John Chow Case Study

November 27, 2007 by Collin LaHay
Filed under: General, Reviews 

A lot of people were asking me for information regarding how much traffic John Chow sent rssHugger.com when I ordered a blog review, so I have decided to make a public post about it. For those who do not know the background, the first review was quite negative (because my site charged money to join), but after I changed the site’s business model, John Chow made an updated post about the new features and the site received a lot more publicity and many blogs did their own reviews about it.

My blogs launch was featured on Mashable.com (9th largest blog in the world), as well as KillerStartups (4000 RSS readers), but even combining those two together did not equal the amount of traffic and viral marketing that I received from John Chow.


*Picture edited to fit in frame*
This traffic spike is known as the “John Chow Effect”

As shown above, the press on John Chow sent a lot of visitors to the website, much more than a bigger blog reviewing the website. Although Mashable covered the launch for free, I would still consider a review on John Chow a worthy investment if you have a great product for bloggers, readers, or webmasters looking to make money online.

Comments

14 Comments on John Chow Case Study

  1. Binh dot Name on Tue, 27th Nov 2007 1:34 pm

    2. Hey ya, Congratulation on your success.

    Did you receive any traffic from my blog?

    I also got a few spare traffic from commenting on John Chow posts, too. What an effect. He seems to be top 10 bloggers out there.

  2. Collin LaHay on Tue, 27th Nov 2007 1:45 pm

    3. @Bin: Yup, looks like 13 visitors. ;)

  3. Robert MacEwan on Tue, 27th Nov 2007 6:05 pm

    4. Wow, that is quite a launch. I found rsshugger from reading others talking about the subject (chow page loads too slowly).

  4. Gyutae Park on Tue, 27th Nov 2007 7:58 pm

    5. Very nice. I’m actually thinking of ordering a review myself. How do you think compares to a banner ad? I would think that a review would receive more initial traffic but that it would die down to almost nothing in the next days. However an ad stays for the duration of the campaign and will send a more steady flow of traffic. Any ideas?

  5. Collin LaHay on Tue, 27th Nov 2007 8:04 pm

    6. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how a banner compares. A banner ad would be more stable, but I don’t know if the total amount would exceed a reviews viral potential. A banner ad also does not reach the 14,000+ subscribers. If you have a good product, get a review, if you are marketing any other site, you could try the banner. Let me know how it goes!

  6. Dinesh on Wed, 28th Nov 2007 3:37 pm

    7. Best of luck man, i m new to this fild but ur have don a good job…. u will win , but dont forget to give me party, …lol bye

  7. Sucker on Wed, 28th Nov 2007 5:02 pm

    8. Nice traffic!

  8. MoneyMoose on Thu, 29th Nov 2007 12:56 pm

    9. Nice stats! The only time I’ve ever gotten a spike that big is when StumbleUpon brought me 700 or so visitors on one of my first posts.

    Awesome job being featured at a few A-List blogger’s websites and hopefully that’ll continue. rssHugger currently seems that it might do well and the more reviews it gets the more viral it becomes.

  9. Bloggers - Promote your blog using rssHugger! | zedomax.com - a blog about DIYs, hacks(wii hacks, iphone hacks), and satiric opinions on gadgets and technology today. on Fri, 30th Nov 2007 2:50 pm

    10. [...] check it out and get a free rss Feed for bloggin’ about it. (just like we are doin’ here…) rssHugger is a new website developed to help bloggers [...]

  10. Win a JohnChow.com Review worth $400! | BloggingContest.com on Thu, 6th Dec 2007 10:32 am

    11. [...] John Chow review case study on Rsshugger.com How to Enter the Blog Contest: [...]

  11. WordPress Cache Plugin | Mixed Market Arts on Sun, 9th Dec 2007 12:01 am

    12. [...] This plugin also allows you to be able to survive a featured post on very popular websites (john chow effect). Rather than having to connect to your wordpress database for 10,000 unique visitors, your server [...]

  12. Haroon Dot In on Tue, 11th Dec 2007 3:20 am

    13. No thats John Chow For You

  13. swisserikin on Thu, 31st Jan 2008 7:15 pm

    14. So young yet so smart. Still so little traffic to my site.

  14. Hyter on Sun, 10th Feb 2008 11:41 pm

    15. What a launch! However, why don’t you show how the curve continues? Did it follow the growth even later on?

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