By now most of the online world has heard the term linkbait. While the definition is still somewhat fluid and subjective, it basically refers to any type of content that is intended to attract links. This idea has expanded to include other newly coined terms such as “flamebait” (criticizing someone or something in hopes of stirring up controversy which in turn leads to new inbound links) and even “diggbait” (content that caters to Digg.com users). Well ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to the first ever* John Chowbait!
For those of you unfamiliar with John Chow, he’s a “dot com mogul” who’s created a very popular blog about ways to make money online. He is fondly referred to as “evil” for the slightly devious methods he writes about. When I heard about the MillionDollarWiki (MDW), the first two phrases I checked were make money online and make money blogging. Unfortunately both were taken. Not surprisingly, Mr. Chow had snatched up the one for make money online and had reviewed several different programs that bloggers use to make money. So, what’s a guy to do?
I chose to create the MDW page for John Chow of course!
On the page I discuss John’s three top money makers complete with affiliate links. I emailed John to let him know about it but so far, he’s not mentioned it. I have however gotten a surprising amount of traffic to the page considering I just put it up yesterday and I’ve not promoted it at all other than mentioning it in the MDW forum. I think so far in just over 24 hours I’ve gotten about 20 visitors or so. My hope is that not only will I drive a bit of direct traffic there, whether it’s from here or my “Chowbait” working, and as the authority of the domain grows, perhaps the page will rank well in the search engines and bring in some income that way. I’m going to count any income from the page as part of the Blogging Experiment but I’ll be sure to keep everyone up to date on how it goes.
If you’d like to give MDW a shot, type “Ben” in the coupon/promo code spot to receive $5 off the price of your page. There are still quite a few pages left that seem like no doubt money makers to me. If you do buy one, or have already purchased a page I’d love to hear about your experiences.
Update: Hmmm looks like I may have picked a bad time to “bait” Mr. Chow. He’s probably quite busy with his new theme which might I say, is quite impressive. I have to admit I’ve got just a small case of blog envy.
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I still can’t believe the success of MDW, but great for him! I remember I was first linked to the wiki site when only three links had been sold. $100 is such a steep investment – I’m afraid of the site’s popularity dying out as soon as I buy in. Thoughts?
-Paul
Ben–
I have one to try to get into the question of the week. You’ve covered how you’ve generated traffic (which has, um, 133x more subscribers to your RSS feed than mine…), but you haven’t (to my recollection) covered just how you entice your traffic to do things which make money for you. I have seen some of them, such as the discount codes for text link ads or the million dollar wiki. I think it would be interesting for you to cover the steps you take to encourage users to generate revenue for you on a couple of different types of sites. So, take your site and a couple of your readers’ sites and walk through the process of how you do or would work to drive revenue activities.
Thanks!
)
Jason (still can’t break my tabbing habit!!!
@ Paul, I figure the more pages he sells, the bigger the site will get. Anything that has a built in incentive for people to promote it seems to work well. For example, the more people I can get to the page I bought, the better chance I have at making money.
Also, the site is bound to be picked up by the national media much like the MillionDollarHomepage. If I recall correctly, it’s already been in Forbes magazine and it’s definitely viral in nature.
Also, as more and more people link to the site, the site’s authority is going to shoot through the roof and it will most likely have great SEO benefits. I would expect it to rank for some fairly competitive terms without any work at all. If you did some SEO work for it, who knows. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s not going to rank like the wikipedia but still, for $95 I figure it’s worth a shot. That’s only 4 Text Link Ad referrals before I break even. After that, it’s all gravy.
with his own google problems, you might be able to rank for john chow somewhere, now wouldnt that be interesting
good luck, nice idea
Sorry but the MDW seems like such a waste of time/money to me. Why not spend that time/money building links to your own site? Maybe I’m just jealous that he came up with this idea to con people out of money and I didn’t…
@ Blogging Tips, that’s hope at least, Whether or not it will work out that way, we’ll see.
@ Jason, you’re certainly free to your opinion but let me ask you this. How much would you be willing to pay for the ability to exclusively edit a page on wikipedia? The value is in the strength and authority of the site. For example, wikipedia can rank for almost any term just by creating a page for it and interlinking it a bit. That’s due to the incredible strength of the domain. Edu pages are used for spam because the domains have such natural strength that it’s easy to get them to rank for terms. That’s the same sort of principle here. As the site gains publicity more and more people will rank to it, making the domain stronger and stronger.
I don’t want to sound like some used car salesman pushing the site, but I do think there’s value there and like I said, purchased my own page so my money is where my mouth is. I also don’t think it’s going to be something that you can sell of a year from now for like 2k or anything but who knows. John Chow has apparently already made more than his money back from it although again, his experiences aren’t always typical.
That’s a clever and gutsy move. Keep us posted on the progress. Also it will be interesting how Mr Chow responds, maybe you’ll experience the John Chow Effect, for yourself. How awesome would that be? Emma
Hei Ben,
Dunno if it’s a glitch, but my Google toolbar shows you have a PR6!!!
PR 6 in 45 days! That’s incredible!
Costa, unfortunately I think that’s a glitch. I’ll check it out on a few different data centers but I’m not holding my breath.
I’m interested to see if he’ll actually bites cause that would mean someone else played the player. Good Luck Ben.
It would be nice but I emailed him a couple of days ago and haven’t seen anything yet. He did mention the Complete Blogging Package contest though so who knows. He’s been pretty busy I’d imagine with the new design and all.
Good idea on the Chowbait. I’m trying to do the same by renaming my header… I’m hoping Google will pick it up and I’ll start showing up on the first page of a John Chow search.