An Interview with John Chow on TTZ Media

John Chow

This is an interview with John Chow about his new ad network TTZ Media Affiliates and some general Internet Marketing. I recommend you join the network and give it a go, it’s highly customizable. Here ya go…

Can you explain exactly what TTZ Media Affiliates is?
In a nutshell, TTZ Media provides shopping ads to its affiliated sites. These ads feature hot selling products from thousands of online stores. When a reader clicks an ad and visits the store, the affiliate makes money.

What separates TTZ from other Ad Networks?
Targeting and customization. Unlike other shopping network that will only let you pull from a board category, TTZ Media ads allows extra keyword matching for products. So instead of showing ads for MP3 players, you can show an ad for a black 8GB iPod nano. This pinpoint targeting allows for much higher click rate. If you were writing an article about an iPod nano, an ad featuring the nano will get better click rate than an ad featuring different MP3 players.

TTZ Media ads are completely customization. Not only can affiliates control border, background and link colors, they can even control the hover color and font style. As far as I know, we are the only ad network to offer this. We also offer 15 different banner sizes and will be adding more in the future.

Have you had any reports of CTR averages?
CTR rates varies greatly depending on the site running the banner, the size of banner, integration, etc. It goes as low as 0.05% to as high as 5%. It really depends on the type of site and how well the site integrate our ads. Our best performing affiliates are technology sites and product review sites.

How long has your Ad Network been in production?
We’ve been working on this for the past six months. This is just phase one of the roll out. We have a lot of new features planned in the coming months.

A major plus about TTZ ads is the flexible customization options. Will there be any further customization options being implemented such as font size or the option for ads to open in a new window?
Right now ads do open in a new window. We can give affiliates the option to control font size but have no turn that feature on because it can really mess up the looks of the ads.

Obviously you are very well known for your prolific blog. How long were you blogging before you started to see some decent income?
My blog was started on December 2005 and made zero for the first eight month. Then in September 2006, I decided to monetize it and made $352.94. In September 2007, the blog made $20,512.17.

What advice can you give to anyone reading who is struggling to make some serious money online?
Don’t give up and don’t worry about the money. If you’re doing this money, you’re not going to make it. Read the other big blog and learn from them by reading between the lines.

For those just starting out in making money online who are maybe thinking about starting a new blog. What niche would you recommend is the most promising?
Anything but make money online. I would look at what I’m passionate about and then see that niche can be a moneymaker. If not, then go with what you are semi-passionate about. The worst case is to chose a blog niche because it’s the most profitable.

Do you plan to sell TTZ Media Affiliates to a larger company in the future?
The network just started. I doubt I can sell it for anything. I don’t have any plans to sell it in the future, but you never know. If someone makes an offer I can’t refuse, well. I do know it’ll be easier to sell the ad network than it would my blog.

Finally. John, in what field of marketing have you had the most success?
I’ve been having a lot of success with affiliate marketing. It’s become the blog’s second biggest income source after private ad sales. I feel affiliate marketing is something many bloggers overlook and that’s too bad. When done correctly, it’s a big moneymaker.

Thanks again to John Chow for a very honest, informative interview!