by Mark W. Schaeffer and Stanford A. Smith
I thought this book would be a little bit more about how to
take a blog and turn it into something profitable, rather than being just a
book about setting up a blog to profit from. Not that that isn't a good idea,
it’s just not as easy as everyone thinks, with or without a book written by two
successful (I presume) bloggers. This book is, however, very informative and
useful. It’s a kind of “brass tacks” guide that will be most useful to people
who are already blogging, but probably of less utility to someone looking to
set up a blog for the first time. This book does cover the basics, however, and
it does a good job of it. It seems to be always steering the reader toward
monetization, so that if you are just blogging for the hell of it or to have
fun, the constant reminders of what might be “profitable” can be a bit
cumbersome. (At least, those suggestions and tidbits weren't of much practical
use to me.) The book is laid out quite smartly, though, and has great sections
on side bar content and which blog sites to consider and which to avoid. The
authors have a lot of experience, not only in blogging, but also in the
periphery of blogging, and they share a lot of their insights in interesting,
real world anecdotes. I think as long as you keep in mind that blogging can be
hard work when you are doing it for reasons other than sheer enjoyment and that
only a small fraction of the world’s blogs ever make enough money to support
their authors, this book will help you swim upstream faster and get your thoughts
and interests published online with a minimum of frustration and anxiety.
That’s more than reason enough to give it four dollar marks.
