Darren Rowse & Chris Garrett: “ProBlogger”

My passion and curiosity about Professional Blogging started accidentally enough with stumbling upon a fantastic personal development website by Steve Pavlina in 2006. I loved what Steve managed to do with his successful blogging and his myriad of personal improvements.  Most of all, I loved the idea of creating – creating content, creating readership, creating something worthwhile first, for the fulfillment of your own passions and second, for the greater benefit of others. My interest in Professional blogging increased and after I read a well-known popular website, ProBlogger by Darren Rowse, I decided to invest in Darren’s book on “Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.”  I finished reading it today and here is my account of it.

The book breaks down blogging as a hobby, a part-time job, a full time profession, so it serves the purposes of many new bloggers. I already had read up Steve’s excellent blog titled “How to make money from your blog“, among many other reads, but I was hoping to organize it all with a clear plan of action from this book.

What I took away from reading ProBlogger’s Book:

• An easy read with very easy to follow language, even for the non-techie among us, and sadly, that is the part where I had initially wished for more depth. It lays the foundation of why and who and how you should or should not blog.
• The authors are both experienced and professionals with diverse backgrounds and a good amount of respect in the blogging community.
• The monetization sections are good but not in depth. The examples of success and failures in this area are mediocre. I would have preferred either an in-depth case study or several shorter examples. It is hard to draw conclusions based on some of these examples. There are just too many factors in play as to what makes a blog successful or not.
• Niche blogging chapter was very useful especially if one does not have a clear idea of what to write about. The purpose of the blog has to stay clear so as to keep a loyal readership going. Quality content is definitely number one area of focus and emphasis.
• Blog networks and team blogging topics were of lesser interest to me at the time of my reading. Nonetheless, I found them to be well covered and I found my interest increase as I learned more.
• Regarding managing of comments on the blog, while the best practices were useful, I wonder why the authors did not even entertain the idea of turning off comments altogether, especially for a vastly successful blog. Would it not be a poor use of time to be managing your comments at the expense of developing content? Steve Pavlina advises turning comments off and upon doing so on his own blog, he had not noticed a drop in his traffic. In fact, he has noticed an increase because of the increased content as well as the discussions that take place in other blogs which trace back to him. This is one open to debate and many other factors including the blogger’s goal as to what he or she wants to achieve from the blog.
• Creating the blog section was good – again, this is another area I really had hoped for more extensive knowledge share.
• A good effort on organizing all the major resources out there, and providing a short review on how to best leverage each.

Overall, a really good starter book on professional blogging. I like and respect Darren a great deal and will be making excellent use of his tips. I would recommend this book to the newbie of blogging world. In hindsight however, most if not all of this information is accessible online through search from either Darren’s website or other similar blogs.

Reading is the best pastime for an active mind! If you like to see the other book reviews, check the index of In Print.