Note: This post was guest blogged by me, Mitchell Harper of www.HarpzOn.com. I’m filling in with a few posts while John’s out and about on his well deserved Canadian holiday 
John’s blog is #1 in Google for “make money online”, and everyone writes about John and links to his blog. In a way this is a self-reinforcing system that tells everyone JohnChow.com is the number one blog for making money online. When you’re number one in search, in the top 100 in Technorati, have thousands of link backs and are mentioned and quoted everyone online, people can’t help but be intrigued and visit your site.
I’m sure you’ve seen ads that say “We’re number 1 in [product/service]“. The reason companies spend millions of dollars self-reinforcing their dominance in a particular market is because they know it works. They are playing for top of mind awareness and want to be the first company you/I think about when we need a product they sell.
Becoming #1 in a particular industry isn’t necessarily hard. We’ve done it with PHP software and John’s done it with his blog. Richard Branson of Virgin’s philosophy is simple and it’s something I agree with: to become #1 in any market you look at whose currently #1 and you find something they’re doing wrong and you beat them at it. He’s taken this approach countless times with music, international travel, mobile phones and credit cards, and 9 times out of 10 he will take the #1 spot he was going for.
When you’re #1 in a particular industry you have to work hard to stay there because there’s always going to be someone nipping at your heals. Online it’s especially hard because besides intellectual property most things can easily be replicated with money and outsourcing, so how do you do it? You grow a community around your products/services and offer them the tools they need to keep them loyal to you, so that when a competitors comes along they don’t think twice about sticking with you.
If you sell software you give them whitepapers, blogs, discounted licenses, free support, etc. If you run a blog you turn it into a community and focus on the needs of your readers instead of spending all of your time trying to optimize your ads. If you sell tangible products online you make sure you have fantastic customer service and go out of your way to make sure each and every order is delivered on time.
To become #1 you have to take out the current leader. You do this by looking at what they offer and breaking those offerings down. You then look at ways you can offer the same thing but at a higher quality or for a lower cost. It’s a continual process that evolves over time, but if you’re persistent then it’s not hard to take the #1 spot from any of your competitors, regardless of how big they are or how much money they have behind them.
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Hehehe…nice rambling. So, he takes out Bidvertiser huh? Hmn…I guess the Bidz affiliates are getting lazy =P.
BTW–John, wait for me, I’ll join you for the first page soon…:). Hey, you can hog the number one all you want, I’m fine with #2 or #3
.
BidVertiser is still #1 for me…
Same here.
Guess it will take a while to sift through all the datacenters (I’ve still got bidvertiser #1 as well).
Yeah, it’ll probably correct it self in a few hours
Hey John, don’t know if my message went through or not, but could you do us 1st time commentators a favor and have a notice that “Your Comment is Being Moderated.”
Thanks.
. Anyway, congrat on beating the beaver 
.
BTW–how did you get the hyperlink to have dotted underline? I try it in my css file but it produce underline
I asked John similar question (regarding him moderating the comments before they appear) and he advised me that once my first comment is approved the following ones will appear immediatelly after posting.
And the dashed underline I think is done by setting your a tag property this way
border-bottom:#999 1px dashed;
Cheers
Dan
Sometimes comments are still put in the moderating queue, at least some of mine. I’ve just come to accept it!
If the comment doesn’t pop up right away, don’t repost it…it’s just in the mod queue and will be approved later
Mitch, you forgot to put in the Adsense box.
Looks like he fixed it!
Congrats John
#2 for me, that’s not including the sponsored links.
John is number one. Good stuff.
Who else out there is making decent money from blogging. I bet no one who reads this blog as it is aimed at wannabe John Chow’s. Thats right the target audience is just that and John Chow has captalised on these people trying to “make money online”.
I think I count.. although not necessarily from blogging.
Yes you do. However i said blogging.
What sites do you run atm anyways mitch?
Ditto, Mitch…some of us are just here to spread some love, pick up a few things here and there, and take to heart whatever the sagaciously evil John has to say.
Nice one Mitch. Yeah i think when you put your goal onto something, try to aspire to be the best that you can.
As George Bernard Shaw finely put it “The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man”
you make it sound so easy…
It’s definately not easy. Not by a long shot!
Hardwork and dedication are required in any business
I think everyone aspires to be #1 whether they know it or not; it’s human nature. If anything, it’s good to surround yourself with people who can somehow contribute to your success.
True for those who has not been #1, you’ve something to aim, but i was thinking if you’ve reached the #1 spot, what else is there to pursue next? … John?
The number 1 spot for yet another keyword phrase, im thinking, ‘blogging for money’
wow. congrats! Watch out for all those who are gonna try hard getting back their position
My problem is I have no idea what keyword I should target to become number 1 in!
Yeah, like that’s my only problem!
You do pretty well for “swollen pickles”
Don’t focus on one money phrase until you get a heap of long tail stuff to work from. Then you can see what you’re ranking well for overall and hone in some more to find the money phrases within your segment.
Sound advice!
Blogger-Rising.Blogspot.Com
I bet John has a lot of #1 rankings, Make Money Online is just the highest trafficked one
I’m still showing Bidvertiser at #1. Either way #1 or #2 it’s a great asset to have.
Yeah, same here — I also tried “making money online,” but John Chow dot com is still in 2nd. Although it really is awesome to be #1, 2nd or even 3rd isn’t so bad. Just keep doing what you do, John, and it will come.
You say “Richard Branson [has] taken this approach countless times with music, international travel, mobile phones and credit cards, and 9 times out of 10 he will take the #1 spot he was going for.”, but it’s just not true. Tell me one market that a Branson Virgin brand is #1 in? Not airline traffic (maybe in a very small trans-atlantic upmarket niche), not online, not music, not cola, not vodka. He’s a master publicist, that’s for sure, and a good businessman – but generally he’s good at leveraging the market positions of others, not in gaining the top slot – though people often assume he has. That said – he may well have the #1 slot in space tourism – but there isn’t a lot of competition so far!
I think the lesson here is you don’t have to be #1 to be successful.
Congrats John…that’s a tough keyword phrase to get ranked so high on.
So Yahoo’s keyword tool says there’s roughly 44,857 searches for “make money online” a month.
My question is how many referrers are you getting for that keyword phrase? Or if you rather, what percentage of traffic to your site is being generated?
Hopefully you’re getting a large chunk now that you’re top 3.
Great post Mitch! You mentioned some interesting points.
Congrats John. First I saw your ad on Steve Pavlina’s blog. Then I saw your name appearing on Agloco. SO I figured you are worth vising. You’re cool man!
Actually I see he is number 3, after bidvertiser and problogger.
Great post. And well combined with your other article!
John great to see you as number 1. When I first visited you were number 2. I always thought to myself, “who is this number 2 fool?”
Now I have mad respect.
#2 for me as well, not including ads.
“make money” he’s like 8th….
“make money online” — #1
“money online” — #1
That’s gotta get him thousands of clicks….
Yeah! .. the rich get richer…
From what people have been saying in here, looks like John’s ranking on Google varies. 1, 2, 3 — all awesome spots anyway.
I’ve got him at #1 on a .ca
It’s like you say though, it’s either propagating through the rest of the data centres or he’s just ranking differently in different regions.
For once, I have to disagree with you here Mitch. If you compare the make money online tips with all the review me’s and pictures of fine dining / other things, you’ll find he doesn’t really have that many posts on making money online (comparatively)
The reason John is so popular, is because of his success. People are interested in what he has to say, because he’s become an Internet celebrity. There is also the matter of the top commentator spots.
I wouldn’t say John is giving the community what it wants, I bet if you polled the reader base, most would ask for more posts on making money online.
I agree. There is more content about dining than anything.
And how does he afford to do all the dining?
He makes money online.
AND some people actually think they are not worthy to take John’s money, since he’s a dot com mogul and all.
Great site. There are all kinds of sites for making money online and so far this is the one I have returned to the most for an understanding of what it takes to succeed. Using John’s tips, I doubled my number of unique visitors overnight.
Thank You.
Blogger-Rising.Blogspot.Com
More posts on making money would be great.
But I love it all. Who else out there is doing what John’s doing? Anyone know of anyone close, in style, content, and success?
Blogger-Rising.Blogspot.Com
There are bigger blogs out there.
On which Google data centre are you #1 for php software?
According to my local data centre you are in the 60s.
Brian: I meant we are #1 in general for web-based PHP software, not that we are number one on Google for the term “PHP software”. We are on the front page of Google for all terms that relate to our software such as email marketing, content management system, article software, knowledge base software, etc. Sorry for the confusion.
I see him as #2, bidvertiser is higher. Some Squido lense is #3 i think? Problogger is 4th. I however am number 1203930292093.
That’s why I asked which data center.
Its hard to beat it some times what makes it easier is when you have money and can buy fancy things to talk about like on my geek website. but then again to circumvent it i’m renting a few things and testing them out ha!
Congrats to John.
I’m #1 for:
Derrich
Derrich.com
and Bloggers Tournament
I am number one for my name…
Kind of interesting actually. I got the domain a few weeks back and already I`m ranked number one…I have nothing but a placeholder graphic and a few words…is that weird
Actually it doesn’t matter how many posts you have on a topic. You can have one single post and yet be number one, if you optimize it well and if you get a big bunch of links with the desired text in anchor.
yup your not number one yet john
More proof that John Chow knows what he’s talking about. Congrats!
Great site John. I’m learning all I can and making it simple at Blogger-Rising.BlogSpot.Com.
John, now you have to conquer Yahoo and MSN. Did you check your ranking with these two?
Good point, he seems to have missed out on those…
does john moderate comments?
He does, but comment moderation is lax at best
Why do you ask that, Best CD Rates?
Congrats — I’d like to think my 8 entries helped out. But I haven’t seen any of my links on your site yet? What gives?
Heyy, i still have bidvertiser as #1 if you can beat them your defiently evil! lol
Market Matador is #1 for search!
But damn… nice catch John. “Make money online” is probably a pretty popular search term.
-Sam from MarketMatador.com