This book Blogging for Profits was written to help individuals understand what a blog is and start their own blog with the intention of making a profit. It thoroughly delves into the appeals of business blogging and the advantages of blogging for your business whatever it may be. I selected this book because my group project is on monetizing a blog and I know absolutely nothing about blogging. I have never blogged before or even followed one for that matter. I understand the concept, but not the ins and outs of how to create and monetize this media.
I have learned a blog is a journal-like website that displays its entries in reverse chronological order. Common characteristics of blogs include an informal writing style, frequent updates, and a focus on strong community interactions between blog writers (known as bloggers). Blogs started as a form of online diary. Today, blogs are used for very diverse purposes. For example: Experts use blogs to provide news and commentary on specific subject areas. Businesses use blogs to promote their goods and services. Mainstream media and journalists even use blogs to provide real time coverage of breaking news events. Blogging is now one of the most popular forms of Web publishing which I was not previously aware of.
Dale Anderson the author of this book writes EZ Guides or “how to” books. He has another related book on Writing Articles for Blogs. I’m not sure if I would consider him an expert on the subject; some of his other EZ Guides include: How to Hypnotize Anyone, Swing Trading: How to Earn High Rates Safely, and Trading Skills. It seems he just writes basic how to books on easily accessible information. Nothing I learned in this book was any big secret or all that innovative, it was simple and generically informative. There are no complaints from me since this is exactly what I was looking for to learn about. The primary audience is simply anyone who wants an “easy” read for learning the basics of blogging and discovering the reasons why it would be beneficial for their business.
The primary values delivered in this book discuss the advantages of blogging for profit. Whether you are a small business, big business, from home business, or corporate business blogging can significantly improve online brand imaging according to the book. The biggest advantage with blogs is that there are no fixed rules when it comes to writing them. It is an open medium and as long as what you are writing is interesting, it can get you the money as well. Unlike other writing mediums, blogs don’t need expertise and it is all about short articles. Hence, the effort that you may have to put in is comparatively lesser than when it comes to writing a novel or other forms of writing.
There are other advantages with blogs as well when it comes to blogging for profit. With a high level of traffic, and using tools such as Max Banner Pro you can automatically even get the advertising revenue as more companies will line up to advertise their products and services on your blog. The number of hits to your website is in direct correlation with the companies’ marketing interests and or course the bottom line of sales. Also, you may even garner a name for yourself. As you rise to fame, more people will line up to offer you the opportunity to write for their websites or magazines. Your fame can earn you a lot of money as well. In fact, many bloggers have moved on to other mediums and there are cases where avid bloggers are featured in TV shows or make news for themselves.
I had hoped to gain from this book a better understanding of how blogs work and the strategy behind making them profitable. I primarily learned the basic functions of a blog. There was not as much information around the strategy of monetizing the blog or all the ways that are available to go about getting ads and traffic. The major weakness of this book was the fact that it didn’t not get into specifics of profits or the numbers behind how much others have profited from blogging successfully.
Overall, I enjoyed the content of this book and would recommend it to anyone who needs a brief, simple, clear explanation of what blogs are all about. The book does not use too many technical terms and it is an easy read. However, if you are truly interested in getting a better understanding of how to make profits and some strategies to use, this book is not going to give you all of that detailed information.