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Miscellaneous Ramblings – Weekend Edition

written by John Chow on August 3, 2007

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Kontera Technology

I got an email from my Kontera rep. He said that I have helped over 1,300 publishers discover Kontera ContentLink, which is good. However, many publishers are not giving it a chance, which is bad.

The problem is they either hate what they see after just 1 hour of using us, or they’re not up to speed on all of the different optimizing techniques and efforts that can happen through just giving us time. A lot of them pull without a lot of thought, and given that the majority of our higher paying advertisers don’t kick in until about a week after a site signs up, I think we’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

In my Kontera optimization guide, I stated that Kontera needs at least a week to adjust itself to a new site. The system can’t work if you remove them after a day. If you’re going to run Kontera – and you should since it’s a good moneymaker – you need to give it at least a week. I recommend trying any new ad network for full month because you can’t judge performance with just a few days of data.

Grace Cheng – The Voice of Money

st_grace_screens.jpg

I like to welcome Grace Cheng as a new blog sponsor. Grace makes money online by trading money online – a lot of it. Now that’s my kind of girl! Hopefully, she’ll be able to help with my biggest online income killer.

Grace will be sending me several copies of her book, 7 Winning Strategies For Trading Forex, to give away in a blog contest. In addition to writing the book, Grace offer a course of FX trading and her blog is full of interesting ways to make money by trading money.

Ed & Michael Sitting In A Tree, Bloggggging

Michael Kwan and Ed Lau are working together on a new hockey blog. The only problem is, they don’t know what to call it. So they’re asking for your help.

Think of a good name for a hockey website and send your idea to hockeyblogideas@yahoo.com. Please include your domain idea in the subject line and perhaps a short blurb about why you think it’d be a good name in the body. Make sure that the domain is an unregistered dot com. We are not going to settle for a .ca, .net, or any of that garbage. You can check on Go Daddy.

The person who sends in the winning name will win an 8GB iPod nano. There will also be a random draw for a 4GB nano. Full rules are available here.

Reverse Culture Shock

My friend Carl Nelson just came back to Vancouver after spending the last two years in Hong Kong. Carl is doing the “get the hell out of Canada to avoid tax” game. In his latest blog entry, Carl write about the reverse culture shock he suffered upon landing back in Vancouver.

While I was laying in bed trying to get back to sleep half an hour ago, I was thinking back to my first full day in Canada in almost 2 years. There were a few instances of what I can only call ‘reverse culture shock’. Everyday things that have changed in my life since moving to Hong Kong, that are noticable when I come back.

Some of the culturally shocking things includes very expensive food, tipping, mobile phone plans and the fact that Vancouver seems to run in slow motion compared to Hong Kong. Hey! We like to relax here. :cool:

Can a Nobody Be Successful Online?

Kyle sent me an email asking me to start a new blog but not tell anyone I am behind it. He says it would be good motivation and proof that a nobody can be a somebody.

In this experiment you would detail your strategy, hardships and successes at starting this new blog (an experiment) but never mention the actual blog url/name. You can always sell it off at the end, or give it away on johnchow.com as massive super challenge/reward… to gain a ton of publicity for john chow dot com.

Good idea Kyle. I’ll think up something at tomorrow’s Dot Com Pho.

Can a Freelance Writer Really Make Money Online?

Freelance writer Chris Bibey has posted his freelance writing income for July 2007. He pulled down $4,894.78 by writing 43 articles. That’s pretty good! I wonder if he’s doing better than Michael Kwan?

John Cow Goes To The Slaughter House

It looks like the cows are about to come home for John Cow. The growing parody site has been slapped with a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Carefully considering our current position, we have decided that it’s time to give in. The money we’ve made so far would not cover any lawsuit. It is with great regret that we are throwing in the towel because we really thought we were well on our way to become dot cow millionaires.

Before anyone ask, it’s not me suing the cow. This is one of those sue them to rack up their legal bills type of lawsuit. The guy is not looking to win. He knows he won’t. However, he also knows the cow doesn’t have the milk to pay for a lawyer. I’m going to work with the cow to see if we can come up with some evil way to get him out of his legal mess.

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To Kyle's idea:

I like the concept, but part of what makes John Chow successful is his writing style, wit, ability to make money online and more. Even if he did make a blog and not tell anyone about it, he has something that many "nobody's" don't have - his writing style, wit, ability to make money online and more.

See what I'm saying? If John Chow does this it's not the perfect example of going from a nobody to a somebody - he already is a somebody. What would be better is if he coached nobody or perhaps tracked a nobody's progress somehow...

I guess I just think the concept is good, but I'm sure he'd be a success at it anyway.

Hope you and the cow can work something out, gosh maybe I need to remove my 2 cars on my blog as well... :twisted:

I have to say, that you have to give Kontera a chance. The folks that aren't are silly.

This ended up being a great post! Thanks so much John!

In regards to the nobody blog, I think it would be OK to start with a dot com, but I have a couple ideas about it. First of all, there would have to be a rule that there can be no mention of the blog or link to it on johnchow.com at all (wouldn't want him to favor himself) and it would probably be best if he were to host it with a completely different hosting provider (not BlueFur) to make it harder for us to figure out.

I used Kontera but nearly every second word on my site was underlined, rather than two or so words in each post on your site. Anyone know how to lower the number?

So Grace Cheng makes SO much money with forex, that she decided to waste her own time to produce a book that can't possibly match her "profits" on forex. This sounds like one of those late night infomercials put out by the real estate millionaire. Unfortunately for some of these guys, the millions were made on their infomercial, and not their investing skill.

Unless you are JK Rowling or John Grisham, you probably don't want to write a book just for the money. Look at George Soros, he's done fairly well with his funds and yet he's written 3 or 4 books.

The Cows are back. God, can't somebody tell us what's going on? Or is that the plan?

Part of the art of being evil is never revealing the plan.

If you start another blog as a "nobody" I would suggest starting it from some type of free blogging site and then move to a dot com. Go from truly nothing to something.

New theory: John Chow and Cow are two different people, but John Chow paid off John Cow to have all of his readers come to him now. Something orchestrated in the beginning.

But I was able to snag a talk with both Chow and Cow. Coming up soon, on My New Hustle! :)

Either way the whole things sucks. Not your talk the other stuff. :wink:

And just to have fun and review the whole situation I have started a contest to comment on my site about what do you feel whether the cows should have lived or not? Best comment wins.. :evil:

Leave it to a frivolous lawsuit to ruin all the fun. But as they say you can't keep a good cow down.

Does anyone know if Shoemonkey.com is taken?

Regarding Kontera... I didnt know that there is referral program alo, I connot find any referral links there.
If there is someone looking for similar program to Kontera than look here: http://www.webmaster-money.org/MediaText.html

So I guess that John Chow now gets hits for all the stupid posts we put up for the contest right?

Nicceeeeeeeee. Forget that!

What wrong with the Mad Cow?

If John Cow is dead, has anyone called dibs on the filet mignon?

If not, I'll take it.

(I'm talking, of course, about all the revenue! ahahaha)

About the whole JohnCow.com matter, the guy could have simply removed the copyrighted material from his site, and keep everything else up.. I don't understand why he took the whole site down....

The verdict about this whole thing isn't out yet. But the truth will be known soon...

And the biggest question is why would his site be redirected to JohnChow?? Did he redirect his domain to JohnChow as a compensation to whatever he did to JohnChow?? I think JohnChow himself is the best person to answer all this..

Seems a new twist to the story??? :shock:

John I dont think it was just 43 single articles

:twisted: I'm beginning to wonder if JohnCow.com was not a parody of John's blog, but orchestrated by none other than John Chow himself! Could that be right? If so, that'd be twistedly :twisted:

http://www.investorblogger.com/archives/johncowcom...

Evil knows no limits!

I wouldnt put it past him but would put money on that he didnt do it

I know, but it makes a nice conspiracy! Anyway, redirecting the traffic is still quite shrewd!

Kenneth :grin:

I bet John Chow just really wanted that USB Drink Cooler:
http://www.johnchow.com/the-winner-of-the-usb-drin...

Its a Cowspiracy :razz:

Of course, it could be a Chowspiracy????!

Thanks for the mention John.

I sure understand what you mean about how the declining USD affects online businesses since most charge in US dollars.

Even the PowerFX Course I've created is priced in USD.

One good thing though, it makes it cheaper for people to buy stuff priced in US dollars.

Very true grace, there are two sides to the decline

agree. dude where is your avatar?? anyhow, i am rising like johnchow, in a few weeks my blog would be as big as john chow. no lie!

wheres your avatar?

dude you have 1 subscriber

Make that 2, I just saw another one. But he says nothing about how he is going to rise to be so big, so fast.

Grace's website is very powerful and well done. Amazing marketing of her own identity in a very crowded, huge niche market. Incredible.

Thanks Jack! Glad you like it.

isnt it, i looked at it and i was like 'wow', very striking

I am a confirmed fan of Kontera - I have a higher click tbru rate than with AdSense. Might be the result of AdSense Blindness whereas Kontera is relatively new for some readers.

ive been thinking about trying but think it will really p*ss off my regular visitors

Read Steve Pavlina's blog and you'll see this was not the case with him.

I just wonder does Kontera working fine for Chinese blog? :neutral:

Thanks for the mention John. Also, thanks for everybody who commented on my freelance writing income. It can be a tough industry to break into, but as you can see, it is possible. The money I made in July is only half of what I did in some previous months this year!

Thanks again to everybody!

I've been using Kontera for 6 months now and the results have been suprisingly good. It's been worth a few hundred extra $'s a month and hasn't impacted on my Adsense at all. I prefer to give any ad network 3 months before making my mind up.

The only possible downside to Kontera is that it can really slow up your pages.

The anonymous blog looks like a great idea. But I wonder how long would it take for someone to recognize John's writing style, if we writes the posts himself.

I highly doubt that you would find it though with the millions of blogs out there...

Unless he hosted it on the same server or something

I'm starting a brand new blog and devouring your blog John to find out as much as I can to promote it successfully. If you decide to start a new blog as a nobody, I would be very interested in the results! It could give some of us bloggers out there some hope.