online’ posts. So ‘we’ your readers have actually something to read….
Reply to this commentOr you dried up??….
I thought you’d break the $20,000 mark this month, fantastic affiliate earnings as well. I wonder how much Deal Dot Com helped?
Reply to this commenthow much time? can do it the same you
Reply to this commentNice work as always John. Great numbers!
Reply to this commentJust wait until those Agloco earnings start kicking in.
HA!
Reply to this commentI just created a MindMap related to this great achievement
Reply to this commenthttp://mappio.com/mindmap/alex/john-chow-dot-com-september-2007-blog-income-20-512-17
I like this mind mapping idea!
Reply to this commentOnly $600 in expenses? What about paying the others that blog for you? Or do you not pay them? If you do, what expense does that bring you to? Interested in seeing what your real profit becomes.
Reply to this commentMichael Kwan is Canadian. He works for food.
Reply to this commentIn other words, he gets a hamburger if he posts 400 words, and hamburger + coke for 600 words post?
Reply to this commentCongrats on the new record John, $20,000 a month is a very comfortable living even with the currency exchange problems you’ve been suffering. So, how long before this “hobby blog” beats the earnings from your day job at TTZ?
Reply to this commentYeh i suppose $20,000 is not too bad in a month. But it isnt really enough to bring up the kids on..
Reply to this commentVery well done. Congratulations.
Have you considered offering shares in your business? You’re the Microsoft in Blogging….
Keep up the godo work. We enjoy your efforts.
Reply to this commentI did not realize that you have only been monetizing your blog for one year. What an accomplishment! I definitely have blog envy.
Reply to this commentJohn, I was wondering when you will come up with the results of your new blog (that one you were going to build from scratch). If you can reach USS 1000 with that blog, then I will raise you to the level of god.
Reply to this commentCongrats John.
The blog is in the content building stage. No ads on it yet. So zero income right now.
Reply to this commentSo I guess you’ll have to remain a mere mortal like the rest of us
Reply to this commentthis is the reason i keep coming back to this site, seeing the amount of $ made just shows that it can be done. patience is a virtue
Reply to this commentImpressive numbers Mr Chow. Keep up the good work. Oh, and don’t forget to check out Wikfreepedia.com .
Shameless plug.
Reply to this commentCongrats John, it’s just amazing
Reply to this commentThat is truly inspiring. If I could make enough money to support a domain, and hosting I would be happy! (thats a joke btw…)
Reply to this commentDefinitely something to shoot for. I think it’s cool to see it work.
Reply to this commentVery impressive figures, where will it go from here i wonder?
Reply to this commentThat’s great achievement!!
Reply to this commentcongrats
Reply to this commentAmazing John! If you continue with that rate in one year, you would be making over 1.140.000 $ in september 2008! Two words for you my friend: Good luck
Reply to this commentHoly crap…now that’s what you call one helluva month…and it’s only going to keep growing!!
Reply to this comment$20,000 is a yearly income for some of us yet you can make just by blogging in a month. This is really an incredible work.
Reply to this commentAbsolutely spectacular! Keep it up John, the sky’s the limit.
Reply to this commentJust wondering — why no mention of Google Adsense? and saying that have you stopped using it for some reason?
Reply to this commentThat is incredible.
Reply to this commentJohn,
It would be helpful for a budding blogger to know what your hosting expenses would be if you were not sponsored. Its one of those fuzzy things thats hard to estimate going into a web centric business.
Ryan
Reply to this commentThe server package BlueFur has John Chow dot Com on cost $500 per month. However, a new budding blogger wouldn’t need such a monster hosting setup. Most will get along find with the $6.95 starter package.
Reply to this commentSure. But with your advice, its only a matter of time.
Reply to this commentCongratulations John. Impressive income.
That’s something that I want to achieve.
Reply to this commentI think you can do better next month. Start leveraging that success with private sales some more.
Reply to this commentCongratulations John!
Reply to this commentFor some reason I was expecting much more this month. I guess its better the $20 something dollars I made this month from my blog.
Bubs
Reply to this commentHey John,
Great job with the way you have monetized your blog.
You inspire all of us to be better bloggers and internet marketers.
I enjoy your monthly income updates!
Cheers,
Reply to this commentCarlo Selorio
Hey John, congrats on breaking the $20, 000 mark. It is incredible that you have done this in just one year.
Reply to this commentGreat job john… Keep up the great work and legible content.
Reply to this commentMany congrats, John!
As many others said, this blog is an unique example on how to monetize your website.
Keep up the good work!
Cheers,
Reply to this commentloredan
Very nice John. I really admire your site and I constantly check my Google Reader for your posts daily. I have a question though. On my blog http://lifeandlanguages.wordpress.com/ is it possible to transfer that to wordpress.org? Sorry if I seem like i’m just putting my link out as publicity but I really want my own .com domain. I would like if you made a post on how to do that for bloggers trying to do that. I hope you keep rolling the $$$ in.
Reply to this commentDid you stop using Adsense because of Google’s anti-John Chow stance or was it because you found more profitable advertising methods? Just curious.
Reply to this commentRay,
more profitable advertising methods (he was making around $600 a month from that spot before he sold it private for over $1,000)
John, the numbers seem too clean this month, were you rounding?
IE:
Reply to this comment# ReviewMe: $2,000.00
# Kontera: $1,000.00
# AuctionAds: $500.00
# Subscriptions: $50.00
No rounding. Those are the correct amounts.
Reply to this commentDo you use Adsense? I didn’t see any. I thought that was the best of all of them.
Reply to this commentAdSense was removed from the blog in September.
Reply to this commenthey John, Put the money up on a contest. I am sure it draw lots traffic. I will be the first to sign up.
Reply to this commentHey, I did put money up on a contest (still running till Sunday), it did drive decent traffic in, but the question seems to be tugher than I thought, not too many answers in
on the other hand, the pool to draw the winner from will not be too large, so chance to win not bad 
Reply to this commentit will be interesting to see how much more in earnings you can go.
As I can see you’ve already added ad spaces on your blog, how do you expand this blogging business? I think, you can’t do much right now, except to keep increasing your readership.
The question then is, why would your readership increase?
Or, what other products can you come up with to make people believe if they use them, they’ll attain the same amount of success? e.g. your milliondollarwiki.com (which I think is made to just make money for the maker, and not the owners unless they keep reselling it upwards)
And one more thing, blogging is not the only way to make money online. Your blog can be misleading at times. If there are another 10,000 blogs writing about making money online, there is so much money to go around in this niche.
Advice: focus on a niche with greater potential
I am speaking from experience of course. I like to read your blog, not really to learn from you, but to learn from the readers of your blog. They tell me really what’s needed in this niche. So I have to thank you for helping us do market research for free.
I wish that your readership goes up, the greater the larger base of potential clients we can learn from.
John Reese did exactly just that with his blogrush. He learnt from you that people are desperately in need of something to boost their traffic. But that doesn’t solve earnings endeavours.
All the mighty best!
Reply to this commentMo ::grin:
P.S. I’ll keep learning from your readers, and commentators of the blog.
Wow. I can only hope for 1/4 in a year or so.
Reply to this commentHey John,
I don’t understand the $2,047.27 TLA versus the $1850 TLA income you mentioned in the post. Is the $2047.27 what you sold for your site and the TLA the number of people you referred to sign up? Please verify, thanks.
Reply to this commentThe $2,047.27 is what I made selling TLA text links. The $1850 is what I made by referring new publishers to TLA.
Reply to this commentThere are a lot of great and “hard” works behind $20,000+!
Reply to this commentMany of us only see the results but do we know the works or ideas before achieving this?
that is incredible
Reply to this commentWhy is Kontera always exactly $1000 every month? Do they have a maximum payout where they won’t pay you more than that amount per month?
Methinks they’re holding out on you.
Reply to this commenti was thinking the same thing. i find it hard to believe that kontera’s earnings is $1000 every month without ever rounding up. And it’s the same every month?? kontera doesn’t pay out in round numbers as the clicks are always of a different amount (unless they have a different pay out scheme for you) — you may want to explain that one further john. i can see reviewme being a perfect figure because it’s $400 a review.
Reply to this commentSame question was asked last month. John has a deal with them at $1k per month.
Reply to this commentI figured it had to be something like that.
Reply to this commentGreat job, John - keep it up! It’d be interesting to see how far your branding could potentially lead you if you had multiple other blogs in other niches. I guess it’s a balance of time and resources.
Reply to this commentMaybe because it was a year you could’ve said the total for the year
Reply to this comment