Earnosphere - St Patricks Day Tomorrow!

I too have been quite put off by the reviews on John Chows site - but that said I just skip them when they come up in my RSS feed.

Personally for me I think if a blog isn’t your main source of income it really should be about building loyalty and readership, more than it should be about building extra revenue. I mean for me personally I think there is great value in being considered an expert in a field, but that perception is diminished if visitor see you trying to squeeze those extra cents out of a otherwise wonderful blog.

That’s just my two Aussie cents though.

The first thing that goes threw my mind when I see a blogger who is making a money grab by doing reviews or sponsorships is that they probably are not making that much money on their non-blogging activities.

I can think of 2 blogs that are no longer in my RSS feed because of the frequent review ads for random junk.

If you are any good at all in this business, $1200 a month (1 $300 review per week) is a rounding error on your taxes or even a bad day (or hour…) in search marketing.

I blog because I enjoy it, it helps me to organize some thoughts, and the outside possibility that it might introduce me to a new partner.

Rather than take the 2-3 hours required to do a proper review, I could put a new test into place or add some keywords or brainstorm new verticals, any of which would provide me with more than $300 in revenue and on a recurring basis.

I never want to get paid just once….

Post us some pics of the Melbourne Grand Prix will ya?

I guess you just sum it up Chris. Not many people go to blogs to read up on ‘paid’ stuff but thoughts, opinions, happenings about the writer in question. Yet for JC, yes, blogging is his main source of income. Even with this, he still has the source of income, and the readership/ loyalty.

Reviewme posts should be balanced out on any site. It’s true that John Chow has been flogging the reviews a bit hard lately but mostly it seems that was because of the half price special and the amount of requests that came in the last days of the month. I think they can be just as beneficial as a normal post if done well. The trick is to link them into the normal blog topic and reference information that is your specialty.

It is probably a good idea to be a bit choosy with your requests though, as the more they go off topic the harder it is to write well and maintain the flow of the site.

John Chow is walking a thin line. I do like to read about monetization, but I think he has crossed the line and his blog is losing qualtiy. He posted about quantity of visitors, but he will realize one day that return visitors put the value into a blog and not one-time visitors that click an add and disappear.