How to Get Up When John Chow Slaps You Down
Most of you might be aware of a review that John Chow made on his blog a couple of days ago for a blog called AndrewTalk.com. If you read the review, which most of you should, you’ll know all about it. Basically John totally destroyed this guy, Andrew is obviously a new blogger and he was doing some pretty bad mistakes that maybe he wasn’t aware of. Andrew’s blog layout was pretty simple, nothing to write home about, and definitely nothing that would really grab a prospective reader. But the real issue was the fact that apparently Andrew was copying all his content verbatim without giving any credit to the authors. Now that’s a serious mistake that can land you in a lot of trouble.
The funny thing is that some of the posts were taken from John Chow himself. So to recap, Andrew starts a new blog with a very basic design, copies all his content without asking permission, and then pays 400 dollars for a review from one of the blogs that he was taking content from, a blog that happens to have a crap load of readers, JohnChow.com. He was asking for a major hiding and some huge embarrassment, and that’s exactly what he got.
When I first read the review I thought it was quite interesting. I’ve contemplated ordering a review from the Chow himself except I didn’t want a negative one, so reading this helped me get a little glimpse into the mind of a top blogger and what they look for, or more importantly don’t look for, in a blog. Then the comments started pouring in and I started feeling a little sorry for the guy, he’s obviously a brand new blogger and sometimes it can be easy to make mistakes like this. When I started out I also copied some stuff for my first blog (didn’t last long), and I didn’t really realize the consequences. It didn’t seem like he really deserved the ridicule and embarrassment that was being heaped on him.
What would you do in his situation? I asked my self this, and I came up with some suggestions. If he reads this maybe he can take a few tips. But for the rest of us, life is not perfect and sometimes things will happen that will really not be cool, so I guess we can all learn something from this.
- I would close JohnChow.com and not read any comments till I was back on track. People may laugh at you but there is no reason to dwell on that, so I would take the lesson from the review and not bother with anything else. For now!
- I would immediately delete all posts, and immediately go to work on writing some fresh ones. Doesn’t matter who you are, if you can operate a computer and you’re desperate enough, you can write 4 or 5 good posts in 1 or 2 hours.
- There’s always some good in anything that happens. Sometimes it takes a bit of training for your mind to see it, but with that kind of adrenaline pumping you won’t have a problem, if you focus, with seeing the opportunity. The way I see it, people see John give a good or mediocre review all the time but a bad review is generally quite rare, and a horrible review has only happened once or twice, I think. So suddenly you find yourself in the middle of a huge spot light, thousands of people know who you are, but more importantly thousands of people are very curious to come check you out because you’ve deviated from the norm. I would definitely not let this go to waste, and that’s why its so important to start writing fresh stuff immediately. If done properly, 400 dollars could be a bargain in this situation.
- I would use my instant popularity as some wicked leverage. There must’ve been hundreds of people that wouldn’t have minded getting on that blog to have a bit of the traffic action. Maybe holding some sort of competition where you exchange a link for a review of your blog and the winner gets some cash also. Or getting some bloggers to guest blog some posts for you. There’s so much that can be done. If Andrew had done the review exchange after making a few fresh posts, he could have easily found 50 bloggers willing to review. Almost instantly he’s got 50 reviews for 400 dollars making it 8 dollars per review. Thats not too bad
- I would not be defeated but I would be very humble. Humility can be a huge asset. I would write an email to all the bloggers that I’ve wronged, the more respected the blogger the better, explaining exactly what was going through my head and apologizing profusely, then I would tell them in detail what I planned to do with my blog in the future. If I’m lucky they might mention me on their blog getting me more exposure.
- I would look to the future and learn whatever I could get my hands on that had to do with blogging and the niche I was writing about. Andrew obviously didn’t know much about the subject that he was trying to blog about, and that was his first mistake. So I would make sure not to make that mistake twice.
- When I’m up and running and doing better, I would approach John Chow again, but this time I’m not going to pay him. I’ll invite him to come take a look at the new blog, and I would humbly ask that he make a small mention of it again. Chances are that he’ll do it, especially since he’s seen what a success you’ve already been for him from the first post.
Hopefully something like this will never happen to me, but if it ever does, I’ll come here first. Andrew is busy building up his blog again, and I truly wish the best for him. However stupid his mistakes were, I don’t think they were malicious. There is a lesson here for everybody, and that lesson is to never give up and always look for the positive, because if you do you’ll find it.
Simon
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