Blogging For Smarties by Yvonne Wu

Disclosure.  This post is a review of an e-book I was sent for free.  All opinions are my own.

I have received a free e-copy of the book Blogging For Smarties by Yvonne Wu to review. To find out more about the author you may visit her website.

Here is the book blurb.

The Internet is often the first place that people turn to for information about anything and anyone. Company addresses, information about a person, and reviews about a company are a click away. Potential visitors rely on the Internet to learn about specials, book releases, events, and information. Your website is your storefront and it enables you to reach a global market. Having a website that supplies this information is a necessary component of running a business.

As an author and speaker, the Internet becomes a business channel to network, advertise your products and services, and build a following on a global level. Learn how to create your first blog, effectively market your blog and create passive income opportunities in our new ebook, “Blogging for Smarties Blogging for Authors and Speakers,” which will walk you through the steps of building an extremely effective website.

In this guide, you will learn:

Blogging Basics for Beginners
How to Attract Readers
Popular Blogging Platforms
How to Setup WordPress
Discover How to Use WordPress
Useful Plugins for Authors and Speakers
Discover Effective Marketing Strategies for Your Website
Easy Tips on How to Make Money with Your Blog
Learn Effective Podcasting
How to Market Your Podcast
Important Links to Resources

I don’t usually read much non-fiction, but agreed to review this book when asked by the author. I did also warn Yvonne that I am neither an author nor a speaker. However I know that a number of my readers are authors, so I do hope that my review of this guide is particularly useful to you.

Yvonne did tell me this is also a blogging book for beginners. Although I do consider myself past the beginner stage, I was hoping I could pick up some useful tips.

It is a fairly short book at just over 100 pages. It begins by defining what is a blog and why we blog, then moving on to attracting visitors. This was interesting with regards to identifying your target audience, branding and the value of content. However I was reading it with my own blog in mind and although I am very pleased to have you lovely followers reading my posts, I created my blog with me as the number one audience in mind.

The next chapter was about WordPress and the advantages and disadvantages of being self-hosted or not. I’ve been pretty blinkered on this as I’m not planning to move to self-hosted, so it was eye-opening to find out what I am missing out on. Although as I say, I don’t plan to do anything about this. Continuing with WordPress, I read how to register a domain if I wished and how to use WordPress. Plugins are something again just available to self-hosted, apart from a basic set.

Then the book moved onto something that was very useful for me to learn about syndicating a blog. I plan to investigate that further. The next item was pingbacks and trackbacks but I have to say I still don’t understand the difference between them even after reading it. Google alerts is another new useful tip that I have discovered. This chapter also covered mailing lists.

The next chapter covered making money with your blog which is not something I am personally interested in, as my blog is purely my hobby. However it proved interesting reading about what rankings could be important and advertising.

Finally podcasting, if you want audio alongside your blog. Again something I haven’t considered but I can imagine this would be good for book extracts.

To summarise, even though this book is aimed at authors and speakers, yes I got some tips from it, so I can certainly see that it would appeal to the general blogging beginner. However it very noticeably focussed on WordPress. What about Blogger and other blogging platforms?

This book can be purchased via Amazon, currently priced at £3.66 in kindle format, but watch out for a price reduction between 23rd December to 1st January. This is the short version of the book. Alternatively there is a full version with videos.

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I’m participating in the book tour.

And the author is hosting a rafflecopter competition to giveaway a $25 Amazon Gift Card or PayPal cash. Open worldwide.

a Rafflecopter giveaway – Please click on the link to enter.

And you may see my giveaways here.

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