All Posts Tagged With: "11"

For those unfamiliar with the term “jumping the shark“, it is a term used by the television industry to describe a show that has already peaked and is now on the decline.  The term originated from an episode of Happy Days where the main character jumps over a shark while water skiing.   After that point, the show was never the same.

So, what does this have to do with the notorious John Chow?   It has been roughly a year and a half since John began his case study on his personal blog to see if he could use his site to make money online.   Over time, through the use of clever marketing tactics and an anchor text link exchange, John was able to take a blog from zero income to over $20,000.00 this last month.  During this time, John has been widely credited for taking the “make money online” niche and bringing it to the forefront of the blogosphere, to the point where he has copycats like John Cow riding his cowtails, make money online blogs are everywhere, and just about every blog you visit in any niche is now covered in hidden affiliate links. 

Despite his success, it was only a matter of time before the blog peaked.  For it to generate any more income, he would have to push the content even further down the page.  So, has John Chow jumped the shark?  

In looking over the posts he’s written in the past two months, one would have to say yes.  A typical day on his blog now contains the following:  Pictures of a recent fine dining experience, pictures of an event he recently attended, or guest posts from other bloggers.   Rarely does John give any actual content anymore or tips to make money online.   It is almost like he ran out of things to talk about.  Unfortunately, unlike many popular blogs that grew their readership over time with content (such as ProBlogger), John’s fast rise to success is based on marketing and manipulation of Google’s search.  

In looking at John’s blog today, I noticed that his 125×125 banners section now contains a few affiliate links rather than paid advertisers.  I’ve also noticed that we don’t seem to see as many ReviewMe posts recently.   Looks to me like the fallout has begun. 

Do you still read John Chow?  If so, why? 

It’s been exactly two weeks since we talked about Google redefining what a clickable area is in an effort to combat click fraud, so I figured that was adequate time to let the change soak in and examine some trends. At the time of the change, it made sense for Google and advertisers, but it fueled a lot of speculation that sites that depend on Google AdSense to generate income would likely lose out on some of their monthly income.

Something that a few publishers speculated on is that with lower fraud rates, publishers would likely be willing to pay more per click to get their advertisements seen. We are also approaching the holiday season, meaning that advertising budgets are going up and a lot of other businesses are launching seasonal advertising campaigns.  If this theory holds true, Google AdSense publishers should still be seeing consistent income.

In looking over my analytics and AdSense reports, it looks like my income from Google AdSense has dipped some, despite a heavy increase in traffic.   Is this due to the clickable area change?   Unfortunately, that isn’t something that I can be sure of.  As David points out, a lot of things can factor into a change in pay-per-click advertising.   Thats why I decided to poll my readers and find out how AdSense is performing for you over the past two weeks.   Has your income remained steady?  Have you noticed any trends?

When most people start out blogging, they usually do so for a variety of reasons. Maybe that person wants to see what the blogging hype is all about, or maybe they just have a strong passion for something and want to open themselves up for some discussion/debates.

Over time, as the blogger perfects his or her trade, it is likely that at some point that blogger’s attention will turn towards attempting to make money online. After all, why do something for free if you can do the exact same thing and get paid?

When you do decide to monetize your blog, there are a wide variety of factors you need to consider. What companies should I sign up with? What type of advertising is best? Where do I place my advertisements to get the best results? This can be intimidating for a blogger that is trying to make money online.

Some lucky bloggers will find immediate success monetizing their blog, but most will fail to truly maximize their blog’s income potential. You might even be making some money, but how do you determine how much money you should be making? There are no exact figures, but your amount of traffic will play a big part in yours blogs income potential. So, how can you maximize your blog’s income?

The solution is simple. I present to you Site Salary, which is a website dedicated to helping bloggers maximize their income. Site Salary believes that too many webmasters rely heavily on a small number of income sources for their online business, and aims to teach bloggers to see the wider variety of opportunities available to them. If you prefer to rely on pay-per-click advertising programs such as Google AdSense to monetize your blog, Site Salary also has you covered. Jason believes that no website should be making less than $20.00 per thousand page views, with some sites having the potential to make even more! On Site Salary, you’ll find details such as ad placement, which types of ad blocks to use, and everything else you could ever need to maximize your income.

In addition to learning about generating advertising revenue blogging, you will also learn more about:

• Affiliate Programs - Learn how to increase your monthly revenue through affiliate programs.
• Mailing Lists - Learn how to reach more people with mailing lists and use them to increase your monthly revenue.

Sound good? If so, you can sign up for Site Salary’s free e-mail course, which provides site owners with an introduction to the website by teaching you how to tweak existing revenue streams and discover some new revenue streams that will improve your monthly income.

Once you’ve gone through the free course, you can then elect to provide your contact information for Site Salary’s pre-launch sign up for their upcoming SiteSalary Guide Book. It looks like it is due to be released November 20th, 2007, and will provide purchasers with a complete guide to maximizing their websites income.

I’ve had the privilege to look through a lot of the content that Site Salary provides, and it is extremely accurate. You can tell that Jason is speaking from his personal experiences.