I have to admit, I like the look of this. It will be available in a Google TV box set and will be integrated in selected televisions.
If this takes off then you may see it integrated into most televisions just like digital TV, FreeSat etc. With broadband speeds getting quicker and quicker, we’re going to see the internet more and more in our home media.
Will reserve judgement til I see it in action though 
Whenever I gave advice to new bloggers about promoting their blog I always told them that ‘The first few hundred subscribers are the hardest’. This is something I have believed for years and something which I believe still holds true today.
It can be very infuriating at the beginning of a blogs life. You spend hours writing top quality articles yet no one leaves a comment because no one knows your blog exists. Essentially, you are writing for the search engines, so the initial articles aren’t wasted if they bring in good traffic at a later date.
Once you get more traffic and more subscribers, everything gets easier. Pretty much any article you write will get a comment, a tweet or a digg, simply because your audience is bigger. It’s usually much easier to get from 500 to 3,000 subscribers than it is to get from 0 to 500. Everything snowballs and grows exponentially, though at the start, it’s an uphill battle.
You can avoid a huge amount of hassle promoting a new blog if you already have a successful website i.e. a platform to launch your new website from. Looking back, this is something I wish I did with WordPress Mods. Unfortunately, I didn’t plan ahead. I thought about selling Blogging Tips and a few days later it was listed for sale. Had I waited a few months I could have started my new site and told readers and newsletter subscribers about it.
Darren Rowse from ProBlogger did it the right way with his Twitter blog TwiTip. He launched the site in November 2008 and told all his loyal readers about it. Thousands had subscribed after just a few articles. According to the sites advertising page it had 5,700 RSS subscribers in 11th February 2009.
Nearly 6 thousand subscribers in 4 months is impressive any way you look at it, and 15 months later the blog has over 36,000 subscribers. Not bad for a site which he rarely posts on himself (guest posters mostly write articles there).
Again, I didn’t take advantage of the platform I had with my old site. I started planning the site as soon as I decided to sell but didn’t launch til 2 months later. Therefore, I need to do things the hard way
The blogs RSS subscriber growth is painfully slow. I get the impression people are less likely to subscribe when compared to other niches such as making money online and news. However, traffic is growing every day so I’m sure RSS growth will happen in time.
To encourage this I have wrote lots of long premium articles such as ‘How to Integrate WordPress and bbPress‘ and ‘The Ultimate Social Media Icon List. I’m also publishing an article this Monday which I spent about 4 days on (no joke!).
I am also writing another article for my old site Blogging Tips this Monday and will hopefully get enough time to write a post for Daily Blog Tips too.
The bottom line is, you can’t really afford to take your foot off the pedal until your blog has been established. Getting the blog off the ground is really half the battle. Once the site has more traffic and a loyal readership everything gets easier.
So if you have just launched a new blog or are thinking about doing so, don’t be too disheartened if the site isn’t a success right away. This does happen occasionally with some blogs though most of the time you need to keep plugging away at it until the blog reaches a good level.
Good luck,
Kevin
Recently I’ve seen a lot of websites I sold years ago being listed for sale on Flippa. The strange thing is, most of the buyers never did anything with the sites. It’s no skin off my nose though it’s seems silly to purchase a site if you don’t have a long term plan for it.
Cards on the table, I’ve did this twice myself (more on this later), though the most I’ve spent on a site I didn’t want was $200. The rest of the time I made my money back or made a profit. The times I didn’t update was purely down to me not having the time to do with them what I wanted i.e. they weren’t priority. Though you’d think that if you were spending decent money on a site you’d make a point of investing some of your time on it.
The first old site of mine I saw listed was WebSiteTrading.net. I created the site as a forum in early 2004 and sold it a few months later. Buying and selling websites and domains was really taking off back then which is why I was trying to capitalise on it. The weird thing is, the new owner changed it from a forum into a Ning network site. It looks like a Made-For-Adsense mini site rather than a community though it’s good to see the logo I got designed is still being used
The site has little to no traffic, a small monthly income from adsense that hasn’t been proved, and pretty much no content. The minimum offer is $500, which I guess isn’t too bad if you value the domain only as it’s a PR 4 and is pretty brandable. Though the owner is seriously delusional if he thinks someone is crazy enough to pay his $8,500 buy it now asking price.
Next up is some poker forums I sold around 5 years ago. The same guy purchased FreeRollForums from me for $6,000 and PokerPlayerForums for $600. However, he hasn’t done anything with them
What I found very strange was the investment this guy made with these sites. He purchased FreeRollForums for $6,000 (which wasn’t a bad price at the time). The forum had a unique design and flash logo at the time which I had paid $1,500 for. The design was less than a year old when he bought it however he decided to get a new design for it and paid another $1,500 out. This really confuses me. Why would you spend another $1,500 on a design for a site if (a) you don’t have time to develop the site and (b) it already has a good design.
Now, this is where it gets really confusing for me. He had already purchased FreerollForums from me for $6,000 and then spent another $1,500 on a new design (which it clearly didn’t need), plus the $600 on PokerPlayerForums. You would think that he would spend all his time trying to develop these sites (at the very least FreerollForums since he had invested $7,500 for it).
But he didn’t. Instead he created a new poker forum in 2007 called BetCamp. He claims to have spent over $3,000 developing the site (design/promotion etc). With less than 3,000 posts it’s safe to say that it wasn’t money well spent. Now all 3 sites are as dead as Dillinger.
He recently listed all 3 sites on Flippa. No one was really bidding so I put in a bid of $1,000. I was the highest bidder for a day or so until yesterday, which was the last day of the auction. My last bid was $1,500. There were few higher bids but nothing much higher so he dropped the Buy It Now to $4,500. With the highest bid at $3,200, someone paid the buy it now to avoid losing the sites to another bidder. He managed to get $4,500 back, however this pales in comparison to his $11,000+ investment.
I have cut my losses with several websites in the past. Just like any business, you learn a lot by the mistakes you make when working online. On one level, I have a little sympathy for him for the loss he made and a little admiration for deciding to cut his losses and move on. Though I cannot comprehend why he kept throwing good money after bad and why he started a new forum from scratch instead of developing the first one he bought. At the very least he could have sold the older one before moving on.
It’s important to learn from this kind of mistake when working online. I now research any website I’m interested in vigorously to avoid being ripped off. The two sites I made a mistake in buying before was a blog called ZuneZag and a discussion forum called RetroWheels.
ZuneZag could have been a success if I spent some time on it, but I didn’t, which is why I sold it about half a year later for around a $75 loss (not much I know). I still own RetroWheels. I got ripped off with that a little as the owner said it was an original design (which was one of the main reasons I was buying it). I had checked elsewhere and hadn’t come across it so didn’t think the owner was lying. It wasn’t until after the sale that I came across the design in a theme store for about $30. I had only paid about $150 for the site (if I remember right) but I still felt really ripped off. What can I say: Every penny’s a prisoner
RetroWheels does actually get a little traffic and some genuine retro car fantastics have signed up to post. However, I have not taken advantage of this since I know very little about the subject. Hopefully the small targeted traffic and the age of the domain will get me most of my money back.
Another lesson why I’m sure both of these sellers have now learned is to never create or buy a site in a niche that you (a) know nothing about or (b) have no interest in. One of the reasons I did so well with gambling and poker sites is because I loved playing poker and played the game 4 or 5 times a week. Therefore updating the sites never felt like work. Clearly the guy who bought the site from me didn’t feel the same as he rarely posted and tried to get moderators to do a lot of the work.
It’s easy to get up in the thrill of the auction. Though on many occasions it makes more sense to create a site of your own from scratch, particularly if you have more time than money. When you do find a site you really want (need), make you do your homework and research everything so you don’t get ripped off.
Good luck,
Kevin
This week I have been reading John Chows 144 page ‘Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul’ book (edited my Michael Kwan). It is available from Amazon in the UK for £9.32 with free delivery and in the US for $10.85 with free delivery.
If you saw this book in a bookshop you would think that it was just a general book about making money online. That is until you see the back cover and you realise that it’s about making money with blogs. Whilst I do like the title of the book, I think something like ‘How to make money online with blogs’ would have been more descriptive. However, I’m not one to judge a book by it’s cover so let’s look at what is inside John Chows first printed book.
The book has 13 chapters in total and a small links section at the end. It’s well written, easy to follow, and has been written from a personal point of view rather than a journalistic/news style. So you should be able to finish the book quite quickly.
The first two chapters deal with how John fell into the world of making money online in 1999 with his first website Moto’s Project 504. This quickly led to the creation of The Tech Zone, which was making him over $2,500 within only a few months. John then talks about how he weathered the storm during the dot com bust of 2001 and leads on to how he started making money with his blog.
I really loved this section of the book as I love hearing about how successful online entrepreneurs got their start. It reminded me a lot of Joel Comm’s book ‘Click Here to Order’ (who happens to have wrote the foreword for this book).
In the next 4 chapters John explains the basics of blogging and gives an introduction to everyones favourite blogging platform WordPress. If you already own a blog and are familiar with WordPress then you won’t get too much from these chapters other than the good recommendations for wordpress plugins.
I also think that these chapters lack something for beginners. There are no images in the book, which is something I believe beginners really need to help them through the basics. And he doesn’t seem to go into enough detail with his beginner tips either. Which I can understand from one point of view as the book is primarily about making money online, though I feel that this section could have been greatly improved with some basic screenshots of screens and more references to books and online resources which will help the beginners install their blog.
There was some poor advice in this section too:
The section will prove useful to beginners though I believe that it could be improved in future editions by adding screenshots and providing more links to other resources.
The last part of the book begins with John stressing that ‘Content is King’. He talks about what you should be writing about, where you can find writers, and why you shouldn’t use free articles from article directories.
In the next chapter John talks about something he knows a lot about – promotion. He speaks about social media promotion topics such as link baiting and older established marketing techniques such as news releases. He then moves onto offline promotion tactics: ranging from free pens and business cards to lesser used techniques such as branding your laptop or your car. The chapter finishes with some basic search engine optimisation tips and is followed by a chapter on ‘The Importance of Branding’.
Experienced bloggers will be aware of most of the tips in the promotion and SEO chapters, though it’s always good to go over the basics as it’s easy to forget that sometimes the simplest promotion methods work.
Whilst most of ‘Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul’ is targeted towards beginner and intermediate bloggers, chapter ten is all about optimising Google Adsense on your blog. Adsense is an ad network which most bloggers are familiar with though I’m aware that many experienced bloggers are not experts with it.
So I believe that this is a chapter that most bloggers will benefit from reading, even if you only use Adsense sparingly. John talks about many Adsense topics such as the bid gap, section targeting and section ignoring, competitive ad filters and PPC arbitrage. It’s a subject which he clearly has a lot of knowledge on.
Next we have Johns top moneymakers in chapter 11. In this section he mentions his own ad network TTZ Media and well known ad networks such as Kontera and Bidvertiser. Those who have been blogging for a while will have come across all of them.
I must admit I was surprised that he only mentioned 8 ad networks. I appreciate that the chapter was called ‘My Top Moneymakers’ and therefore should include the sites which John uses to make money. Though I think newbies would have benefited with references to alternative (and established) blog revenue solutions such as Buy Sell Ads, BlogAds or Chitika.
Finishing the book off is a useful chapter on private ad sales and a summary of what you need to do to make it as a successful blogger.
The book also has some small inconstancies within the book which were not picked up in the proofreading process. For example, the back of the book states that his blog makes $40,000 a month but in chapter two, ten and thirteen he says this figure is $30,000. He also states in chapter five that his blog has 20,000 subscribers but as I write this post today it boasts well over 90,000 subscribers.
Neither of these small errors should disuade you from buying the book. They’re simple human error mistakes which were not picked up. No doubt they will be addressed in the next edition.
As someone who ran a blogging advice blog for 3 years and is now running a WordPress related blog, I didn’t get much from many chapters in this book. Though I am obviously not the target audience. This book was clearly written for beginners and those who are unsure about how to monetize their blog. I don’t think that this is a worthwhile purchase for experienced bloggers as John doesn’t cover enough advanced topics, though they should find the Adsense optimisation chapter useful.
If you are looking for general blogging and blog promotion tips then I would recommend Darren Rowse’s Pro Blogger Book instead as it has lots more images and explains a lot of the subjects which John briefly speaks about in more detail. Similarly, if you want some practical advice on how to install and maintain WordPress then I would buy a WordPress specific guide about that as although John touches upon the subject, he doesn’t delve deep enough for beginners.
Though if you are looking for a good overview of what blogs are and how they make money on the web then I would encourage you to check ‘Make Money Online’ out as it’s worth it’s relatively cheap price. It would be the perfect book for someone who has no idea what a blog is or is not sure how to make money with the blog they already run.
What does come through in all the book is Johns passion and drive. He doesn’t give you any false hope and tells readers right from the start that if they don’t work their butt off they aren’t going to make any money. I seriously believe this no holds barred approach to giving advice will help a lot of people as there are millions of people trying to make money on the web using get rich quick schemes. As John rightly points out, no such thing exists.
If you are thinking about buying the book and have some questions about it please let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them
Thanks,
Kevin
Additional Bonus
As an added bonus John gives a link to a presentation he gave at the Vancouver Business, Marketing and Entrepreneur meetup. In this 56 minute video he details how he makes over $40,000 a month from his blog.
Purchase Links
Jason Schuller, owner of Press 75 and ThemeGarden, wrote a good post about how hes making a living online from developing and selling WordPress themes.
In response to this article Jeff Chandler wrote a very honest article entitled ‘Jason Schuller Did It – I Can Do It To‘. In the article Jeff explained at how hes moving into a house with his wife to be and is feeling the pressure of having to make more money. He currently works in a grocery store but is looking at ideas as to how to make money online.
My situation is a little different but there are many similarities. I’m also moving into a house in a few weeks and I’m concerned about the increase in expenditure. At the start of the year I sold my previous main site for $60,000. Which, granted, is a lot of money (It was around £37k). However I didn’t really see any of it as the money went towards my tax bill (which was larger because of the sale) and my deposit for the house.
Because I sold the site, my monthly income has dropped. This has happened to me several times in the past when I have sold a big site however I have always had the safety net of my referral income from the gambling sites i created between 2003 and 2007. Unfortunately, this income is starting to drop. If I rented instead of buying a house then I would have had a lot more money saved to invest in new projects or to buy an existing website which has a decent monthly income. However I really wanted to get ‘my own place’ and get a foot on the property ladder, particularly with how cheap houses are just now.
Though because of this I find myself in a similar situation to Jeff i.e. I’m starting from scratch. This is something I’ve done before as my backpacking trips a few years ago to Australia, New Zealand and most of Asia were funded through selling sites which were making me money. If I hadn’t sold any of these sites then my monthly income would probably be $10k+, but I don’t have any regrets as I had a great time.
I do understand that it takes time to get a website established i.e. to get it to a level where it is making decent money online. Though I’m positive that I can develop WP Mods and get it making money a lot quicker than it took me to monetize my last site.
Thankfully, I do have savings to keep my going until my online income improves. Though obviously I don’t want to be on the breadline either. If I do find I’m struggling to pay the bills then I would simply get a part time or full time job to supplement me until my online income is back to a good level.
In fact, I was interviewed for a 3 month contract with a bank recently for a complaints job which paid £150 a day (around $220). Unfortunately, I didn’t get the job as there were other contractors available though the interview went well and they are keeping me in mind for future positions.
At first I wasn’t keen to take a contract job, even if the money was good. In many ways it felt like giving up. I gave up a career in the financial services to work online not because of the money, but because I love working online for a living. If I had stayed in the financial services industry I’d be making around £300 a day or more, but I don’t believe I would be as happy in my job. So going back to it, even if it was only temporary, felt like I had given up my dream in many respects.
Thankfully, common sense prevailed. I realise how this additional income could really help me, both in the short term and in the long term. The money I earned from such a job could let me invest in new projects and buy an existing one to help secure my long term future online. So this may happen in the future.
I’m going to work my ass off in the next few months to increase my monthly income through WP Mods and other new sites. I know I will make money, it’s a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’. If I do struggle to increase my monthly income as quick as I would like then at least I am in a good position to take a part time job or a full time contract job to help me. At the end of the day, bills need to be paid. I will let you all know how I get on regardless and tell you all about the ups and downs
Also, I’d like to wish Jeff the best of luck with his online venture. I’m sure once he finds a good plan for his site he will find his feet and start increasing his income.
Good luck,
Kev
It’s been about six weeks since I’ve last gave an update on my online work. During that time I’ve primarily been working on my new site WP Mods.
I did a guest post at JohnChow.com about making money at Flippa and one at SiteSketch101 about developing a business model for your website. Feedback from both articles was very positive but incoming traffic from the articles wasn’t amazing and I didn’t see a huge jump in my RSS reader count. This particularly surprised me with JohnChows site as he had around 90,000 daily subscribers and I had a lot of good content posted the week the article went live.
However, there have been many positives. Traffic has more than doubled in the last six weeks so subscribers will definitely come. I also know that many of the long articles I have written (some took several hours to write and another took several days) will bring a lot of traffic in the long term from search engines. I know this from experience as many of my tutorial and guide articles I wrote at my previous site BloggingTips got little to no comments yet they usually brought in the most traffic.
Speaking of BloggingTips, the new owner Zac Johnson has just released a 93 page affiliate ebook called Six Figure Affiliate Blogging for free. If you are interested in making money from blogs or websites online I recommend downloading it.
On a similar note, I also received a signed copy of Making Money Online by John Chow. I’ll do a quick review of the book once I’ve read it
I’m looking to get rid of a lot of small content websites I have, whether they are making money or not, as I should really put all my energy into WP Mods before working on other projects (though I have been doing a lot of research into what new sites I can start, so I could perhaps start one if I have spare time).
Once the site has been established then I can look into releasing themes, plugins and other WordPress related products through the site.
I also need to:
I’m also going to write more articles on making money and scripts etc on here. I will still do the odd guest post for BloggingTips and I have promised to write a guest post for Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips too but I’d love to talk about web development and working online here. It’s a good way to track the development of my sites online plus I enjoy writing
Kevin
May 5, 2010 in
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