John Chow and the Amazing Internet Wayback Machine
Whenever you start any journey, even an internet one, it is a good idea to have a mentor or a guide. One of the guru’s that I was made aware of by my friend Tristan is John Chow at www.johnchow.com. John is a local boy (local meaning Vancouver BC local, which is where I live) who has been in the internet business in one form or another for some time. He likes to refer to himself at the “root of all evil”, although I don’t really see anything evil about him at all, just a lot of smarts. His blog began as a modest enterprise, something he did only for fun. However, in the last year he has really worked at it, until it now generates about $30,000 a month for him. Pretty impressive, me thinks. Obviously, he must know something.
Whenever you read about someone like John who is experiencing massive success, it’s easy to become a little intimidated. He’s so far up the mountain, and you’re just standing at the base, looking up at him. Can you follow in his footsteps? Can you do what he did? It sure seems a long way from here to there …
Whenever I feel this way, one tool I like to use is the Internet Wayback machine, which you can find at http://www.archive.org/index.php. What this site allows you to do is to enter the name of any website and, so long as the robot file allows it, watch how it developed overtime. With John’s site, you can watch how he changed and tweaked it, turning it from at minor distraction to the major success it is today. Using the Wayback Machine helps to remind you that even a guru like John Chow had to start at the bottom of the mountain. There are no free rides. If you want to do what he did, you have to DO what he DID, which is to start hiking and not look back.
Some other points with regards to John’s site:
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If you do go there, I highly recommend you sign up to receive his free e-book on how to make money online. I’m reading it myself, at the moment, and it is filled with great information on how to become a successful blogger. I’m sure I’ll have more posts on this in the days and weeks to come.
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It is also well worth your while to look into John’s archive’s. When you read some of his most recent posts, they can literally be on anything. For example, he had a post on how he went to Wally’s Burgers awhile back. It was a fun post, but not that informative, as far as the internet is concerned. However, when you have the vast readership he commands, this is the kind of thing you can do. As a blogging apprentice, it is far better to look in his past archive’s when his readership was not that large (when he was at the bottom of the mountain, so to speak) to see what he was blogging on then. This way, you can learn what kind of topics he blogged on to increase his readership. I think you can use this for any guru blogger out there. I believe it’s well worth doing (I’m doing it, anyway).
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Be careful if you go there today, which is April 1st . John is a bit of a prankster, it seems, and there is a good chance you might get “Rick Rolled”. Don’t ask, just be careful out there.
All the best,
- Dave
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:03 am
The Way Back Machine is a really fun site. I have used it several times to check out how some of my favorite sites (even my own) looked in the past, and well, I usually get a good laugh.
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:07 pm
It can be quite addicting too. I love seeing how different sites developed overtime.
April 5th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Indeed, John Chow is an individual you can benefit from by just witnessing his success with his blog. He holds one element that thousands of bloggers don’t have. That element is traffic. Many bloggers are equally as smart. Many bloggers offer equally as good tips and suggestive products; however, it is in the sheer numbers that allows John Chow to reap such a huge percentage of the business. A lot, indeed, can be learned from witnessing his site.