How did John Chow get so popular?

November 19th, 2008

I saw a post on DP which I found was a bit interesting. The question someone asks is how John Chow became so popular.  I thought most of the responses were quite funny.  This somewhat reminds me a bit of his post he made a couple days ago titled, whats in it for me?

John became popular because he was in the blog business at the right time. He started early with his TechZone website, then blogged about making money online. When people saw he was successful, they were interested. I think people ‘follow’ someone because they see that the person they are following is/was successful. I’ll be honest, I read people’s blogs because I see they were successful and I want to see what they have to say about things, and hopefully gain knowledge. One thing that attracted me to John Chow’s blog was his blog monthly income reports. When they see that his website (yes, the one they are looking at right now) is making nearly $40,000 profit a month, they are interested in coming back and seeing what the website is doing to make that much in hopes of doing the same thing themselves. This is also how Shoemoney got so popular in my opinion. He posted a picture of him holding a $132,000 check (that he made in one month) which made people come back to see what he had to say, because he was successful.

So, what made John Chow popular? Same reason Shoemoney is popular…they were successful and told their story. Humans are so interested in successful people that success and popularity only build (look at any celebrity for example). Success builds because your popularity builds and you have the ability to reach many, many people very easily. Popularity builds off this because you are successful. Once you’re successful, it is hard not to be more successful.

When people ask questions to Shoemoney or JohnChow about how they were popular, they always answer “write good content over time”. I agree that good content over time will help, but in all honesty, both JohnChow and Shoemoney didn’t become popular by writing good content, they become popular because they were successful.

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Rubik’s Cube Demonstration

November 18th, 2008

I will be giving a rubik’s cube demonstration at Bell Middle School in Golden, Colorado on Thursday, November 20th.  It will take place from 2:00-5:00pm, as part of the 80’s week that the school is having.  I’m looking forward to it.

If you’re interested in learning to speedsolving, I’d suggest checking out Speedsolving.com.  There is tons of information there on everything from competitions, to solving tips and techniques.  If you’re new, there is a beginners central spot just for you to ask questions.

Posted in Other, Sports | Comments (0)

Using Google Calendar to Manage Ads

November 15th, 2008

I noticed that I would often place direct ad sales on various parts of my webpage and then I would forget when to take them down since I had so many.  I then thought of simply using Google Calendar to manage my ads.

Whenever I place an ad, I simply create an event in my calendar that is scheduled for the end date of duration of the ad, and in the description I describe what it is, where I put it, and the contact information of who bought the ad.  Under the options when you are creating the event, I have Google sent me an email 2 days before the event, so I can contact the advertiser for renewal.  It is as simple as that.

With a combination of Google Calendar to manage my ads, and Gmail to get notified and to contact advertisers, it is a perfect combination for managing advertisements.

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Posted in Advertising, Search Engine Stuff | Comments (0)

New : Google Video Chat in Google Chat

November 14th, 2008

Google just came out with an awesome video chat that goes along with the already popular Google Chat.

Check out all the details and the demo video here.

Enjoy.

Posted in Search Engine Stuff | Comments (0)

DMA Session Review - 2008 - Money & Blogs

November 14th, 2008

The other day Shoemoney posted a video of a panel he was part of at the DMA Session last month.  Today I had the opportunity to sit down and watch the entire thing.

I’m not sure what the goal of the conference was, and/or for what level, but I thought it was pretty basic.  Nearly everything that they said could be found on the web within 5-10 minutes of searching.  Jeremy did provide some good tips, as always, but most of the other tips I found to be so basic that it wasn’t even worth a conference and/or panel for.  Anyways, if you want to check it out, click on the link above.  It is directed toward people just starting to use advertising.

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Sites I visit daily, and why

November 12th, 2008

Here is a list of sites I browse daily. I’d suggest checking them out, for the following reasons:

  • Gmail: My main email
  • Facebook: Just to stay in touch with friends
  • Yahoo Sports: Have to keep up with the latest sports news
  • Digital Point: I almost learn something new each time I visit.  A great place for new ideas
  • Speedsolving.com: The lastest and greatest information on speedsolving puzzles… a hobby of mine
  • Adsense: Keeping up to date with the earnings
  • Analytics: I monitor all my sites to see where the traffic and coming, and why it is coming
  • Mac Forums: Good news/rumors on Apple-related stuff
  • Google Webmaster Central: Google’s blog for webmaster related stuff

Do you have any sites you’d like to share?  If you read this, I ping you.

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Website Magazine - websitemagazine.com - Review

November 11th, 2008

The other day I received my first issue of Website Magazine in the mail.  Last night was the first opportunity I had to look through it and read some of the articles in it.  I have to say, this magazine is very good, especially for being free.

I noticed that all of the advertisements in the magazine at blended nicely, and are quite relevant to the magazine topic.  I ended up going through the magazine and checking out nearly all the advertisers websites, and found a lot of great info on them.  Lots of nice companies I have never heard of were represented there, and I will definitely look into them more.  I noticed some of the links that were in the ads didn’t work, such as Ezanga’s ad listing on page 43.

Each article in the magazine is written well, and contains great information.  This magazine is loaded with great articles, and advertisements, which are quite nice.  I support Website Magazine 100%.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, I’d highly suggest going there and signing up for next issue either as an e-Magazine or by mail, at WebsiteMagazine.com.

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Increased Google Rank

November 10th, 2008

A little over a week ago, I mentioned how one of my sites was ‘de-ranked’ from Google.  The site in particular was making a decent amount of advertising money from Adsense.  The earnings dropped by around 70% once the search engine traffic went away, since the SE traffic was a large portion of the site.

Since this time, I have been able to regain the #1 rank but simply adding more content to the site.  It took around a week to regain the #1 rank, and at the same time, I took the #1 rank for around 30 more, low-searched keywords, increasing my traffic even more than it was before being de-ranked.  It looks like the recent change in Google’s algorithm helped out that particular since, and didn’t really hurt it as I initially thought.

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Posted in Advertising, Search Engine Stuff | Comments (0)

The John Reese Story - Simply Amazing

November 8th, 2008

Over the last several years, I’ve heard a lot about John Reese, but I never really knew exactly what he did or how he did it.  If you do a quick search for him on Google, you won’t find much on there, mainly because he was in his prime 5+ years ago.  I had downloaded an interview that Joel Comm did with John Reese awhile back, but I never got around to listening to it until last night.  It is a 2 hour+ long interview, but it is a really great one.  John goes in depth on his story, and how he went from over $100,000 in debt in his early twenties to a multimillionaire.

He seemed to join the internet marketing era at the right time.  From what I understand, he was responsible for creating email auto-responders that are ever-so-popular today.  He also hosted images for eBay auctions way back when eBay was starting in 1996, and that was what really made him take off.  Since he began doing that, he was able to sell advertising on his site where all the images were located and where people had to go to see the images.  This not only allowed people selling stuff on eBay to display what the item looked like, it also had a huge impact on whether or not an item sold and for how much it sold.

John talks about how he started to get into debt by using credit cards in hopes of turning that money into more money.  Instead, none of it went through, and he found himself with 10+ credit cards, maxed out, and no money to pay for them.  He also talks about selling a domain for $900, which was then turned around and sold for $1,000,000 the next day.

John ended up selling an eBook called ‘Traffic Secrets’, which generated over $1,000,000 in sales in the first 18 hours, which became the most successful eBook ever.  Today, John lives in a mansion on the beach, and owns several exotic cars including a lamborghini.

I would highly suggest downloading and listening to this interview, it is a quite remarkable story.  You can download it by clicking here (29MB).

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Review: TylerCruz.com

November 7th, 2008

I discovered TylerCruz.com back when shoemoney mentioned him winning the Market Leverage cashinator.  Tyler has a nice blog design, and it is attractive.  He basically blogs about making money online.

However, since I subscribed a couple months ago, I have noticed nearly all of the posts he makes are ‘Paid Reviews’, which he gets $175 for per review (per blog post).  This has really driven me away from reading his blog via TylerCruz.com, or by email via subscription.

Tyler, if you read this, please, enough with the paid reviews, or at least minimize them.  They are taking over your blog.  I want to read and learn, but instead, all I see is you reviewing websites that want some attention.  Because of this, it makes me wonder if you’re doing it for money, since they are all paid reviews.

Posted in Advertising | Comments (4)

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