I subscribe to Daniel Scocco’s Daily Blog Tips site, which provides a wealth of information on everything bloggish. He recently published an e-book called MAKE MONEY BLOGGING which I downloaded free as a subscriber. As blogging for a living isn’t my exact goal, I didn’t expect the book to be of much interest; I assumed it would focus on advertising and financial strategies. But I was pleasantly surprised.
MAKE MONEY BLOGGING is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to attract blog traffic, whether for profit or not. It discusses networking strategies, quality content, organization, and online tools like networking and bookmarking sites.
Scocco encourages bloggers to take pride in their written content. He advocates putting time and effort into both writing posts and becoming an expert in your niche. He offers expert advice for generating post ideas and making the most out of prime post topics. Overall, he makes superb blog writing seem attainable, if not easy.
Scocco identifies the biggest mistakes novice bloggers make, and how to avoid them. His advice is simple and straightforward; mostly, he speaks about important features to include on the front page and how to make the blog visually attractive to visitors.
The most refreshing aspect of the book is Scocco’s insistence on respect and civility within the blogging community. How refreshing to have a book about profits which urges its readers to keep the human factor in mind! The book instructs aspiring bloggers to develop genuine relationships with others in their niche, and cautions them against selfishly using these contacts. The message is clear; if you want something from others, be prepared to give of yourself in a warm and friendly manner. Scocco also brushed on internet etiquette and organizing a contact list.
The web tools section touched on everything from online networking to social tools such as StumbleUpon and Twitter, highlighting the general uses of each to promote a blog. It was not an exhaustive explanation of each site, but rather a starting point to demonstrate how each might be useful.
When I finally did get to the section entitled “Monetization,” it impressed me. Rather than a shrewd list of ad sites and book keeping strategies, it presented the model attitude every blogger should have towards profits–an attitude that puts the quality of the blog first, money second. He explains different money-making strategies in terms of pros and cons. The entire section is very down-to-earth, not full of wild cash promises and greed.
In short, I opened the book intending to skim through it, but ended up with detailed notes which I shall go back to again and again as I continue this blog.
RHDavis
I’m curious, what are some of the biggest mistakes novice bloggers make?
I find the Google tools helpful when writing my posts. There are two I use: Google Trends (http://google.com/trends) and Google Keywords (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal).
As you probably know from reading the book, Google Trends lets you compare search terms to see which terms are more popular and displays it in a chart format. Google Keywords lets you type in a search term(s), and Google will then give you related search terms and the amount of times those terms are searched per month on average. Both very helpful tools.
A lot of the mistakes centered around failing to find a good niche or tackling too many blogs at once.
One mistake he noted was bloggers who make the blog revolve around themselves–they write excessively about personal matters or use their names in the domain. As an author, I think the rules are a bit different for us; the whole point of having the blog is to get your name and your project recognized around the internet.
Then again, his book was targeted to people who are strictly bloggers, not authors.
I can barely tackle the one blog I have right now, much less multiple ones. I don’t see how people manage several. It’s a full-time job. I do have another blog I started that centers around the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin, but I just haven’t had the time to update it frequently.
I agree. For us, for authors, using the name in the domain is important. I went ahead and snagged steventill.com a few years ago before some other famous Steven Till came along and took it. Surprisingly, there aren’t that many of us.