It’s days like this that I appreciate working at home the most. Not only is there snow on the ground (which, up until this winter, had been quite a rarity in Vancouver), but it’s also raining. The next result is a whole lot of puddles and more than our fair share of slush. It’s gross out there, but I’m nice, warm, dry, and toasty sitting in front my laptop, watching BET music videos on television while typing up this blog entry. I wouldn’t say that everything in my life is peachy-keen (far from), but it’s days like these that I can appreciate my lot in life. My apologies to any 9-to-5ers out there that I may have offended.

Working from home isn’t for everyone, but at the same time, it’s a quickly expanding in popularity, given how much easier it is to run a small business out of your home. Countless retirees sell small trinkets online, either through their own modest websites or as eBay PowerSellers. You don’t even need to sell physical items: As local blogger John Chow put it in his Content over eCommerce article way back in May 2006, it’s a lot easier to run a content-based site than it is to actually buy and sell things. That’s why his primary venture — The Tech Zone — is so lucrative, and that’s how he gets himself into the hottest trade shows, racking up all sorts of swag.

I’m still pretty new to this whole working from home thing, taking it seriously for about a year now, but John Chow has been in the game for quite some time. He was even there raking in the dough (and suffering the consequences) during the first dot-com bubble bursting. Since then, he has gone to create his very successful Tech Zone website, as well as his more personal blog at John Chow dot Com, the latter of which I visit on a daily (or even more frequent) basis.

There, he expels all sorts of wisdom on creating content and monetizing your site, as well as keeping us all up to date on the world of Digg.com, Google Adsense, WordPress, and so on. In fact, it is through him (and Ed Lau) that I found out about AGLOCO. His advice is highly valuable and I can wholeheartedly recommend his blog to anyone looking to not only make their presence known on the internet (John Chow dot Com recently broke into the top 1000 on Technorati), but also to make a few bucks along the way. For example, John is making well over $2000 a month from his blog, the majority of which he’ll be giving to charity.

Sure, his English isn’t the best — coming across spelling and grammar errors in his posts is far from being uncommon — but those mistakes are easy to ignore. His posts are all easy to read, flow very well, and provide all sorts of useful knowledge and wisdom. He’s also known to post up his fine dining adventures and hilarious hijinks. Despite making all sorts of money (and being labeled the root of all evil by some of his friends), Mr. Chow is as down to earth a person as you’ll ever find.

Good stuff, John. You’re an inspiration to us all. Go, dot com mogul, go!

This post was part of the linkback promo that John’s got going on


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