I read a post on problogger today in which John Chow describes the best thing he did for his blog in 2007. The post is called improve you blog with a custom made theme.

In his answer to Darren’s question, John wrote that the best thing he did last year was introduce a new custom wordpress theme for his blog. He said that introducing the custom theme increased his traffic and blog earnings tremendously. He also stated that both traffic and earnings increased instantly.

As usual there’s something to say about the ‘behind the scenes‘ reasons for the success of John’s custom theme introduction.

It’s important for beginning bloggers to understand that it’s not the theme itself that attracted more visitors to his blog. It also isn’t the theme itself that made his blog earnings go up after it was introduced …

It’s key to know that the instant effect of a custom theme introduction is directly related to John Chow’s popularity and following. Once you have a popular blog with as many readers as John does, the ways of making money from the blog change. You should know that using existing momentum (especially when it consists of popularity and following) can turn most things into cash easily.

Practically speaking :

When a popular blogger such as John Chow introduces a new theme. This will be news to many other bloggers around the blogosphere. Many will write about the new theme and link to John’s blog. This would mean instant blog traffic and potentially new RSS subscribers. As a result of more and new traffic, blog earnings increase. The theme introduction grows the blog indirectly.

Things don’t stop here though :

Aside from the instant benefits mentioned earlier, making sure the new theme is a quality one is key to continuation of the blog’s success. Theme design improvements can help achieve more effective advertising placement. These design improvements could for instance be based on statistical information about clicks and page visits. Aside from that, brand improvement can open up even more possibilities for money making ideas in the future.

In a sense the blog’s existing momentum only becomes bigger.

Conclusion :
What it comes down to is that John Chow (consciously or not) is using his popularity and following very effectively in order to make thousands of dollars a month from his blog. In my opinion these two factors are key to John’s success. Combining these and executing creative money making ideas give the blog the kind of momentum that can turn almost any kind of move, be it a new theme introduction or controversial situation into cash.