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?
John Chow has extremely good information on his blog….yea,I know sometimes he doesn’t exactly stay on the marketing subject,but marketing involves what you go through in life,the places you eat,cultural news,etc.
The fact that he commands so much($30k) from monthly ad revenues proves readers like what they find at his blog. I mean c’mon how could he do this if there was nothing valuable?
It may be hard to swallow, but he is one the of leaders of the monetized blogging world. Everyone can learn some lessons from John Chow, whether they are good or bad is up to you.
30k per month ? That’s good coin considering what he’s doing. Netrepreneur, how do you know about this figure? I wonder if carlocab is doing this much?
brazilman’s last blog post..Building Your Own Blogs To Get Backlinks
I have mixed feelings regarding JC. Sometimes he does provide quality information, but it truly does feel like he’s trying to squeeze as much as possible out of his site which makes his site feel sort of ‘forced’ in my opinion. Sort of like, when he reviews things and says they rock, do they really rock? Or is he just telling you what you want to hear because someone is paying him to tell you that?
SeanFu’s last blog post..Kid Builds Paintball Tank
Guys why you so concern on JC? what he’s doing on his blog certainly not for us to concern, is this a matter of ‘JEALOUS’ ?
I spotted this post now only… Really nice write up. In fact, my own blog was started after I started reading John Chow. It is true that of late, he is talking too much about dining, food etc than make money online topics.
Cheers,
Ajith
Ajith Edasserys last blog post..Make money with CreditBurner PTP Network
John Chow Dot Com is evil blogging at it’s best
Benjamins last blog post..Will the real John Chow please stand up?
I disagree, I think Chow did a very good job in optimizing his blog and at the same time feed his readers with some valuable information. As we understand, we can’t just tell people how to make money, that’s not the way. JC will not be around if he tells everything about what he did. But he did share some informational knowledge on his blog.
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My view is develop some good script for helping spam protection automatically like if your past related advise or comment then it should approve other wise disapprove .
Yes, he should just let it roll, and not to push it so much. It was doing just fine!
Agreed the only credible thing on John Chow's blog is his e-book everything else is just an affiliate scam. He is a hypocrite as he always says content is the most important thing yet he delivers nothing of quality.
I disagree with your post. I really like John Chow's style. Have you downloading his free ebook on blogging? Wow. Great stuff. I have already applied many of the ideas in this no frills ebook and it has substantially improved my blog. I still have not even finished reading it all because I wanted to implement the suggestions he had right away. He is not the typical snobby blogger who is "above making money." He is straight up about this. He is honest that he is coming from a marketing perspective. We need more like him. By the way, your blog looks very sharp too. Kudos.
?????
Some of the comments you people have made are cries of jealousy and envy AKA "HATE" grow up
your site not as profitable try something new ,some of you people would be served well learning from John Chow.
John Chow is an example of a person who take full advantage of what he got and others don't
I'm agree too
John is a businessman and a business man will do what a business man will do. The guy is an absolute creative and a crazy genius in making money online.
Never cared to read John Chow's blog, but it appears that he's been doing pretty good :)
I've come across a lot of these posts. In fact, they show up pretty high in the search rankings when I search for "john chow blog." I actually like the content on Chow's blog, but I agree that the number of ads on there is ridiculous! I remember him writing that he first started that blog and had no ads for like 7 or 8 months because, well, content is king. Once he had a following, however, he put a gazillion ads on there. Why? He could make the same amount of money if he eliminated some of the ads on there. The demand for the remaining ads would increase, and therefore, their price would increase.