I came to know about John chow a few months ago while browsing the web. I had a faint memory of reading somewhere that he was a spammer and Google had banned him and sort of that but after knowing the whole thing I really began appreciating his genius and doggedness towards building an income online, building his brand and making himself a name. All these things mean the same thing though. His blog got de indexed out of Google for using black hat SEO techniques like selling and buying links, doing paid reviews and similar dark stuff. If I were in his place then I would have rather given up on my blog but John didn’t and the rest is history.
WHO IS JOHN CHOW?
John Chow is a blogger whose name when typed on Google produces a search suggestion John Chow v/s Google. Now how many of us could really do that or even conceive of doing it. In this panda world where every tom, dick and harry speaks of optimizing your content for Search engines(Google), placing impossible standards on blogging, JohnChow.com was de indexed from Google search index for not one, two or three months but for three years and his reputation, traffic and income only went up. He is the world’s most read blogger on internet marketing and he did it all without Google.
How did John chow survive Google?
This was a question which baffled me for a long time, I really wanted to find out how can one make his traffic and reach grow without Google. Let me make it clear to you that John was not a nobody before being ousted of Google search and that’s why you can’t beat Google without building a bit of reputation at first if you are thinking of making money blogging. Gathering information from here and there I built this list of traffic gainers which John used.
twitter traffic
John says that during the days of his exile twitter was his main source of traffic. John currently has a following of 50000 on twitter. It might have been substantially less three years ago but it was there and when Google showed him the door his following didn’t. In fact if the phrase ‘a silver lining behind dark clouds’ could be associated with a story then John Chow’s would exactly fit that. Because couldn’t be found on the world’s most popular search engine people were more interested in him. It could have been the best thing that could have happened to him. And John played the story to full houses. John became a celebrity without Google but with Google.
john never wrote for google
All what we are doing is writing excellent content but for whom? We are doing that for Google. Instead John wrote for the people. “How to really make money with clickbank?” is one of the most read articles on his site. By reading that anyone can start making money with clickbank. He says, “Most gurus would’ve charged for this stuff but I got to the place where I am by giving away stuff which most people would have charged for”. He provided content which people could really use, make money off the bat. I too want to make my posts for the people. As I write this I want you to know that even if you don’t appear on search results you can still dominate the online world.
John never sold useless products
John makes money a lot of ways but he never sells crap. He started a business model of providing free wordpress installation( widely copied by others later). Many people have trouble understanding c panel, ftp and other terms that come along with wordpress so John became an affiliate of hostgator and provided anyone buying hosting under his affiliate free wordpress installation. This is called good business. He provides a set of videos on blogging on wordpress, SEO and making money online which can help any noob an expert at wordpress. None of the things that he sells personally are crap. Even the clickbank products which he promotes seem to work.
use of social bookmarking sites, digg, delicious and other things
Just because you can’t be found in Google doesn’t mean that you do not exist but it does make you obscure though. I remember that John’s site was banned from digg because of some hate group. If 10 people mark your site as spammy then it gets banned on digg. So I can safely assume that John used Digg, delicious and all social bookmarking sites to the hilt. Many of his posts made to the front page of Digg at times. He wrote content which were such delicacies that it inspired people to share it across platforms. Write content which engages people. His faithful fan base shared his posts on those sites and did something that Google was not doing for him i.e bringing content before the eyes of fresh audience. One more thing that John did was guest posting on related sites. No he never himself wrote a single guest post nor will he ever write one but outsourced the job to a well known company in India. It not necessary that the guest posts be written by you. That company did the job of researching and writing content and also finding sites for submission all equipped with the right page rank and stuff.
EMAIL MARKETING , THE MONEY IS IN THE LIST
Your list is your personal atm. If you have not heard it before then its the biggest thing about making money online that you will ever hear. When I was in school I participated in a lot of debates and I got to know that the point made the last sticks closest to the audience. So listen that what I am going to say very carefully. Making a list is your key of freedom from Google and John Chow did it right. If I was making a single penny form this website I would have in buying an Aweber subscription. He made an email list of the visitors to his site by offering them freebie ( currently its his e book on how he took his blog from zero to $400000 per month) and marketed to them products related to his niche and till date his list has been the greatest money maker. It has more made more money than the banner advertisements he has sold , more money than all the sales done through twitter, Facebook and linked in combined, more money than free wordpress installation services and when he surveyed the biggest names in internet marketing the results vouch for the same. The e mail list is a gold mine.
That’s the incredible story of John Chow growing without Google and what a giant has he become.
REKHILESH ADIYERI
Yes, john chow is a great person, i’m still following his words and now learning his new method that were shared on IM john CHOW.That’s really an interesting launch as like blogging with john chow.I really love his IM launches.It always contains something new & valuable.
George
Very true
Fatih
Important to note that John Chow also used Adwords and many other ads services such as buysellads to promote his site during that time of Google penalty. If you have money you can do Chow’s way too.