Helping kick-start my successful blogs section was my review last week of what has made The Rating Blog become the fastest growing blog in the industry. This week, I’ve decided to write up a full analysis of the guy who “makes money online by telling people how much he makes online!” John Chow is clearly above the rest when it comes to “make money online” blogs. To be honest, I have been following John’s blog for several months now and enjoy watching his earnings grow. The man is a pioneer in the “make money online” industry, has a good game-plan, and is running a successful blog!

So what has made John Chow dot com so successful?

The man is a veteran blogger

Then you wonder a little bit more why you are not as successful as him! If you think that Chow just threw up a blog, put some content on it, sat back and watched the money get carried to his front door by America’s top models, your sadly mistaken. Unfortunately, many bloggers think that all they have to do is build a site, write a few posts, throw up some Google Ad-sense, and the money will come on autopilot. What most new bloggers don’t realize is that John has been in the blogging game for years. You won’t reach problogger status overnight if you don’t commit each day to blogging over the period of several years like John has.

John Chow is very efficient

John knows that he doesn’t want to spend time blogging his life away. Once he started making some serious money, he hired Michael Kwan to help write paid reviews. By outsourcing his paid-review writing’s to Michael, he saves time, still makes a profit, and his blog is run much more efficiently. Another thing to note is that John usually spends less than 1 hour a day writing content for his blog. This shows that John can manage his time well and get his point across to his readers. I have personally try to spend less than 1 hour a day writing content for my blog, though sometimes I go over the time limit. Either way, he’s built up enough traffic and income to outsource a lot of his work and still make profit: John is definitely an efficient guy!

He incorporates his life and has a friendly voice

He actually rambles a lot about restaurants, posts pictures about his food, and parties with the blue man group. So what if John Chow rambles? You know that you’ll still return to his blog! His writing sounds “human” and really is able to connect with his readers. He has a nice, friendly blogging voice — a big reason that his readers are so loyal. Yeah, he does post a lot of pictures of his life, non-blogging related activities, and non-”make money online” activities, but he is a very effective “rambler.”

He offers a free make money online e-book

I’ll admit that he got me to subscribe to his newsletter by offering his free make money online e-book. People love free things, him offering a free e-book is another incentive for you to return to his website. I’ve read through the entire e-book and I thought it had quality tips and suggestions to help get anyone started to making money online. If you haven’t already read his book, I suggest that you check it out and let me know what you think!

Why he will get you to return to his blog:

• A unique, yet catchy theme — John’s blog has a theme customized by UniqueBlogDesigns that gets your attention the moment you visit his site. Most visitors make an impression on how they like the theme and layout of your site within the first 3 to 5 seconds of their visit. The reason that visitors keep coming back is partly due to his high-quality theme that features a black Lamborghini in his header image. The guy made putting a car in your WordPress header popular! If you don’t currently have a good quality theme, go check out Chows and take some notes about what you should do to improve your theme!

• A daily dose of fresh content – At a minimum, there will be 1 post a day on John Chow dot com! He usually posts very frequently, usually around 2 - 3 posts per day. He is lucky because he does have some extra help from Michael Kwan, but for the most part, John has his blogging organized and will put in the time to publish daily content to keep his readers satisfied. I am currently trying to keep my blog updated daily with as much quality content as possible and I’ll admit that it is hard work.

• He’s got a nice community feel — I don’t know if John knows it or not, but he’s got a nice community feel to his blog in the comments section. Many of the blogs use his post’s comment section as somewhat of a mini-forum that discusses his latest postings. You can definitely tell that most people visiting his blog really enjoy the community atmosphere and camaraderie that they get to share with John and other members in the comments section.

• A clever little punchline — “I make money online by telling people how much money I make online.” This little punchline will stick in your head and make you realize that Chow is clever. The punchline alone will make you interested to find out more about his site. Does your site have a clever punchline? If you don’t, a good tip I can give you is to think of one. It will help you establish a good brand that will help separate your site’s from the crowd. “The $10 Million Dollar website” definitely allows me to stick out from the crowd, which is good. If you are just another “make money online,” you’ll probably benefit from changing it up!

• He has large RSS subscriber #’s — Admit it, you don’t really enjoy following a bunch of blogs with low RSS numbers. When you see a large RSS subscriber numbers in his feedburner chicklet, you know that it is probably a blog worth subscribing to. Many bloggers have this mentality: large feedburner numbers = a must subscribe! Because many bloggers and website surfers have this mentality, a popular blog becomes more popular and gains more readers without much effort. If you choose not to subscribe to his RSS feed, you will at least visit his site again due to seeing such large numbers. He must be doing a lot of things right to have such large numbers. Last time I checked, his feedburner chicklet showed around 18,000 RSS subscribers. When I first visited his blog, he had around 14,000 subscribers! This shows that his blog is continuing to grow, expand, and make him even more money!

• He has quality contests — Every once and awhile, John Chow will run a nice contest. The last contest that I was aware of was his Affiliate Summit contest. In his Affiliate Summit contest, Chow gave away 2 tickets to affiliate summit, which were valued at over $1,000 each. When the guy does have a contest, they usually are pretty impressive and get a lot of people participating. When more people participate, he builds up a bigger buzz than he’s already got and even more people start getting filtered to his blog from other blogger’s links. He’s got a nice system that he’s working and his contests are definitely very effective!

• The monthly profits – John Chow’s monthly earnings definitely suck most people into becoming long-term followers of his blog. He posts his earnings, gets more followers, posts more earnings, gets more followers, and the cycle keeps continuing. For the month of February 2008, John made around $30,000 dollars from his blog! His earnings have kept growing since he first monetized his blog. The first month that John monetized his blog he made $300 dollars. His progress has been pretty darn impressive!

Hopping on the John Chow bandwagon

If you haven’t already considered hopping on the “make money online” niche bandwagon, John Chow will make you want to jump up and start a “make money online” site!  Hold up though and read through some of his posts first!  There’s a lot that new bloggers and even veteran bloggers can learn from John Chow and his experiences as a “dot com mogul” before they get started.  John has been in the game for quite awhile and it doesn’t look like his earnings will be dropping anytime soon! Be careful not to get addicted to his site though. Reading through all of his monthly earnings will could get you more caught up in his site than your own!

Andrew Pavelski’s final say about “make money online” blogs

To be honest, I think that you should choose a topic that you are passionate about, not necessarily making money online. “Making money online” is a niche that is quite overcrowded. You still can definitely succeed in the niche, but if you aren’t passionate towards making money online, pick something else. When you pick a topic that you are truly passionate about is when you will actually be able to start making money online!

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