John Chow, as you all might’ve known, is one of the most famous bloggers in Make Money Online niche. He had shared his knowledge, tips, and advices for years through his JohnChow.com blog. As he stated on his blog, he was a partner in some printing company before discovering the internet. Then, on April 1999, he started a technology site call The TechZone, which has become one of the larger tech sites on the net. He then followed this success with JohnChow.com at the end 2005. And for almost 2 years, I have personally read his blog and these are the 7 things that I learned from John Chow.
1. Get Banned to Get Popular
You know those popular sports guys in high school who was hated by the teachers (because they don’t do homework or follow the rules) and other less popular boys (because they are jealous or whatever), but the girls just couldn’t get enough of. That’s John Chow. Not necessarily the girls or high school part, but more to how his popularity and rebel-like behavior always seem to cause his site being ban by other sites.
In November 24th, 2006, John posted in his blog, telling his readers that he was banned from Digg. The reason is because there are many people in Digg who marked his posts as spam. Then, because he was selling paid links, writing paid reviews and created a huge link building scheme to rank for certain keywords, he was banned from Google. But the weird thing is, his site got more popular after the banning news. All the bans have been lifted now. His site was unbanned from Digg 3 months after his Banned from Dig post. And he get his site back to Google search engine a couple of months ago, after complying with rule and talking to Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team. Good for him. And good for us as well to learn that we might get popular if we get banned.
2. How to Get Free Stuffs
John Chow don’t give free stuffs. No, no, no. Instead, he told us how and where we could get those free stuff ourselves. Ok, in order to obtain most of those free items he offered, you need to actually do something first. And even then, you might not get it, just because the stock is limited. But, to hell with that. Through his 4 years of blogging, John had taught me how to get free stuff at trade shows, how to get free online bookmarks and free reviews from certain sites, free T-shirts, free business cards, and even free laptops. I could honestly tell you that I never win any of those, just because I have never really put any effort into getting them (except for the trade show one, I remember getting a 2GB USB from one of the Sydney computer trade shows, following those advices). But congratulations for those who actually try and win.
3. Reading Blogs Makes You Hungry
John Chow surely have a huge fascination for anything related to food and restaurants. Geez, I just realize that there’s even a special category in JohnChow.com called Fine Dining. Those burgers and desserts from DB Bistro Moderne or those Seafeast meal from Crab Pot are still in my mind, long after I watched the videos. And after reading John Chow blog for almost 2 years, I have somehow trained my subconscious to link reading blogs (particularly John’s own blog) to eating. Now, every time I read a blog, I feel hungry. It’s all thanks to you, John.
4. Girls are Evil
On February 7th, 2006, John posted a simple mathematical formula, worthy of Nobel Prize. It was the proof that girls are evil. Here is the burn after reading formula.
5. One big site is better than ten small sites
Ok, this one is the more applicable thing I learned from John. He claimed that having one big site is better than having, like, ten small sites. At first, I was skeptical. But after seeing how the most successful internet marketers usually only have one or two sites or even one to two products (that were re-launch every year), I could say for certain that I’m 100% behind this idea now. Big sites make more money because of how much the advertisers dare to pay to monetize your visitors and the fact that you might get special affiliate deals when you have big enough subscribers. It simply allows you to have more power over other smaller sites or products in your niche.
6. Highest title US could ever bestow to anyone: Citizen of United of America
I’m not trying to criticize John Chow for not doing proof reading before posting to his blog (for those of you who don’t understand, I believe it should be Citizen of United States of America). But, I just find the overall phrase to be tad melodramatic. Hey, but that’s just me right? I’m sure it’s the highest title now. You could read the or watch the full post here, Citizen of US.
7. Google and Whores are a Lethal Combination
Over the years, I’ve heard from John who sometimes post how popular some of his posts could get. And one of them that always come back and back again and again is The Internet’s Biggest Google Whores. That posts have been linked back and forth more times than you could imagine. There is just something about the word Google and whores that cause people to click and link to it. Or maybe it is the ranking and the money? People always wants to know who’s the richest guy in their niche. No, it must be the combination of the word Google and whores. Should use it for my next article…
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wow, nice article. I should learn from him also.
look like i am better than you , i learn hundred of useful tips from his blog . btw thanks for this great article , some of the article make me realize that johnchow is bigger than i though
I learned a lot from John too. But, in this article I tried to balance the internet entrepreneur’s side of John and his more playful side, without being too long-winded. Hopefully I have achieved that.