Are you a fresh new blogger who has wondered whether you could kick start your blog by paying John Chow to review you? Based on the history of two blogs he reviewed in December 2006 and February 2007 — which died- I’d advise against it.
Both Pubincome.com and Allenation.com, now dead, were reviewed by John Chow. Below, you’ll find a plot showing Alexa estimates of their traffic reach. For comparison purposes, I also show my new blog, “BigBucksBlogger”.1 Here are the plots: 
The Blog Kill Effect?
In late December of ’06, Jason Rodriguez paid John Chow to review the very new pubincome.com. In early January, Jason posted that the review brought his blog a lot of traffic; by March 23, Jason had taken his blog off line.
PubIncome is now dead. May it rest in peace.
On February 7, Allen paid John to review his new blog “Allenation.” In the Alexa graph, you can see Allen’s traffic had increased during the month before the review and then increased more rapidly around Feb. 7 when the review occurred.
At one point, the “reach” noted by Alexa exceeded that of BigBucksBlogger! Imagine getting more than 47 unique visits a day! And without even discussing a topic that really draws in traffic — like knitting!
In the short run, it’s clear Allen was happy with the results and reported a spike in traffic. But, alas, Allen’s traffic dropped precipitously, and for some reason, Allen pretty much stopped posting at Allenation in March 2007. You can read more at Allenation.
Allenation is now dead: May it rest in peace.
Final Analysis
I tried to find other new blogs John Chow may have reviewed more than 3 months ago, but I didn’t find any. If you are aware of any, let me know. I’d love to look at the Alexa plots for those.
Still, based on the results I’ve found, I would advise new bloggers to resist the temptation to buy a ReviewMe by John Chow. The sudden drop after the thrilling rise may kill your blog.
Concentrate on other things- like building good content.
Endnotes:
1. Bear in three things in mind when interpreting the Alexa plot: 1) according to site meter, BigBucksBlogger currently averages 47 unique visits and 91 page views a day, 2) Alexa is a pathetically inaccurate tool but 3) all three blogs are in the “make money niche” which means we can expect our blog visitors to have Alexa toolbars installed.
Ha! I did a review for a guy who lives outside of Toronto. So did John. Why he wanted a home reno site done by John I don’t know but he wasn’t happy at all. In fact John Chow didn’t even write the review and the review was full of links to other sites, and links within Johns blog. That’s not a proper review nor fair to an advertiser who’s paying $400 for a review! All links in that review should be to the advertisers site!
The website he reviewed was:
http://www.remodelingmyspace.com/
I didn’t go looking on John’s site to see what the date was but looking at the Alexa reach the biggest blip is in almost mid April. So that was probably Johns Review (hey maybe mine too). The reach has now tapered off to almost nothing.
Maybe your theory is correct?
I would say that the blog owner/author killed his/her own blog by ordering the review too soon and without building a solid base first. It would appear that after the “john chow effect” wore off the blogger became discouraged by the precipitous drop in traffic.
Check out John Chow’s alexa graph for when he hit digg several times in quick succession. notice that after each spike the traffic level dropped but maintained a higher level than before. By the time he hit the front page of digg he had already built up good content and a decent loyal base.
Hmm very interesting.
I always read about the positive side of the John Chow Effect not the negative.
Nice observation!
[...] will recall that I previously John Chow Effect: Does it Kill Young Blogs? Today, I will discuss the effect of a John Chow Review on a medium sized blog — Gaman’s [...]
Hello there Ms. Big Buck,
I am Allen Heat, owner and author of AlleNation.com. First off let me say that your idea to observe the John Chow effect from a different angel is nice, too bad it was carried out poorly, particularly referring to your hasty observation on AlleNation.
I suppose you haven’t even read AlleNation before posting this article, if you did at least read the latest 2 posts, you’d know exactly the reason why AlleNation wasn’t updated for so long, I guess you thought looking at the last posts’s date was enough.
And one more thing - A nice practice among bloggers who claim to be professional is to let their fellow bloggers know when a well-studied and a comprehensive post like yours is referring to their blog, especially if one is crowning another’s blog “dead”.
I therefore expect you, which I believe is a blogger that understands the importance of proper disclosure, to update this post accordingly when you do find out the reason of my absence, and refer to the corrections in one of your next posts. That, of course - is up to you. Being a guardian angel is just as nice as being a grim reaper - trust me.
Cheers,
Allen.H