How does John Chow make $12,000 a month?

Sep 1, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Monetization 5 Comments

The infamous John Chow makes over $12,000 a month off his blog. His “evil plans” (to quote him) frequently involve link-baiting contests, and had landed him a PageRank of 6. Google got tired of his plots to take over the web (or at least land him a huge pile of links) and demoted him to PageRank 0. Ouch. Several of people have said “I probably rank higher in a search for ‘John Chow’ than John Chow does”…and they would be right.
It hasn’t done much to his earnings however. He’s still going along making piles of cash without Google, thanks to other search engine, and his large reader base.

This brings us to the big question. How’s he making all that dough? If you look at his blog, you won’t see a single AdSense ad (I’ll bet Google banned him from AdSense too…). What’s the secret? Haha, you didn’t think AdSense was the only way to make money online, did you?

If you look closely, you’ll see 125×125 buttons that cost $500/month. There are Text-Link-Ads links that net him $250/month (per link). There are Kontera ContentLinks, AuctionAds banners, and more (not to mention affiliate links). There are tons of revenue sources scattered throughout JohnChow.com. Of course, not just anyone can demand $500/month for a 125×125 button.

I’ve made a Content Map of JohnChow.com to help you visualize the CNBA Ratio (Content-Navigation-Branding-Ads) of the site. Here it is:

It would be a lot of work to mark-out the Kontera links, so I didn’t do that. :D

EDIT: Oops, I missed the $400 ReviewMe banner.

  • http://www.bluejar.com GomeyNewt

    Wow, he has a lot of ads on his website and honestly I never noticed many of them. His whole top right section is just ads and it really doesn’t seem to affect the user experience on that blog. His new design is really nice too and the ads are blended well.

  • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

    Yeah, he’s an “evil genius” all right. He’s succeeded in making huge piles of cash without affecting the user experience. I just don’t like the Kontera links that go-off when you hover over them.

  • http://moremerchant.com Jake

    He does have a lot of ads. He has done well for himself, but at what cost? Is he taking bloggers to an all new level of spam?

    His site isn’t necessarily spam, but where will this lead others?

  • http://www.bluejar.com GomeyNewt

    From what I can tell bloggers who blog about making money or who have those “one year goals” can get away with just about anything when it comes to ads and monetizing their blogs. They saturate their users with this stuff but its what their blog is about so they get away with it.

    I hope it doesn’t bleed into other blogs too hard. Plus I think it would damage theme personally as if their blog is about say “dogs” or something like that, certainly they can’t soup their website full of ads and talk about making money that often.

  • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

    Personally, I don’t mind an AdSense block or two, a few Text-Link-Ads, maybe a few 125x125s like John Chow and ProBlogger have. I don’t mind affiliate links at all either, but I’m not a fan of the ReviewMe reviews. I don’t like the Kontera links either.