The legend of John Chow
This is an excerpt from an upcoming book - Boom and Bust in the Blogosphere.
John Chow is a unique example of a winning blog , and a winning strategy that goes against the standard grain of how blogs operate. This is what makes the story of John compelling for bloggers who read his work. John Chow runs a blog that talks about how to make money on line, or making money from your blog. There are many web sites that discuss this, but many of them feel like Spam, or feel like a con. No one who says, “Make millions overnight” just is credible, and John is very credible because he is not talking millions, he is just talking thousands.
Thousands sounds much more “doable” in the longer run than millions. Making money off their blog is an important thing for many people who have migrated off Blogger, MSN Spaces, or Live Journal and have started their own blog on a hosted system. Making money is one of the primary reasons that people start blogging, but it is 3rd on the list. The list points out that writing is what blogging is about, but when a blogger looks at all that blank space on their blog, they want to fill it with something, and that usually means ads. John combines writing with advertising, and there is a lot of advertising on his site, to prove his point. Much like Gawker, the appearance of John’s site is more about wrapping content around advertising rather than advertising complimenting content.
What makes John a winner is that he has developed a legendary status for himself, and his blog is that he bucked the system. The idea of creating your own legend, what “brand management ” is about and then using that legend to your own purposes is not new. What was new was how the John Chow legend was created, and then used to win the one battle he had to win, and that was against Google’s ban. When Google changed how they did paid links, and how people were making money off the internet in 2007, he was also caught up in the process of page rank downgrades for what he had on his blog. All he had on his blog at the time were the standard paid links, and other monetizing programs that Google took an exception to as manipulating the Page Rank system. The saga is long and complex, at one point he was banned, then nearly banned, and then not banned. In some ways by being reinstated into the Google index without compromising, he won against Google, even though they banned his site from the Google index . John’s web site does give out questionable advice because Google is the search engine of choice, if Google bans you, you do loose traffic.
That is a reality of the way that the modern search engine environment works. It is no longer the personal portal or even a news site, it is all about Google and the other search engines in how they display search results that drives the majority of traffic . However, in some respects the way that John has gone about building his blogging credentials and has been successful doing so, goes against the grain of every known rule to blogging. That is what makes him and his blogging system a winning blog formula, but not one for the faint of heart, or not willing to take on huge risks in order to make money off their blog.
With the caveat in mind, that John runs high-risk ways of making money off your blog, he has a hugely loyal audience, and can often be found speaking about his experiences. His blog focuses on how he makes money on line from text link ads, to pay per post or pay per review blog articles, as well as affiliate marketing. All of these are ways that people can make money off their blog, but they do come with their penalties. Know More Media (written as a blog failure case study) used similar tactics and when they lost their Page Rank (they were not banned in the Google index ), it hurt their business model so that they could not make enough money to survive.
John describes himself as a “Dot Com Mogul ” and has a booming business as his primary job, the techzone.com that is a price comparison site for electronic hardware. The blog however is something that he does because he can. The Google ban is not the only ban from a system that John Chow has had to deal with either, he was also banned from Digg , and from Technorati . Although it does not seem that, he has been banned anywhere else. This is what is makes John so interesting, the blog is not a primary way that he makes money, although he does, it is the techzone site that also provides him a source of income. Yet he is still an underdog hero for standing up to the bigger powers (Google , Digg , and others for “manipulation” of their systems) and not sweating how he does make money on the internet. He even speaks at big events so that he can teach, and provides a free e-book for people to download and learn how he makes money off his blog.
While he might have “won” the battle with Google by being re-indexed and being the number one search result for his name again, that alone builds up the myth of John Chow. He becomes bigger than what Google thinks of him because the event was skillfully marketed as a “David and Goliath” issue. In this case, while Google still did the things they needed to do, John Chow today is available as the first entry in Google when you type in the name. However, in the end, the myth of John continues, while Google apparently capitulated by putting him back into the index. The things that make John Chow successful as a blogger are:
1. Passion, he is very passionate about what he is writing about
2. Acknowledged leader in his niche, he has the checks from Google’s Adsense program to prove that he has made significant money doing what he is doing
3. There is an almost reckless disregard for larger systems, if he sees a worthy battle, particularly Google, he will not back down, which leads to an almost mythical reputation on the internet. The compelling factor is that he is believable; he is doing this because he believes in it
John Chow’s blog treads in both worlds, both successful for consummate marketing, and using banning events, and social/advertising systems that will get him a Google penalty or other systems banning for what he is doing and using that to sell more of his brand. These attention seeking behaviors that he uses along with his social friend base also helps him become and maintain being popular on the internet. If you blog, you need to be aware of that while John is successful, this has been a hard won success. While some of the things that he does are excellent, and he has excellent advice and is popular, some of the methods that he used, unless you have a large group of friends, might be difficult if not impossible to duplicate. New bloggers that try his techniques might end up being banned in Google, but no one will listen because the community has not been built up yet. This does not mean that the new blogger should not be working on their myth, but knowing that there are limits at first to how far that myth will spread on the internet. It helps to have a large installed and vocal support base to help perpetuate the legend if you choose to go this route in blogging.
tags: john chow, blogger, case study, popular, interesting, google, banned, attention seeking behaviors, humor, banning event
Discussion Area - Leave a Comment