As part of my ongoing process of spending my cash to find out how you can best spend yours I had a review done over at JohnChow.com a little while back. The review was actually part of the Blogging Mastermind course I bought (and liked to some extent) so rather than do what I would normally do in this situation i.e. pay for a review of a product of which I’m an affiliate and hope to get my money back, I just asked in a very roundabout way for a review of this blog. I wanted honesty and got it. My goal was to find out what spending $500 over at JohnChow.com would get you for your blog. Why is this important? Because John makes a lot of money pushing high value affiliate offers for products to improve your blog. If you take him up on his offer and try to use his blog as a springboard then this is what value you get. We all know it wasn’t a great review, but then again if you go back and look at Johns review history you’ll find very little in the way of positive reviews of other blogs. Even so the review post attracted quite a bit of debate and was certainly well commented on. So without further a do here’s the raw stats:-
How you define your own idea of value for money is really up to you. As you can see though neither set of stats really blows you away. I’ve paid for advertising at JohnChow.com several times (see this post for an example) and to date I’ve been less than overwhelmed.
But, and here’s the thing. John Chow is not really interested in what his advertisers do and don’t get out of paying for advertising, his whole blog is simply designed as something to capture email addresses and push prospects down a sales funnel in order to get affiliate commissions. There’s nothing wrong with that but just don’t get blinded by the big number hype when there are certainly more cost effective ways of getting traffic for your blog.
My Blog Business Model from John Chow on Vimeo.
15 Responses to “What Does A $500 JohnChow.Com Review Get You?”
Paul B
July 4, 2009
Sorry but I don’t go along with the bad review = less traffic thinking. Here’s a little bit from John’s own advertising page from Zac Johnson -
“According to Google Analytics, initial stats show a little under 400 clicks have been sent over since the new design went live, which went live on Aug 22″ – Zac Johnson from his post on Aug 24. 2 days = 400 clicks.
|marguerite
July 4, 2009
I was not saying that bad review = less traffic (in case you were referring to my comment). Though poorly written review could= less traffic. Because the article is so uninteresting (non-engaging) people don’t even bother to read it pass the first few lines (or phrases). .
Though a truly bad (as in negative) review should have gotten you loads of traffic. When I read a review telling me how bad a site is I’m always curious to see if it’s actually that bad. When you consider the fact that the blog has over 56000 subscribers you’d expect to get more traffic from a review.
|R Kumar
July 5, 2009
I was never quite fascinated with John’s blogs. I found that the material there was not quite informative nor, was it something that would bind to the blog as a reader. Add to it the ads stuffed on the blog and you don’t feel like spending more than a few seconds on the blog.
So if that is my feeling, I am sure there would be quite a few readers who would feel the same. Hence the ROI on any investment that I make on his blog is not going to be very lucrative except if you are able to grab some prime positions in advertisements.
When the quality of the posts is not that good, I would but obviously not even think of getting a review written, let alone the $500 and the ROI from it.
R Kumar’s last blog post..Poll:Paid posts as a monetization strategy!
|Doug Dillard
September 16, 2009
First time visitor! You have some great information on this site.
This post is very timely for me, as I was thinking about shelling out $500 to have John (well probably Michael) review a new site we are getting ready to launch. But with those traffic numbers it sounds like a total waste of money.
I had a similar experience with another Internet Marketing Guru with whom I spent around $175 sending out a solo ad in his newsletter. He supposedly had some ungodly number of subscribers (I think like 50K – 80K) and he had some end-of-the-year special running where you saved 50% off (it was originally $350) if you purchased the ad by some certain date, but you could use it anytime within the next year. So I jumped all over that deal. I spent probably a day sculpting the perfect ad and I was so excited the day it came out.
When the day came and went I checked my numbers to see how many people visited my site and it was less than 50. I think the total for the entire week was less than 100 visitors for that $175. Definitely not a very good return. I have since sworn off Ezines as an advertising vehicle for any of my projects! I guess I am going to do the same with John’s $500 ads as well.
Thanks!
|Doug Dillard´s last blog ..Increase Affiliate Sales Conversions Dramatically
Evoire
August 5, 2010
Wow, that will be quite a disappointment. Well, I had planned on getting a review from John, but this is certainly what I expect. There should be at least thousands of visitors, isn’t it? But, looking at his site carefully, that is probably just right. His blog is so full of paid reviews that no-one will really pay attention to anything other than his featured posts.
|Evoire´s last blog ..Yuri Agpalo posted an update- Just published my new post My Blogpost is My Money” Check this out guys! http-evoirecom-page-my-blogpost-is-my-money-