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John Chow Exposed: A Long-Time Veteran Who Sold Out (Dec. 2020)
By Ian | Negative Reviews
If you’re finding this review because you’re considering something John Chow has recommended, pump the brakes reallllly hard and take just two minutes to skim this review. We can show you beyond any doubt that this is a businessman who absolutely should not be trusted.
How can we say that with such a high degree of confidence?
John Chow was one of the “blogging OGs”. He’s demonstrated a superhuman work ethic throughout his career and, in many ways, has practiced what he preached.
The challenge is: what Chow preaches financially enriched him to the tune of millions of dollars at the direct cost of dozens (if not hundreds) of his followers who trusted him over the years, and who ultimately experienced some form of financial ruin as a result of placing their trust in him.
And we have a mountain of evidence to prove it — shall we begin?
If you’ve kept up with John, you may think you know where this is headed, but Chow’s association with ethically questionable MLMs goes back even further than what he’s knee-deep in today.
The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is currently suing John Chow (among others) as detailed in a truly damning court filing from March 3, 2020 — but that’s not where this story begins (although we’ll breakdown that filing momentarily).
This story begins with John Chow recommending another MLM that predates his affiliation with MOBE by several years:
This screenshot was pulled directly from a 2013 archive of JohnChow.com — click image to zoom
John Chow promoted an internet marketing “training” called Empower Network several years ago. If you’ve never heard of Empower Network, it’s a now-defunct MLM that started with a low-ticket purchase of $25, but sucked you into a vortex that often ended with the member going “all-in” to the tune of a $4,625 hole in their bank account.
Empower Network was only prominent for a couple of years. Its story ends with the company’s founder, David Wood, accidentally impregnating his mistress and releasing a video where he rubbed lime on his face to the point it was visibly bleeding (that video has since been removed due to a copyright claim Wood filed to have it taken down).
EN’s downfall resulted in a few people towards the top building substantial amounts of wealth while the majority of members received nothing but multi-thousand-dollar holes in their bank accounts.
Of course this is only Chow’s FIRST documented case of promoting a dumpster fire of a company. The second has resulted in significantly harsher consequences.
People deserve second chances. A reasonable person could read the events above and think, “People change — that was 2013, and maybe Chow has turned over a new leaf.”
Unfortunately, that reasonable person would be demonstrably wrong.
As mentioned earlier in this article, John Chow is being pursued by the Federal Trade Commission due to his involvement with another MLM called MOBE (My Online Business Empire) that was shutdown by the FTC in 2018. Ultimately its founder, Matthew Lloyd McPhee, settled out of court for a mere $17 million (although the company had taken well over $125 million from their customers), but the FTC began pursing all of the company’s former top affiliates in March 2020.
Enter John Chow:
click to zoom
John was one of MOBE’s top affiliates. As detailed by the FTC lawsuit filing linked earlier in this review, Chow claimed that he was driving luxury cars for free and bought a $2,000,000 house cash using his earnings from MOBE.
Keep in mind — this is a business that was explicitly shutdown by the FTC for misleading and illegal business practices.
The writing was on the wall for anyone who held themselves to some standard of ethics, but others proceeded to promote MOBE anyway because it was an absolute cash cow for anyone who ignored where their commissions were coming from (trusting, unassuming people who the statistics clearly showed would never recover their investment).
Each and every dollar John Chow earned during his time at MOBE came at the expense of the people he referred. The average MOBE “consultant” earned only $700/mo. When you subtract the earnings of all of the super affiliates like Chow at the top of the organization, there’s a net loss for the vast majority of people who signed up — especially those who signed up for their most expensive tiers — ranging from the entry-level offer of $49 to $29,997 (not a typo) with multiple tiers in-between.
Even when John was alerted to MOBE’s dubious business model by a follower, Chow responded by doubling down, instructing the follower to:
“…apply, go through the 21 steps and connect with your coach” and, rather than rely on others’ opinions, to “take control in your hands and find out yourself.”
He had years to recognize that what he was doing was wrong, but it took the FTC shutting down MOBE for John to stop promoting their company.
By then his fate was sealed, as he’d already benefitted enough from the organization’s illegal business practices for the FTC to pursue him personally in the March 2020 lawsuit.
That’s ultimately a personal decision. Given his track record of promoting offers that enrich him financially without regard for the financial damage they cause to his customers, we’d recommend against it.
All we can do is empower you with the information above, provide as much free training as possible for aspiring online business owners, and let each individual choose their own path.
Either way, we wish you the absolute best of luck on your continued journey, and we hope you can stay safe out there.
Now this fella has been around the “make money online” space for a very long time. John Chow has been known to be affiliated with overpriced MLM products that cost thousands and don’t deliver on their promises. Today we’ll be looking at John’s own product “Blogging with John Chow” to see whether it’s just as bad as the MLM crap he recommends.
I’m not an affiliate of Blogging with John Chow. This course has a lot inside and I’ll break it down to see if it’s worth the $37 John is asking for it.
Shall we get started?
The idea of Blogging with John Chow is that John will show you how to create a blog that generates $40,000 per month in 2 years. That’s a big promise. Is this something John can deliver with this course?
There’s a lot of content in John’s course, which is great. We see far too many products that contain so little that it’s a joke. Not a problem here. If anything there’s too much information and you could get information overload if you’re a complete beginner.
Thankfully the main course is broken down nicely.
There’s both good and bad points to be made about this, but is it something I would recommend?
Let’s find out.
Like I said earlier, there’s a lot of content in the Blogging with John Chow course:
Click to zoom
The best parts of this course are modules 4 and 5.
I like John Chow’s views on how to write blog posts and SEO. He really focuses on the right things. Too many people focus on trying to rank well in Google and worry about becoming number 1. They forget about the person who’s actually going to read the content.
John says he focuses on writing content the reader will love. If the readers enjoy it then Google will too. This is because people will stay to read it, they’ll share it, and even comment on the posts. All of this is great in the eyes of Google.
This is something John teaches. He tells people to do the same. Focus on creating epic content the readers will love and you’ll rank well in the search engines too.
Click to zoom
This section of his course is nicely broken up too:
Click to zoom
John focuses on building the relationship with the reader to attract comments and also how to come up with content ideas. If you’ve tried creating an online business before, you know how tough coming up with new content can be.
It’s the same with John’s list building training in module 5. He really knows the importance of having an email list.
If you can build a decent-sized email list of people who love your content, you won’t have to worry about Google sending you traffic. Every time you come out with new content you can email your list to tell them. The better your relationship with your list, the more visitors you’ll receive to your website.
Click to zoom
You’ll learn how to incentivize someone to give their email address, how to build a relationship with them, how to get people to click on links within emails or “take action”, tips on building your list, how to build a high-converting landing page that’ll convince more people to give their email address, and how to make money from your email list.
Pretty comprehensive!
These are the two things John has done well in his blogging course.
One other thing to mention that I like is the 50-minute video of an interview John gave a while ago:
Click to zoom
Shot in a hotel conference room during a seminar John held, he explains his story and how he built his blog. I find it interesting listening to people talk about how they built up their businesses, especially businesses that are making 5 figures or more per month.
Firstly, there’s a strong indication that John hasn’t updated this blogging course for a few years:
Click to zoom
The backlink training is also incredibly out of date.
John teaches “the more backlinks the better”, and even provides details on how you can hire people on places like Elance.com (now UpWork.com) to build these links for you. The more the better is not a rule to follow. Google and other search engines don’t like it.
You want highly relevant backlinks from highly respected sites. It’s all about quality, not quantity — something John doesn’t mention, which leaves his customers very vulnerable. 10 quality backlinks are worth a lot more than 1,000 backlinks from random, unrelated sites (which, these days, will actually get you punished).
However, the main downside is that there seems to be some big gaps in the training.
There’s a lot of information within the members’ area. Sadly, for parts of it you’re left on your own to figure out how to do what John is talking about.
A big gripe of mine is when these guys talk about what you should do for your business but don’t tell you how you should do it. There’s a lot of this within Blogging with John Chow and if you’re a complete beginner there’s a very good chance you’ll end up stumped not knowing what to do next.
If John filled these gaps in his training and actually provided a little more “how to,” then his claims of being able to “build a blog that makes $40,000 per month in two years” might be fulfilled — but that’s still quite a stretch.
You might be able to build a business making a couple thousand per month with John’s training, but it needs updating and needs more information for a beginner to understand what they should be doing.
Although Blogging with John Chow is a big course, I’m afraid it doesn’t deliver on its sales claims. John says in 2 years you’ll have a blog that’s generating $40,000 per month… Something I can’t see happening.
If you’re a complete beginner you’ll definitely learn something from John. The modules on creating content and email list building are still really good. Completely worth it for the $37 price tag. However as an overall course, only 2 of the 9 modules (plus the bonus) are worth paying for, so it’s not something I feel comfortable recommending broadly to everyone. If you buy it with that in mind, you won’t be disappointed.
If you’re looking for a program that contains more useful training than just 2 modules then I would suggest you check out our 100% free training.
Here’s how it stacks up again Blogging with John Chow:
Do you want to be successful?
Have you heard of John Chow before? Have you purchased his course and seen success?
Let me know what you think about John Chow and his Blogging with John Chow course. Do you agree with my rating? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.
I've been in internet marketing for over 10 years, and I've purchased dozens of illegitimate products for the sole purpose of evaluating them and exposing the truth about these products to anyone who's thinking about purchasing it. I never let money influence my rating of a product and your success/safety is my absolute highest priority. Don't want to buy a product? Register for one of my 100% free internet marketing training courses>>
