Book Review - ProBlogger and WordPress for Business Bloggers

One great thing about the Internet is that whenever you want to start a business, regardless of what kind or what industry it may be in, you can be sure someone has probably tried and succeeded before you. There is one theory that the best way to learn is to go out and “just do it” and if you fail on your way, that’s part of the learning process. I disagree. If a mistake has been made, I’d rather hear that someone else made it so I can avoid it! I also believe in the process of modeling, that I want to see what worked for someone else, and do the same thing rather than spin my wheels trying 101 combinations until I do it right!

Part of my research included <gasp> actual books! Yes, contrary to popular belief paper is not dead (In fact, three of my Christmas presents to my family are books that I <ahem> read on my iPhone!)

ProBlogger - Review At Amazon

The first book I read was ProBlogger, written by Professional Bloggers Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. They tell their story about getting their start in Blogging when blogging was new territory on the Internet, and how they were able to take it full time after a few years. The strengths this book is its focus on the personal aspects of blogging: that you have to be passionate about your topic, you have to be willing to work (because trust me, any Internet biz is not a get-rich-quick!) and you have to be willing to be a good student as well as teacher. I was confident in buying this book because I was already familiar with his website, ProBlogger.net, and I wanted a reference where I could create a punch list, an action plan, and in light of this website, a good testimony and inspiration to others (thank you, thank you, oh no, stop, please!)…

The second book I read is WordPress for Business Bloggers. This book focuses more on the mechanics of blogging, including theme design, search engine optimization (SEO), marketing strategies including using Google Analytics and AdSense. This book, of the two, may incur some information overload for the true beginner, but like any great endeavor worth pursuing, eat the elephant one bite at a time and it will satisfy in the long run. Blogging is fun, and like anything you become good at, you can indeed get paid to do it!

To close, I’ll give you one good story and one action item. The story involves my wife. For about a year when I got started blogging she was very skeptical about the whole thing: “Who reads blogs? what’s the point? who spends (wastes!) their time writing about them? In fact, her take on blogging was much like this poster on the Demotivators site, the site that parodies those famous Successories posters…

Well, several months after that we started homeschooling. She starts researching homeschooling online and found dozens of homeschooling moms with blogs out there! My wife is now the proud owner and author of her own homeschooling blog, a personal blog, and book review blog (she’s a ravenous reader) which she updates daily! She is not looking at blogging as a profitable enterprise, but has found a great creative outlet for her likes and hobbies and has found a wonderful community of like-minded people.

So now my action item to you: start a blog. Now. The hardest step is the first one… and don’t just step… leap! Decide now whether you want to start your first blog on a free site or if you will host it yourself and write one little article. Even if it’s a “Hey, I’m going to start blogging” or “I like widgets” put one post up. Then commit to put up another… and another… once per day. Get the juices flowing. This blog may not even be the blog you end up writing once you decide what you really want to write about. It may be like that proverbial glass of water you pour down the pipe to prime the pump. You don’t actually drink that first glass, but that first glass gets the water flowing from the tap and then you can drink (write) all you want!

Now get bloggin’!

-Anthony