Meeting an Internet Mogul, John Chow (Dot Com)

This morning I met an internet mogul…..a guy who is making half a million dollars a year (or more) from his blog…….his name is John Chow and he grew up in a poverty-sticken town in China, then emigrated with his family to Canada, where he lived in a slum in Vancouver.

John Chow had an entrepreneurial gene, however, and he started as a teenager to figure out how to make money. Today he makes money on the internet, actually he makes lots of money on the internet, and he only spends about two hours a day doing it. He is not a blogger, but rather, he is an internet marketer who happens to have a blog.  I, on the other hand, have a blog that promotes my PR and marketing business  (which offers  internet marketing as well as website development.) Subtle difference, but still important.  If you look at John Chow’s blog, you will see that it is full of advertisements. He gets paid residuals from the advertisers on his blog based on his traffic.

He’s a smart guy, John Chow. This morning, he was the keynote speaker at the Society of American Travel Writers’ conference in Dresden, Germany where I am spending the week.  John probably knew that he would get lots of writers posting info about his speech on the web and linking to his blog, just like I am doing now. And inbound links are a good thing because they help with search engine optimization. 

The thing I liked most about John Chow’s message is that you should blog because you love to blog, not because you want to make money. The money, he says, will f0llow your passion and enthusiasm. He also says that your relationships with your family and friends are more important than all the money in the world.  Even if you have loads of money, he said, you should honor your spouse and your children, and spend more time with them.  He gives lots of credit to his wife Sarah for inspiring him to do better with his business and supporting him every step of the way.

He said one of his secrets has always been to see opportunity in problems. So when he moved from a hovel in China with no indoor plumbing to a slum in Vancouver that had a flush toilet, he saw that as moving up in the world.  Now he has a wife and a daughter, and he lives comfortably, all because he has figured out how to position himself as an expert in the field of making money by blogging. If you look at his site, you will see that he has written books on the subject, too. His content is all targeted at that one topic. He repeats his message in many different ways but it is all with the goal of driving traffic to his blog, which in turn, generates revenues for his advertisers and income for himself. This is an example of consummate organic search engine optimization.

He said that before he decided on a name for his daughter, he checked to see if the URL was available. Therefore when his daughter was born,  he also gave birth to www.sallychow.com, a blog that includes photos of Sally in utero three months prior to her birth! 

I was inspired and motivated by John Chow. He is an interesting guy and he had a great PowerPoint presentation this morning.  Check out his blog if you get a chance, especially if you want to figure out the secret to a happy, fulfilling life (as he has).