He Really Does Help You Blog
Today is the last day of the ReviewMe 50% off sale, so if you haven’t got your review request in by midnight tonight, it’ll cost you $250 tomorrow. It is good to see that some fellow bloggers and readers are stepping up to the plate and ordering up last minute ReviewMe reviews at 50% off. One such fellow blogger is Philip Liu of I Help You Blog.
Philip is a New York City-based corporate finance lawyer with a background in business, law, and accounting. With the exception of law, which I only took one year of, Philip and I would get along smashingly for a bowl of pho because corporate finance and pho go hand in hand.
Who Is Helping You Blog?
Before you start shouting, “Wait a minute. John Chow helps me blog!” You need to understand the angle Philip is attacking this from.
I Help You Blog is a new blog about all aspects of professional blogging. Yeah, another “problogging blog” right? Enough of those already! But this blog is very different from the other problogging sites out there. I Help You Blog is about improving the value and worth of a blog from the point of view of someone who might down the road want to sell it. I Help You Blog seeks to demystify the factors that determine blog value and worth.
While the thought of selling John Chow dot Com has not entered my mind – I doubt I can sell it anyway – it is something that many bloggers may look forward to down the road. There’s really no better thrill than to create something from nothing and then sell it down the road for something. Given his background, Philip is well suited to blog about his chosen topic.
Demystifying Blog Worth And Increasing Blog Value
Launched on February 8, I Help You Blog is pretty much a brand new blog. However, Philip has done a good job at keeping the blog updated with an average of one new post per day. Some of the highlights include:
- A Fool-Proof Method To Brainstorm Blogging Ideas
- Five Things You Can Do Now To Increase Your Blog’s Worth
- Your Blog’s Reputation: One Sure-Fire Way To Kill It!
- How Much Are Blogs Worth And Indicia Of Value In Blogs For Sale
- Complete Blogging Resource List For The Pro-Blogger
- How And Where To Get Blogging Inspiration
- How To Write An Awesome “About” Page
I Help You Blog runs on Wordpress using a very clean and simple template. Being brand new, the blog is not monetized. However, the template is well suited for Google AdSense and other network banners should the time come.
What I really like about Philip’s blog is his willingness to try new things that others haven’t tried. On his latest post, he tells his reader that he has disabled nofollow to encourage visitors to participate and comment more on the posts. I Help You Blog is the first blog I’ve seen to do this and I’m looking forward to see how the experiment works out.
In another exclusive, Philip posted The Biggest Secret (Maybe) To Increase Your Adsense CTR (Click Through Ratio). This is a must read post for anyone suffering from low Google click through rates.
Suggestions For Improvements
My one complaint about I Help You Blog is the read more links. Instead of giving us the entire post on the front page, I Help You Blog requires you to click [Read more] in order to read the entire post – the front page holds just an excerpt. With just a few posts per day, I don’t think I Help You Blog needs this. Fortunately, you can subscribe to the blog’s full feed RSS and avoid this problem.
I Help You Blog can use a little more posting consistency. The blog has average one new post per day but it’s not a constant one per day. Today, there are three new posts, but there was nothing new for the previous three days. The content quality is there. If I Help You Blog can maintain a consistent posting pattern, it will be a daily read for many bloggers (including me).
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Trackbacks
- Don’t Look Now, but You’re Being Followed » Ask Shane.org - March 1, 2007 at 11:05 am
- Some New Features - March 4, 2007 at 10:06 pm
- One Month Update - March 8, 2007 at 9:30 pm
- Make Money Online With ReviewMe « John Chow dot Com - March 19, 2007 at 11:01 am
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I enjoyed some of the posts, though the selection isn’t there just yet. The read more is annoying, I found that out first hand after receiving lots of feedback to take it out from my own site.
I actually use the “read more” link on my site because I don’t want the front page to be a million miles long.
Most would rather read the entire post on the front page.
Really?! I had no idea!
I post a lot of screen cap.’s that can make a single post quite long – I wonder if I should change that on my site…
I agree. I rather read the whole post than have to wait for another page to load all over again. I know wordpress can help you limit the number of posts on a page. That would be a way to cut down on the mileage!
I’m lazy. I don’t want to have to click more than I have to. Gotta watch out for that RSI
OK then, I will go change my code!
Thanks guys!
I think most readers like me like to read the whole posts immediately on the front page. That is, unless you are writing many articles a day.
The other aspect is to limit the number of posts showing on your first page if they are pretty lengthy. I keep mine at 5.
I guess you could use the read more feature depending on the topic of your blog. It allows the reader to grap more different posts on the front page (like 10) and then choose what he wants to read.
It also should boost slightly your page views per user.
But then again, most people prefer full posts on front pages.
Less clicking, more reading..
Seconded. I understand your point of wanting to make it sleeker to look at, but visitors are there to read so make it easy for them to do so.
That really is a great point! I have removed all of the more tags!
THANKS ALL!!
Thats good.
Just an awesome post John.
I wish one day I’ll be as efficient as you are in my posting. I am sure taking notes. Instead of singing the song dedicated to Michael Jordan ”I wanna be like Mike” I should start singing ”I wanna be like John”
John Chow,
I know you’re extremely busy…if you have time please participate or reply here with the following info for a OSU school project.
I am putting a statistical analysis together with 3 criteria.
Here’s a sample…please replace with your info!
1. Name: Bryan-Baker Dot Com Blog(http://www.bryan-baker.com/blog).
2. Unique Visitors: 35/day.
3. Revenue: $91.32/last month.
thank you sooo much.
I posted a new blog and would like you to participate if possible.
Online Revenue.
Thanks. If you know anyone who is eligible to participate I’d really appreciate you sending them my way.
You can probably calculate that information from John’s monthly income recap. The one for February should be coming tomorrow so stay tuned
ahhh thanks aniela. i’ll be posting the results of this analysis around march 14th ish…
i’m hoping to see a positive correlation between unique visitors per day and monthly revenue.
I’m guessing john chow will be the top dog in my study.
It’s for a class too…25 required participants. please participate if you make money online and read this.
Online Revenue.
sounds like an interesting project, I will keep an eye on it
Interesting project – am awaiting the output .. might throw up a few interesting things..
IF you can make $91 off 30 something uniques a day I’ll be blown away..
No kidding. That’d be very impressive.
Well, in that case you should take a look at PayPerPost, it’s very easy to make like 100$ a month with a 0 visitor/day weblog – really no problem at all. It wouldn’t be appreciated, but 35 uniques a day surely has a big chance of making the double or triple of it. Simply because those sites do not look at the visitors or whatsoever, just at your posts.
While that’s true, you’re then not earning your revenue per unique visitor. e.g. an increase in uniques will not increase your revenue.
Apples and Oranges…
Its unbelievable guys ! I cant even imaging making anything close to that ! at 1/10 that number i will be happy
How is this going ?
After the great ohMyBod review, i like this one. It’s simple, text with a great focus, when the reader are surrounded by the words
Yes, it is indeed simple. I like it when the writer comes straight to the point of the story. Yet, I feel that the layout can be made to be alittle more interesting.
I agree. Although it’s a great find John.. thanks!
I hate the “read more”, too, but in some cases I just click through my Google page directly to the post so it’s not an issue.
One way to get around the long home page loading time is to decrease the amount of posts per page. I changed mine to 5 from the default 10.
That’s a great suggestion too! I wonder how the community feels about that?
I did reduce the number of posts appearing the main page itself. I too agree that it is kind to tiring to look at lines of summary. The first instance when I go to a site is to have a view of the full content itself.
Although of course a summary allows for easy scanning of articles before you even read it.
Oh, and it’s nice to see John Chow actually doing a review!
Nothing against Michael, but if I were buying a ReviewMe review it’d be because I would want John Chow to review it (and it shows).
i subscribe interely that
Why, instead of going through ReviewMe, don’t you charge (say, $200) if the advertiser goes directly to you?
ReviewMe offers exposure though, for people who are actually looking for places to advertise.
Thats true, I’d be interested to know how popular John’s reviews are in comparison to other bloggers, he seems to get an awful lot, maybe he has brand recognition even without ReviewMe’s listings…
Sure he does have a brand recognition without review me also.
Hmm
Nice review, the post about blog’s reputation was my favorite.
Allen.H
Hi Everyone,
Thanks all for visiting and leaving all that great feedback! John, that was an awesome review–thank you very much. Well worth the money and exposure! I found your tips really helpful and I’m working on them to improve the blog going forward.
Next time I’m in Vancouver later this year, maybe we can grab some pho!
Phil
Oh, wow! I didn’t realize this was a ReviewMe thingy until now.. (going back to the first paragraph I might have overlooked).
So how much traffic did you get out of the reviewme posting at JohnChow.com
That would be an interesting thing to know.
Anyway Philip, great work on your site!
Thanks, I’ll post something about it soon. Let me say now though that I’ve been impressed by the results in both traffic and new subscribers.
Ah. you could have been sure that it was a small investment on your part to gain exposure for your site. I might do the same some time later in future too.
Hope to hear about it soon!
Great post John !1
That guy has a pretty cool site for a newbie. I think it’s pretty cool that he disabled the no follows in the comment links. Too bad it will hurt his pagerank quite a bit.
I agree. Yet saying so, the writer has his own style to keep up, and has done well up till now.
It looks to be a very enjoyable blog, I’ve subscribed myself!
Yeah.. I found the content amazingly original. I subscribed as well!
another subscriber here as well, recently i cleaned my rss so i got some slots to fill!
Another enjoyable read subscribe for the day. Interesting, and straightforward layout. Plain and simple.
Have been a subscriber since the last few months and it has been a great experience reading John’s site
cool, I will look into the nofollow idea.
Go check out the do-follow tag. It will actually give you a lot of flexibility with the extra features they have to prevent abuse.
Good pointer on the Read More. I had been using those but am also thin on content. Thanks for the tips.
Going to have to bookmark his site, he does have some good tips.Maybe one of the only ReviewMe posts that actually is worth something to your readers.
Hey John, I’ve also recently disabled the nofollow feature on my blog at http://www.badslacks.com – we’ll see if that encourages more comments.
I also used to use the “read more” tag but found it annoying after a while. The developer of Phil’s wordpress template recommends it to increase page views but I think that getting as much of your good content in front of the reader at once is the better move.
you reviewing his site was def. worth it for him. He now has over 115 rss readers, and a good steady group of people visiting his blog each day