John Chow dot Com rambles about many topics. However, the focus on most of the posts is to make money online. This is something I’ve been able to do with other sites but I have never tried it with a blog until seven months ago. That’s when I started a case study to see if you really can make money on the Internet with a personal blog. It has been a fascinating journey so far.
Starting with just Google AdSense, John Chow dot Com made $352.94 in its first month as a moneymaking blog. In October, blog income jumped to $1,361.64 as I added more revenue sources. And it continued to go up: $2,139.93 in November, $2,790.05 in December, $3,440.66 in January and $7,011.05 last month.
With six months of non-stop growth, one has to wonder when the party will end. Well, I’m happy to report that the party is still going on!
Total Blog Income For March 2007: $8,545.25
I was actually skeptical about beating the February income because so much of it came from the 50% ReviewMe sale. There was no ReviewMe sale in March so advertisers had to pay full price for a review. However, it turns out advertisers like this blog so much, they buy with or without a sale. Here is the income breakdown.
- ReviewMe: $2,400
- Affiliate Sales: $1,962.20
- Text Links Ads: $1,308.06
- Google AdSense: $1,129.60
- Direct Ad Sales: $625.00
- Vibrant Media: $357.08
- Kontera: $296.12
- TTZ Media: $278.92
- FeedBurner Ads: $188.27
- Grand Total: $8,545.25
Blog traffic for March was 313,510 page views from 152,471 unique visitors, according to Google Analytics. This is a nice increase over February results but still off the 229,853 unique visitors and 360,967 page views posted back in October.
Blog expenses for the month was $480.75 for Google IM ads to other blogs and $197.45 in normal Google ads. John Chow dot Com is hosted on the TTZ Media servers for free. I estimate the hosting value at $25 per month. My friends at Bluefur.com has a $24.95 Enhanced Unix package that will easily handle the traffic this blog gets (use promo code JohnChowRock to get 15% off).
If you take the blog income and divide it by the blog page view, you get a site wide eCPM (effective cost per 1000) of $27.26. This is a crazy high rate for a blog. Most blogs are happy making a buck or two per 1000 page views. How much would your blog make if you can get $27.26 per 1000 page views? Here is how I do it.
Never Stop Tweaking
After posting over $7,000 of income last month, you figured I would leave well enough alone. In this business, you cannot stop tweaking – there is always something you can do to improve the blog. This something doesn’t mean just tweaking the ads. It also means tweaking the site layout and text. For example, I changed the title of the blog front page from John Chow dot Com The Miscellaneous Ramblings of a Dot Com Mogul to Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com. This helped me rank number two on Google for search term “make money online.”
For this month, I am switching out the TTZ Media ads for Auction Ads. It will be interesting to see how they perform. I also plan to go after the keywords, make money on the Internet. Right now, I am at the middle of page two on the Google SERP. Expect to see me on page one this month. Never stop tweaking!
Add More Income Sources
You must never place all your eggs in Google’s basket. If all you have running on your blog is Google AdSense, you are losing out big time. The key to making money on a blog is the revenue mix. Add as many revenue sources as you can while still offering a good user experience.
A few days ago, I posted about the partnership I set up with Kontera that will allow smaller blogs to use their ContentLink service. If you haven’t signed up for that, you should. It’s a great opportunity for lower traffic sites to take advantage of a revenue source that is only available to high traffic sites. Fill out this application and enter “John Chow Kontera partnership” into the Comments field. The application is sent to my personal account representative. He will approve you based on your blog content and not your traffic level. I made almost $300 with Kontera last month and I know it will make way more this month because I only had it on for 12 days in February.
I had nine sources of blog income in March. If I only ran Google AdSense, I would have made just $1,129.60 instead of $8,545.25. At the very least I think you should sign up for ReviewMe, Text Link Ads and Kontera. ReviewMe and TLA have fairly high entrance requirements, but anyone can sign up to Kontera through this blog.
For The First Time Visitor/Blogger
If you’re new to the world of blogging and want to know how to make money on the Internet, I recommend you read all the old posts from the Making Money From a Blog series. This will show you step-by-step, how I took this blog from zero to better than fulltime income. You should also check out the Top Posts. This is where I link to some of my best work with many articles talking about making money online.
I also recommend you read the comments left on this blog. John Chow dot Com has a very vibrant and active community of users with great ideas to share. Please consider joining it.
April is going to be a real interesting month. I have new ad sources running and AGLOCO is set to release their Viewbar. You think I’ll be able to beat March earnings? 
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