Stay At Home Mom Diary

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I looked forward to the arrival of my book so I could be one of the first with my ProBlogger book review. However, when ProBlogger Book: Secrets To Blogging Your Way To A Six Figure Income arrived, I was more than a little disappointed. 

Perhaps I expected too much from this book or maybe I thought it really did contain some “secret” that few others knew. But it didn’t. It was a ho hum book. All the information in the book can be easily found on the Internet, most of it on the ProBlogger blog.

I actually felt like this was one of those $29.99 ebooks you buy off of the Internet and find yourself thinking “I already know this stuff, where is the “secret”. I’m not saying it was totally worthless. Not at all. If you’re new to the Internet and blogging, then this book would be helpful. However, if you’ve been around a while and know what a blog is, know how to drive traffic to a website and know what Social Networks are, then you pretty much have the knowledge that is given in the ProBlogger book.

The ProBlogger book covers the basics such as choosing a niche, starting a blog, setting the blog up and making the blog grow. It also talks ways to get traffic, social-media, marketing, monetization of your blog, link baiting and what type of post you should be making to satisfy your readers. Pretty simple stuff.

The ProBlogger book has 10 Chapters. The Chapter headings include:

1. Blogging For Money
2. Niche Blogging
3. Setting Up Your Blog
4. Blog Writing
5. Blog Income and Earning Strategies
6. Buying and Selling Blogs
7. Blog Networks
8. Blog Promotion and Marketing
9. Secrets of Successful Blogs
10. Creating Something Worthwhile

As you can see, pretty basic stuff. I would have liked to see them go into more details on many of the subjects but they didn’t. This book seems to be aimed at the beginner and just lightly touches many of the subjects. For example, in Chapter 1, Blogging For Money, there is a section title “How Much Could You Earn”.  This section does’t really give a range of what a blogger could expect to make. It’s full of generalizations such as

Although there are some bloggers like Darren and I do make a full time living from blogging, and there are bloggers who make way more than eithe of us do, there are many more bloggers who use their income to subsidize gadget purchases or as a way to offset some Internet cost.

Ummm, yeah…could you be a little more detailed? Of course, if you’re familiar with some of the articles about Darren and his ProBlogger blog, you know he makes over $100,000 per year blogging. Likely it’s way more than that now.

The exerpt above just gives you a feeling for the way the rest of the book reads. Basic, kinda boring and full of generalizations.

On the plus side, it is an easy and quick read. It’s not hard to understand. I think even your Grandma or Aunt could read this book and start a blog. This may be just the book for them!

So is the ProBlogger book worth the $16.49 asking price? Yeah probably, especially if you’ve never started a blog or have any idea of how to start one and make some money out of it.

Will you wake up one morning to a 6 figure income from blogging? If the ProBlogger book was the only one you read, I doubt you’d make 6 figures any time soon.

I think we all know that the title, “ProBlogger: Secrets to Blogging Your Way To A Six Figure Income” was designed to catch the reader’s wallet more so than to offer anything but basic advice on blogging.

To summarize this ProBlogger Book Review, if you’re new to blogging and have no idea how to start, this book may be for you. It will help you get started and answer many of your questions. If you’re a more advanced blogger, this book is just good bathroom material while you’re taking care of business. Not much in the way of substance, advanced tips or strategies. If you’re in the latter boat, save your money.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 8:47 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.