All Posts Tagged With: "Make Money Online"
Free eBook Hammers John Chow For Worthless Reviews
There’s a question I’ve wondered about for some time now, whether or not all those people that pony up hundreds of dollars to experience the John Chow Effect really get something worthwhile out of it. Let’s face it, you can save yourself a bundle of cash by landing yourself on the frontpage of Digg or having something that people love to Stumble but more often than not all of that is worthless outside of driving up your traffic stats. However, just like beauty, worth is in the eye of the beholder, so the question is, is it worth spending $400 to have your site or product reviewed by John Chow?
If your Alvin Phang the answer is a resounding NO. Alvin has put together a free 16 page report on his experience with the “John Chow Effect“. While the report itself does tend to cast John in a dim light because overall it states Alvin got $0.00 return on his $400 investment it’s not necessarily intended to convey that message (but it makes for a great headline).
I’m not an ebook kind of person, especially ones that are grammatically challenging to read, but I’m really interested in seeing some results from someone who’s bought one of the many reviews John has done. While Alvin’s approach is from an advertisers point of view and the ebook is full of screen shots there are still a number of lessons we can take from it. For example, Alvin requested a review of his Atomic Blogging product, in his ebook he states “The review was written very well but as an advertiser’s point of view the review did not deliver what as I was expecting from John”.
That’s a great point because whether you buy a $10 review or a $400 review there is some expectation on the part of the person buying the review. However, the first question that comes to mind is, what (if any) conditions/requirements were given when the review was submitted? It would be important to convey your expectations to the reviewer, even if your sending them a product to review, don’t assume they know what your looking for.
Something else Alvin points out that I think is important, especially if you pushing a product, is that the product and even a site needs to be of interest to the reviewer. Alvin argued that John didn’t really recommend his product throughout the review, but he also admitted that he felt it wasn’t something that really grabbed John’s attention. This is so important, the whole purpose of spending this money is to get loyal readers or sale conversions. If the reviewer doesn’t find the lvel of interest your require then your probably not going to get what your looking for, whereas, knowing your expectations up front could influence their review just enough spawn you some sales. If you just want a million hits in your stats meter to say you got lots of traffic then send me $200 and I’ll hook you up, just don’t complain when they don’t provide you any benefit.
Bottom line. Whether it’s John Chow or anyone else, if your looking to get a review done you need to seriously consider what your asking of the reviewer. If you simply toss them some cash and ask that they “just review my whatever” then don’t have very high expectations that your investment will gain you readers or sales. However, if you have a goal in mind, then explain that to the reviewer, tell them what your intent is: whether it’s to generate sales of an ebook or critique it’s content. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time and will most likely make your investment much more beneficial.
Thanks to Andy Beard for turning me on to Alvin’s ebook. I’d really like to see more of this kind of stuff reported from people that have bought reviews, not necessarily from John. I’ve said before I’m actually surprised John doesn’t solicit this feedback to bolster his already bulging ReviewMe wallet.
If you’ve bought a review and have results to show how it did, drop a link in the comments to let us know.
Funniest Adsense Forum Posts Ever
Chew on these funny forum posts about Adsense while I go try and melt my iPhone by running the latest update.?
Future Of Advertising In Danger???????
hmm… Someone went to school to figure that out.
Google is cheating publishers
Hang on while I call my lawyer
My idiot friend clicked 3 of my ads.
Either shake his hand or kick his ass
Adsense 1 million Doller !!!
Lost in translation I guess
Does traffic really increase your adsense earnings?
Yes! It’s like Viagra for your website
What Is Wrong With My Adsense?!
It’s Broke
Am I allowed to have Adult content
Sounds like a morality question to me.
Can you tell people to click?
Is that a question of ability or permission?
Oops. I accidentally clicked an ad.
In some countries they chop your fingers off for that.
Do you earn money if people visit your site?
Did you use all your brain cells thinking up that question?
Hacker put his adsense on my site for months
Sucks to be you!
Am I earning to much?
Yes, now go away!
Does Adsense Waste Time?
Depends on your perspective of Time!
Adsense doesn’t work are the golden days of adsense over?
Works on my machine so I guess not!
Anyone know use RSS to improve traffic?
Nope! I searched Google and not one person had a clue, sorry.
Is there a clear-cut answer?
Yes, but it’ll cost you $47.00 to find out how to get it.
Did this ProBlogger Really make $100,000.00 a month from AdSense?
He said he did didn’t he? Why on earth would he lie?
Why not getting paid for clicks?
Google hates you and wants to do nothing but cheat you out of everything you make.
Around 1,000 uniques a day, how much should I be getting?
That too will cost you $47.00 to find out how to get the answer, but for free I’ll tell you how stupid you are for asking that question.
Who to believe, adsense or adlogger?
Why would either lie to you?
10,000 uniques aday! and only $82 Normal?
Apparently for you it is.
When is the best time to put google adsense in your site,
Now!
Banned from AdSense - whats the alternatives?
Death!
How to get accepted
Try begging, maybe even protesting. In fact, why not write a blog about it then you’ll have the answer.
Redesign destroyed my earnings… thoughts?
Your design abilities suck!
Adsense cancelled in Brazil…what if it was in your country?
Move to another country. Duh!
Can you have AdSense and gambling ads on same site/page?
Again, is this a question of ability or permission?
Im getting scared about even STARTING adsense
Google can help you find a good therapist
HELP! I think i have to be accepted to adsense FIRST to be a newb?
But you don’t have to be accepted first to be a dumbass.
Important Newbie AdSense Question!
Search is your friend.
The Real Secret To Becoming a Successful ProBlogger
Every wondered what it must take to build a small empire the size of John Chow’s or to become so well known for something that you become the defacto source for information on a subject like Darren Rowse? Sure you have, along with thousands of other people. Just visit any forum catering to the subject and you’ll find numerous posts asking what the secrets are, where to find that silver bullet to make a site the next big thing. There’s also plenty of us bloggers that are willing to share our opinions with you, some of us have had some success while others just talk about the subject because they believe it will make them more knowledgeable or something.
What I’ve found having spent several months now keeping up with a lot of the big players and finding some new and interesting smaller players is that everyone usually has good advice. Advice that’s based on experience so it may not necessarily be the same as similar advice from someone else. That’s good, because I might relate more to one bloggers experience than I do another even though they both have similar posts. Many talk a good game about how to do this or that, but I can’t recall seeing many talking bout the most important thing you need to have a successful blog. I’m going to share that with you because it’s so simple that almost everyone forgets about it. What is it?
ATTITUDE or BELIEF
Before you can ever be successful at anything, you have to first believe you can be. If you don’t or you doubt yourself, you’ll never, ever make it no matter how hard you try. It’s that simple. If you believe you can do it, then you can, and if you don’t believe it then you won’t.
People talk about the A-Listers and the things they do and how they want to be like them. People like Shoemoney, Daren Rowse and John Chow. They aren’t successful because the things they endeavor to do work, those things work because they believe they will work. It’s an attitude, and if you don’t have it from the very start, your doomed to wasting your time. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. Back in the day my parents were involved in AMWAY and as silly as that has come to sound there is still something to take away from it. People in the organization were always talking about “speaking something into action”. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. If you believe your are successful and you act like you’re successful and you present yourself as being successful then people will gravitate to you. Any motivational speaker will tell you to surround yourself with people who are successful and this is no joke, the biggest way to bring yourself down and kill your new found blog is to hang around with your best buddy from high school who is always laughing at you saying it’ll never work. Yeah, it’s time to get new friends.
Being a successful ProBlogger, being a successful anything, first requires an attitude of success. After that, everything else is secondary and while still important, none of it is as critical. If you want to succeed and make money online, then you have to believe you can do it. It’s not enough to look at someone who has done it and believe it can be done again, deep down you have to believe that you can do what they did. If you can do that, if you can get past that hurdle, then you will be a successful problogger. A great example of this can be found in the writings of Liz Strauss at Successful Blog, many of her posts are about attitude, where the majority of others are about “How to this or that”.
So here’s a question for you, if I met you on the street and asked what you do, what would you say? Can you honestly look someone else in the eye and say “I’m a successful problogger”? Can you?
Thoughts On Why People Hate Google Adsense
Ahmed from Performancing has a list of the 10 Things People Hate About Google Adsense. He thinks most are silly and ridiculous but admits a couple are valid concerns. I’ve done similar lists The Most Annoying Adsense Questions Ever and 15 Signs You’re A Paranoid Adsense Freak and I’ve thought about a haters list but since Ahmed did one, I decided to just comment on a few of his.
9 - Google allows AdSense ads on scrapper sites
Ahmed suggests: Google needs to do manual checks both at the point of application (maybe introduce minimum conditions for joining - such as site age, traffic, etc) and at any random time every 6 months (or 1 year).
To get the scrappers out of the system sites need to be checked manually - although this raises another nasty problem where personal bias on ads can mean the difference between a site being seen as heavily optimized and blatant spam.
I think the random site testing is unrealistic, Google does this today (see How I Got Yellow Carded ByGoogle) but I’m definitely a proponent of the having each and every site that runs Adsense approved before they are allowed. This alone will eliminate a number of the MFA type sites. Not all of them, some people will be willing to go to the trouble to make an acceptable site then change it after approved but not all, many are in it believing they’ll make a quick fortune, those will get eliminated.
7 - Doesn’t pay enough
Ahmed suggests it’s: A problem of expectations and nothing to do with Google or Google AdSense.
AdSense is usually a function of traffic - if you have low traffic you might want to head the TLA way and push your PageRank up.
I completely agree here. Poor performance of Adsense is largely a case of mindset. Take the Adsense forum on Digital Point for example, what used to be a great resource has turned into a whining convention about how little Adsense pays and how crappy it is. Sure, it’s not what it used to be but that’s the reality of things. Advertisers are smarter so publishers must become smarter. If you spend all your time on someplace like the DP Forums it’s easy to see why someone would think Adsense sucks.
5 - Don’t allow arbitrage
Ahmed says: Losely translates into:
Don’t allow us to cheat by going against their TOS.
I’m all for arbitrage, but you have to make sure you don’t get caught :)
Arbitrage is allowed and there are plenty of sites still doing it. It’s the implementation that Google has a problem with. Affiliate marketers use this with great success. Using Arbitrage to push a product is one thing, using it to push a bunch of Made For Adsense sites is another matter entirely.
4 - Dont allow banned accounts to be reinstated
Ahmed says: Never had an account banned (touch wood) so I can’t say much about this. If it really is a zero-tolerance policy then it’s not necessarily a bad thing - although accounts that are wrongly banned for suspicious activity should be reactivated once the mistake is discovered. Google will only get better at detecting fraud though, so the number of false positives should decrease.
Again, anywhere you go people are whining about this or they’re paranoid because they spend all their time reading forums that have become havens for the Paranoid Adsense Freaks out there. Point of fact there have been numerous cases where accounts that were banned for the dreaded “invalid clicks” and have been reinstated after being investigated further by Google (Google Loves Me Again). I do agree that over time Google should get better at detecting false positives and the collateral damage should decrease everytime there is a new culling.
These are just a few of the points Ahmed brought up, read the rest of them at Performancing.com
Google Buys Feedburner Moves Closer To Owning The Web
It’s been rumored for days and now confirmed by Techcrunch, Google has indeed bought the RSS Management company Feedburner for $100 million. That’s not bad for a company that started only about four years ago with $10 million in startup capital. The deal is an all cash deal and puts Google in a position to stake a sizable claim in the in RSS Advertising market.
What’s that mean for you an me? It means we should soon be seeing the ability to inject Adsense into our RSS feeds and Adwords advertisers will have another option for displaying their ads along with the search and content networks.
Paris Hilton And Britney Spears Help You Make Money Online
There’s a number of articles been written lately about the use of keyword for targeting traffic. Two of the hottest right now are Paris Hilton who’s set to be incarcerated and everybody’s favorite bald, blond, down in the dump, pop-star Britney Spears. Jane May wrote about using these keywords for niche blogging a few days ago, I ran across another post about it at blog’n'bloggers . both talk about targeting “in the moment” keywords to gain some traffic and thus increasing your money making potential.
There’s several ways to find these keywords, the best one is Technorati. When you go to their homepage the left column shows you the “Top Searches“. It’s usually filled with some celebrity that’s the talk of gossip land right now. There’s also Yahoo Buzz and MSN’s Popular Searches to give you an idea of what’s hot in search land at any given time.
This might seem out of character but if you can architect a post that’s relates to your niche and includes the hot keywords your targeting then you can effectively leverage the buzz surrounding them for your own benefit. It takes a bit of research but hitting keywords like paris hilton photo, paris hilton video, paris hilton nude or paris hilton exposed can bring you a world of traffic. It might not all convert to readers and it might not all translate into immediate money but when you have someone like Britney Spears who’s constantly creating drama then targeting things like britney spear picture, britney spears naked, britney spears video and britney spears exposed can bring you traffic that’s just out surfing.
The key to capturing these browsers is to give them something of interest that makes them want to read what you have but also relates to your site. Top 5 lists are great for this. Things like the “top 5 thing Paris Hilton taught me about blogging” or “5 things Britney Spears taught me about making money online“. There’s a knack to keyword targeting and when you hit on a hot one it can pay tremendous benefits. Try it out and let us know what works for you.
Internet Porn - The Easiest Way To Make Money Online
When it comes to making money online there’s nobody that does it better than the porn industry. This video was released last week and already has 333,000 plus YouTube views. It’s an ingenious advertisement in that it’s alluring, provacative and targets an aspects of the industry that taps the curiosity of anyone trying to make money online by showing some staggering stats about the industry. Sex sells and the ad itself, from a marketing perspective of course, is ingenious and a great example of viral video marketing. Check it out after the jump.
The Miscellaneous Ramblings of a Dot Com Mogul
Do you recognize this website? Sure you do. Who doesn’t? When it comes to making money online, John Chow is one of the guys everybody wants to be like. Sort of like the star quarterback who’s got the really hot girlfriend, everybody wants to be like him and in John’s case they want the website too. The dream to make money online is no easy task, but John makes it look effortless which is one of the reasons people flock to his website looking for that one piece of advice that will make their own sites prosper.
I’m no exception, having recently started following his lead and targeting the key phrase Make Money Online, not so much because I want to be like him, so much as I want to be like him. Actually, the key phrase is popular and if your going to talk about making money online, then you could do a lot worse than using John’s advice.
There’s a huge difference in what John offers and the run of the mill blog talking about how to be the next millionaire. John makes no bones about the programs he uses or the fact that he’s using his knowledge to make a dollar at our expense. His blog is like fly paper and it’s the ultimate in link bait. Having recently acquired a page rank of 6 it’s become one hot commodity, commanding $200 plus per month for a featured link and $400 for a ReviewMe review. That’s some awesome revenue generating potential and somewhat out of reach of the typical blogger or site owner. But never fear, John recognizes that the biggest value in his blog is it’s word of mouth power and there’s no better way to get your name mentioned than to have it continously dropped in post after post around the internet. One of the most facinating examples of this is the reason I’m writing this post.
A couple of months ago John put forth this experiment, called Review My Blog. In this experiment he asked that other sites review his blog and link back to the original post, in exchange for the review he would link back to them. This quickly exploded as site after site immediately snapped at the chance of getting a link from his site. It also spawned a multitude of similar offereings on other sites as well and has now become a hot link baiting strategy. It didn’t stop there though, recognizing he’d hit on something, John changed the program and asked that he be linked using the key phrase “make money online“. After only a couple of weeks this paid off and he’s now sitting pretty at #2 in Google for that search. Gotta like that and he does, yet he doesn’t come across as vain or even bragging about his success, which is something I find appealing. If your going to talk about making money online then there is a perception that has to be set and maintained otherwise people have no incentive to take you seriously. Something John’s taught me is that there is tremendous value in sharing what you know and it’s something I hope I can be a fraction as successful with.
But it’s not all about making money online at John Chow dot com, there’s exotic places, fast cars and fancy food, but I haven’t found any hot women yet. Still, if Asian quisine is your thing, his Fine Dining reviews are tops and he’s got an eye for the super hot sportscar. Check out the new Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR Roadster, one of which I walked by while playing golf with Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan the other day and failed to take any pictures of.. Lesson number one, when in the presence of a super hot car, take the pictures. Unlike the super hot lady close by, it won’t slap you back or send her really big football player of a boyfriend over to smash your camera or worse. John also touches on things of a technology nature and nicely diverts us from our obsession with some more personal type posts.
If there was one thing I could recommend, it would be an analysis based on feedback of the ReviewMe reviews he’s done. I’m a stats kind of person. I believe in stats and it’s one thing to look at his site and just know that $400 will bring in a hoard of traffic, but it’s another to actually be able to see that. I am disappointed that more sites that have benefited from his reviews haven’t put up more statistical data showing their results. I don’t know if it’s something he’d be able to work with some on to get or maybe it’s something those sites need to be doing. Maybe I’m lax and not keeping up with them like I should but it sure would be great to see some of that data.
Other than that, there’s not much else I can imagine he needs to do, yet I know that the next slick idea will probably come from him and that’s why if your really serious about making money online, John Chow dot com is one site that must be on your daily read list.
This is a sponsored review. If you’d like to order a review, you may do so here.
Don’t forget I have a similar offering for a link back as well, check it out here.
Meet Super Affiliate Zac Johnson
I recently came across another affiliate marketing blog that’s targeted mostly at making money online the old fashioned way, through affiliate programs. This is a hard game to be successful at, I’ve tried and failed miserably. Zac was looking to get some reviews on the blog since it’s relatively new so I gave it a good look. I’ve got some friends that do really well with affiliate marketing but for me, it just doesn’t work. I’m not sure why, but Zac Johnson just might have and answer for how one can make money through affiliate programs.
Zac is a Super Affiliate. How do we know? Because he tells us so. With ten years of experience going all the way back to high school where Zac was buying 12 packs of cola and selling them for .75 a can because the school only served Snapple, milk or water. Zac also worked with one of the very first affiliate programs, Pacific Coast Banner Company, a banner ad program that paid .01 per click for each visitor sent to their site. I’m not sure which is odder, the fact someone actually cited them in a bio page or the fact that I actually know who they are. If that isn’t enough for you, simply take a look here.
ZacJohnson.com is neat site. At fist glance you might think you’ve landed on Rich Riches homepage because but after spending a bit of time nosing around that’s hardly the case. Zac’s a no nonsense kind of person that has gained a wealth of knowledge from his online ordeals and now feels the need to share that experience (or sees a developing niche where that experience can be utilized by other people for his benefit and theirs). Case in point, I run Amazon ads on some of my sites, they do ok. They do best when one of the artists I work with have a new album coming out, but other stuff, might as well not even bother. In a post titled “Motivation for the New Guys” Zac talks specifically about using Amazon in a very similar niche and while I didn’t achieve near the results he did, I did get a couple of tidbits from that simple post that I will have to try in the future.
Being the blog is relatively new, there’s not a great deal on different affiliate program as yet, but that should change (can’t give up all the secrets at once). There are however some pretty interesting articles you’ll want to check out:
- To Sell or Not To Sell where Zac discusses the thoughts behind selling a profitable website
- Digg Traffic vs. Google Traffic is a reflection on Chitika’s analysis of clicks from each of the traffic sources.
- Why Do Affiliate Networks Let Super Affiliates Leave? Offers some nice thoughts on why this happens.
- Bad Companies & Lost Commissions looks at what happens when companies pick up and run without paying their affiliates.
Overall ZacJohnson.com is a pretty cool site. Some might look at it and wonder where the affiliate wisdom is, but I caution you to be patient. There would be little point in revealing everything one knows in one sitting and I look forward to hearing about programs Zac’s had success with.
This is a sponsored review. If you’d like to order a review, you may do so here.
Ever Wondered How Much $$ Those Other Bloggers Make? Check This Out
Paula Mooney has put together a list of blogging salaries of bloogers/webmasters from around the net. Some of the names you’ll recognize while others you’ve probably never heard of before but should check them out. It’s a pretty cool list, one that had to take her a long time to prepare.
I spent hours and hours scouring the internet for the last-reported information about bloggers/webmasters and their revenue. Some are hard-core daily bloggers, some run sites with lots of pageviews but not much written content — like dating sites.
Yours truly isn’t on the list, go figure but if’n I were on the list I’d be somewhere around #27 and a half. Check out where you stack up compared to “those other guys”. If your not on the list, like me, you can get on the list by providing Paula with a post about your earnings. #60 is at $479 so it should be too awful hard to get on there. If she tracks it every month it’ll be interesting to see how these might change over time.
