I started reading this late last night and immediately felt bad about my previous post about ProBlogger.

Joel gently sets out the history of the internet in the first couple of chapters (which is as far as I’ve gotten) and reminds us that the internet was only really available for the masses from 1996.  That’s only 12 years.

Now from ProBlogger the number one blogs are 33.6 months old.  That means they’ve only managed to do this in a quarter the time that the internet has been around – basically.

Joel also reminds us – gently – that the technology (or lack of it would be more to the point) that was around when the internet marketers were making their debut, was hideously bad compared to what we have today – so we are still only just beginning.

I”m hooked on this book now and looking forward to more insights.

Niches may be harder to find, but after reading Click To Order so far, I can’t believe that they are ALL gone within the very short amount of time and space (the internet is still not available to the entire world yet) that we have been going.

Stay tuned for the rest of the review.  Get your copy here:Click Here to Order

The last half of the book deals with writing, writing styles, blog networks and how they came to be, and whether or not you should (a) join one or (b) build one. Neither really seemed like a great idea or even possible.

They then went on to talk about marketing and promotion and then FINALLY the SECRETS we’ve all been waiting for.  And just like Kung Fu Panda there is no secret.  It’s a combination of all with no secret ingredient.  It seems it’s a matter of luck and persistence just like everything else.

They finish off with urging to make something worthwhile and maintain that if you give your readers what they want they will be happy and come.

So I’m still lost about this blogging thing.  It seems almost impossible to find a niche that is not already over crowded by either wannabes or heavily bank rolled networks determined to dominate the whole web.

Is is really possible to make money from blogging? If you’re patient for it, maybe but I think the days of the big bucks in blogging have missed the masses.  As even Rowse states in his book, if everyone is talking about it you’ve missed the boat, and everyone is talking about blogging, even CNN.

My advice is to keep it as a hobby and if it pays for itself and turns into something grand and brings in a few thousand, then congratulate yourself because you’ve managed to carve at least that out of an almost impossible marketplace.

ProBlogging by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net and Chris Garret of b5media.com join forces to give us newbies and hopefuls a guide to making money by blogging.

There are so many of these at the moment both in blogs and books, it’s really hard who to believe.

However I tend to believe these guys for two reasons.

Firstly, take a look at their sites and rankings – the proof is all there.

Secondly, they are brutally honest about how they did NOT succeed for ages online and then how they began to succeed.  It’s a long process. Something that is not often cited in blogging and blogging literature elsewhere.

Half way through there is not much actually new that they have added here.  They talk about niche blogging or demographic blogging as if that hasn’t already been done to death – except there is a catch in this book.  Exercises.  They give a summary of what you should have ‘got’ so far and then finish with some exercises to prove their point about what they’re saying about niche blogging.

There is a whole chapter on blog platforms which I’ll be honest I skimmed through but it had the obligatory wordpress versus blogger scenario.

At chapter four where I’ll leave this review we are back at writing and content which is the universal theme so far about actually making money out of blogging.  Reminds me of another webmaster I’ll talk about later, who has been saying the same thing for nearly 10 years now.  Content is king.  And even though the new bloggers on the block may be using different interfaces and platforms to deliver it, content is still the winner.  If you build it they might come.  If you write well enough about it, they’ll definitely be there – those who are interested anyway.

Get your copy here: Problogger

I’ll finish the rest of the book by tomorrow and give the rest of the review.