New John Chow Blog Design

John Chow just went live with his new site design a few days ago. Before going live with the new look, John made sure to send out an email to a bunch of his older advertisers to try and fill some new ad spot. I was one of his contacts and gladly took him up on the offer, and was actually the first to do so as well. You can see my 125×125 banner ad on screenshot below. I didn’t spend much time on the banner ad, instead I simply grabbed my Zac toon logo and sent John the image so he could add it to the site when it went live. If you would like to try and create a cool new 125×125 ad banner for ZacJohnson.com that will get some clicks, feel free to send them on over using the "Contact" page. If I use your ad banner I’ll be sure to send you a free "Damn It Feels Good to be a Super Affiliate!" t-shirt!

According to Google Analytics, initial stats show a little under 400 clicks have been sent over since the new design went live, which went live on Aug 22. Stats also show the average referral from John Chow views 2.24 pages and spends an average of 8:58 minutes on the blog.


The All New John Chow dot Com – With a splash of ZacJohnson on the side 🙂

John said the main reason for the design change was because his monthly earnings were stuck in the $12k range for a couple months. With the addition of the new 125×125 ad spots, John will easily add an additional $3,000+ to his bottom line each month. With traffic increasing, RSS feed numbers on the rise and new revenue sources added… a $15k estimate would not be far off, nor a surprise.

I really like his new site design and it’s something like what I wanted to setup as well. I’ll be sticking with this blog design for a bit as I’m still not looking to make money off this blog, but will continue to share my information and advice ad-free. When I do change over, look forward to a new design which will maximize content space, reader participation and overall site navigation. I’m sure we will see John Chow’s numbers increase with the new design as this month closes out. Any guesses on his new earnings with the new design in place?

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19 Comments

  1. I like the ad. The only reason I clicked was because I did not know what it was. When I got here, I remembered I have been to this site before, but the sheer mystery of the ad is appealing.

  3. I definitely like the new johnchow.com site a lot more than the old site.

    In addition to the addition ad space for the 125x125s I think it features a lot more of his affiliate links which should help increase revenues even more.

  4. I really like your 125×125 ad. Nice and simple. However, I may have to bust out some of my old photoshop skillz and make a play for the coveted “Damn It Feels Good to be a Super Affiliate!” tee.

  5. I like your ad spot just the way it is. You have the prime location as the first ad and it doesn't look like everyone elses.

    John's new design is definitely an improvement over the older one and I think he will see some large gains in income. However I think the main sponsor banner that has been used by Search Engine Guide has lost a lot of value by being moved up into the rafters. It's no longer at the head of the first post and I think that will make that spot harder to sell.

  6. I liked his site too, the design is nice and the ads portion is just great for his revenue and you are right on the top!

  7. Well, this sounds like the perfect contest for me…if I had any actual design talent…or visual creativity…or anything else that would actually help.

    I really wish this was the perfect contest for me.

  8. Are the stats from Google Analytics live or are they updated daily? Good luck with the ad on JC – that is how I got here and you gained a new reader!

  9. It's about time John Chow updated his site design. That was something that I always felt the site was lacking, and while the new theme is still too busy for me, I believe it's always better to use your own theme over a cookie-cutter theme.

  10. John Chow's themes are awesome. I hired his old designer because I liked how his old one looked, and I like his new one even better – and it's good to see him push the envelope a bit and expand his site to monetize more. Not like traffic will suffer bad. This guy's at the top and he's still optimizing. There's a lot to learn there.

  11. Actually, it's John Chow's ads that made me found your site. Honestly, I think you are doing a lot of what John is doing but that is a good thing. You always want to copy a good model you don't want to reinvent the wheel. i did the same thing. I used to copy makezine.com for my zedomax.com site…

  13. New design is really nice – and looks professional. 125×125 ads looks just in right place too. I always have feeling that my blog is getting overloaded with ads and changing sidebars just too often, but yours looks very nice even with so many ads… How comes? LOL 😀

  14. It looks better than the old design, but it's still quite cluttered – not that it matters, I don't think anything could stop that guy from making money these days.

  17. really amazing design, i read john chow to, this blog and john really amazing with a lot great information

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