Comments on: John, Here’s Why You’re Wrong

By: Peter @ Iwillchangeyourlife.com

Peter @ Iwillchangeyourlife.com — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:10:45 +0000

Sorry but I disagree. There are endless blogs out there about making money. John Chow has found a magic formula of which his personality is a major ingredient. The cars, the foods…. even if you don’t appreciate these posts they help create the character of John Chow, which in turn continues to propel the popularity of the site.

Peter

ps I just posted a John Chow related post on my site (very different from this one though).

By: Angel

Angel — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 11:50:09 +0000

I don’t really enjoy John’s restaurant or car posts. I can see why some people would, but for me, they serve no purpose and just turn the day they are posted into a day not to read his blog. The “babes” thing had me scratching my head. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single babe on johnchow.com

By: Jason Peck

Jason Peck — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 01:30:33 +0000

Nice post. This is one issue I’m struggling with on my blog. Do I focus on one/two niche topics or can I also post about random things I find interesting? I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it should be the readers who determine the direction of the blog, but I wanted to add this. For a successful blogger to post off-topic, that person has to 1) be interesting and 2) have people care about him/her as a person.

For example, everyone knows Mark Cuban and Seth Godin (though his blog has fallen off some in my opinion), and those two guys can post about whatever they feel like, because people are legitimately interested in them. However, most people come to John Chow’s site to learn about making money blogging, and could care less about what he thinks about X –not trying to be mean, but I think that’s just the fact of the matter.

I think right now I’m leaning towards sticking to one pretty narrow niche on my blog. I could probably find a new “voice” or perspective that would draw people on it’s own but that takes time to develop, so I’ll probably just focus on attracting people with good, focused content. Though I’m not sure if my niche is too narrow to attract a large audience…decisions, decisions…

By: Rony John

Rony John — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 01:10:05 +0000

Great Post,Your RSS Feeds have increase .Congrats

By: Ben Cook

Ben Cook — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:10:57 +0000

Steve, that’s a great example. John seems to enjoy food enough that he could probably split that content off into it’s own blog and it would be successful. And really, I don’t know that he even needs to do that but I think just assuming that his readers are ok with the off topic stuff is a mistake. I could easily be wrong and he could be right, but I’d be interested to know whether other stats back that up or not.

By: HMTKSteve

HMTKSteve — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:21:21 +0000

I agree. That is why I broke off my Pokemon content onto its very own site. A site that has been having amazing success!

My main site is not doing badly but it has fallen from its high point when the Pokemon content was there. At the same time I am getting over 1K PVs daily while PokeFarm is getting more than 10 times that amount!

I have split off other blogs from my main site in the past but this is the first one that surpassed my main site’s traffic numbers.