Posts Tagged John Chow

I'm still honing in on the focus of this blog as I go along (I thank you for indulging me as I do that), and I realized recently that since this blog is about helping you quit your day job that it might help to outline exactly how I did it -- something I've never actually thought through a very structured way. And maybe in the process we'll actually start to get some real ... Keep reading »

Last month I wrote about how important it is to learn from others who are already successful. Well, this month I decided to make that a little easier for you to do. Here is a roundup of all the posts I've found so far where bloggers listed their earnings for October. Click the dollar figure to see their details. Shoemoney (~$30,000) Direct Ad Sales: 50% Affiliate: 30% Other: 20% John Chow ($23,448.59) Direct Ad Sales: ... Keep reading »

Of course, that's not because I have budged from my PageRank of 4, but because ProBlogger.net, CopyBlogger, John Chow, and Blog Herald have all been chopped to a PR 4 -- apparently for selling links. Again, I'm not taking a stand on it one way or another, but if this doesn't convince you to stop selling text links, you must be earning a ton.

One of the best ways to figure out the model that will allow you to go from day job to independent business owner is by looking at the specifics of other people's models -- particularly those who are very successful. By looking at what actually works for them, and other detailed information that they give out, you can determine what's realistic and what's not. Here are a couple of recent examples. Shoemoney has one of ... Keep reading »

Back in February, John Chow wrote about 10 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid. He's dead right on 9 of them (not sure about #10 ;) ), and it's definitely worth both a read now and a bookmark for reading at least once a week from now on. I know I will.

Looks like John Chow's Technorati 100 blog has been hacked by ISKORPTIX (safe link), and Geek in Paradise is reporting that the hacker has hit several other blogs as well. Looks like it may be a server hack and not a WordPress hack. Update, 18:05 Eastern: Prompted by Tim in the comments below, I've read back through everything now, and it doesn't look like we know what the problem is at all. I can't believe ... Keep reading »

You've probably heard many times about all the free visitors you can get from search engines. Well SEO, or search engine optimization, is the science -- and art -- of getting a site to rank well in order to get as many of those visitors as possible. The great thing for you as a blogger is that you don't have to been an SEO expert to see quite a bit of search engine traffic to your site because most blogs are tailor-made for ranking well in search engines. Just take a look at the top ten search engine ranking factors and notice how many are naturally inherent in blogs. I count seven to nine, depending on how strict you want to be. Since blogs are almost always text-heavy, very community-driven and interlinked heavily, it's hard to find your blog not ranking for lots of things if it becomes popular. However, there are a few easy things that you do need to do to ensure that you're set up for search engine success. The basic principle behind all of them is that SEO, first and foremost, is about so much more than your homepage. Especially with blogs, you'll find that most of your search engine visitors come in on anything but your homepage. So almost all the basic SEO for a blog has to do with your individual pages. Keep reading »

If your blog is good and you're blogging consistently, you'll be successful. That's it. Two conditions. If it sounds simplistic, it's because we don't think enough about that second part: blogging consistently. Most bloggers start off with a passion and excitement, only to have it wane within a few weeks or a few months. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm a firm believer that you have to get out there and do something to find out if it's really something you like to do or something you're good at. You can't just read a book about it and know. So flaming out after trying something for just a little bit isn't necessarily a bad thing at all. I've started and abandoned too many projects to count, and I'm glad I did. It's only by trial and error that I've narrowed in on what I really want to do. So this guarantee isn't for those of you who have found out that you don't really enjoy blogging. It's for those of you you who do enjoy it and are looking to take your blog to the next level. Keep reading »

Back in February, I wrote about "The Top 3 Ways to Generate Revenue from Your Blog" -- number one being advertisers: Dedicated advertisers are usually your best source of revenue. They pay a much better rate, they’re a guaranteed revenue stream every month, and they tend to stick around. The only downside is that you usually need to have really healthy traffic levels to make it worthwhile for advertisers to work with you directly. I noted later in the comments that what constituted a "healthy traffic level" really varied from nice to niche -- some sites may be able to attract advertisers with a tenth of the traffic of others; it's just so dependent on what type of readers you're attracting. Additionally, you definitely want to avoid monetizing too soon. Very few things can kill a site quicker than letting your advertising overwhelm everything else. Let's suppose, though, that you do have healthy traffic levels for your niche and are indeed ready for advertisers. How do you go about finding them? Keep reading »