I’m not exactly a John Chow fan. True, he is one of the most popular bloggers (and who can call himself a blogger if he hasn’t heard of John Chow?) but I’ve found a number of his methods for making money excessive and shy of being ethical. Now, if you’re John Chow and you already own many websites that make money, you can afford to be “reckless” with your money making endeavours, but new bloggers who don’t know the pitfalls of borderline SEO techniques can find themselves in hot soup if they try to copy some of the stuff done by Chow. So, in writing this post, I would advise you to apply due dilligence whenever you attempt any method to increase you revenue or traffic. Remember that you have more to lose in terms of revenue, traffic and reputation in case you screw up than someone like Chow.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I need to say that I still read John’s blog and find most of his posts helpful. I know that somewhere behind his devil-may-care demeanour, he has his readers’ interests in mind so I try to keep my personal principles in perspective. Now, he’s about to embark on an experiment that will surely turn many a doubter into a believer of John Chow. This is the experiment :

I’ve been challenged to create a new blog but not tell anyone about it. The premise is to see if a nobody can really become a somebody in the blogsphere if that person has no name behind him.

In this experiment you would detail your strategy, hardships and successes at starting this new blog (an experiment) but never mention the actual blog url/name. You can always sell it off at the end, or give it away on johnchow.com as massive super challenge/reward… to gain a ton of publicity for john chow dot com.

It has been mention that one of the reasons John Chow dot Com got so big was because I had an established name as the owner of The TechZone and TTZ Media Network. By creating a successful blog as a nobody, I will be able to prove once and for all, that anybody can do this.

This will be an interesting experiment and one that I suggest you follow. He will document how to start a blog on a limited budget and using ONLY methods and services available to a regular newbie, generate income to a level that his readers would consider as “substantial”.

The whole point of the experiment is to show one and all that “anyone can do it”. John will build the blog, market, drive traffic and to it try and reach a specific target income level (voted on by his readers) without the benefit of having the name “John Chow” connected to the blog in anyway. In other words, he’s going to attempt to prove that the phrase “making money with your blog” isn’t just a load of hype.

I’ve added my 2 cents to the comments on his blog. My concern was how he would distinguish and separate the methods available to regular bloggers and those available to someone of his stature. In other words, he may take for granted that bloggers know something when in fact, that knowledge was gained though his contacts as the “most popular” blogger that is John Chow.

I think we’re going to learn a lot from this experiment.

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