Reading the JohnChow.com2007 Blog Income Report indicates that we don’t necessarily have to sell stuff online to make money. Working on a blog, with the right publicity, traffic generation techniques and some writing skills on the right topics, are some of the key ingredients for success.

Of course, all these do not come free. I’m certain that at some point or other, John Chow had to work hard to promote his blog before the money came pouring in. And, if you review his Blog Income Report for 2006, there is actually a significant difference in the income he’s getting. Apparently, according to this report - How Top Bloggers Earn Money-John Chow dot Com Income Report-August 2007 – John Chow had only started with a few hundred dollars of income in the first month. To me, this small amount is
great, as it indicates the effectiveness of his traffic drawing methods. Apparently, he started with only $3,440.66, which then grew to a whopping $27,240.83 at the end of the year.

By looking at his income breakdown, I guess adding Text Ads, Review Me or Kontera links have helped to significantly increase his income. However, while these are great income sources, they usually don’t work with new blogs, or blogs with a significant amount of CONSISTENT web traffic. Therefore, anyone who would want to turn blogging into an income source would FIRST need
to learn how to DRAW WEB TRAFFIC to their blog.

If you have read my previous post about Shoemoney, you’ll be inspired. I just visited his blog again, and he has posted up his 2007 Blog Statistics. He gets about 1.4 million hits a year. That’s about 116,000 hits a month!

In the end, even if you aren’t blogging, traffic would still be a key factor to selling a product online and making a success out of it. Next to using the right keywords to optimize (and identifying the right product to market), this would be the next ingredient needed for internet marketing success.