John Chow has you fooled. He has never contributed anything worthwhile. You need to stop thinking about the dollar signs and actually analyze what he writes about - absolutely nothing. He's actually a joke in the blogging community, and so are his followers.
If JC is a joke in the 'blogging community', sign me up. Maybe the people who follow his advice blindly are fools, but the lessons I've learned from JC are very worthwhile.
You take what is valuable, and leave the rest. I'm far from a daily JC visitor, but I check in from time to time in order to gain new lessons on self-promotion, marketing and creative ways to bring in money that is otherwise left on the table. All things that are important to a startup founder/hacker.
Jasan Calacanis is probably the biggest whore/self-promoter out there, and while many may laugh at him, it's worked out pretty well for him so far.