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Top Affiliate Challenge is Bottom Feeding

Saturday, June 28, 2008

The ”Top Affiliate Challenge” is just 3 days away from airing it’s first episode and the controversy is already starting to brew. I figured this would be an appropriate time to look at efforts of Thor Schrock’s ”Top Affiliate Challange” to see just what is driving it.

The big picture… Why would the show’s two biggest gurus Jeremy Schoemaker and John Chow choose to participate in a low budget internet reality show? What do they have to gain? Perhaps the better question to ask is; how much more could they afford to lose? It is common knowledge in the Online Marketing world that Shoemoney and John Chow have raked in a significant chunk of cash over the years from their blog. What isn’t discussed (for obvious reasons) is that they have been on a steady dip for quite some time now and they are quickly losing traffic and reach. Lets take a look at the charts…

First up, take a look at the dwindling reach of John Chow and Shoemoney over the past 8 months. “Reach” shows us how many internet viewers out of a million, come across your website. Thor’s blog does little more than serve as a baseline. To give credit where credit is due, Thor has only been blogging since his appearance on Joel Comm’s “Next Intnernet Millionaire” so he hasn’t had the time that Chow and Shoemoney have to build traction.
Shoemoney and John Chow Reach

I know that “reach” doesn’t hold the same weight as overall rank, so I’ve saved the best for last.  This is where you see the sharpest drop in the success of Shoemoney and John Chow’s blog. “Rank” is your sites overall rank of all indexed sites in Alexa’s database. Alexa is the authority on internet traffic statistics and they have well over 20 million sites indexed.  In the hay day of John Chow’s and Shoemoney’s success, their blog was ranked in the top 5,000 of all internet sites. Anything in the top 25,000 is well respected and a lucrative candidate for monetization. 

Shoemoney and John Chow Rank

Ouch!  Looks like our heros were taking quite the hit.  As I pointed out in the images, once the “Top Affiliate Challenge” was announced, all three sites saw a slight bump in traffic. Once it goes on air will see them recover? I guess that is something that only time will tell.

In the mean time the shows gurus and producer are attempting to drum up controversy and draw attention to their dark horse. A week ago Shoemoney aired Ty Hurd’s dirty laundry and subsequently threw him under the bus at the advice of his “legal council”.  Today John Chow announced on his blog that Shoemoney has already given up. Ahhh the drama.  Come Monday we will get our first glimpse at what happens when 12 contestants picked to live and work together at the Hampton Inn New Victorian Suites for a week, choose to have their lives taped, and start being real. Or something to that effect.

Next entry: What happened to the Top Affiliate Challenge?

Previous entry: Fuck "the dream" of Being a Millionaire

Comments

lol, I didn’t realize that jchow and jeremy were losing traffic.  It makes sense though- if you are into making money online, it only takes a month to learn that those guys don’t really tell you how to make money in any form.

I guess we’ll call it karma for the lies…

Jason  on  06/29  at  03:35 AM

This may be shallow… but that guy looks like a tool rasberry

Scot  on  06/29  at  01:29 PM

Good Post.  Chow and Shoe are loosing traffic way faster than they first started gaining it.  Too much drama, not enough valuable advice, and they seem to hold themselves above their readers (even after Shoe’s lame post about me he wouldn’t return my email (only sent him one) and Chow is known to not reply to his readers email).  I have however emailed Darren Rowse from Problogger.net and he was as nice as they come and personally & promptly replied to me.  If you look at his numbers they’re slipping a bit too, but nowhere hear as fast as Shoe’s and Chow’s.  I think all the “super” bloggers are loosing ground due to the plethora of new bloggers offering solid advice and personal help and support.  Once you’re successful you can’t forget who made you that way - gotta stay in touch with your followers or they will leave you…

Ty Hurd  on  06/29  at  08:17 PM

Thanks for the post about the show and I am glad to hear that you will be tuning in.

I’m not sure that Alexa is the best way to judge overall traffic to any website anymore, but the charts you showed clearly backed your points.

Top Affiliate Challenge is about the raw bottom line.  These guys make a lot of money online, and we have 12 contestants who do the same, although to a lesser degree.

Our hope is to entertain and inform. We want to show some of the techniques these guys use in action and there is little doubt that people who watch the show will try to emulate their success.

One last thing though… We are staying at the New Victorian Suites, not the Hampton grin

Thor Schrock  on  06/29  at  09:19 PM

Well i never heard of this guys or about theyr blogs but hmm they seemed to have a lot of visitors ... Same as the railroad track ...it was a rush to put it everywhere now it’s in downfall… All the things that go up eventualy go down so , i think it’s just in the nature of things to grow grow grow stagnate and then downfall...Why do u think Bill Gates soled his company ?

Cristina  on  07/01  at  09:17 AM

I guess in the wrong hands anything can be ruined. We will find out what happens to Microsoft. 

Bill Gates didn’t sell, he basically just retired and took a seat on the board (which is what CEOs tend to do when they retire).  That puts Steve Ballmer in charge. Hopefully Steve Ballmer will remain a figure head because he shouldn’t be allowed to make any real decisions.

Here is a quote for you:

“No matter how much Bill Gates may claim otherwise, he missed the Internet, like a barreling freight train that he didn’t hear or see coming.”
— Netscape Communications Corp. co-founder Jim Clark

I think Bill was finding that he couldn’t keep up anymore.

 on  07/01  at  10:40 PM
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