Be careful not to try so hard to make money with your blog. Sometimes, like in the example I’m talking about below, you can do “too much” and as I’ve said before, you will start to lose your credibility and readership.

Read this comment on a post over at Problogger. #18 comment to be exact. He’s talking about JohnChow.com. The post is talking about using donations to monetize your blog.

I immediately thought of John Chow as an example of how NOT to do this.

While he does have a loyal readership he breaks a few of your other rules:

1. Already Monetizes in Other Ways - when I saw he put ‘buy me a beer’ on his blog I got really angry. He boasts every month about how much he earns and then has the arrogance to ask us for a few extra dollars?

2. Offers Little Value - he used to write some good valuable content but lately his blog has become largely about doing paid reviews, swapping links (in the name of ‘reviews’), boasting about his earnings. The actual tips about making money online are few and far between.

3. Greed - he’s recently even started charging people to leave comments without no-follow tags.

4. Buy me a beer on every post - I’m already sick of seeing that link at the bottom of every post.

Thanks for your tips on this Darren. I hope others do it in a more sensible way.

The reader is right. It is only a matter of time before a loyal readership decides that enough is enough. They start asking themselves, “Is this blogger really trying to help me, or just make money?” When they think the latter, they begin to question the blogger’s credibility and as soon as that happens a loyal reader can fade away fast.

I’ve had my issues with John Chow before, particularly way back in November of 2006 right here on this blog when I wrote about how this could actually happen to John.

Do you want to be known as a thought-leader, well respected in your community… or that internet marketing guy who pushes stuff just to make a buck?

Is that starting to happen? I don’t want to say I told you so. I’d rather use it as an example for other bloggers to learn from.

Promotion and marketing is all fine and good. Heck, I do it all over the place. The difference is that I’m not writing frequent content specifically to make money (paid reviews, etc…). Rather, I’m trying to help people. Has John’s blog gone too far?

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