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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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. Update July 22, 2018: Hospitalera’s blog is not live anymore. It’s sad to see how many bloggers have given up and quit. I would say at least two thirds of the bloggers that I knew about 5 to 8 years ago are now missing from the blogging scene. I’m leaving this post up to document what it was like 8 years ago. I have removed the links which now go nowhere. 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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