Congrats To John Chow!

Congratulations to John Chow who made it into the Business Section of the Vancouver Times. The article titled Part-time labour of love online brings in some cash talks about how John has managed to turn a couple of hours of work into a money-maker equivalent to that of a full-time job…$3,440.66 in January alone. Not bad considering I only made $88.90.

Preview from Feb 6th edition of the newspaper

John has been an inspiration to many bloggers including myself…if you couldn’t tell by our similar header photos of cars. Reading his blog for a couple of weeks gave me the desire to start my own blog back in October of 2006. I have things to say, too, ya know!

John donates his blog revenues to charity, which is very commendable. I try to make money to pay my electric bill each month (I’m just kidding, mom). He uses a variety of advertising methods, blog networks, and review sites with which to build his revenues each month. Those include good ol’ Google AdSense, Text Links Ads, Vibrant IntelliTXT, Feedburner Ads, and ads from his main website, TheTechZone…just to name a few. Some of these require a certain level of traffic before you can qualify, so I’ve been forced to get creative. I have yet to achieve the same success (relatively speaking, of course), but I refuse to give up.

John’s blog includes a wide variety of content including auto reviews, restaurant critiques, some financial wisdom, but above all…advice for making your blog a better blog. A blogger’s blog. Check out his Top Posts page to get an idea of the blog greatness that is JohnChow.com. Now that I think about it, I wonder if this qualifies as a blog review for John’s Review My Blog, Get A Free Linkback deal.

The Next Big Thing
I’m working on a new website that I’ve actually had planned prior to starting derrich.com. I figured derrich.com would give me a little practice…not that I’m new to web design (see countryraptunes.org for the first website I created). But the whole affiliate and advertising thing is certainly new to me. Aside from reading John Chow’s experiences with both his blog and The Tech Zone (TTZ), my good friend Eddie (or, “The Eddie” as he likes to be called) runs a few of his own including one of the largest online communities on the Internet, Webrats, as well as a related music video site. I’ve learned…and continue to learn…from these two.

My new website will be called BlackFridayTour.com. Read this if you aren’t familiar with Black Friday. While there are already a couple of very successful and informative sites dedicated to Black Friday — GottaDeal.com and BFads.net — I thought I could do something similar, but with a twist. The name of the website should help you determine what that might be, but I’ll refrain from including any details until I’ve got more substance on my website. If you remember, I’ve already written some articles on my blog relating to Black Friday:

• Online Sales Grow 25% for 2006
• Retailers Prepare for Black Friday
• Do You Need a Shopping List for Black Friday?
• Is Wal-Mart the Benchmark for Holiday Shopping?

I hope this will be successful as I envision it to be. I will be sure to keep you posted on its progress.

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