March 6th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I happened to stumble upon a blog several months ago, it’s called JohnChow.com. I had seen some of his innovative Google ads on some blogs I read daily and couldn’t help but click through to his site. Thought I’ll also grab the chance of reviewing his blog too.
John Chow hails from Vancouver, Canada and is a self proclaimed “Dot Com Mogul”. His site talks mostly about how he makes money off his blog, tips to help one do it, ways to increase traffic and also miscellaneous stuff about cars, food and technology. He is an established internet entrepreneur owning the successful Tech Zone, a site that reviews, rates and compares computer products.
At first glances I wasn’t too interested in the site until I started reading some of his compelling posts. Articles like “The Importance of Deep Linking”, “Better Anchor Text= Better Search results”, “10 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid” are a few out of the many good articles that serve to improve ones knowledge on optimizing a blog.
The title “Dot Com Mogul” comes from the fact that he has transformed his 7+ month blog into a money making machine i.e. making money blogging about blogging and monetizing a site. He tends to be pretty good at it, evidenced by his earnings disclosure every month. Within the past 4 months, he has earned himself a nice amount i.e. $2139 in Nov, $2790 in Dec, $3440.66 in Jan and $7011.05 in Feb.
In fact, his feats have caught the attention of the Vancouver Sun newspaper and several others as well. In addition to that, his daily traffic has increased tremendously to roughly 200,000 readers a month.
Through his increase in popularity, advertisers have recently asked him to do many reviews through ReviewMe - a little too much in my mind and I hope it would taper down. However, the viral and informational level of the site is still pretty high.
I believe blogging is an art form in itself. The tricky part is not simply to write a post but to get the readers to read it and make your blog interesting enough for readers to come back in the future. In my 8 months or so of blogging, I have found that the hardest part of blogging is just that. The best written articles would be worth nothing without readers, right? Not that I write the best articles out there but that saying does make sense. Therefore, sites like John Chow reveal successful tips to take that the blog to the next level. I am not so concerned about making money on a blog as that is not really what I blog for, but I do like to learn more about how to make a blog more attractive, increase traffic and where people will come back for more.
His success (besides his informative posts) is apparent in the way he sets about getting his the readers involved i.e. the contests, the rewards of SE link backs by being his top commentators, the way he speaks to the community and how he is not as detached from readers like many blog writers are. These are the things we could all emulate to make our blog a better one.
So don’t take my word for it, why don’t you hop on over to JohnChow dot com… you might learn a thing or two.
4 Responses to “JohnChow.com is Viral”
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gina said: @ 5:50 pm
March 6th, 2007
Just letting you know that I’m reading you.
Cindy said: @ 1:53 pm
April 23rd, 2007
One question about being “the top commentator”. Do you mean the comment that is posted for the articles (just like this one)? As far as I know doesn’t the SE ignore the links in them due to the “nofollow” tags? Perhaps I’m missing here…
Content Writer said: @ 1:43 am
October 4th, 2007
Hmm 7 months old site with $5k+ revenue… Thats Inspiring…
Alex said: @ 10:14 pm
February 15th, 2008
Live the dream!
Be a BIG thinker!
There is a way to BLOG your way there!