From Nobody To Somebody – Part 1

I’ve been challenged to create a new blog but not tell anyone about it. The premise is to see if a nobody can really become a somebody in the blogsphere if that person has no name behind him.

In this experiment you would detail your strategy, hardships and successes at starting this new blog (an experiment) but never mention the actual blog url/name. You can always sell it off at the end, or give it away on johnchow.com as massive super challenge/reward… to gain a ton of publicity for john chow dot com.

It has been mention that one of the reasons John Chow dot Com got so big was because I had an established name as the owner of The TechZone and TTZ Media Network. By creating a successful blog as a nobody, I will be able to prove once and for all, that anybody can do this. In part 1 of this series, I want to talk about laying down the foundation.

It Will Not Be a Make Money Online Blog

You know, it truly amazes me that a person who has never made a dime online would start a blog about making money online. That’s like me starting a blog on how to fly a plane and expecting people to come and read it. I don’t know how to fly a plane. Why would I make a blog about it? However, people see me pull down over $12,000 per month by blogging about making money online and suddenly everyone wants a piece of the action. It doesn’t work that way.

John Chow dot Com started off as a personal blog about my ramblings. It turn into a make money online blog and developed a following because I am an authority on the subject. I’ve been in the game for a long time. I survived the dot com crash and I own an ad network that serves millions of ads every month.

I get tons of emails everyday from new bloggers asking how they can make money with their make money online blog. I answer their question with a question, “Why would I want to read your blog?” When you can answer that, you are on your way.

I’ve decided to keep the topic of the nobody blog a secret for now. However, it will be on something that I know very well.

It Will Not Be Hosted on a Free Blogging Service

If you’re truly serious about making money from blogging, then get the hell out of blogspot.com or any other free blog hosting services. If you can’t afford to pay $4.95 a month for a BlueFur hosting plan, then you have no business making money on the Net.

As your blog getting bigger, you’ll start to understand the power of your brand. And you cannot create a brand when your blog has blogspot.com in the URL! This is not to say you should never use a free hosting service. By all means, use them to get your feet wet. However, the longer you stay with a free blog host, the harder it is to make money with it. Many ad networks (like TTZ Media) will not deal with a blog hosted by free blog host. Because of this, the nobody blog will be have its own domain name and web hosting.

$100 Budget

While it would be easy to pour thousands of dollars into the nobody blog to acquire tens of thousands of readers in the first month, this is beyond the ability of the average blogger. Therefore, I have set a budget that I believe everyone should be able to afford. Of the $100 budget, $8.95 will go for a domain name and $4.95 will go to pay the first month of web hosting. I expect the blog to cover hosting costs after the first payment.

The remaining $86.10 will go into blog promotion. That’s a pretty tight promotion budget but I have a few ideas to leverage the limited funds. I’ll talk about that in part two.

At What Point Is The Blog a Somebody?

I will open this question up for discussion. How much would a nobody blog have to make before it becomes a somebody? $100 a month? $1000 a month? $10,000 a month? Give me a number. The amount you pick will help me decided when to reveal the name and URL of the nobody blog. Until the blog hits that amount, no one will know where it is.