Making Money From Blogging
April 3rd, 2007John Chow has a fascinating post (and blog for that matter) on how he is making money from blogging. He decided to monetize his blog as an experiment to see if he could make money for himself from the Internet. John, like most Web professionals, has experience in telling others how to run their Web sites, but he wondered if he could make money himself… like most Web professionals do! Turns out he is doing very well – good enough to make it a full time job, but he also shows that it takes dedication and hard work.
Here’s how he’s been doing:
September $352.94 (first month as a moneymaking blog)
October $1,361.64
November $2,139.93
December $2,790.05
January $3,440.66
February $7,011.05
March $8,545.25
He’s also kind enough to show the breakdown of his income for March – all from smart marketing tools:
ReviewMe: $2,400.00
Affiliate Sales: $1,962.20
Text Links Ads: $1,308.06
Google AdSense: $1,129.60
Direct Ad Sales: $625.00
Vibrant Media: $357.08
Kontera: $296.12
TTZ Media: $278.92
FeedBurner Ads: $188.27
Grand Total: $8,545.25
(I noticed that he also has Adsense-like ads by ActionAds.)
The traffic didn’t come for free, but it was relatively cheap at $480.75 for March (mostly AdWords). Now, $480/month is a lot of money for an amateur blogger, but it goes to show that a little money can go a long way.
An interesting expense that he incurred is what he calls Google IM ads to other blogs. “Google IM ads” could be a way of spreading the love (“who knows who”) or it could be a form of AdSense arbitrage, or – most likely – it’s a combination: spreading the love and making money. The perfect mix. Huge hooray for corporate marketers that are on board.
He may have been lucky, but he proves that one can make a decent income from blogging. Can he keep it up? I bet he can because, like any other job, it takes time and passion to do it well and he seems to have both.
Why do I do it..? Passion! I am a Web professional and I love this stuff and so it has become a hobby. The Adsense income was a “why not?”, but now it justifies the hobby 
. I also do it to encourage other people to blog about their passions because it is such an amazing forum to spread knowledge.
Make Money On The Internet – johnchow.com