Review: Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul | D3so.com

Need a Roadmap for Blogging? Check Out This Book!

Posted on May 12, 2010 by d3so

Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul is basically a roadmap to help you reach success through blogging. The book is written by John Chow who is a well-known blogger in the make money online niche, and Michael Kwan who is a professional blogger and is known for his technology reviews. I’m going to share my thoughts about the book’s content, who would benefit most from reading it, and its negative aspects.

Content-wise, the book doesn’t fail to deliver. I especially admired how the first chapter acted as a call-to-action for those who are thinking about jumping into blogging. The second chapter details about John’s past and how he started on the internet to what he’s achieved and where he is today. You get to know the author on a personal level. The next four chapters covers the basics of blogging, from what blogging is, what to keep in mind when blogging, and the preferred blogging platform & tools. Every experienced blogger should know blogging’s basics and should read those chapters for a nice refresher. The rest of the chapters, seven through thirteen, is the true meat of the book. Those chapters outline how crucial content & branding is, promoting your blog, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and how to make money blogging. I’m positive that most experienced bloggers will learn something new in those chapters, I know I have!

The beginning blogger is best suited to read this book. The chapters are well organized to teach the absolute basics to the advanced aspects of blogging & money making. They would benefit from every single chapter. That’s not to say that veteran bloggers shouldn’t read it, because they should. As I’ve stated earlier, this book is a nice refresher for things we may have forgotten. The second half of the book is the place where you’re bound to learn something new unless you already know it all.

I found a few minor flaws in the book; some of you might disagree with some of the points I present but it’s all from my perspective. First off, the title of the book could’ve been more specific. Make Money Online should’ve been Make Money Blogging. Though, making money through blogging is a form of making money online, it’s only one category of making money. There’s a vast amount of ways to make money online; you can create a subscription site, flip sites, complete get-paid-to (GPT) offers, and even gamble. John was probably trying to pull an SEO tactic to make that phrase associate with him offline and add-on to his online repoire . But in my opinion Make Money Blogging is more appropriate, and the description of chapter 13 can validate my argument. Next, I found a couple of errors in the book. I forgot to note the second error which was a misspelled word, but the one I did take note of is found on page 64 in the first paragraph. There’s a missing word, can you find it? The last thing I have to pick on could be nothing at all. I’ve read on John’s blog (I wish I could find the source of reference) & is faintly described in the book’s preface that some of the book’s content are old blog posts. Supposed evidence of this can be found in page 139 where it’s stated that the OIOpublisher Direct plugin costs $37 but actually costs $47. I know this might be a little nit-picky because the price could’ve changed last week, but I don’t think that’s the case. The book should’ve been written fresh to avoid these small errors and even add disclaimers such as price is subject to change.

Don’t get me wrong I actually enjoyed reading the book but I felt the need to find imperfections because nothing is perfect and there’s always room for improvement (clichés ). Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul has plenty of great content for every blogger, new or experienced. This book is reasonably priced and a great buy if you get it off Amazon. Don’t waste any time, buy the book because The Best Time to Get Started is Now!

My Signed Copy!

Discussion: 27 Comments

27 Responses to “Need a Roadmap for Blogging? Check Out This Book!”

NextBlogger

- 14th May, 10 08:05pm

Your story is interesting, and make me feel I have to get it. Thanks for share
FTB Bloggers

- 20th May, 10 02:05am

Yo d3so,

I just wanted to give you a quick shout out, You go hard at this blog game everyday; there are only a few of us in the in between game (not John Chow's or Shoemoney's but doing this long enough to know we can get there).

My hats off to you homie, keep killing it.

-Uno
The FTB Bloggers

d3so
Reply:
May 20th, 2010 at 7:29 am
Thanks for dropping by. Yup, we can do it!
tube

- 20th May, 10 06:05pm

Interesting post. Like FTB said, hats off to you.
PPC Ian

- 21st May, 10 12:05pm

A great review of John Chow's book! I must agree with your comment regarding the book's title, it is very general while the book is all about blogging. Great job also hunting down the imperfections – John should hire you as his proof reader. Great blog, I'm looking forward to following.
All the best,
Ian

d3so
Reply:
May 21st, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Yeah, I caught those errors when I read something that didn't make sense and reread them over and over til I found out there actually was an error. I hope they fix it, especially now since the book hit #1 on amazon.
Melvin

- 22nd May, 10 12:05pm

How I wish it can get shipped here in Philippines. Most of the packages I buy online never really reach me..

d3so
Reply:
May 22nd, 2010 at 4:49 pm
How unfortunate
Knowing that makes me reluctant to want to move there because I know I'm going to have to order goods. I live in California and most of my gadgets, clothes & shoes are ordered online.
judith

- 24th May, 10 11:05pm

I read this book, it good but could be better.
Michael Kwan

- 25th May, 10 02:05pm

Thanks for the review and feedback! Regarding the price differences and that kind of thing, there actually is a disclaimer near the beginning of the book stating that things are subject to change. Even beyond just the pricing of OIOPublisher, there's no guarantee that certain products, sites, and services are still available today (though they were available when I wrote the book).

Cheers,
Michael

d3so
Reply:
May 25th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Thanks for the reply!
I also found another flaw. The adsense deluxe plugin was highly emphasized in the book and since I've never used it before, I thought I'd try it out. I found that it hasn't been working with wordpress for sometime. Though, I did find a fix for it to work with current versions of WordPress, it still might not have full functionality.
I hope you guys revise the book and come out with a 2.0 version in the future.
I enjoyed reading it and would like to congratulate you and John for the success.
Thanks again!
Steve

- 28th May, 10 06:05pm

Thanks for dropping by. Yup, we can do it!
Affiliate Marketing

- 30th May, 10 08:05am

I just found out about this book other day on John Chow's blog (which is how I found this site).

Thanks for your review too, I'm definitely adding this book to my collection.
Benjamin

- 1st Jun, 10 04:06pm

I am surprised John has not posted your review on his blog yet.

d3so
Reply:
June 2nd, 2010 at 9:08 am
I don't think he's posted any reviews.

Jay Ho Sports Blog
Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 7:15 am
I think the winner of the free Ipad will probably end up getting his review posted on johnchow.com.

d3so
Reply:
June 4th, 2010 at 11:14 am
I think I recall John saying that he would post a list of everyones review.
UnProblogger.Com

- 2nd Jun, 10 03:06pm

A very nice review. Hope there is an ebook version.
Dino Vedo

- 17th Jun, 10 08:06pm

I finally decided to drop a comment, and let me tell you this is another very strong and powerful post. I've been reading through some of your previous posts and have been visiting your blog every now and then. I signed up for your newsletter and shared your site with my contacts, so please keep up the informative posts and return the favor.

Good luck on your blog, and feel free to comment and subscribe to my blog as well when you get a chance: Make Money Online with Dino Vedo.

Thanks so much, and lets stay connected and maybe share some ideas, do some guest posts, and get us both some more traffic and backlinks!

All the best,

Dino Vedo
Thu Nguyen

- 29th Jun, 10 09:06am

Hi,

Just finished reading it last night and got my review up. Hopefully it'll be on time for the end of the month contest. But your review is quite to the point. You've got a little bit of John's flair going on . I agree that the title is a big vague because making money online is a large general area, making money online with blogging is the proper subtext.

Overall, you got an eye for details there. Keep it up!
sharepoint training

- 14th Jul, 10 02:07pm

This roadmap belongs to the community, and is a living document. Acceleration and amendment are quite possible. Desirable, even — we'd love to get more done and in less time! I'm sure that CollabNet and others are already investigating ways in which they can do exactly that.
How To Attract New C

- 1st Oct, 10 01:10am

I can't read another book right now….I want hands on experience.

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