Make Money Online

Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul

John Chow, Michael Kwan

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781600378041
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Unternehmertum

Blogs. They may have once been the realm of personal online diaries, but blogs have quickly become just as legitimate and influential as mainstream newspapers and magazines. Did you know that you can make a very healthy income from blogging? Do you want to make five figures every month? I can show you how. My name is John Chow and my personal blog consistently makes over $40, 000 a month. In this book, I describe exactly how I went from earning $0 to over $40, 000 a month from just a couple of hours each day. I'll walk you through the process, step by step, uncovering all the secrets that other pro bloggers are too afraid to tell you. What are you waiting for? Get out of the rat race and into the blogosphere!

Chapter One:
The Best Time to Get Started

 

In this chapter, you’ll learn about finding the best time to get started with a new venture, what it means to wait for the perfect conditions, and the concept of someday.

According to Technorati, a trusted authority on what is happening on the World Wide Web right now, there are over one hundred million blogs on the Internet. It seems that nearly everyone has a blog these days, from celebrities like Martha Stewart and Ross the Intern to your ten-year-old neighbor down the street. The accessibility of the platform has made it increasingly easy for people to claim their own plots of online real estate, and they can use that space to talk about politics, sports, or what they had for lunch. The choice is 100 percent yours. If you’ve got something to say, blog about it, and your words can be read by literally millions and millions of people.

However, of these one hundred million blogs, very few make much money. In fact, the vast majority make no money whatsoever. But that’s not what you want, is it? You want to make some real money blogging, and that’s why you bought this book in the first place. Congratulations! You’ve already completed the first step on your path to becoming a dot-com mogul. Now you just have to read the book and implement the strategies described within.

If this was your average, run of the mill, get-rich-quick kind of book, this is probably where you’d be told how you’ll be making mounds of money with less than an hour of work each day. They’d tell you how you can escape the nine-to-five lifestyle and be your own boss. They’d tell you about all the free time that you’ll have and about all the unfathomable riches that you’d be enjoying during that free time. If you’re looking to get rich quick, this might not be the book for you. The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as a get-rich-quick scheme. I am not a get-rich-quick guru, nor do I do want to be associated with them. I don’t make money selling people on stupid schemes that lead to nowhere; I make money on the Internet with real websites.

The single greatest piece of advice that I can give you is to take action now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Right now. Let me tell you why.

Someday Never Comes

Do you know how to tell a successful person from an unsuccessful one? Just take a look at the language that they use. When you talk to a successful person about his goals, he’ll tell you exactly what he plans to achieve, what he plans to do to achieve it, and when he will do it. When an unsuccessful person answers this kind of question, assuming that he has any real goals to begin with, you’re more likely to hear a response along the lines of “I hope to do this someday.” But in reality, someday never comes.

The reason why a person uses words and phrases like someday, I hope, or I wish? It’s because this gives him an out. This excuse allows him to avoid being held accountable for his actions and, ultimately, his failures. If he were to place a time limit on the goal and doesn’t manage to achieve this goal, guess what? He fails. Some people hate to face failure and will do everything they can to avoid it. For example, if you say that you will become a millionaire someday, you literally have until you’re buried six feet under to achieve this goal. Even if you ultimately fail to become a millionaire in the end, you won’t be around to feel the pain of failure. In contrast, winners have no fear of failing in the short-term because they know that success comes from a string of failures. The key is to learn from your mistakes, learn from your failures, and build success from them.

Everyone has dreams and goals. The only real difference between a dream and a goal is the fact that a goal is a dream with a timeline and a plan of action. We all have dreams—becoming financially independent, having a happy family, contributing to society in the best way possible—but how many of you have made it a goal to achieve these dreams? How many of you have placed a time limit on each of these dreams? Or did you just say that you’re going to do it someday?

Think about this way. Can you imagine buying a presale condominium and not knowing when it will be completed? Imagine if you were to approach the developer about the matter and the only response that they’d give you is, “It’ll be finished someday.” Who would even consider buying into a condominium like that? You have to think about your dreams in the same way. By telling yourself that your dream will come true someday or that you hope that it will come true someday, you’re effectively giving the same response as the condo developer. If you’re not willing to buy the condo, why on earth would you be willing to buy your dream?

If you wish to achieve anything in life, you have to place a time limit on it. A goal without a time limit is not a goal. A time limit forces you to take action right now, instead of just sitting on the couch waiting for things to happen. Don’t be afraid to fail because without the risk of failure, it is not possible to achieve any sort of real success. Failure is required in order to succeed. You will not find a successful person who doesn’t have a few good stories to tell about their failures. Take a look at someone like Donald Trump. As much as some people would like to believe otherwise, Trump is not infallible. The real estate mogul has come close to bankruptcy on several occasions, and there are very few failures that are worse than bankruptcy. Despite these, “the Donald” is still respected as one of the savviest businesspeople on the planet. He learns from his failures and continues to succeed in a monumental way.

Ducks and the Waiting Game

Don’t give yourself an out through a foolish excuse either. Are you the kind of person who likes to wait until everything is perfect before starting a new venture? There are tons of people out there who are just like this, holding off on buying that house or investing in that stock because they are hoping that the market conditions will soon be changing in their favor. They hold off on starting a new business because the economy isn’t quite right. They hold off on getting married because they’re still trying to save enough money for that big wedding. Insert whatever excuse you want; most of these people are still waiting. Don’t wait. The perfect time is right now.

Success comes to those who make opportunities happen, not those who sit around waiting for opportunities to fall into their laps. If you’re waiting for all your ducks to line up before going forward with making money online, that’s all you’ll be doing: waiting. The fact of the matter is that the ducks are never going to line up for you. The conditions will never be completely perfect. If I had waited until everything was just right before starting my first money-making website, the TechZone, I would still be waiting to this day.

When you really dig deep and look at the things that are keeping you from where you want to be, you’ll find that it’s not the economy, the market, other people, or anything to do with a few ducks. The only thing that’s keeping you from being where you want to be is the person staring at you in the mirror. Some people are always looking for external conditions on which to blame their current situations because they don’t want to accept responsibility for them. They don’t want to say that they failed. Consider the word responsibility. Responsibility refers to the ability to choose your response. In any situation that you’re faced with, you have the ability to choose how you respond. 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.

Making Money Online

Making a living off the Internet is something that many people want to do. There are innumerable folks on the Web that desperately want to make enough money from their blogs to be able to quit their day jobs. It’s something that many of my friends dream of doing. However, after all these years, only two have managed to actually do it. You know why? They actually listened to me when I told them to build a site. They built their sites to the best of their abilities and learned a lot along the way. Sure, they have suffered a failure here and there, but they are certainly much more successful because of it. When it comes to the other people to whom I gave the same basic advice—“Go build a site!”—they sure sounded positive. They would say things like, “Yeah! Sounds great, I need to do this. Working at a job sucks!”

I’m still waiting to see the sites. I’m sure they’ll get to it someday.

Chapter Two:
My Story

In this chapter, you’ll learn a little about how I became a dot-com mogul, how I got into the world of blogging, and how much money I made in the first month I monetized my blog

If you had told me five years ago that I would be making over $30,000 a month from my personal blog, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. I have been making money online for a number of years now, but this was largely through a commercial site called The TechZone. I’ve learned much from the rise, fall, and reemergence of that site, and I’ve taken these lessons to John Chow Dot Com. Even so, I would have never imagined that my personal blog would become quite as popular as it has. Coupling my experience from the TechZone with my experience with John Chow Dot Com, I think it’s fair to say that I know a thing or two about how to make money online. Even so, I had humble beginnings like anyone else. One of the greatest keys to success, you see, is starting with something that you are passionate about. If you are truly passionate about something and are willing to work hard to achieve your goals, success will surely follow.

But how did I get started and how did John Chow Dot Com evolve to what it is today? Let me share my story with you, along with some of the lessons that I learned along the way.

Moto’s Project 504

It was in 1999 that I built my first computer all by myself. Naturally, I was rather proud of this achievement, so I decided to start a personal home page that described what I did and how I did it. I called it Moto’s Project 504. Moto is the nickname that I used, and continue to use, in many of my online endeavors—posting in forums and so forth—and the Project 504 part? Well, that’s because the first computer that I built by myself was a Pentium II 300, overclocked all the way to 504 MHz, which was a feat unheard of at the time. It was an exercise in what was possible, and I wanted to share this achievement with the rest of the Internet community. I also wanted to gloat a little. In any case, the site was created using Microsoft FrontPage because I didn’t know any HTML whatsoever. It wasn’t the prettiest thing in the world, but it worked. And oh boy, did it work.

The Project 504 home page got about two hundred page views on its first day, and most of the traffic came from a forum where I was a member. To this day, forums remain a significant source of traffic for many successful websites, and I highly encourage anyone looking to make money from a website to be actively involved in related forums. This is because of the community that can develop within a popular forum, which is a place where like-minded individuals from around the world can bounce ideas off of one another and otherwise communicate in a manner that just wouldn’t be possible without the Internet. The forum that was sending traffic to Project 504, Riva 3D, was one of the biggest NVIDIA forums on the Web. It’s no longer in business, but it was a monster in 1999. NVIDIA is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of computer graphics cards, but I was the guy on the forum who kept proclaiming the superiority of 3DFX, one of NVIDIA’s competitors. This made life a living hell for all the NVIDIA enthusiasts, because I would always attack their love of NVIDIA. In the end, I guess they got the last laugh when NVIDIA bought out 3DFX in 2000. I didn’t care, of course, because Moto’s Project 504 was garnering a fair bit of attention, and I loved having my fun with the NVIDIA fanboys.

As Project 504 became more popular, I tried to add more content to the site by posting news from other tech sites. There weren’t nearly as many tech sites around in those days as there are today. The biggest and best-known tech news site of the day was probably Tom’s Hardware, followed by AnandTech. After about a week of posting news from around the Web, the strangest thing happened: websites started e-mailing me their news. Naturally, I was very happy about this turn of events, because it meant that I didn’t have to go looking for news anymore. The news came to me, and Project 504 continued to grow.

One day, I received a news release from Mike Chambers, an NVIDIA fanboy who I knew through the Riva 3D forum. Mike sent out this news release with all the e-mail addresses in the carbon copy (CC) field (as opposed to the blind carbon copy ([BCC]) field). What this means is that all the thirty or so e-mail addresses were fully visible! Here’s a quick note to anyone who sends out news releases: use the blind carbon copy (BCC) field for all the recipients! These thirty e-mail addresses gave birth to my first news mailing list. Today that news list has over one thousand addresses (and growing).

The TechZone is Born

Even though the Internet wasn’t nearly as developed back then as it is today, things still moved quickly. After about a month, I decided that Project 504 needed its own domain name. I created a post asking readers for recommendations, and I think I received about a dozen replies. In the end, none of the suggested names appealed to me. I racked my brain for ideas and then it dawned on me. At the time, I also owned a site called The LoveZone, which served as a home page for members of a certain chat room. Giving it a little bit of thought, it came to me that I could extend this idea. LoveZone? How about TechZone? Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best ones. And so, the TechZone was born in April 1999.

There was no content management system (CMS) back then—refer to chapter 5: Installing WordPress, for more information on content management systems—so I had to manually add content to the site every day. To help expand the TechZone, I managed to con a couple of local computer stores to loan me hardware to review. A website without quality content isn’t going to get anywhere, so this helped a lot. After another month, I decided to try my hand at e-mailing a manufacturer for a product to review. The company that I first contacted was Abit. I asked them for a BH6 motherboard and got no reply. And then a week later, the motherboard showed up at my door! After reviewing the motherboard, I e-mailed them to let them know that I had completed the review, and also to request another motherboard. As before, I got no reply, but, sure enough, the new motherboard arrived about a week later. To this day, Abit has never replied to my requests for review samples, but they have almost always delivered.

Two months after starting the TechZone, I got a call from Ed Homich, who worked for Maximum PC, one of the most respected online magazines in the world of computing. He informed me that he was going to start a network and wanted my site to join. Maximum PC would post my news and sell advertising for my site. Any money made would be split fifty-fifty I thought, “I can make money doing this?” This was my first exposure to site monetization. Yes, you can make money online!

Being a part of the Maximum PC network was a fun and interesting experience. Unlike other networks, Maximum PC kept their number of affiliates low and they stuck with well-known sites. Some of the original network members include Ars Technica, WinDrivers, and Neoseeker. Ed told me to pump out the content, and he’d send me the traffic. MaximumPC.com was a huge website back then, and they only posted network news.

Interestingly enough, most of the other sites in the Maximum PC network didn’t produce very much content. There were times when the Maximum PC home page looked like the TechZone because all the stories on there were from me. This goes to show you that when you feel passionate about something and you’re willing to put in the work, the rewards are definitely there for the taking. As I mentioned in the first chapter, you have to make your own opportunities. The other sites in the network just didn’t take advantage of this tremendous opportunity in the same way that I did. The first check that I got from Maximum PC was for $250. I remember thinking that this was pretty cool. The next month, the check was for $2,500. That’s how fast my traffic was growing.

Networking and Trade Shows

In August of 1999, just four months after launching the TechZone, I got rid of the black background that was so popular in those days. This was based on the recommendation of a site designer. The next month, Ed Homich of Maximum PC gave me another call and he told me that I needed to come to Las Vegas for Comdex. At the time, I’d never heard of it.

Comdex was the biggest technology trade show in North America at the time, attended by over 200,000 people. This not only provided an excellent opportunity to see the latest technological developments, but it was also a fantastic opportunity to do some networking with people who had similar interests. Maximum PC hosted a party and an affiliate awards dinner at Comdex 1999. I received the award for Top Affiliate because I was the fastest growing site in the Maximum PC Network. It’s hard to believe that only a few months prior, Moto’s Project 504 didn’t even exist.

It was also around this time that I decided to register the domain name JohnChow.com. I figured that there had to be millions of John Chows in the world, so I wanted to be the only one to own the domain. After snatching the domain in March 2000, I set up a static home page with a really nifty Flash intro. The fancy animations of Flash helped to give the site a little more personality. Yes, Flash was cool back then, too. The static page basically described who I was and what I did. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Welcome to the Wired World of John Chow! My name is John Chow (as you no doubt notice from the domain name, hee hee). Right now, the world is under heavy construction. I will update this home page when I have more time (and...