John Chow made a post in regards to a promotion that Citibank is running where you open a savings account (US only) and in 3 months they’ll give you $100. One person commented that they had talked to the customer service rep and verified that just a $1 deposit will do it. As long as your account is in good standing after 90 days, you will get your $100. There are no fees, and there is no minimum. On top of that the account has a 4.65% interest rate on it.

There was a lot of discussion about whether or not there was a catch. Some believed that banks do this sort of stuff all the time in order to generate new customers, and that $100 is nothing for them. Others said there always has to be a catch. The only thing I potentially saw was this term:

I also authorize you to use these consumer reports to consider me for other programs with Citibank. Upon request, you will inform me if a consumer report has been obtained and will give me the name and address of the agency furnishing the report.

I’m guessing in this instance, they can spam you about other Citibank offers they match you with. On the first page of the application there is a box you can check to say you don’t want them to share any information with their affiliates. I’d recommend checking that.

You can apply here, this is not an affiliate link. I actually tried to sign up for a Citibank affiliate program, but for whatever reason they didn’t accept me. For those of you running blogs that want to promote this, consider signing up through CJ and applying for their program. I believe you can make $20 for everybody you get to sign up.

Here are the terms:

$100 offer is only available for first-time Citibank deposit account customers, and will be paid only once to any individual. Persons who currently have or at any time have had a deposit account at Citibank (or any of its predecessor banks) are not eligible. To receive this offer you must apply for and open a new Ultimate Savings Account by 5/31/2007. $100 will be credited to your Ultimate Savings Account within 90 days from the end of the statement period in which your account was opened. Accounts must be in good standing at the time of the $100 credit.

All accounts are subject to approval. Customer must be a citizen or resident alien of the United States (U.S.) with a valid U.S. taxpayer identification number. The amount of any bonus payment will be reported to the IRS as interest earned in the year credited. Persons under 18 years of age are not eligible. Offer may be modified or withdrawn at any time without notice and is not transferable.

This month my blog was the “Blog Of The Month” according to John Chow. John’s blog is popular, he is ranked in the top 200 on Technorati, has almost 4,000 RSS subscribers, and is ranked the 3,537th (as of writing on this) most popular site on Alexa. So what does getting your blog featured as a dedicated post on his site do for you?

There are five major benefits from getting coverage like this:

Traffic

The most obvious benefit is a gain of traffic. Because John and I have similar interests, many of his readers would more than likely be interested in reading some of the content that I write. This brings in very targeted traffic that hopefully becomes sticky. By that I mean I expect to gain a few dedicated readers of my own. While the traffic was not a tremendous amount, I was definitely happy. Here’s a chart that shows the spike as soon as it was posted:

All said and done John’s post brought around 350 unique visitors directly to my site from 3/21-3/24. They also averaged 2.64 pages per visit, so they were definitely reading some of the content. Keep in mind, we’re only talking about people that clicked from JohnChow.com. There was also an influx of traffic from Google Reader and Bloglines (100+ uniques), this was people clicking into my site that were reading his post from their feed readers.

This traffic generated some reader interactivity as well as there were a ton of comments posted, a boost in RSS subscribers, and a few new inbound links. Plus you can’t forget the traffic that will continue to come over time.

RSS Subscribers

My RSS subscribers jumped up from 10-20 subscribers to 30-40 subscribers. I suspect this number will continually get higher as more of his readers discover that they like the content that I offer.

Name Recognition

According to the actual article on John’s site, it has had 1,772 views (views are counted when a reader specifically goes to the article, and not when they see it on the main page) and 50 comments. That’s a lot of people that may not have known who I was, that now do. My blog is new, so maybe some readers didn’t find the content that I have now to be appealing. In the future if they find something they like, they will be more inclined to stick around since there is some recognition involved.

Inbound Links

Many of the new readers have their own blogs, and mentioned something that I wrote in theirs. This brought new traffic, helps with my Google and Technorati rankings. It also introduced me to some new people and blogs I would have never seen or talked to before. This alone is one of the most valuable benefits.

Google “Trust”

When you launch a blog, Google doesn’t trust you right away. You can build that trust up by writing good content, updating frequently, and gaining trust by getting linked on sites that are trusted by Google. Understanding this method helped me get out of Google’s Sandbox in a very short time by writing content that was good enough to get linked on sites like Autoblog, John Chow, ActiveTuning, and more.

How Can You Get Featured On John Chow’s Site?

There are two main ways to get featured on John’s site.

1.) Become the blog of the month. Per John, these are the requirements:

Don??t email me asking if you can be a blog of the month. The answer will be no. Future members to the Blog of the Month will be based on how well you can grab my attention. I am looking for blogs with great content that are updated a lot.

2.) Buy a ReviewMe review. At the time of writing this, it will cost you $300 to get your site/blog/product reviewed by John for a featured post on his blog.

John Chow has chosen my blog as the blog of the month, a new feature he just launched. John and I have very similar interests, as he mentions, if you find his topics interesting, then I think you will find what I have to say interesting as well. Here’s a few quick bullets about me so you can get a quick overview without reading my about page:

• I started a business when I was 16, and sold it 4 years later
• I currently own 4 companies
  • Two blogs, this one and VideoExperiment.com
  • An automotive manufacturing company built mainly through eCommerce sales. ActiveTuning, LLC
  • A local IT solutions company. Tri Megatech, LLC
• I currently work for a large corporate new media company as a day job
• I have a passion for cars, technology, business, entrepreneurship, management, design, and investing

If you want to know more about me, stick around and read some of my posts. I put this blog online in order to share information that interests me as well as information that can help you be successful. On top of this, I’m also looking forward to learning more my readers, networking with new people, and having a journal of my life adventures.

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.

I was going through some old designs on the Wayback Machine of my old company l that I had sold back in 2002. I happened to find some interesting content, including an interview with one of my favorite bloggers and somebody I’ve known for a long time, John Chow. John Chow is what you would consider a “dot com mogul” (at least according to him ). At the time that I had met John, we both owned computer hardware review websites, he is still running his. One of the articles I had written for my site was an interview with John, but it hasn’t been online for a long time. I happened to stumble across it on my computer, and figured there would be a good amount of people, including himself, that would get a kick out of some of the responses (TTZ is John):

SL: Tell us a little bit about yourself (Age, Location, etc.)

TTZ: John Chow. Nick name “Moto”. 34 from Vancouver BC Canada. Born in China, came to Vancouver, Canada with my parents at age 7. Been here ever since. I guess I would be considered a grand dad to most of the young techies. I have a daughter name Ashley who is 8 years old. My background is in finance. I graduated from the British Columbia Institute of Technology with a degree in Financial Management. Computers are a hobby. Always been interested in them.

SL: What exactly got you started working on The Tech Zone?

TTZ: The Tech Zone started out as Moto’s Project 504. It was a personal home page about the first computer that I built myself. Never dream it would become what it is now. Back then, the whole site was just 6 pages long.

SL: How long do you spend working on your site a week?

TTZ: I normally spend 2 to 4 hours a day updating it. I use to have to find the news. It’s much better now that most sites send me their news to post. Most of my time is spent testing products and writing articles.

SL: How many people do you have working on the site?

TTZ: No one really “works” for me. The Tech Zone is still run like a personal site. I don’t want to get too commercial with it. Most of the articles and reviews are done by myself. I do have others write for me from time to time. Right now the site is run by me acting as Editor-In-Chief and Kahthan “Kat” Deane will be the new webmaster and CGI guy. Kat also runs SavageXtreme.com and was a webmaster at the Review Zone. I also have people working behind the scene to help make the site run smoothly. Pauline Taylor is the most important. She puts in long hours to help me out with the site. Then there’s Mick?, Mudzy? and Kincaid?. I always seem to be using their computers as guinea pigs. I also have a few Tech Babes who model products for me.

SL: What do you like to review and how often?

TTZ: I would have to say video cards and CPU. Let’s face it, there isn’t much different between one 7200 RPM drive to another.

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The but not John Chow aka “root of all evil” is giving away a Nintendo Wii courtesy of a company that makes promotional pens. Need proof? Here are the guys with the Wii they are giving away:

I was able to pick up a Wii a couple months back for the 20 minutes that CircuitCity.com had it available before it sold out. The console is like nothing else, and although the graphics are not as good as its competitors, the fun factor makes up for it and then some. From what I’ve read, Wii’s are still pretty impossible to find on shelves, and I know that my last few trips to stores that carry them haven’t had them.

From a blogging promotion perspective, this an excellent idea for both the advertiser and the blogger (John Chow in this case). If you look at the requirements that are needed to win, it’s an ingenious way which will boost the Google ranking for both parties.

If you are interested in winning the Wii yourself, you will have to create a blog post with certain guidelines. If you end up winning, make sure to let us know! If I end up winning, I’ll more than likely give it away through this blog since I already have one.