Thread: What do you think of John Chow Dot Com ?

Well me and SlightlyShadySEO were talking about John in another thread and decided to make one of our own. We were going back and forth on why some people dis like John Chow dot com and some like it. If you want to post your 2 cents feel free to let us know what you really think.

I Make Money Online by Telling People How Much Money I Make Online - John Chow dot Com

Originally Posted by Gasmoney

Well me and SlightlyShadySEO were talking about John in another thread and decided to make one of our own. We were going back and forth on why some people dis like John Chow dot com and some like it. If you want to post your 2 cents feel free to let us know what you really think.

I Make Money Online by Telling People How Much Money I Make Online - John Chow dot Com

I dislike him on an absolutely extraordinary level. I've never seen anything of real value on his site.
Maybe 1 out of every 4 posts even has to do with some "lesson" that is not a blatant plug, and even then, it's either a complete common sense thing, or something someone could get easily from 999,000 other blogs out there without having to deal with the day to day crap he puts out.

The reason everyone keeps going to read his crap is they think he's going to give out his "big" money secret, not realizing that "sheep" are his big money secret, and they just so happen to be his sheep. They are his big money trick, and his only one.
He is a self declared .com mogul, however he made what was an absolute pittance during the height of the .com bubble. It's like me working at a gas station, then going to a country where the average per-hour wage is like $1.00, and calling myself an Oil Tycoon.

He's made one or two popular sites, but he is not a tech god. He is good at controlling sheep. It's still a talent, but makes any advice he could possibly give worthless.

*Takes a breath*

wow , that was a very extensive rant lol. But you have to give him credit for keeping his so called sheep. Not to many people can keep em coming back like that when the info isn't gold.

You also have to keep in mind all of the other bloggers who want those sheep. people trying to get reviewed and links coming from John. The spike in traffic that you get from stuff like that pays for itself.

Another main reason he gets the traffic is the buzz he had going by battling with Google and the Shoemoney RSS feed contest. He knows what people want. Who knows if he faked it til he made it. 20k a month is a nice income from just one blog no matter how he did it. don't you agree?

Originally Posted by Gasmoney

wow , that was a very extensive rant lol. But you have to give him credit for keeping his so called sheep. Not to many people can keep em coming back like that when the info isn't gold.

You also have to keep in mind all of the other bloggers who want those sheep. people trying to get reviewed and links coming from John. The spike in traffic that you get from stuff like that pays for itself.

Another main reason he gets the traffic is the buzz he had going by battling with Google and the Shoemoney RSS feed contest. He knows what people want. Who knows if he faked it til he made it. 20k a month is a nice income from just one blog no matter how he did it. don't you agree?

Yup. 20k is awesome. He picked his readerbase carefully. They're [largely] newbies. They can't sniff out a clickbank sales page a mile away yet. They don't know how to code their own stuff. Or really, even what constitutes as "good" information in many cases.

The issue with people snagging his sheep, is that if the traffic chow sends actually enjoys the blog they're sent to and they subscribe, in their mind chow gets a lot of the credit for "finding" it. So their devotion is deepened. I'd never say he's a stupid guy, or a bad marketer.
He just has a shitty looking blog with shitty information, and isn't half as good as he says he is. You said he "faked it till he made it"...he's still faking it now, even after he made it.

Good points though.

Originally Posted by SlightlyShadySEO

Yup. 20k is awesome. He picked his readerbase carefully. They're [largely] newbies. They can't sniff out a clickbank sales page a mile away yet. They don't know how to code their own stuff. Or really, even what constitutes as "good" information in many cases.

The issue with people snagging his sheep, is that if the traffic chow sends actually enjoys the blog they're sent to and they subscribe, in their mind chow gets a lot of the credit for "finding" it. So their devotion is deepened. I'd never say he's a stupid guy, or a bad marketer.
He just has a shitty looking blog with shitty information, and isn't half as good as he says he is. You said he "faked it till he made it"...he's still faking it now, even after he made it.

Good points though.

i dont know how TTZ is doing as an advertising company but a lot of his time does go into the blog. so i wonder if its doing good at all. What other major sites does he own other that TTZ and JC dot com ? I personally havent done the research on the rest of the companies but i did find this

John Chow Graphs dot Com | How The Man Makes His Money

Originally Posted by Gasmoney

i dont know how TTZ is doing as an advertising company but a lot of his time does go into the blog. so i wonder if its doing good at all. What other major sites does he own other that TTZ and JC dot com ? I personally havent done the research on the rest of the companies but i did find this

John Chow Graphs dot Com | How The Man Makes His Money

That's all he owns. Apparently saying he owned plural successful sites was giving him too much credit in my rant.
And I like the graph Not too much point though.

PS: If anyone else wants to comment(pro or con), I promise I will not bite too hard.

Originally Posted by SlightlyShadySEO

That's all he owns. Apparently saying he owned plural successful sites was giving him too much credit in my rant.
And I like the graph Not too much point though.

PS: If anyone else wants to comment(pro or con), I promise I will not bite too hard.

the graph has several pages and im not sure how accurate it is. interesting read though

Too many photos of food!

Andrew

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Too many photos of food!

Andrew

but thats his strategy. to make it a blog about nothing and at the same time everything.

Originally Posted by Gasmoney

but thats his strategy. to make it a blog about nothing and at the same time everything.

Id also be willing to be those restaurants pay dearly for the publicity.

I visited his website for the first time yesterday, and I just stared.
I didn't bother reading a thing, since I know it's a blog about blogging. Which i always find to be a waste.


I just stared at a wall of ads.
And an annoying bullshit advertisement that hugged the top of my browser window saying 'LEARN TO MAKE MONEY LIKE JOHN CHOW'.

It's terrible.

Loads of ads -> Going Away -> Never visiting again.......

Dont know the guy, so cant say anything about him but i'll never know anything about him but the fact he slams to much ads on his site as i'm not going to read thru the ads along with all the different stuff he has written about. Realy, sites having that ammount of ads is a turning point for me and i usually close them before i read anything.