Last October over 200,000 people visited the blog of Internet and technology entrepreneur John Chow. That’s about 7000 visitors a day and the question any aspiring, or even established, blogger would be asking themselves after seeing such stats, is how?

How does one person drum up that sort of interest in their blog, especially when, if you take a closer look at the web stats graph I just pointed out, the blog was receiving only a fraction of those visits just two months earlier?

Explaining a traffic jump of some 200,000 visits over a two month period could be difficult. For a blogger to achieve a feat like that they have to do something exceptional. And maybe have a number of well connected friends. And maybe a little good luck to boot.

While a couple of hundred thousand new visitors arriving is one thing, converting them to regular and returning readers is another. This is an important aspect to consider though when it comes to devising a long term blogging strategy. Getting serious now, aren’t I?

So lets look at John Chow’s blog and see if we can learn something from his methods.

First up is the interface design. We are greeted by a two column layout that is well organised and not cluttered with an excess of ads and widgets. There is nothing that puts anyone off here.

Next, the blog quickly makes its purpose apparent. Make money online. Even if it weren’t spelt out in the title bar, it wouldn’t take long to work this out. Readers aren’t going to hang about trying to “guess” what a blog is about, are they? Not when there’s any number of other blogs competing for their attention.

It is also obvious that this is a living, and happening, place. The entries are all very recent. In fact there are several a day sometimes. Regular readers are going to see something new just about every time they visit.

And on the subject of the content, it is well presented and punctuated with images and photos. It is not only interesting to read, it is also interesting to look at.

So what have we learnt so far? Pleasing design and interesting, fresh, content are indeed crowd pleasers.

But that’s not all. Another important ingredient is personality.

This may be a blog dedicated to helping people make money online, but you soon get a handle on who the person behind the whole show is after reading a just a few posts. And a friendly, approachable, personality at that. For instance, in exchange for writing a review of his blog John is happy to give your blog a plug.

That’s not something every blogger will do for their readers.

And while that point may not explain why 200,000 people started reading John Chow overnight, it probably goes a long way to explaining why they keep coming back.