I was going to just ignore John Chow’s ebook and get on with posting new material. I’m not particularly fond of rehashing the current popular posts, and I have a backlog of original content to add to the blog.
But, when you write a blog about making money online, and one of the world’s most successful bloggers writes an ebook about making money online, people are going to wonder if you’re paying attention if you don’t at least mention it. So this post is about why I’m not reviewing John Chow’s ebook.
It isn’t evil
John seems to take great pride in calling his distribution of a free ebook to drive traffic to his site “evil”, and his readership buys it. The fact is, this technique has been around for years, and can’t really even be considered particularly clever these days. It is a good solid technique that works well, though.
It’s repackaged forum posts
Everything in the ebook is available in the archives of John’s blog. There’s no value added here, no roadmap for beginning bloggers to follow. Just a jumble of posts that you have to wade through to create your own roadmap. I put this on par with collecting public domain documents into an ebook and distributing it.
John’s blog is not about making money online
Despite the huge success of his positioning for the keyword “make money online”, John’s blog is no longer about making money online. It’s for making money online. Displaying advertisements on a blog that attracts newcomers to the idea of making money online is misleading. Someone new to the Internet or blogs might click on an advertisement and think it’s something John endorses. That’s one of the reasons I do not, and have no plans to, display ads on this blog.
Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with repackaging old forum posts into an ebook and giving it away to boost traffic to your site. But there’s also nothing original about it, and it doesn’t really deserve the hype it’s getting.
What do you think?
Jay, I do agree of your statement :”John’s blog is no longer about making money online. It’s for making money online”.
You also said:” I do not, and have no plans to, display ads on this blog”.
Just wondering what is your source for having money online?
Sorry if my question a bit silly, I am new at blogosphere.
Julia, that’s a great question! I run this blog to share my experiences about making money online so others can benefit from it. My focus for making money online is split between Internet marketing efforts and site development. I have a site in development now that I plan to feature as a case study once I’ve seen how it profits (or doesn’t). I’m interested in domaining, but have zero experience there. If I get involved I’ll write about my experiences here.
Also, I do use affiliate links to products or sites I reference in posts here. I don’t post about something just to try to sell it, though, I post about it because it’s something interesting that I think will help, or to review an ebook so you don’t have to spend the money to see what it’s about. Currently my earnings through affiliate links through these blog posts since the blog went live is $0, so you can see that I’m not really trying to make money that way (I’d be repeating the usual hype for those programs if I were trying to make money from them). If someone *does* like a product or service well enough to use it, I welcome the referral fee, but that’s not the purpose.
Hope that helps!
I do agree that there’s absolutely nothing original or great about it. Most of Chow’s readers are really newbies when it comes to affiliate/internet marketing and that’s probably why they found it fascinating.
I think you’re right, Maki. That’s one of the reasons I’m glad he’s not on the first page for “make money online” anymore. His blog wasn’t a particularly good answer to that question for newbies.