I make a decent amount of income with this blog, but it surely isn’t $40,000 a month like John Chow claims to make from his.
Much of this is my own fault, lack of split testing offers, and not being overly concerned with churning out a profit on this site. However, after seeing this presentation below from John Chow, it sort of makes me want to focus a bit more on increasing the revenue generated around here.
Blogger and marketing expert John Chow claims to make around $40,000 a month with his blog. This video was filmed at the Vancouver Business, Marketing & Entrepreneur Meetup Group where John reveals his blog/business model.
My Blog Business Model from John Chow on Vimeo.
After doing well with other facets of Internet Marketing & Social media, im only now starting to work on my own blog ..geez that was a long time coming. Your blog is one of the few i enjoy reading and look forward to watching the John Chow video
Peace from Londonistan ~Z~
wow….I gotta get my shit together…ha ha ha
I took 5 pages of notes watching this. One of your most helpful posts Jason! Major light bulbs went off for me today.
I really appreciate you posting this!
Kenneth
Hey buddy, wanna be a rock star and post those notes so we can add them into the post? That would be super awesome! If not, no worries.
Jason,
I noticed that John has a free 60 page ebook on his JohnChow.com site that contains pretty much the same content as this video. So if people are looking for notes or a written version, they could grab a copy of that.
Thanks for posting this video. It was very helpful.
Hey Jason.
Long time no see. I saw your tweet on this post and had to watch it. I also saw your request for notes, so I took notes and will post them both here and on my own blog, http://www.TrafficAndConversion.com.
Thanks for turning me on to John. Seems like a good, smart guy.
I’ve been lying low recently. Hope to see you at an event soon.
My notes follow.
Warm Regards,
–Mark Widawer
p.s. I tried to post this a moment ago, but got an error when the page refreshed. So my apologies if you get this twice.
John Chow $40,000 a month Blogging Notes
by Mark Widawer
http://www.TrafficAndConversion.com
John started with goal of working 2 hours/day and earning $3k/month.
Before September 2006: $0
September 2006: $352
By December 2006, hit $3k/month
Then decided to “crank it up” by doing some other minor stuff.
In 2007, did $180k.
2008: 360k
2009: 500k
…still on 2hrs/day.
Easy today, but preparation was not easy. Took a lot of energy.
Why bloggers don’t make money:
* They think of themselves as bloggers, rather than internet marketers.
* No money required — easy in…and OUT. Because they have no investment, they leave too soon.
* They’re blogging for money only.
* They don’t treat their blog as a business.
The Average Blog Business Model
* Produce Content, set up Adsense
* DOES NOT WORK
* Requires too much traffic.
John’s Blog Business Model
* Captures the lead
* Builds a relationship — establishy ourself as a trustworthy source.
* Put them through a sales funnel
* Work out the cost per lead
* Add Pay Per Click
Capture the Lead
* Get the email first
* RSS, Twitter, Facebook are secondary.
* Most other blogs are ad-driven, and when they click the ad, they leave his blog. So the first thing he does is to show a popup optin for a free ebook on how to make money online.
* Recommends http://www.AweberAutoresponder.com. And start from the beginning (even if you’ve got zero traffic). Choose your AR service wisely, since CAN SPAM makes it difficult to move your entire list from one service to another.
* Use the lightbox hoverpop. Using the Lightbox hover increased his daily signups from 25/day to 100/day. Being “in their face” is okay. Don’t be put off by that. Advertising is not subtle.
Build the Relationship
* Use confirmed opt-in to make sure you get real email addresses.
* Write your autoresponder messages related to your optin gift.
* The purpose of your AR messages is to establish trust and bulid yourself as an authority. Gradually sell them something.
Sales Funnel
* It’s getting harder to make money with advertising on your site ($2cpm). So sell them something.
* Find targeted products to sell
* Could be your own product or affiliate deals.
* Add messages to your AR series to promote the items.
* Day 0 email is “Welcome”. Gives the download link again. Gives twitter, linked in, facebook links.
* Day 7. “Let’s get you started”. I’m sure you’ve read the book by now. Over the next 6 weeks, you’ll get a series of lessons to getting you to make money.” Links to affiliate offers for Godaddy, hosting, etc. (Don’t try to sell. Instead, recommend and teach.)
* Day 14: Ways to make money with your blog. All using affiliate links.
* Day 21: Why you need a mailing list.
* Day 28: How to build a huge twitter following
* Day 35: Tools of the trade.
* Day 42: Blog Mastermind Program
* Also mails Broadcast of sales promotions, affiliate offers, etc.
* Aweber is set to digest every 15 blog posts and mail it out automatically.
Work Out Cost Per Lead
* Sells his advertising automatically on his site. Totally automated at $500/month or more.
* Use Google Analytics to set up a Goal.
* Work out the Sign up rate
* Work out the average income per signup from the sales funnel.
* If 1 in 10 sign up for the newsletter and the average income per lead is $10, then your value per lead is $1.00. If you spend anything up to $1 per lead you’ll be profitable.
Add Pay Per Click
* Runs PPC sending people to his free ebook offer on his blog. Gets 25% optin rate.
Over the last year, his revenue has doubled, even though the number of ads has remained the same. Each new person adds a couple of dollars per month to his revenue, and they stack one upon the other. That’s why he’ll keep making money.
Now if I can just figure out this backend thing, it’s over!
Finally, some clarity. Great tip about the probability of making oodles only using adsense… Also, the automation and the cost per lead analysis… priceless. Great post J.
Side note: How in the EFF do I get my pic to show up in the Gravatar? What plugin do you use for comments? I have a discus account and a gravatar account… What account am I missing?
I dunno dude. I have the same problem. I can get my picture to show if I’m logged out of the system, but if I try to comment logged in the image won’t work. I’m not sure about the plug in I’m using. I’ll take a look into it.
thanks…
signed,
white dude in front of a gray background.
got it. i’m pretty sure it has to do with the email posted in the reply. first, it has to be all lowercase and second, if you have a gazillion emails, you gotta add those email addresses to gravatar.com and add pics too… if there is a pic next to this post… the above is correct..
Steve Pavlina makes that much from his blog, too.
And this guy Ramit Sethi turned his blog into a $2500/pop coaching business. He has built a huge list via the blog and makes more than $40k/mo with the private coaching biz (all clients harvested from his blog readers as well)
Jason,
Wicked post.
Picked up a few REALLY good nuggets in his video. Plus I checked out his blog and came across some very cool sh#t on how to pre-pop CPA offers through Aweber. I can’t believe a little extra line of code can make an optin THAT much easier to click through…
Props man.
Laters,
Mary
Making money on the “nets”. I’m not worried about doing all that.
Offline marketing is more important to me.
If you all can make money blogging,great!Don’t tell me how to do it
I’ll probably just go the other way.Being a conformist sucks.
Mark