Born to Blog

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.