Man Plus Machine

As part of a “Review My Blog” thing I’ like to tell you something about one of my favourite blogs, John Chow Dot Com. If you run one or more websites, you might want to consider advertising on them, and although online advertising has become far easier and more attractive lately, there is still a lot to learn. Fortunately, John Chow and his weblog is around to the rescue.

John Chow runs several websites, but I’m going to tell you something about his weblog “The Miscellaneous Ramblings of a Dot Com Mogul“. Despite the title, John does more than just ramble. He has an immense knowledge about online advertising and how to gain traffic to your site. The best part is, that he doesn’t mind sharing his wisdom with others.

I first encountered John’s webiste when his (probably) most famous article, “The Internet’s Biggest Google Whores,” was on Digg.com. It was an extremely fascinating article about some of the people who make most money on advertising with Google, and it really got me hooked on online advertising. I began reading the blog on a regular basis and I have gotten quite some tips and tricks the last six months. Since I first saw this article, I’ve seen references to it everywhere. Last time was a few weeks ago on a local Norwegian webiste.

The primary advertising focus is on Google’s Adsense program, but John also covers many other advertising programs and tells us which to give a try and which to stay away from. If Google or some other advertising network change their rules about advertisement placing and colours, John will most likely be one of the first to let you know and tell you how to avoid being banned. Very useful information, especially if you’re living on the edge :-)

Online advertising is not the only subject of John’s weblog. He also writes stories about trips to various expos he’s invited to, and he likes to tell about his latest visit to some new restaurant. His family plays an important role and is a regular subject on his blog, too. Of the more technical subjects is his views on the Wordpress blogging tool. For one he has a nice list of useful Wordpress plugins (I know, I have installed some of them) and most importantly he gives us guides and pointers to getting Google Adsense going with Wordpress.

The fact that John spends a lot of time on his weblog is obvious. He updates it a few times every day and there’s almost always something to check out. Not only does he share some good business secrets and tricks with us, he also makes a list of the best and most popular articles he’s written over time. This would perhaps be a very good point for advertising newcomers to start, and it’s a fantastic resource for we more experienced to freshen up our knowledge base.

In short, John Chow’s weblog is a very good place to keep going back to. The blog has so much information to offer especially if you’re new in the game. The downside is that he also writes a lot about some less interesting matters such as restaurants in his home town (in which I don’t live) and his family (cute, but in the long run it’s not of much interest to me…). Give it a try, though - I bet you won’t be disappointed!