The Ultimate Guide to Blogging: What to Write About, How to Promote Your Blog, & How to Make Money Blogging Paperback – January 1, 1800

As one who is in the process of launching his own website, I'm very interested in all the information I can find on the subject. So, when I saw that Mike Fishbein's "The Ultimate Guide to Blogging" was available for free as a promotion, I decided to see what advice Fishbein has to offer. What I found when I read the book was not so much a comprehensive manual about blogging but a compilation of what appear to be the author's own blog posts written at various times on various subjects related to blogging. There's some good information here, but readers have to dig through a lot of generalized background material, and, as a result, it's questionable whether what's left is worth the $3.79 the author usually charges.Fishbein's main premise in "Ultimate Guide," with which I heartily agree, is that many businesses of all types can use blogging to promote their business but that few do so effectively. Further, many small businesses may be intimidated at either the prospect of having to generate their own content or to create and maintain a blog, and decide not even to try. So, the valuable content in his book begins with the basics: the various blogging platforms like Wordpress and Tumblr that are available, with various pros and cons of each platform discussed. From there, Fishbein offers some practical tips on how to start creating content (a hint, it requires discipline, organization, and a willingness to just start writing), some effective types of content to begin with, and effective topics. He also covers some good blogging tools and apps, ways to promote a blog, basic search engine optimization, and ways to monetize a blog.Although there's a considerable amount of helpful material in the "Ultimate Guide," it's not organized in a way that beginners will find helpful. Fishbein hops around considerably from topic to topic, so that his tips for writing a good blog post are listed several chapters after his discussion of how to start writing and suggestions of good ideas for topics. Similarly, he discusses Quora, a platform he uses regularly, in about four different places in the book, so readers may have a difficult time figuring out exactly how Quora works or whether (and why) they should use it. There's also a lot of fairly useless filler material in "Ultimate Guide." The first third of the book covers topics such as why blogging is good for small businesses. This may help persuade someone who's on the fence about deciding whether to blog, but such a person was probably not going to plunk down $3.79 for this book to begin with. Thirty pages or so of introductory material in a 300-page book wouldn't be bad, but it wastes a lot of space in a 100-page book.I strongly suspect that, in writing "Ultimate Guide," Fishbein merely assembled a series of his own blog posts. That's why a lot of sections in the book have titles such as "Seven Reasons Blogging is a Great Source of Traffic for Your Business" and "Eight Ways to Get More Traffic from Blogging." These sections provide excellent examples of effective blog posts, illustrating Fishbein's points about why lists make an effective blog topic and the optimum length of a blog post. They are not, however, a substitute for what one would expect to find in a textbook on blogging or, frankly, in a book that advertises itself as covering "everything you need to know about starting a blog." The book does mention a lot of topics but doesn't cover them in the manner you would expect from an "ultimate guide."There's certainly some valuable material here, although I think "Ultimate Guide" will have more value for people who are already familiar with blogging and content marketing than for novices, who may well get even more intimidated by the book's haphazard organization and rudimentary coverage of certain points. What I consider the fundamental rule of blog writing, namely "don't sell your product, educate or amuse your audience" is buried in about the exact middle of the book. All in all, "Ultimate Guide" at $3.79 is a close call, but I feel it's worth a marginal recommendation. Frankly, reading this book won't give novices an effective roadmap to successful blogging. However, if they do decide to blog and then run into some problems along the way, they may understand and appreciate some of the information in "Ultimate Guide" somewhat better and get some good refresher pointers. And as I've discovered myself, if you're stuck as to how best to proceed with web content, you can use all the help you can get.

This was an enjoyable, easy read. I've been blogging for about 10 years and helped a number of friends get their blogs started.One of the biggest challenges in starting a blog is trying to figure out where to start - there is just so much friggin' information out there, it can be pretty overwhelming for beginners. The Ultimate Guide solves that problem by giving you a comprehensive look at the basics.The author obviously has a lot of practical experience as a blogger and teaching others. For instance, his "6 myths about blogging" addresses 2 key reasons why many people don't blog: they feel they need to be an expert and don't see the value of blogging if few people read it. Neither is true as the author explains.It is an easy read because he doesn't dwell on any topic and his writing style (good use of headlines, well organized) allows you to quickly flip through the book and figure out which topics are most important to you. You can get through it on an airplane flight.If you've been blogging for a long time, have and audience and know where you're blogging this probably isn't the right book for you. I would definitely recommend it to beginners or people who are stuck in a rut and trying to restart their blogs.

I purchased "The Ultimate Guide to Blogging" only a few days ago, and so haven't begun to try out all of the 25+ ways to increase traffic yet. Many of his ideas are easy and can be implemented immediately. One such idea was to advertise my blog on every email I send using only a few simple steps. That took me about 5 minutes to put in place and Other ideas need to be implemented on an ongoing basis, but are simple to do. I highly recommend it to anyone who needs help in figuring out the seemingly overwhelming (to me) complexity of website or blog traffic building.

Ultimate? Not even close. If you are looking for a book to get you started in blogging this wouldn't be it. This is completely worthless as an "ultimate guide". If you're looking to purchase this book you probably have a general idea of what a blog is and are looking for a guide on how to create a blog. You're looking for directions on how to actually create, on your computer, your blog. It's not here. For example, there is a chapter entitled How to Create a Blog. Sounds perfect, just what you're looking for. But it only offers sketchy descriptions of various platforms and sites that you might user. Under Wordpress - the most prolific site building software used by 24% of sites - you will find 32 lines of elementary description on two pages. And that's it. The author tells you that Wordpress is"a free and open source blogging tool and content management system", it's "great" and he "recommends it". This book will only tell you, in very general terms, what blogs can be used for and offers some suggestions for blog topics. Basically, that's it. You can find much, much more information on the internet by simply typing "how to create a blog" in your browser - or I might even recommend a Kindle-only book entitled "Step by Step Wordpress for Beginners - the author does a wonderful job of describing the basics of "websites" and how they're put together - even if you don't use Wordpress.

"The Ultimate Guide To Blogging". Considering the qualifications Mike Fishbein has as detailed in the introduction this is a very poor book. It has quite obviously been self published and it's presentation is poor. The font size screams self published. But content is nothing out of the ordinary. There are no tips or hints that I can't get from websites. But I think what really disappoints me more than anything is the number of typos and poor copy editing. I is obvious that he has relied on his spell checker for his spelling since most of the errors are those that a spell checker would not highlight. But there are also several errors of English in that some of his sentences just don't make sense. He also repeats phrases a lot. I think the one I noticed most was saying that he'll "cover this more later in the book". I'm not sure if he does because I'm not sure if I can be bothered to finish it. It does give me the impression that this book was written by someone who knows little about the subject other than what he has learned from blogs or from books. If I was looking to start blogging then this would not inspire me.

Good , informative start to Blogging, mainly as a Moneymaking project but never the less, took you through each step .