Starting Out Like ProductCritic? Read John Chow!

While there are quite a few blogs that I read to learn as much as I can about SEO and what works for an internet site now, one of my favorites is John Chow dot Com. Recently, he offered readers the chance to get a free linkback if you reviewed his blog. Although this isn't technically a "paid post", I am hoping that John adds this review to his list and we get a linkback from his blog which ranks high on Technorati (#1341). This helps raise the Google and Technorati rank of ProductCriticBlog and will hopefully lead to more readers (which will hopefully drive traffic to our main site).

Who Is This John Chow Guy?
You can read about him on his blog but I know that he lives in Vancouver (like me) so maybe at some point we'll get a chance to meet as he does seem like a genuinely nice guy. Also like me, his "real" job is not running his blog but running The TechZone which is a very popular hardware news site (over 200K page views per day) that he started in 1999.

What's Good?
I've been reading his blog ever since I found it on digg and then later read a great post he made about being banned from digg as spam. "Wow", I thought, "how do you get banned from digg?" This was especially interesting to me given that many of his posts are genuinely useful. Here are some key reasons why I like the blog:

• Great posts regarding his experience and knowledge in making it in the dot com business. Making money online is the strength and the "hook" for the blog. He's willing and ready to teach others.
• Very clear and concise writing. The blog is very easy to read and digest.
• Very regular, high quality posts.
• John is very responsive to his readers. He regularly comments on the comments left on his posts.
  

What's Not So Good?
Like I mentioned previously, the "hook" for his blog is about making it in the dot com business. I believe that most of his readers are coming for that (I know I am). So, what do I think that he could improve on his blog?

• He combines personal posts with "dot com" posts. As an example, he makes posts about Dine Out Vancouver (which if you live in Vancouver like I do, you'll know what he's talking about) but many of his readers will simply not care. In another post, he posts pictures of his Pho dinner with his friends.
  
• Although John is obviously successful in monetizing his blog, I believe that he has too many ads in both quantity and type. On his blog, you almost have to battle to navigate through the ads from Google adsense, feedburner, Dealtime, and IntelliTXT (the ones I hate the most).
  

Despite what I think he could improve, he's obviously doing something right in monetizing the blog so what do I know? Anyways, I definitely enjoy reading his blog. If you're starting a blog or a site, do yourself a favor and subscribe to his blog.