I also agree with other users... His site is becoming a mini Digg where you'll get a bunch of people to your site without any clicks on ads or anything. A week after it's back to same ole lonely you.
He has the number of pageviews listed on most of his posts. Most are in the 5,000 range. That won't generate very many clicks, especially to a site he's being paid to review.
Just as stupid as paying to get onto Yahoo! directory. Eventually after about 6 years they added me for free and nothing happened. What I do is a reciprocal link to ANY .edu web site that links to me. I have content for kids so I e-mail schools asking them to add my web site and it works sometimes. The PR is not high, but Google considers them as more weight in their PR algorithm. Every once in a while you hit the jackpot and get a .edu with a high PR... that is when you are really helped out.
$400 for a review, not worth it. You could put that money to better use. Serisously, you could buy links, adwords, hire a writer to write fresh content, etc.
There are other ways to get edu links. Easy ways. And you can get into the yahoo directory ALOT faster than 6 yrs if you take the right steps...
Consider the brand power generated from advertising on JohnChow. Traffic is by no means worthless, and tracking revenue from brand advertising isn't a case of counting the AdSense clicks and hoping it amounts to 1.25x spend. We are looking at long term value of exposure with the paid review, not short term turnaround.
Steve's Tech Blog was mentioned last week on the Technorati bug and how I was "evil"(fun) with it. I did get a surge of visitors for a few days. Unfortunately, I was sick so I could not exploit that new traffic. I have more info on the Effect A recent review made $7000 to on guy in 24h. Is it the same for all? Maybe not. It all depends on the price of the product. The guy sold 70 pages at $100 page on his wiki. Their is also the negative review he does. That's a downside. $400($200 for him) could be better than the other ways and you have instant exposure. Also, he don't do many review himself. The PR juice will not matter unless it's near a PR update.
Think of it this pay - these days you don't pay high $xxxx for nothing, theres always a positive results at the end up. If you pay quality, you'll recieve quality ..
He did one just this week. It was a negative review. AndrewTalk - How Not To Do a Blog Even at $400, I think the guy lost more than that.
Yes its highly priced... I wont pay $400 just for a couple of backlinks and a review which he usually writes by putting some screenshots..
Erm, Has everyone forgotten that John Chows blog has been dumped by Google, mainly for selling links for pagerank purposes. I wouldnt have a blog post, even if it was free! Theres no way I would want to be associated with it.
If you own an off-line business, advertising costs are going to cost you $1,000's. $400 is a very small price to pay for a full article and review that is going to be placed in front of 10's of thousands of people. If your site is good enough, and is a good business, selling REAL things.... $400 is nothing for that type of publicity.
If you can get him to notice something interesting on your website and blog about it, you'll get the same links, exposure, etc. It's too bad he stopped doing the Make Money Online blog link exchange thing. That was awesome.
Thats a really poor equation.. I've spent less than 60.00 on a site and earned 1.5k per month inside 3 months consistantly.. I've right this second over 10 sites doing that with one initial small investment and some strategic free marketing. If you're doing it right your return should be 1 to 2k per month at 0.00 expense. I'll never sell those sites as they pay for me to develop more from my portfolio as time goes on and all the renewal fees on all my domains. Of course there is exceptions depending on the competition and niche which is why I create things no one else has. I have a new method of bringing traffic in That I'm about to teach using torrentmoney.com when it's finished. Still writing the book but for now I can teach from my head if anyone's interested.. Think money and millions of visitors .. free. As for JohnChow.com .. I'll test this this week and see the difference in exposure and do a review of it's worthyness
Dude you gotta be joking. I don't read his blog as often as I used to but still see few negative paid reviews every now and than.