Today is a new declared holiday at my blog, it’s John Chow day! John Chow is a Dot com Mogul that can teach you to make money online. John is the owner of TheTechZone, a large tech site that he started in 1999. In December of 2005, before blogs got really popular, John started his own personal blog. Over the last 6 months or so, it has turned into so much more than he had expected. It is now generating a ton of traffic, and he even monetized it to the point where last month alone he brought in over $7,000…enough to make a good living on. John vowed to take proceeds from his blog and use them for charity and his daughter’s trust fund. Take a look at how his site has done over the past few months:

These are very impressive numbers, but the most interesting part is how he gets there. From first glance you would guess that his site is just generating more traffic, therefore generating more money, right? This is definitely not the case. Although he does generate a good amount of traffic, he has increased income by optimizing ads and diversifying revenue streams. The blog is interesting in this aspect because John goes into detail about how much he is making and how he makes it. He discusses the various changes that he makes and how it affects revenue. If you are running a blog, or even a website, the information John provides is worth a ton. Just remember to not put all your eggs in one basket, and that goes for generating traffic as well as generating revenue.

John has come up with some fairly clever campaigns for generating traffic. One of the most successful is one where he allows site owners to review his blog. But why would a site owner want to do that? John has set it up so that he provides a linkback back to your site with whatever keyword you want as long as you link certain keywords to his site in your review. This is beneficial to both parties because John’s blog is so popular (as of writing this it is ranked #76 on Technorati) that his post linking to your review can drastically help your Technorati and Google ranking, which are key points for growing your own site. It helps John because he gets more linkbacks to his site, further helping his rankings and doing things like making the search for “make money online” on Google display John’s site as the #4 result. In fact, it was a goal of John’s for 2007 to make it into the Technorati top 100, and he made it in March…just a few months in.

John isn’t all business though. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s been into cars, and seeing the Pagani Zonda F in his header will give that away. He is also into food, as he often goes out to fancy dinners and posts about it. One of the most memorable food posts that he has made was his trip to the Lumière restaurant, where the check total came out to be $1,314.37 between 6 people. He also runs various contests (which of course benefit him somehow), the most recent was a partnership with 1234Pens where he is giving away a Nintendo Wii console.

If you run your own blog, I highly recommend keeping up with John’s blog. Either way, check it out, and make your own opinion. If you want to read more about John, check out the interview I did from back in 1999.