From My Reader: JohnChow.com

“From My Reader” is a weekly series, highlighting one of over 30 blogs that I track using Google Reader.

Love him or hate him, John Chow knows how to make money online. In just a few months, he’s pulled a blog up from making nothing at all, to pulling in more than $7,000 a month.

John’s main tactic is to simply blog about how to make money online - especially with a blog! Oh, meta blogs, how I love thee! It’s a topic that nearly every other blogger is interested, even if only in passing.

He’s also decidedly pretty evil – leveraging his audience to meet his goals of increasing his revenue. But of course, we don’t mind, because by using us to make more money, he’s showing us how to do so! It’s all very incestuous, in a way… but I’m not complaining.

The main example of this is what you’re seeing right now: John offers a linkback to anyone who reviews his site. This is beneficial all around: his search engine ranking skyrocket, because of all the incoming links, and in turn, the linkbacks help all the blogs that linked to him.

John Chow is one of the few bloggers that can pull of a ReviewMe post and make me actually want to read it. He doesn’t just shill a site – he visits it, dissects it, and lays out his findings for his audience to see.

Speaking of dissecting, my favorite post of his has nothing to do with making money, but rather with him eating a live lobster. I hate lobsters, as a rule, because I’m girly and I think they’re gross. With that said, I could never eat a live lobster, because I never want a lobster within ten feet of me!

The posts I find most valuable are located in the Make Money Online section, but the other sections are definitely worth checking out. As far as improvement, I catch a grammar error here or there, and it always irks me. I know English isn’t John’s first language (and yet, his grammar is far superior to many people that I know), but I’m a grammar Nazi! (This does not go for my own site. I don’t proofread my own site. I hate proofreading myself! I’d rather criticize others!)

So why is John Chow in my reader? Because he writes on a topic that interests me, and he writes in a style that’s engaging. And he’s evil… and I like that!