I was a passionate reader of John Chow’s blog up until a few months ago. It was interesting, it was teaching me how to make money online, it was nicely written with sense of evil humour and he was a good model and example of making money online for me.
But, at some point we all fall preys of greed.
Sponsored reviews are nice, and they are even nicer when you get $450 per pop, but posting about brain control vitamins, and other totally irrelevant products (that I doubt even find a buyer on a blog that focuses on making money online) is somewhat not very readers-friendly. The 125*125 banners are nice, but placing 10 (!) of them on every page, most of which are blinking and lead to dodgy website is yet again not readers friendly. Linking to everything from office chairs to lowest level MFA sites is obviously profitable but how does his blog look?
Without a doubt he earns more and more every month and appearantly adding more and more ads, as well as getting penalized by Google did not affect him all that badly. For me, reading daily on the exciting TTZ Media updates (his own ads company) as well as viewing appetizing pictures of dishes from luxurious dinners he has been invited too is again — nice, but not enough to keep an average blogger who is eager to make money online — reading daily or subscribing. Sad, it used to be my favorite blog.
