I’ve been using the buy me a beer WordPress plugin for the past three months and it has worked well with readers buying me over $600 of beer. However, I will be removing the plugin at the end of this month so if you wish to buy me a beer for all my hard work, you need to do it in the next two days.
Why I Am Removing The Plugin
The reason I’m removing the Plugin is not because it’s not making enough money – the plugin makes more than FeedBurner. I’m removing it because the buy me a beer link shows up in the full feed RSS and competes with the RSS advertisers. This will deliver more value to the blog sponsors.
To further increase the value for the RSS sponsors, I will be removing FeedBurner RSS ads as well. The Buy Me a Beer plugin will run until the end of the month. It will be turn off in September. I doubt it will ever come back.
Two RSS Text Ads Spot Available
I am almost sold out of RSS Text ads. There are only two spots remaining. It would be nice to go into September with all RSS text ads sold out. If you’re looking to reach 8,000 RSS readers for only $200, then this is an inexpensive way to do it.
*Update – All RSS spots are now sold. And thanks to Nhu Y Nguyen and Darin Carter for buying me a beer.
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There’s a reason behind everything here right… good way to sell those last 2 links!
Yeah i like the way he treats his advertisers. To give them more exposure he is removing 2 incoming resources, that shows he respects his money but he also respects people that advertise on JohnChow.com blog.
Great way to go John.
That is definitely nice. since advertisers are demanding! So it is nice you’re doing that for your advertisers! smart move.
could it also have been that there was such a slow take up to this one compared to his other sales?
yea it makes me wanna advertise on this blog even more!
There’s a reason behind everything here. I agree.
I bet the very last beer buyers will get at least a mention on johnchow.com and a backlink. Will you buy John the last beer? Will I? hmmm…
John may be evil, but he definitely knows how to treat his advertisers. That’s part of the reason he’s so successful.
Do you think John will manage to hit the $1000 mark with a last minute buying frenzy – if anyone can John can.
Wow…I think so many people have emulated your Buy Me a Beer strategy over all this time….it had a good run though! There should be a way to prevent certain web page items from appearing in the feed – a NoFollow for feeds perhaps?
- Raymond (MONEY BLUE BOOK)
Agreed- I think it did a pretty good job, but with all of the other revenue from RSS to be coming in… you should be more than okay. *=)
Good strategy – and thanks for explaining.. it totally makes sense.
Did you drink $600 worth of beer though?
Oh that would be fun reading…after he has drank beers for $600
well if he wasn’t a drunk before he is now!
I highly doubt it
I wonder, does he need to offer beer receipts for the IRS? It’s just crazy enough that it wouldn’t surprise me.
Quick! Everybody make a beer run! Get this man a beer (or two).
Buy me a beer didn’t seem to fit in very well with the new sleak JohnChow.com anyway.
Still thinking about one of those ad spots, if only I could come up with something clever to do with it.
Yeah you’re right – it’s a little bit cheesy now the site has been redesigned.
I never was a fan of the buy me a beer plugin, especially now that everyother blog on the planet has some variation, tea,coffee, root beer. I am a fan of keeping revenue streams very relevant to the site so I would be a big fan of say a bear blog with a buy me a bear plugin
I wouldn’t want any of my readers to buy me a bear! It’d likely maul me to death!
It wouldnt be a mean bear
I would love to buy a bear! A big and dangerous one!
Drinks are quite dull but exotic animals win everytime!
Well the big question is John, how many beers have you been drinking while blogging? (For me, average is about 5-6 a day, well usually I am drinking some unfiltered Korean rice wine or Soju but if I am drinking MGDs…)
5 or 6 – blimey that’s quite impressive! Do you think that helps with your blogging or makes it harder!
If I attemtped that I think I’d end up under the desk!
Check your email John!
Good idea John. I never understood how you managed to drink all that beer anyway.
What I find more interesting is the advertising page that the bottom link brings you to. Interesting that you are no longer going to allow the ad flipping. What’s the matter, getting out of hand and resulting in too much extra work with no pay? Why not charge for an ad-flip instead?
I find ad flipping too much like scalping at a sold out show.
Really? That surprises me a little bit. I thought you would have been right behind a concept like this.
I’d be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on this if you have the time?
Thanks
John, I have a make money online idea for you, and it will take you under an hour to do. Think of it as “An Hour In The Life of JohnChow.com”
1. Get Camtasia
2. Record a screen video of you setting up the button ads on the right blog column, your RSS ads, your TLA ads, post-level ads, etc.
3. Record setting up your RSS feed in Facebook, handling your email, etc (basic blog business-running type stuff)
4. Upload the 50-60 minute video to your Kunaki.com account and sell the dvd for $47 from a link on your blog.
I’ll be your first customer. You’ll easily make $50K for one hours work. You can even use it as a front-end for people to pay $4000 to fly to Vancouver for private consulting or your boot camp!
Yeah, I will buy it for sure. But give your loyal readers some discount.
Discounts are generally smoke and mirrors!
John, I appreciate your thoughts for your advertisers. This is also an evil strategy of John to sell his last 2 ad spots.
Please dont drink too much beer and might turn John Chow to Chohn Jhow
Thats interesting http://www.chohnjhow.com
Hey John,
I have a money making idea for you. How about a “Money Making Social Network” using Pligg? If you let me aggregate your posts on it, I will make it. Free advertising for John for sure… We can get everyone with a Money Making blog to participate. Just an idea for a bigger evil scheme.
enjoy your ‘buy me a beer’ for last two days too!
You can very easily put a buy me a beer link in your single.php template file below the post. This would allow you to keep making beer money and it won’t show up in your feed. You get the best of both worlds.
Maybe I’ll open up my stingy pocket book and buy John a beer tomorrow.
All RSS Text Ads spots have been sold.
John, did my ad get in sent about 15 mins ago thanks
Yes, you got the last spot.
Thanks John , that’s great
Suzie, I will meet you on the next RSS feed. I took the other one for my download site/blog directory.
At least, I won’t compete with the beer or bear
I never liked buy me a beer and neither did a lot of people. Glad it’s gone.
John, why don’t you just put a link somewhere else on your page not in your theme? Something to the effect of “If you enjoy the hard work I do, then buy me a beer!”
Have you considered delving into code to make the plugin not show up on the feed? That way you can keep it on posts and keep one of your income streams.
I could do that but then the plugin would be competing against the blog advertisers.
I don’t see why you can’t still have it only your blog. I use it on my blog simply buy editing the template and entering the code. I don’t use a plugin to have it. Check it out here, http://www.aspkin.com, by the way, I love the way your website looked so, like other webmasters has to take advantage of it.
Good luck
It’s last call at the John Chow bar
Is there a buy me a meal plugin? Or is that one easily editable?
Or perhaps a “Buy a supermodel a meal” plugin?
Dear Mr. Chow;
This is Jose, a new fan of you from Spain, Europe. I’m fan of the beer too, so I’d like to tell you that you can enter the “buy me a beer” code where ever you want in your template without the inconvenience of the rss feeds.
1 Create a new paypal donation item
2 Edit single.php and index.php and copy/paste this at the end of the loop;
Buy me a beer!
3 change https://www.paypal.com/… in this example for your paypal donation address.
4 include a beer icon with css; background-image:url(images/iconbeer.gif)
Check it working here -> joseperdicion.com
Buy me a beer! if you found useful this piece of advice.
Jose
With all the money you make, you should be buying ME the beer.
good bye to buy me a beer
Hey John,
I have never been one to complain about too many adverts but I am starting to think that your RSS feed might have too many at the moment to the point that I dont even look at them anymore. I felt that one or two link adverts at the end of each post was about ideal and i always seemed to take notice of them. But now that there is 6 I think its just too much for me too take in when skimming past. But I guess they aren’t pay per click so the evil one still wins anyway!
macgoo
code didn’t appear ok so let’s try again;
Buy me a beer!
Last try; change * for Buy me a beer! */a*
Damn it! I e-mail you the code
how many people have bought you a beer so far?
I didn’t keep track. I say over 100.
$600 worth of beer is good..u will miss them
Three months get over $600 of buy you a beer that’s very impressive.
Thanks for the plug, hopefully we will get to drink a beer together in person soon!
Darin
Get some Shiner Bock with that dough, John.
Hey John,
Why don’t you just have it so it doesn’t appear in your RSS feed?
I’m not going to click on your ads, but I might buy you a beer… tsk tsk
Perhaps the real reason you removed the plugin was because you were drinking so much beer you couldn’t get any work done?
Hehehe, Well according to his last stats/income report I would have to say that he works very well under the influence of beer.
Surely that would be an incentive to keep it in place! Sounds like heaven!