John Chow Effect on a Top Commentator
I'm sure many of you have heard of the phrase "Experience the John Chow effect." The phrase is of course from John Chow's blog and it refers to the surge in traffic that occurs after a person, product or website orders a ReviewMe review on John's blog. You can see some examples of the traffic that is sent by the reviews in his post on the John Chow Effect. While those numbers look pretty good, I don't have $400 to spend on a ReviewMe review so I decided to discover how much traffic could be sent to my blog by securing a slot as a top commentator for free instead.
I wrote 33 comments on September 1st on John Chow's blog which put me into a mid range top commentator spot on the right hand sidebar of his blog. Now before you think that I spammed my way up, that could not be further from the truth. I have my RSS feeds set up to run through my outlook account that I read between breaks at work, but I rarely have time to comment. So on September 1st, I spent some time going through posts and commenting on posts and reached a mid placement spot on the top commentator's section. For the anchor text I used my name, Chris Guthrie.
I was a top commentator for one week before the list reset and started everyone over. The grand total of visitors I received for a mid placement on the top commentator section on John Chow's blog was... 14 visitors. Here's a graph from Google Analytics:
I was really suprised to see that I got only 4 visitors to my blog from being in the top commentator list. In fact, I received more traffic from my comment on his most recent post - at the time - the August income report (5 vistors in total). Perhaps I would have received more traffic if I didn't use my name as the anchor text and instead opted for something like the focus of my blog: "Forums and Blogging." I may have received even more traffic if I was thee top commentator, but I didn't want to spam 100+ comments just to get a top spot. I wrote comments that I believed added something to the conversation and still only achieved a mid placement on the top commentator list. I believe that if you do write comments on anyone's blog make sure they're insightful and worth reading. Besides, you'll likely get more traffic that way then having your name in the top commentator spot.
So there you have it, if you want to experience the true John Chow effect then it looks like you're going to have to pay for it 
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nice case study – found this via digital point forum – I experience the john chow effect for free by making a video – it was a good link bait video too: here it is if you do not mind links in your comments
http://www.johnchow.com/interview-with-john-chow-almost/
Hello Ian. I actually did see the video when it was first posted and it was pretty hilarious. (And no, I don’t mind the link)
Also found this via digitalpoint, great study, im a big fan of john chows blog. I will be reading more of your blog also
I found this too and was curious how it was. Nice experiment.
Nice find, keep up the good work!
Thanks for the experiment, but a free 14 visitors is a free 14 visitors in some peoples mind, especially if you get someone like me who bookmarks every neat blog I find, and go through the list 2-3 times a month.
Thanks everyone. That’s true it is a free 14 visitors, but who knew I’d get more traffic by posting about the experience on DP’s forums than from being on the top of his list? I was pretty surprised.
Feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed, I will be doing more interesting case studies and talking about blogging and forums
[...] Chris did an experiment to see how much traffic he would receive from John Chow if he became a top commentor, he got a whopping 14 visitors, I reckon he’ll get a lot more by publishing the case study [...]
I bet you will be receiving a lot more visits for this post. Great idea!.
Great experiment keep up the good work!
Found via DP.. Great Post I have to say..
I tried this myself to see what they were worth, 96 hits over one month!!
Its a waste of time.
I also got the same results, maybe better. My post has a different type of theme, but same bit about john chow stats.
Post: http://blog.redzero.co.za/?p=45
thank you, bro
Good analysis on John Chow effect as they say
. That means getting into his Top commentators list does not really help a lot, neither from traffic nor from Google PR side. By the way, did you remove your top commentators list from the homepage?
I think John Chow is no more a hot blogger this year. If you observe, there are so many nice bloggers came up in the lime light and they are providing much better quality articles to read and improve on the internet marketing knowledge. One is right in front of me.. you have to be indeed!
$400 is way too much [and currently the price is like $500 I believe]. Rather I suggest to go for $50 reviews on 10 quality sites of smaller webmasters. By the way, do you know you stand at 10th position in Google for “john chow effect” term
I think by your link in johnchow post comment bring more traffic than top commentator because usually post made by him were found in the search engine and those a fresh traffic.
I don’t try to get on the top commentator list on blogs for traffic. I do it for the links. I choose blogs that I am interested in and then comment and subscribe. Taffic is just a bonus for me, I try to get my traffic from google.
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