I stubled across a tweet by Jason Moffatt this past weekend, where he wrote about a video he saw by John Chow, about how John makes $40,000 a month from his blog.
Let’s do a little math.
That’s $40,000 a month, times 12 months in a year. That comes to just under a Half Million dollars a year.
Going the other way, that’s about $1,333 a day.
Now, if John was working an eight-hour day, I’d say that was a pretty darn good living he was making: about $166/hour. It turns out, though, that John doesn’t work 8 hours a day.
He actually set out with a goal of earning just $3,000 a month by working 2 hours a day.
And it turns out that he STILL works just 2 hours a day. So that’s about $666 per hour.
Thanks, John for making the video and sharing what you know. And thanks to Jason for turning me on to John.
Here’s the nearly hour-long video, in its entirety, for you to watch. Below the video is my Cheat Sheet set of notes that I took while watching the video.
Sure, go ahead and just read the notes. But I think you’ll get more value out of watching the video and taking your own notes.
Here is my “John Show Blogging Cheat Sheet”
–Mark Widawer
John Chow $40,000 a Month Blogging Cheat Sheet
Started with goal of working 2 hours/day and earning $3k/month.
Before September 2006: $0
September 2006: $352
By December 2006, hit $3k/month
Then decided to “crank it up” by doing some other minor stuff.
In 2007, did $180k.
2008: 360k
2009: 500k
…still on 2hrs/day.
Easy today, but preparation was not easy. Took a lot of energy.
Why bloggers don’t make money:
* They think of themselves as bloggers, rather than internet marketers.
* No money required — easy in…and OUT. Because they have no investment, they leave too soon.
* They’re blogging for money only.
* They don’t treat their blog as a business.
The Average Blog Business Model
* Produce Content, set up Adsense
* DOES NOT WORK
* Requires too much traffic.
John’s Blog Business Model
* Captures the lead
* Builds a relationship — establishy ourself as a trustworthy source.
* Put them through a sales funnel
* Work out the cost per lead
* Add Pay Per Click
Capture the Lead
* Get the email first
* RSS, Twitter, Facebook are secondary.
* Most other blogs are ad-driven, and when they click the ad, they leave his blog. So the first thing he does is to show a popup optin for a free ebook on how to make money online.
* Recommends Aweber. And start from the beginning (even if you’ve got zero traffic). Choose your AR service wisely, since CAN SPAM makes it difficult to move your entire list from one service to another.
* Use the lightbox hoverpop. Using the Lightbox hover increased his daily signups from 25/day to 100/day. Being “in their face” is okay. Don’t be put off by that. Advertising is not subtle.
Build the Relationship
* Use confirmed opt-in to make sure you get real email addresses.
* Write your autoresponder messages related to your optin gift.
* The purpose of your AR messages is to establish trust and bulid yourself as an authority. Gradually sell them something.
Sales Funnel
* It’s getting harder to make money with advertising on your site ($2cpm). So sell them something.
* Find targeted products to sell
* Could be your own product or affiliate deals.
* Add messages to your AR series to promote the items.
* Day 0 email is “Welcome”. Gives the download link again. Gives twitter, linked in, facebook links.
* Day 7. “Let’s get you started”. I’m sure you’ve read the book by now. Over the next 6 weeks, you’ll get a series of lessons to getting you to make money.” Links to affiliate offers for Godaddy, hosting, etc. (Don’t try to sell. Instead, recommend and teach.)
* Day 14: Ways to make money with your blog. All using affiliate links.
* Day 21: Why you need a mailing list.
* Day 28: How to build a huge twitter following
* Day 35: Tools of the trade.
* Day 42: Blog Mastermind Program
* Also mails Broadcast of sales promotions, affiliate offers, etc.
* Aweber is set to digest every 15 blog posts and mail it out automatically.
Work Out Cost Per Lead
* Sells his advertising automatically on his site. Totally automated at $500/month or more.
* Use Google Analytics to set up a Goal.
* Work out the Sign up rate
* Work out the average income per signup from the sales funnel.
* If 1 in 10 sign up for the newsletter and the average income per lead is $10, then your value per lead is $1.00. If you spend anything up to $1 per lead you’ll be profitable.
Add Pay Per Click
* Runs PPC sending people to his free ebook offer on his blog. Gets 25% optin rate.
Over the last year, his revenue has doubled, even though the number of ads has remained the same. Each new person adds a couple of dollars per month to his revenue, and they stack one upon the other. That’s why he’ll keep making money.
=== END ===
So that’s my cheat sheet based on watching John’s video. Nice work John!
It’s pretty clear, from watching the video, and even reading the notes, that there’s really nothing that John is doing that is so remarkable. The difference, though, between John and most people, is that most people don’t take action.
John takes action.
And more importantly than that, he takes CONSISTENT action.
I’d love to hear your comments on John’s video here, as well as your own advice or questions for how to make this all work.
–Mark Widawer