How to Make Money Online

I read a few blogs on "how to make money online" (I don't take much of their advice since I'm not really trying to make money on this blog, but I do like to keep up-to-speed with the latest tips and trends.) Out of all the big name "make money online" bloggers, the one I like best is John Chow. To me he has the right combination of experience, common sense, practicality, craftiness, humor, perspective, and attitude that make his blog great reading. And since he makes $40,000 a month from his blog, he knows what he's talking about.

Well, he's now written a book titled Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul and I wanted to let you know what I thought about it.

A good part of the book is information you can find online. In fact, it's not much different than what I detailed in the series How to Get Your Blog to 100,000 Visitors and Beyond. That said, John adds much more detail and some GREAT tips (I wrote down several that I could use here at FMF) so that even an advanced blogger can learn something. In addition, he adds fascinating stories that make the book entertaining and especially interesting if you read his blog (it's always cool to get extra insight into how someone "made it.") In fact, this was the best part for me -- reading another biography of a successful person that shows that most wealthy people weren't handed their wealth -- they earned it.

I also really liked John's success formula (listed at the end of the book) that summarizes his steps for making money with a blog. The five things he lists include (along with my one-sentence summary for each):

1. Quality content - write great stuff people want to read
2. Marketing skills - get the word out about it
3. Dedication - stick with it and don't give up
4. Adaptability - change as need be to be successful
5. Maximizing revenue - take advantage of all opportunities and try new things

There, that's simple, isn't it? ;-)

Seriously, it all really does boil down to those five things. Do them well and you WILL make money blogging.

Finally, one other thing I admire about John is that he's a giving person. Every once in awhile his blog has some sort of charity challenge like "you donate $1 to this and I'll match it." His book ends in the same spirit of giving and features a chance to give to John's local Habitat for Humanity branch (BTW, I support Habitat as well.) Good for him!

Overall, I'd say it's a solid book for those who know little about blogging and for those who read John's blog (80k subscribers) and want to know more about him. Check it out at your local library or, if you want to use it as a guidebook to develop your own blog, buy a copy and mark up all the great ideas in it.

Anyone out there read this book? What do you think of it?

Comments

[BillV]

$40,000 a month! Wow. I am impressed. Now I have to check out his blog. ;-)

[Budgeting in the Fun Stuff]

I hadn't read that book yet but it's in my library request list now. :-)

$40k a month from one blog is simply impressive no matter who you are...

[Rich Avery]

FMF, thanks for your generosity in sharing tips to help other bloggers succeed!

[MMOF]

John Chow is pretty well known on the internet. I won't argue that he knows what he's doing, however I've tried learning from his teachings and it's extremely hard to follow; especially for a newbie.

But no denying that he's definitely made a name for himself in the "make money online" world.

Hopefully someday I can pull off even half of what he's accomplished!

- TriNi

[sunil]

JC - "Cow" is no doubt a success at what he does, a big reason for it was his involvement at the earliest stages of the game.

i agree with a previous comment, not all of what he says is easy to understand and follow. i received a free copy of this book and read it immediately. it's a good read and i recommend it for both a novice and someone already making a healthy living online. i have been making solid income only from a portfolio of websites for a few years now, yet was able to pick up a new thing or two.

to answer your question FMF, the book is good. nothing out of the ordinary for me or someone in my shoes, but a good one for someone aspiring to make money online. 100% of this info is available free online, but the cost of the book will save the reader the hassle to research and put pieces together.

[elvie]

Great article! Thanks for the information...I'll try and see this for sure...

[MMA]

It is very easy way to earn money online using Internet there are so many blogs surveys where from you can easily make money monthly by adds by putting articles etc. Now it has very popular that every boday making money online by different ways using interent.

[Jasmine Lee]

I'm actually quite skeptical when it comes to making money online because most of the stuff that I've seen seem spammy. But there are a lot of people who have made it and I think that Quality Content is the most important. If you're writing to everyone, you're writing to no one.
Thanks for the post :)

[Brent]

I've purchased a few "how to make money online" books, DVDs, and audio CDs. They were moderately useful on teaching how to promote and market yourself. However, my big problem is that their material really only focuses on how to sell other "make money online" programs. So you basically have a group of people making money by offering you hope that you can make money by selling programs on how to make money to others (I know, it's a mouthful). At the end of the day I really didn't feel like they taught me how to sell an actual product.

I would be impressed if someone said they made thousands selling online cookbooks or some product that is not related to online marketing. That is someone I would listen to.

[Old Limey]

I did quite well back in the 90's by selling some computer software that took me 2 years, 7 days/week, and about 15/hours/day to write. It isn't anything that I have the knowledge to be able to repeat today.

Computer software used to have a useful life of about 5 years before it became obsolete. I happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with a group of people that were fellow users of a proprietary database to which I subscribed. The company that owned the database also provided an electronic bulletin board whereby its users could share ideas with other users and that's what I used to get new ideas, write my software, and distribute it.

I think a lot of products are the result of a person, like me, that saw a good opportunity, had the knowledge to develop it, and supported it while it lasted. When mine became obsolete I gave it to the company that owned the database, free of charge, and they took what they needed from it, paid for it to be rewritten, at low cost by a programmer in India, and it's the product I use today.

Technology is now changing at such a rapid rate, particularly in the computer and communication world, that new products don't have long to go before a better one comes along to make the competition obsolete.