‘ProBlogger’ book: How to make money blogging

Twenty months ago, I read a USA Today story headlined “‘Gray Googlers’ strike gold.”

It described how a number of mature adults had succeeded in creating an income through blogging and participating in Google’s AdSense advertising program. One of the success stories featured was that of Jerry Alonzy, the guy who runs The Natural Handyman. Thanks to Google Adsense, at age 57 he was working “two, maybe three hours a day on the site,” making $120,000 a year, and thinking of moving to Hawaii.

Blogging for dollars struck me as a very intriguing idea back in 2007, and I immediately added Google AdSense ads to this site, which was already enrolled in the Amazon.com Associates affiliate program. When my job disappeared in early December of 2008, blogging for money became much more of a regular pursuit. After a few months of dedicated effort, it was producing a reliable, four-figure income for me and Amy.

Buying the book

While four figures may prove the concept, it will not cover the mortgage. Hoping to learn more about blogging strategies and methods, I recently purchased and read ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income at Amazon.com.

The book, published a little over a year ago, was co-written by Darren Rowse, founder of Problogger.com, and Chris Garrett, a blogging and Internet marketing consultant.

As you might imagine, the “secrets” revealed in the book are very much like the directions for getting to Carnegie Hall. (Practice!) Rowse and Garrett repeatedly stress just how much hard work blogging takes, and that one should not quit one’s day job and expect a guaranteed income right away — or ever.

In fact, very little nuts-and-bolts moneymaking is detailed in ProBlogger. Instead, the book is more of an introduction to the nuts and bolts of blogging itself, with frequent reminders that money can be made through blogs in various ways.

Written like a blog

Rowse and Garrett (which one is writing any particular passage is often confusing) spend too many of their 211 airy pages on very basic and obvious considerations, like the fact that you may want to focus your blog on a particular topic, or have a memorable domain name, or choose a blogging platform.

The book is padded with many unnecessary screen shots. For example, the home page of Blogger.com is depicted — as is the home page of Technorati and even the home page of Chris Garret’s Blog, helpfully captioned “Figure 1-1: A typical blog.”

ProBlogger is written very much like a series of blog posts, incorporating plenty of bulleted or numbered lists of easily-scanned “content.” Consider, for example, the book’s general guidelines for approaching potential advertisers through email:

1. Introduce yourself and quickly explain why you are emailing them.
2. Explain why you chose to contact them, with an emphasis on what they have to gain.
3. Give brief details about your blog (traffic, subscribers, topic, audience).
4. Tell them about the advertising options (location on the site, max number of advertisers, monthly price).

One might add, “5. Click ‘Send.'”

At times, if some of the content in ProBlogger seems familiar, it is because it is being repeated.

On page 101, in a section of the chapter on “Blog Writing” titled “Buliding an Interactive Blog by Encouraging Comments,” the following point is listed:

Interact with comments left — If you’re not willing to use your own comments sections, why would your readers? If someone leaves a comment, interact with them. Doing so shows your readers that their comments are valued, it creates a culture of interactivity, and it gives the impression to other readers that your comments section is an active place that you as the blogger value.

Later, on page 185, in the “Blog Promotion and Marketing” chapter, there’s a section called “Build Community and Get More Comments.” It has another bullet list, with a similar item that begins:

Be interactive. If you’re not willing to use your own comments section, why would your readers? If someone leaves a comment, then reply. […]

Now and then it feels as if there was more of an emphasis on getting the book fulfilled than on fully articulating its lessons.

A decent overview

Still, while ProBlogger leaves much to be desired — search engine optimization (SEO) is glossed over, Google Analytics is barely mentioned — the book is a halfway decent overview of how blogging operates, and it should spark in aspiring bloggers at least enough ideas to quickly pay for itself, if not a house in Hawaii right away. It does a good job presenting the fundamentals of creating content and building traffic. It also touches on ancillary topics such as blogging networks, and the buying and selling of blogs.

So far, I have not seen a lot of competing titles on the market. I am starting The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging right now, and I’ll let you know how that goes.

Do you know of any helpful professional blogging books or Web resources? Please be part of my community by leaving a comment. Perhaps I will be willing to interact with you! ;)