Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul Book Review

Make Money Online is the title of a brand new physical book by John Chow who to me is the embodiment of The e-Marketer.

The “e” can stand both for internet or e-commerce and also for evil, the word included in his nickname by which he is known in the online marketing circles.

John Chow accepts being called and even calls himself “the root of all evil” which is part of his branding strategy.

Do not be alarmed though. John is actually as far away from being evil as you can imagine.

When I first met him in person I was really surprised at how helpful and down to earth he really is. Not stuffy at all but on the contrary. He treats you like a long time friend right off the bat.

Don’t believe the rumors about how stuck up and unapproachable all the A bloggers are. Some may be that way but certainly not John Chow.

I was very fortunate to get his Make Money Online brand new book as one of the first people because I pre-ordered it right after he wrote a post about this book to be published shortly saying it could be pre-ordered from Amazon.

He published the announcement post on his blog on April 01, 2010 and many of his readers thought that it was an April Fool’s Day joke. They were incredulous and admired his elaborate “joke”.

It always pays to examine things for yourself and it paid off for me yet again.

Having read the book I feel an overwhelming desire to share my impressions of it with you.

Whether you are making oodles of money online or not this book is for you

Even if you don’t have a blog I think that you will want one after reading Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul by John Chow.

Failing that you’ll still enjoy finding out about how John is making over $40,000 per month from a blog that was originally meant only for close friends and family.

You will read about how the Dot Com Bubble came and went and what it looked like from the inside. When the burst of the Dot Com Bubble took place it was quite a mystery to me. Reading about it from John’s perspective is very revealing.

You will learn to appreciate the role Google has played and still plays in enabling ordinary people to have the opportunity to make money online.

You can read about making your first dollar online in the post that appeared on this blog before under the heading Make Money Online Now, Your First Online Dollar.

I have also reviewed an ebook on related subject by Daniel Scocco in my post titled Make Money Blogging.

For some reason people like to bash Google and I think that it is more out of envy and ignorance than anything else.

You will learn a lot about blogging and most importantly you will learn what made John so successful and what you can do to become a blogger of John’s caliber.

Nothing is held back. John tells it like it is. He shares many details of what he does.

The book has a smart full color front cover and a full color head shot of John Chow on the back cover where John introduces himself and his $40 K plus blog income saying he can show you how he does it inside the book.

Don’t tell me you wouldn’t want to know how he started this money stream from zero and how he continues to rake the money in.

The foreword is written by Joel Comm who is a well known social media expert.

In the preface John introduces you to Michael Kwan who helped put John’s ideas, strategies, techniques and advice together into the book package and is thus listed in the book as the second author. Michael also writes guest posts on John Chow Dot Com occasionally.

The book is written in a friendly style that I think most people will like. It relates things with authority without talking down to you. It is as if a friend was relating to you his or her experiences and the lessons learned.

It is amazing how much John covers in the 149 page book. And that number includes the Appendix and the Free Bonus Page.

The Free Bonus is a video tutorial of a special presentation John gave at the Vancouver Business, Marketing and Entrepreneur meet up and it describes the specifics of his blog model.

This bonus alone could well be worth the price of the book.

The Best of What’s Inside Make Money Online

There are 13 chapters of which I’ll mention only some that each on their own would make me buy the book.

When I read Chapter Two “My Story“ I was real happy I made the purchase. John’s story is fascinating and he covers a lot more in it than just himself.

Chapter Ten “Optimizing Google Adsense” has great information and tips that I haven’t seen in one place anywhere else.

Chapter Eleven “My Top Moneymakers” talks about what makes John the most money. Did you know that he has his own ad network? You’ll find out which one in this chapter.

Chapter Twelve “Private Ad Sales” shows you how you can start monetizing your blog when it becomes bigger and well-known. In this chapter you will learn that direct ad sales is the single largest source of income on John Chow Dot Com.

Only a few wouldn’t want to read Chapter Thirteen “The Formula for Success”.

All the chapters in Make Money Online fit together well and are full of
great value. You may like all of them like I do and probably will like some better than others. I like the above mentioned ones the most and for you that list may be different.

Is the book all it could be? No, but it is a mighty good one.

Some shortcomings and suggestions

I think the book can be improved upon in future editions by including some illustrations. There is not one inside the whole book. And please have the illustrations in full color.

It shouldn’t be like the book by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett who in their good book on professional blogging called (who would have ever guessed it?) ProBlogger have plenty of illustrations but they are all in black and white.

It might be worthwhile to consider adding an additional 50 to 75 pages to expand on things already there and to include a few more from the vast reservoir of John’s knowledge and experiences.

Since this a review I believe I should rate the book and below I do just that.

The Make Money Online Book Rated 8/10

(Note: I don’t believe that anything can get a true 10/10 mark and realistically the best mark I can ever give is 9/10 if I at least partially close one eye. This is because there always is and has to be some room for improvement).

Without taking into consideration the Free Bonus I’d say 8/10 – eight out of ten.

That is a very high mark considering that nothing in this world is perfect. Mind you this is the score I give and you may have a different view.

Unless you totally don’t care about blogging, don’t want to know anything about it and aren’t interested in knowing how to make $40,000 per month nor how John Chow manages to make that much from his blog, I recommend that you get the book and read it.

If you don’t like to read get it anyway and watch the free bonus video and give the book to your friend who likes to read and ask her or him to read it to you.

Note: some of the links above may make me less than one dollar if you buy the Make Money Online book through them.

If you wish you can go directly to Amazon or go to John’s Make Money Online blog and buy the book through his links. Either way I hope that you’ll get to read the book and benefit from it.

Now it’s time for you to give me and the other readers here your comment. What do you think about this review? Have you read John’s book already? What part of it did you like the most, what didn’t you like? Are you planning to get Make Money Online right now?

Tweet the post and bookmark it to alert your friends and followers.

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Authored by Vance Sova

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Why Build Your Email List or Opt in

List

Email list building is crucial when you are engaged in online marketing, have a business off-line or think of starting a brand new business. Bloggers need this too.

Having a targeted email list of leads or potential customers and customers is fundamental for the survival and thriving of any business.

If you are just starting your business or if you have not paid much attention to building your email list, you will want to read my brand new and free ebook titled The Basics of List Building.

While most products on list building are focused on the internet marketing niche, this is not the case. The Basics of List Building is for any market and any business.

You may want to read my previous post where I have covered this point already to a considerable degree: Email List Building, Opt in List, Not Just For Internet Marketer.

There are various methods that can be employed in building your opt in list. Yes, there are number of names which essentially mean the same thing as email list.

To me the name opt in list is more accurate in describing how the email list was obtained.

There is even a term to describe that the people on the list were given two opportunities to make sure they indeed really wanted to be added to it.

So you may come across the name double opt in list.

Double opt in list is very important in permission marketing

In case you are mistakingly accused of spam you can prove that the subscriber opted in twice and therefore wanted to receive information from you.

There seems to be an ongoing debate, especially among the IM niche marketers, whether a single opt in would bring more people to their email list and whether a double opt in is causing them to lose some opt ins.

If you want good subscribers who really want to be on your list do not even let single opt in enter your mind.

Another term for email list is subscriber list.

You are likely familiar with the different names already but I put it in for those who are brand new to this.

I think you need to read my free ebook The Basics of List building if you want to increase the growth and success of your business.

What’s in it for you ?

If you are a seasoned marketer and if you know all the ins and outs of list building you will still benefit because you may find a thing or two there that you forgot about or haven’t thought of.

Another reason would be the fact that it devotes some sections to SEO and several other traffic getting methods like YouTube.

I’m not going to give away every bit of information about the ebook here.

You just need to get your own copy of it and find about all the good stuff that is inside.

If you are new to marketing in general, new to online marketing or if you are starting a new business off-line, your business and you will definitely profit from reading this brand new ebook The Basics of List Building when you put into action what it has to say.

Maybe you already have an ebook on email list building. Why should you get this one anyway ?

Because you will get a different look from different perspective. The book is new. There is nothing like it out there. Not that it has any revolutionary brand new knowledge but the way it is put together and what it includes in one volume is unique.

If you are a little bit like me than the way your brain works and learns is pretty much similar. It learns from repetition and from sensory stimulation.

This is why we learn better when we see a particular information and skill multiple times in different settings and from different angles and sources.

For that reason I read books from different authors when I’m learning a language or any other skill because each author has a different angle from which they look at things and a different way they cover the material.

A different style can make a big difference in how well one learns

Looking at things from different angles, even if the thing that is looked at is the same, produces additional understanding of it.

This ebook gives you that and it is absolutely free, so go for it.

Get yourself a sparkling new ebook The Basics of List Building.

Voice your opinion about this post right now by leaving a comment.

Then comment about the ebook after you’ve downloaded and read it.

Don’t forget to tweet this post and bookmark it so your friends and others can read it and comment as well.

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Authored by Vance Sova

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Wealthy Affiliate University Rip-off Gives Internet Marketing Black Eye

Is Wealthy Affiliate unethical? Is it an outright scam or rip-off? You be the judge. The FTC should pay attention to what Wealthy Affiliate is doing too.

This is a true story that has just happened to me and which may happen to you as well if you don’t read on.

I want to warn everybody so that Wealthy Affiliate University doesn’t take advantage of you as the company will certainly do this to everybody who is not aware of their greed and their disregard for their customers which they aren’t ashamed to rob.

If you purchase their subscription for a year like I have and have no desire to renew it the following year they will without any notice charge you for another year.

That wouldn’t be so bad if you could get a refund.

But Wealthy Affiliate will refuse to give you any refund even if you ask for it the same day they charged you for yet another year.

They bill in advance and will laugh at you if you tell them that you aren’t using their service and have no desire to do so in the future.

They will keep your money and will blame you for not reading their disclaimer which they point out to as saying that they don’t give any refunds.

This is how the Wealthy Affiliate contradicts itself in their disclaimer which I quote excerpts of:

..”If for any reason you are dissatisfied with the services of COMPANY after receipt of any services or electronic digital goods, COMPANY will work with you to try and resolve the issue.” …

“Under no circumstance does COMPANY provide refunds to dissatisfied customers”… “refund requests shall be ignored”…

You can read the full disclaimer here.

I have not read the disclaimer when I singed up and I bet that most people don’t. This is where the company hides and what they rely on.

After reading this you can form your own opinion but I doubt that you will want to deal with a company that contradicts itself saying that it will work with you to try and resolve the issue in one paragraph and that refund requests shall be ignored in another.

If this was a physical product it would still be refunded by any ethical merchant.

But Wealthy Affiliate is a membership site.

If you don’t use it at the start of the new subscription year and never intend to use it, what are they charging for? To see that there have been other cases of this blatant rip-off by Wealthy Affiliate you can view the Rip Off Report site.

Where is the FTC? Perhaps they should intervene in cases like this instead of trying to protect people from obvious scams.

Is Wealthy Affiliate University a scam? If so it is a well hidden one so far. The judgment is up to you and what I think is my qualified opinion.

You can check the Scam dot com forum if you haven’t done so by clicking on the link above to see what people say about the company. It is not always a favorable assessment.

I could understand if they didn’t refund a monthly charge but they are charging me against my will for the whole year.

Wealthy Affiliate is raking in money that doesn’t belong to them.

(But you wouldn’t suspect that if you read what Kyle of Wealthy Affiliate says about ethical internet marketing. He certainly knows the theory. What his company practices is vastly different from it).

Your credit card company isn’t likely to help you get your money back either.

It didn’t help me because the payment went through paypal first. The credit card company told me to contact paypal.

Paypal has canceled the subscription but says it may not be able to get the money back. They promised to file a dispute claim and they have done so right away. What a great attitude as compared to Wealthy Affiliate disservice.

(UPDATE: May 23, 2010 Paypal has decided in my favor. I hope that the people at Wealthy Affiliate University will cough up the money that they took from me  without getting a heart attack. I detest their practices but wish no ill to them as long as they treat people without underhanded tactics to separate them from their hard earned money).

Wealthy Affiliate and their kind need to be listed in Better Business Bureau as offenders and people users. I have told them that I would make sure they are in hopes that they would return the ill gotten money. But they just laughed at me.

Apparently they don’t care so I will keep my promise to warn others about their rip-off tactics.

What do you think of Wealthy Affiliate and the way they treat people?

Have you had any terrible experience like this with them or any other company?

What have you done to defend yourself? What would you do in this case?

Please comment and bookmark and tweet this story to warn others. If you have a blog, link to this story and post about it. People must be warned and hopefully the regulators will notice too.

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Authored by Vance Sova

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Whether you are just starting to blog or have been blogging for a while there is likely nothing more important to you than knowing how to get traffic to your blog.

One of the good ways you can get blog traffic is to comment on other blogs as I have covered in my post Get Blog Traffic With Comments. Another good way to increase blog traffic is to build links to sites that will help your blog to be found by others.

Link building is a part of SEO. I have mentioned some elements of SEO in my post called Blogging SEO Strategy.

There are hundreds of blog directories that you can list your blog in. I would start with the top ones first. I’m Vance Sova and I invite you to read on.

The following is a guest Post by James Adams:

Top 10 Directories That Will Help Get Your Blog Noticed

Once you’ve got your blog set up and have been blogging for a few days or weeks, you may have wondered why the readers and visitors aren’t flocking in.

The answer is: you’ve got to get the word out. If you don’t tell anyone about your blog, then no one will even know that it exists.

One of the best ways to get instant exposure for your blog is to submit to a blog directory. There are hundreds of these around the Internet, but some are much better than others. Here are the top 10.

1. DMOZ: This is one of the oldest and most respected directories on the Internet. DMOZ.org won’t accept your site until it has been reviewed by their editors to make sure that it’s not spam. Unfortunately, this process can take several months, so it’s a good idea to get started early. When your blog finally does get listed with DMOZ, Google will look upon your site with much more respect.
2. BOTW: Best of the Web is also an established and highly respected directory. It has been in business since 1994. A link from BOTW will instantly give your blog a boost in credibility and visibility.
3. Business.com: If your blog is commercial in nature, then this is an essential place to get it listed. For a listing fee of $299, you’ll be able to get targeted traffic all year.
4. Yahoo: Yahoo bills itself as the oldest directory on the Internet. Although Yahoo may not have the prominence that it once did, it still gets a ton of traffic every day. If you can get your site listed here, it can be well worth it. It’s free for non-commercial sites, but $299 for commercial sites or if you’d like your site reviewed within 7 days.
5. Bloggeries: Bloggeries is a great directory because of its organization. Visitors will be able to quickly find your blog by category, which will result in more targeted traffic for your blog.
6. Eaton Web: This is another highly respected blog directory. One of the strengths of this directory is that blogs can be rated and will be listed based on their overall strength and popularity momentum. This can get you a lot of exposure if people begin to find your blog valuable.
7. The Blog Frog: This is a directory that is quickly rising in popularity. The Blog Frog combines a blog directory with a social media platform. Not only can you list your blog, but you can interact with other bloggers directly on this site.
8. Blog Search Engine: Blogsearchengine.com is another highly selective blog directory that can give your site a nice boost. Many Internet users come here directly to search for blogs, so you want to make sure that your site is served in their search results.
9. MyBlogLog: MyBlogLog already had 45,000 members when it was acquired by Yahoo in 2007. Now, it has more than a quarter million members and 22 million visits per day. You can list your blog and encourage other members with similar blogs to form a community around you. This is one site you don’t want to skip.
10. Blogged: Blogged is similar to news aggregators like Google News. The only difference is that it pulls news stories from blogs rather than traditional news sites. If you write about topical subjects on your blog, then you definitely want to list your site at Blogged. You’ll be able to show up on the radar screen of web surfers looking for fresh content.

If you haven’t yet begun to promote your blog, or if you have been using other methods to get the word out about your blog; then your next course of action should be to begin submitting your blog to a few directories. The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll begin to see the results you want.

This guest article was written by James Adams who is a full time blogger working with an online supplier of ink cartridges. Check out their blog for more of his posts about design and marketing.

Please go ahead and make a comment. Have you submitted your blog to any of the directories above or any other ones? Have you noticed an increase in traffic?

Bookmark and tweet the post for others to see.

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Authored by Vance Sova

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Hi everybody, Vance invited me to guest post here on his blog. Some of you might know me either from my main blog or from a forum. I go mostly under the nick name of hospitalera on the internet. And some might not know me at all But enough of me, let me ask you a question:

Have you made a dollar on the internet today?

Yes? Great, you can proceed to one of the other great posts on this blog, for example to Getting Blog Traffic from Twitter But if you haven’t, you should keep reading.

Does the following description fit you?

You have bought a couple of ebooks, joined a few membership sites and paid forums, perhaps you even have bought one or more make money online – coaching courses. But you never earned a single dollar, despite all of your investments. Or you earn a few now and then, but still not enough to break even, not speaking of making any profit.

And do you know what else? I know exactly why you don’t make any money. You never made any money online, because you never started to implement what you have learned. You never started your first site (not even a free blogspot blog) nor did you ever write your first article on hubpages or elsewhere. You are still learning, you are still researching and you are still spending money on ebooks, courses and coaching programs instead of actually earning money on the internet? If this is correct, then this blog post is for you

Making money online, no matter if with blogging, article writing, affiliate marketing, building of niche websites or a combination thereof, is very much learning by doing. If you never actually implement what you are learning and reading about, you will never gather any experience and never know what works for you and what not. So, lets get finally started, shall we?

1. Step to making your first dollar

Take an empty sheet of paper or open a fresh document in your text editor program. Dot down what the things are you know a lot about. What are you an offline expert in, and in what field could you become an online expert? What are you passionate about? In short, what could become your niche market?

2. Step

Sign up for hubpages and start to write articles about things you are knowledgeable about. Write the best articles you can about a topic you are really knowledgeable in. Ask yourself the question: What would I want to find and read when I look for information about xyz? Again, write as best, as informative and as exhaustive as you can. Write the best possible answer to each query a reader might have.

(Please note a message from the author and editor: 3. Step is not missing, it was absorbed into the 2. Step).

4. Step

Look what works and why. NOW you can use all your knowledge and research you have done so far about internet marketing. Write articles and see what works and what doesn’t. Which hubs get traffic and which convert this traffic into dollars and which not. Which keywords = topics work best with which monetizing method. Repeat which methods work and don’t insist on doing what doesn’t work.

5. Step – Make Money

Will you make money with your first hub? Most certainly not. With your fifth? Perhaps. With your tenth? Most likely, if you continue to write great content and to learn from your own experience.

What about keyword research? Competition? Planning? Having a system?

If you are like most people on the internet, then you suffer from information overload regarding all these topics. The only way to actually see the bigger picture and to learn is to DO SOMETHING! Remember the first Harry Potter book? When Hermione gets attacked by the mountain troll? Harry tries to help, but gets himself in trouble and shouts at Ron for help. What does he shout? Do something, ANYTHING. The same is valid also here. You have to do something, anything, to make a start.

So, are you ready to start NOW to make money online, or will you wait just a little bit longer? Will you sign up for free to HubPages today AND publish your first article also today? Or will you wait until you know it all?

Leave a comment and tell us what you think and how it’s going.

You can even put in a link to your first hub in the website section of the comment form. That would mean you have not only published your first hub, you also have build the first back link to it.

Before you go tweet the post and bookmark it.

So, go ahead, make your first dollar – NOW.

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