Customer Reviews

How to Make Money with Your Blog: The Ultimate Reference Guide for Building, Optimizing, and Monetizing Your Blog (How to Make . . .)

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

 

 

This is a book I recommend anyone interested in Internet marketing read and study. I liked it overall. But I didn't like the title to the book because it gives the consumer the idea that there is real money to be made blogging. At page 88 the author finally acknowledges that bloggers should not expect to earn anything more than modest amounts of revenue each month. And modest means minimal! The book has the following chapters:

1. Quick starts: Top 10 lists
2. Blogs and search optimization (SEO)
3. Generating revenue with your blog
4. Managing your blog
5. Extras and inspiration

This book attemps to cover all aspects of successful blogging. It introduces the reader to Blogger and Wordpress, which are the two main free blog-hosting services online. It also covers the various hosting options and what to look for in a host. I have blogs at both Blogger and Wordpress, and I think they are wonderful hosting services. This book also covers how to create, maintain and promote a blog.

According to the authors you can monetize your blog with either contextual ads, ad networks, or affiliate programs. Of course, it takes a very popular blog (one with lots of traffic) for much money to be made from any of these sources. And if you have a blog that is that successful, then you'd be better off selling your own products and services where you make all the money instead of collecting a wimpy commission.

This book covers how to use your blog to self promote and gain credibility in your field. Your blog will help you funnel prospects and paying customers to your real Web site where you sell what you do for a living. Basically, blogs are great public relations and publicity tools for you to use in marketing your products and services.

I would have liked the book better if its content had been divided into more than five chapters. It would have been an easier read if it had been. And I would have liked the book better if the title were different. For me the book is about blogging, and not how to make money from blogging. And since the author says few blogs will generate much cash each month, then why title the book about making money?

Blogs can be used as an Internet marketing tool similar to article writing, and in a way social networking. They can be used to market public speaking gigs for the author, and to sell white papers and ebooks the author has written. And they can make referrals to the author's main Web site where she sells online coaching, offline bootcamps, or similar services, or higher ticket products. Finally, blogs can help their owners connect to other bloggers who are part of the blogoshere. And getting connecting translates into getting known. 4 stars!

The authors devote one chapter to "Generating Revenue With Your Blog" - and, frankly, it doesn't tell you anything you can't learn on the web. In fact, the authors refer the reader to many web sources for what they repeat in the book.

There really isn't much substance to this book. It is moderately well written, but offers no new or rare insights.

It might be usable for someone who doesn't use the web much or isn't a very good researcher and who can't find information on blogs on the web. In short, it's a simple guide and nothing more, with much of the information coming directly from web sources, which the authors are honest enough to credit.

But be aware that none of the subjects covered are treated in any depth. The part about "search enhine optimization" is laughably incomplete and amateurish.

The book simply doesn't live up to the promise of its title.

Jerry

This book has some good information in it, but the good stuff is overshadowed by how poorly it is written. There are misspellings, conflicting information, switching between first and third person, screenshots that are unreadable & references to wrong diagrams. As another reviewer mentioned, it seems like the authors were more about promoting their own blogs & websites rather than offering measurable amounts of useful information. The most useful section of the book is actually a series of tips written by a blogger that the authors copied and included in the book (with full credit given to the original author). There is some decent information in the book, but I had much higher expectations from the title. This is a good book to check out at the library, but I wouldn't buy it.

I just didn't find this book very useful or relevant. For a book written this recently, I don't think they covered things like wordpress well enough and they seemed to be really scarce when it came to the resources available out there.

Also, they talk about themselves way too much and you get a feel they are trying to advertise their own blogs way too much and that this book was just another way for them to monetize their own blog as opposed to helping others.

I've read his "How to Make Money on MySpace" book and loved it. This book has been equally as good. It is easy to read as well as filled with all sorts of great information. I've just started to get into blogging and read Problogger and this book is a great addition to the process. You will enjoy it!!

I don't know html, php, or any of the other languages used to develop websites. But I was able to get enough info out of this book to take me to a higher level. The best feature this book has to offer, in my opinion, is references to lots of other sources. I highly recommend this book if you are a beginner.

Even if you're thinking of starting a blog or already have one you need to read this book. It takes you through every step in the blogging process, from picking a blog host to picking your categories. Very helpful resource.

I picked up this book because although I have been blogging for a little over two years, I'm always looking for ways to bump up the revenue potential of my site. Based on the title this book sounded perfect to help me out with this, however in actuality, it was not that useful.

The book is broken down into chapters on things like advertising networks, seo, rss, etc. In this sense, it has all the topics that you would expect from a book on making money from blogging (including the expected chapters on setting up a blog for those just getting started). The problem is that although all the expected topics are here, they are not covered in great detail. What's more, what is here is mostly intuitive or common sense. Thus, while the book serves as an okay introduction to these topics, I walked away feeling like I needed to read more books rather than have all the answers.

In general, I think this book could serve as an okay introduction as long as you expect that you will have to read further books as follow up. If you walk into this expecting to find all the answers you will be severely disapointed. I could see this being slightly more valuable to someone who has no blogging knowledge whatsoever. However, if you have even a little bit you will likely find that you've found better answers either online or in other books for free. (ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, for example, is a much better alternative. They offer up a lot of the same information, but with much more depth and fewer obvious solutions.)

Overall, I would not recommend this book unless you are incredibly new to blogging and know nothing about online advertising and seo. If you already have a little bit of knowledge you are better off reading the title I suggested above, or reading blogs about blogging to find advice.