John Chow: The Blog is the Business

John Chow’s blog is the home base of his business. This means his content is written for the purpose of attracting a high readership, which he hopes to convert to paying customers.

The more traffic John gets, the more leverage he has over pricing his services like site reviews, banner ad space and sponsored tweets. The last time I checked, John charges $500 for a site review, between $250-1,000 for an ad and $117.65 for a sponsored tweet. Not too shabby.

But that’s not really how JohnChow.com makes its money. The real profit is in the list, as they say. When you subscribe to receive John’s free Make Money Online ebook, you automatically start receiving his autoresponder email series. These carefully timed, automated emails detail how you can go from zero to $40,000 a month with your blog, just like John did.

John makes money as an affiliate from the products he recommends in his autoresponder series and his blog. Some products have monthly recurring payouts, like Aweber, so John will continue to get paid as long as you’re subscribed to the service he recommends.

The more content John puts out, the larger his influence spreads over the Internet Marketing space. More influence equals more readers, more readers means more income, and so on.

Shoemoney: The Blog Compliments the Business

Shoemoney’s blog is a bit different than John Chow’s. For one thing it’s not the entire structure of his business. He makes most of his money from successful internet marketing ventures in various niches as well as his Shoemoney System.

Shoemoney’s posts are off-the-cuff but really insightful on how he’s done so well for himself. Where John is exclusively a blogger—and a good one at that—Shoemoney tends to speak his mind more assertively. He makes a lot of subjective observations about what’s going on in the Internet Marketing world and elsewhere.

I believe Shoemoney makes some pretty good money with his blog as well. Aside from freely promoting his own products, he has the Shoemoney marketplace which allows advertisers to pitch their product once a week on his blog. He may also throw in the occasional affiliate offer in his posts.

Which model is better?

There’s no right answer to this, because each one works pretty well. It all depends on the path you want to pursue. There’s no right way and there are a million other ways as well.

But if you want to make blogging your business, listen closely to John’s advice and read his book “Make Money Online” (I’ve reviewed that here).

If blogging isn’t your main thing, check out Shoemoney’s “Shoemoney System.” In it he breaks down exactly how he makes his money, from eBay to Facebook to a dozen other creative approaches. (I’ve seen the system and it’s solid.)

For what it’s worth, Shoemoney.com gets more traffic than JohnChow.com, according to Compete.com. There are some other stats on that page worth looking at as well.

Personally, I prefer Shoemoney’s blogging agenda. He doesn’t have to worry so much about his blog making him money because his business is spread across other enterprises. John Chow too has other endeavors, like his book and blog training program, but I’m certain his main money maker is the blog.

What do you think?

Road photo by i_yudai, comic by Comictan.

Disclosure: links to Aweber, Shoemoney System and Make Money Online book are affiliate links.

1. They are consistent. This is number one for a reason. Their blogs are like rivers in that content is always flowing, with average posting frequency of at least once a day. Consistency equals hard work plus solid routine. Special props to Shoemoney, SEOBook and Problogger for working on Sundays!
2. They are passionate. I’ve never read a good blog’s post that indicates the author is bored, disconnected or hating what they’re doing. Every one of them believes in their work and the value they offer their readers. You can’t fool loyal readers with fake passion — sooner or later it’s going to backfire.
   
3. They are original. So many niches are saturated, like this “how to blog” one I’m temporarily dabbling in. A top blogger is well learned, like all of us should be, but then they innovate, gather some experience and then apply genuine creativity to their subject. What results is leadership.
4. They are generous. If you tend to hold out on your good ideas, perhaps out of fear of someone taking them, someone is going to take them anyway. That’s because there’s so many bloggers out there with reasonable intelligence that sooner or later they’ll make the same connections as you. The difference is they’ll want to share them and you won’t. This happens to me all the time, actually, but more so due to laziness and excuses.
5. They take risks. Fortune favors the brave, they say. I couldn’t agree more, and look around you — how many blogger’s stories do you read where they got paid huge salaries to blog when they first started? None. If you got some time on your hands, read all of these stories: Darren Rowse, Jeremy Shoemaker and Aaron Wall (not really a blogger per se but a great dot.com story nevertheless).
6. They are in touch with their audience. How can you lead without knowing and responding to your followers? For the answer to this I defer to Gary Vaynerchuk of Winelibrary.tv for an empassioned explanation: “You have a community when one person listens to you.” Watch the video here. 
7. They edit their work. Sure, it’s a little mundane to go over what you’ve just written, but in my experience editing is where the magic happens. It’s where you take a raw piece of writing and refine it so the language, ideas and subject matter is mature and cohesive. Not to say all top bloggers sound mature, but I can bet they go over their post before publishing it to avoid any silly errors.

And there you have it, yet another list of good blogging habits. Notice I didn’t say anything about being a good writer? That’s because it’s not too important. It’s better to write for the sake of educating, entertaining or engaging your reader. Everyone has their own style, and that’s what gives bloggers their personality.

Oh yeah, I like to do this for people who actually read this far: the 8th habit: Vision. I believe it’s important to focus on where you see your blog in the future. Maybe not necessarily the details, but some idea of the importance, magnitude and value of your work is vital to staying inspired during the day-to-day grind of blog writing.

End note: I bet you haven’t read this kind of article before, huh? Hey, I gotta start somewhere!