John Chow, the self-proclaimed “dot-com mogul”. He has been called a black-hat SEO expert and an “evil-blogger”. I happen to think he is a nice guy that has gotten a bad wrap for finding “inventive” ways to make money on-line. I respect his bluntness when it comes to discussing how and what he does to make money on-line. I did a little digging for this interview (as well as the others) and tried - as much as one can with 5 questions - to find out what makes John tick. The readers have voted and without further ado, I give you, John Chow.

#1

jemmille.com: The name John Chow has come to be associated closely associated with making money online. Many people don’t know that you take the money you make from JohnChow.com and donate it to charities (right?) What charities are at the top of your list to support?

John Chow: Yes I donate the net income of John Chow dot Com to charities. I have placed a cap of $10,000 on blog donation however. Anything above that goes to a trust fund for my daughter. I give to a charity that helps children and strengthen the family unit. I believe many of the problems facing America today comes from the break down in the family unit. This year, the list of charities receiving contribution include The Union Gospel Mission, Unicef, The United Way, and BC Children’s Hospital. There are others but that’s all I can think off the top of my head.

#2

jemmille.com: You have been banned from Digg.com, been accused of “googlebombing” certain keywords for rankings, and your Technorati account was frozen for some time. What is it about John Chow (or johnchow.com) that causes so many people to react in a way that is unfavorable to you?
John Chow: I am not exactly sure. It may have something to do with comments that I came out of no where and now I’m among the biggest personal blogs on the Net. I guess people want to see you pay your dues before you are allowed into the “elite group.” The thing is, I’ve paid dues. I maybe fairly new to blogging but I’m been making money on the web since 1999. I survived a dot com crash.

Another thing that has created negative reactions is my bluntness. I post that trading hours for dollars (working at a job) is the stupidest thing in the world to do. If you’re making a living by working, that may not sit too well. I guess I’m a love me or hate me kinda person.

#3

jemmille.com: You recently joined up with Kontera In-Text advertising to allow sites that get less than the 500,000 monthly hits usually required to use the service. How did this deal come to fruition and what benefit does it have for you and the small publishers that will sign up?

John Chow: Kontera contacted me about the partnership. They’ve done very well for themselves serving their ads to content based sites but they never made a big move on bloggers. Since my blog is read by a lot of bloggers the partnership was a good fit. I received a referral fee from Kontera for sending bloggers their way. It’s not different than an affiliate program like Text Link Ads. So far, the partnership has done well. Kontera has received over 400 applications since I posted it.

#4

jemmille.com: Your first venture into the online world was Moto’s Project 504, now known as www.thetechzone.com. Could you tell us a little more about this “other side” of John Chow and how/if your inspiration for johnchow.com was influenced by what you learned from thetechzone.com?

John Chow: On The TechZone, everyone knows me as “Moto.” It’s my nickname. I’m now slowly trying to replace the nickname with just John Chow because I want to brand my name. I would say I’m much better known on the tech side than I am on the blogging side because TTZ has been around for so long. I used all the traffic building experience I gained from running TTZ to building my blog. Getting traffic to a blog isn’t much different than getting traffic to a normal content site.

#5

jemmille.com: What’s next for John Chow?

John Chow: Right now I’m working on revamping the ad engine for TTZ Media. That’s my comparison shopping ad network. You can see the ads running at the end of my blog posts. The new engine will allow me to accept affiliates with a lower traffic level. Right now TTZ Media requires 250,000 page views per month. I will be able to lower that to about 10,000 per month with the new system. Hopefully, it’ll be out of beta next month.

If you enjoyed this interview read the others here. Thanks John!

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