I've been reading John Chow's blog for several years now. The site is a classic example of someone taking their passion and monetizing the crap out of it. His blog alone makes upwards of $40,000 a month, mostly in advertising revenue. When he published his book Make Money Online: Roadmap of a dog com mogul [not an affiliate link - I live in Colorado so my Amazon account was unceremoniously canceled] co-written with Michael Kwan, a frequent guest blogger, there was no question I'd buy it. I have a small stack of books written by my favorite bloggers and I hope they'll buy mine someday.
The book starts and ends with the most important message: Don't wait for ANYTHING to happen before you start. Start now. Today. In fact, the message in Chapter One contains my single favorite phrase from the entire book:
Responsible people don't need to have all their ducks in a row because they are able to work through a series of disorganized fowl.
I don't know if Michael or John came up with "disorganized fowl" but that's the funniest damn line I've read in a long time and yes, I will plagiarize it, probably in the next week or so.
The second chapter covers John's personal story. Unfortunately, it starts from his early days on the internet, rather than showing new readers his true meager beginnings. Some of my favorite posts on JCDC were the videos he made when he visited his childhood home. This guy really started with nothing. I think the book readers would have appreciated having that perspective.
In chapter three, Blogging 101, John hits my own key message on this blog:
But don't forget to have fun too. Life without fun it just not worth it.
Amen, brother!
By chapter five, WordPress Basics, it hit me what the book was missing, probably because this is something I do for a living. Editing. The writing is great, and having two authors maintain a consistent voice is tricky and these two pull it off seamlessly. However, there are references to things like Feedburner without any explanation as to what Feedburner is or does. It just pops up out of nowhere on page 39. When this happens, it is usually because an earlier version had the explanation but then it was (poorly) edited into a different section (viola, page 49). The same thing happens with "dofollow" and "nofollow" references. If this book is meant to provide a roadmap, the noobs are going to trip up and the experienced bloggers will feel like they hit a speed bump but they probably won't know why. A good editor can remove these hiccups without changing the message or the voice of the book.
Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I have to mention the multiple references to Google penalties for duplicate content. There are two schools of thought on this one, and I subscribe to the school that believes Google does not have an algorithm for finding and penalizing duplicate content. The "penalty" comes from creating your own competition, which is usually a bad strategy and John does mention that in the book. I'm not fond of perpetrating the fear that Google will hurt you if you repeat yourself. Obviously you should always create fabulous original content 24 hours a day but in the event you rinse and repeat on occasion, Google doesn't care.
Okay back to the book. The chapter on branding is crucial. Once you've settled on your brand, you have to promote the crap out of it any way you can. And for God's sake do not use your name as the brand (I know, but my name doesn't appear on any of my OTHER sites, just this one that doesn't have any traffic). John makes it clear that having himself as the brand doesn't lend itself to eventual cash-out, which is why he is milking his brand for every penny while he can.
The last four chapters of the book address what to do once you actually have traffic; and how John utilizes private ad sales to crush anything he could do with AdSense. For your average blogger, this is going to be out of reach but it's still solid advice if you can hit that level of traffic.
Would I recommend this book? Of course! I think it would have been better if it were twice as long. The book touches on basics for beginners and has some advanced techniques for folks like myself who are already blogging but wanted some more insight into exactly what it is John does. The real reason I bought this book is because I like John's online persona. He's built himself up to be a regular good guy with an evil twist. If he's anything like that in real life, I'm a huge fan!
The Internet Marketer’s Christmas
December 24th, 2008 Annie Posted in Internet Marketing 8 Comments »
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
The network came alive with clicks from my mouse;
The articles were written, submitted with care,
In hopes that Google would soon be there;
The keywords were nestled all snug on the page,
When search engine robots leapt from their cage;
Finding my backlinks like breadcrumbs laid,
Tiny spiders on the path I had made.
When out on the net there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the couch to see what was the matter.
Away to the browser I flew like a flash,
Spilling my coffee with a loud crash.
The moon on the edge of the MacBook Pro
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But organic search traffic, that much was clear.
Without any pay per click, so very frugal,
I knew in a moment it must be Google.
More rapid than eagles its coursers they came,
And it whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, Sphinn! now, Digg! now, Twitter and Stumble!
On Squidoo, on Reddit! On Friendfeed and Tumblr!
To the top of the page! To the number one spot!
Secret algorithms, show us what’s hot!"
The sweat and the tears, the niches I’d lost,
Domains unused, keywords tossed;
The hours of staring at Samurai red;
Those days are over, or so Google said.
E-books and newsletters and membership sales,
And a shiny new list brimming with emails.
Laying my finger aside of my nose,
I gave a quick nod, from the chair I rose.
I skipped to the kitchen with my empty mug,
Stopping on the way to give the family a hug.
I whispered to my kids as I held them tight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."
Lynn Terry Tells All – Starting a Free Online Business!
September 2nd, 2008 Annie Posted in Internet Marketing 4 Comments »
.jpg "Lynn Terry Tells All Starting a Free Online Business!")
As you may already know, I’ m a huge fan of Lynn Terry and her internet marketing blog, ClickNewz! I can’t remember how I found her, but I have been reading her blog for a long time, and just recently started participating in her weekly webinars. Lynn has been online for more than a decade, and has a refreshing no-bullshit approach. The thing that gets me about Lynn is that she genuinely wants to share the knowledge that she has put to use to become a successful online entreprenuer. Internet marketing is full of people who talk the talk, but Lynn is one of a few folks who actually walks the walk. When she makes a buck from something she promotes, you’ll know it. When she doesn’t, you’ll know it. Speaking of which…
Disclaimer time: Lynn is testing a pay-per-post social media marketing idea and I will probably be getting paid a small gratuity for this post. I told her that if she didn’t pay me, I would write it anyway. So there – I really showed her, huh!
She wrote an article this weekend that I really want to share with you. In Starting a Free Online Business, Lynn talks about going to lunch with some gals who she hooked up with on MySpace. Lynn knows how to use MySpace. I don’t. The only fun thing I’ve discovered about MySpace is a typing game. I’m a crazy-fast typist and crazy-competitive by nature, so the game really hits my sweet spot. But I digress…
So Lynn meets up with these ladies and starts explaining some of the ways you can make money online: Selling your own products or services; and promoting other people’s products and services. The latter idea appealed to Lynn’s new friends, and to me as well, because it involves passive income. Lynn is quick to point out that you can’t get up one day and decide to start getting passive income:
"To clarify, when I say passive I dont mean that you wont have to work at it. I think we’ve all kind of figured out by now that “get rich quick schemes” dont really work. And we were discussing real, legitimate ways to make consistent income online. "
That’s the secret in a nutshell, folks – you have to work at it. It takes a lot of work to create a situation where you can make money while you eat bon-bons by the pool. So much work, in fact, that a lot of people simply turn back to traditional ways of making money. We all know how to go to the office for 8-24 hours a day and bring home a paycheck. Lynn wants to teach you something different and she goes to great lengths to explain it to you. If you think you’re too new at this to understand what she’s teaching, you’re wrong. Lynn know a lot of technical mumbo jumbo but thankfully, she keeps that stuff to herself. Instead, she just tells you what you need to know, in very simple terms. Got a question? She’ll answer it. Personally.
The archives on Lynn’s site walk you through every step of setting up your own online business. I could happily spend days digging around in her site. However, the post I mentioned earlier, Starting a Free Online Business, has links to all the necessary "first steps" of creating that business. She also links to some other very well-known tutorials by Jeremy Palmer about selling other people’s products (a.k.a affiliate marketing). This single article has everything you need to get started. I hope you enjoy it, and getting to know Lynn, as much as I do!
P.S. Here’s the money part of the post: LYNN ROCKS! LYNN ROCKS! LYNN ROCKS!
P.P.S. Note to self: Charge per color.
