John Chow uses his blog to try to help his reader’s make money online. He is also giving out links to those who are willing to review his blog. Besides being an obvious link baiting scheme, I think it is a great way to get a link to my own site, which is always welcome! At any rate, this plan of his is working, and it only goes to show that he really does know how generate traffic and thereby make some money. On to the review:

Design:

The design of this site is definitely lacking. There isn’t really anything eye catching about it and there was certainly no hard work but into any sort of graphics. As a matter of fact, the site really has no graphics to speak of. I disabled the images using my Web Developer tool for Firefox and found that out. It is good practice to make sure that your site still is usable without graphics, but to not have any is to skip an important part of a person’s impression of the site.
That being said, the design is incredibly functional. All of the element of navigation are obvious and usable and everything is readable. There are many, many advertisements; more than this site! Then again, given how successful he was, I suppose that the ads have something to do with it.

Content:

Here is where the site really shines. John manages to balance his posts, with some pertaining to making money (or, said in another way, generate traffic for your site), some reviewing other great sites, and some random bits of humor and news. Obviously the biggest draw is the SEO/Traffic generating material, but I like that it isn’t entirely that. If I am going to be reading a site constantly, I want a little variety; not too much.
The man has over 3,500 readers according to Feedburner, and the readers are very active. All of the posts have many comments and are great conversational forums. John also promotes his community further with MyBlogLog. This is something I would consider doing if I actually could beef up my number of readers, because I wouldn’t have so much of a community; more like an awkward AA meeting. Anyways, here is a screen shot:

If you want to get a link as well, all that you have to do is review his blog.