Customer Reviews

Google Blogger For Dummies

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First Line: So you made the decision to start a blog.

This is a decision that thousands, if not millions, of people have made. If Google Blogger is the blogging platform chosen, how much help isGunelius' book? A lot!

From Part I where the author describes Blogger's features and compares it to other blogging software, Gunelius takes the reader step-by-step through opening a Google account, starting a blog, choosing a template, writing and publishing blog posts-- everything a beginning blogger should know.

From the basics, she moves on to covering how to monetize a blog, blogging from different media such as podcasting and mobile phones, how to use social media such as Twitter to network and build a community, and how to obtain your own domain. There's even a section for troubleshooting problems. Everything is written in clear, concise language and easy to follow instructions.

People who have been blogging for a while may wonder if Google Blogger for Dummies contains anything worthwhile for them. My answer would be yes. For example, I had questions about obtaining my own domain, just what does "bounce rate" mean, and how to increase my search engine ranking. This book answered all those questions and many others. This book is for everyone using Blogger, both novice and pro.

The "Dummies" franchise is notoriously uneven with lots of low-quality titles and a relatively few good ones. "Google Blogger For Dummies" is a winner.

Susan Gunelius effortlessly walks the reader through the history of blogs and Blogger, in particular, the mechanics of starting, maintaining and growing a blog and ehnhancing your blog with templates, widgets, elements and gadgets. Then Gunelius segues into "Making Money with Blogger".

This section is surprisingly well done and thorough. It lists a number of resources for monetizing your blog and has a pretty detailed discussion of Google's AdSense program. Gunelius then moves on to networking and relationship building.

All in all, Susan Gunelius has turned out a very usable guide to getting started with Google Blogger, growing into as sophisticated a blog as you like and, if you are so moved (and have enough traffic), monetizing and growing it. Good work. Do remember that this guide is oriented toward Blogger beginners.

If you'd like a good introduction to WordPress, Google Blogger's major competitor, checkout another "dummies" title, WordPress For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)).

Jerry

I've had my blog up and running for a couple of weeks and decided to get this book to help fill in some gaps in what I had learned on my own. I was not disappointed.

It is easy to just take a chapter at a time and you can skip around as needed. It is a great reference book. I have a Kindle and started to buy that version, but decided to go with the hardcopy. This was a good call as I have highlighted and dog-eared a lot of the pages so I can easily flip to sections I need to reference.

While you can learn a lot about Blogger online, I find it helpful on my eyes to get away from the computer screen every now and then and read a "real" book. Also, there aren't many books exclusively devoted to Blogger (like this one)so this was also a real plus.

One of the ways the book helped me the most, was in creating a unique domain name for my blog. I wanted to have a url that didn't have the .blogspot.com at the end of it. The author walked me through the steps and it took all of 5 minutes! This alone saved me a lot of time and was worth the price of the book. [...]

Good luck with your blogging!

This my first attempt at Blogging, and I found this book worth the purchase. There is one shortcoming: Blogger has been updated since publication, and many of the photos are not representative of the current format. In spite of this, it was still a worthwhile purchase.

Google Blogger For Dummies
I usually am a little disappointed with "for Dummies" books - but not this one. I am 73 years old and have decided to set up my own blog. I borrowed this book from the library and found it to be very helpful. I am so impressed with this book that I am writing my very first review here.

The author, Susan Gunelius, writes about everything from setting up the blog to search engine optimization in a very clear and organized manner. If a grandmother can understand the book, everyone should be able to. I'm ordering my own copy of "Google Blogger for Dummies" to keep handy as I progress with my blog.

Easy read -- easy to follow instructions. I feel empowered! Took a Blogging 101 class but couldn't recall all instructions. This book was very helpful filling in the blanks and taking me through steps I didn't remember correctly. Learned a few new things as I worked through it. Recommend this book to anyone who wants to start blogging.

This is a great resource for anyone considering a blog creation. I had already created my blog, however, there were some great applications and suggestions that I was not aware of and picked up as a result of this book. This reference guide will walk you through every step of creating your blog to things you can do to monitor traffic, drive traffic to your blog, give suggestions for layout and applications that are available as well as walking you through the process of using Google Blogger with your own domain name. I found the book very helpful and there were several things I learned and implemented. The great thing about these series of books is that each chapter is stand alone. Choose the chapters or topics that you are interested in and in whatever order you wish. Some of the features that were discussed were already outdated, as Google is constantly making upgrades, but there is usually another similar application that will do virtually the same thing.

Wow, the book is simple and easy to understand. From the time it took me to read the blogger book, I was up and running my blog in a matter of days.

This was a perfect process of my order with a book in excellent shape received with promptness.

After reading this book, I have moved out of "dummy" status and now consider myself a "novice" blogger. Very helpful!