Blogging to the Bank 2.0. Reviewed

Rob Benwell begins Blogging to the Bank 2.0. by looking back at the 16 months since the release of the original Blogging to the Bank. Rob discusses the impact this release had on blogs (particularly Blogger blogs) and how this led to the creation of his five blogging commandments. The five blogging commandments are what Rob believes are essential for your blogs success and provide an overview of the whole ebook. Obviously, I cannot spoil Rob's ebook by revealing them here but they do contain some good information to keep your visitors coming back and reading your blog. After this introduction Rob gets into the main body of his ebook.

Rob begins by discussing Market Research & Keyphrase Lists. This is a very important stage as it ultimately determines what you will be blogging about. Rob emphasises the importance of taking your time and discusses how you can find affiliate products using ClickBank. He also describes how to to do some basic keyword research using a couple of free tools. Overall, I found this chapter to be a great introduction to affiliate marketing and in particular keyword research. Before reading the chapter I knew almost nothing about keyword research and whilst I'm still no expert I now know the basics of optimising my blog and its pages.

Rob then moves on to discuss creating your blog. First, he outlines how to actually install your blog. Then he moves on to discuss the four options available to you when getting content for your blog. After this he outlines how to optimise, monetise and ping your blog. Overall, this section of Blogging to the Bank 2.0 contains a lot of good information. I was particularly impressed by Rob's use of screenshots and instructions to explain his ideas. I'm a big fan of screenshots and feel they really help beginners. The section on monetisation was also a real help for me too. My main criticism of this section was that Rob does not explain how to automate the pinging of your blog. This is a relatively simple process but for some reason Rob ignores it.

If you have followed Rob's instructions up to this point you should have your blog ready to go. Logically, Rob goes on to outline how you can promote your blog and get some traffic. The topics he covers in this section include basic promotion techniques (including article syndication, forum marketing and link exchanges) and Web 2.0. techniques. Web 2.0. is a phrase that describes the trend in web development towards creativity, collaboration and sharing between users (good examples of successful Web 2.0. websites are Facebook and YouTube). Whilst the basic promotion techniques are good, I was very impressed with the Web 2.0. section. Before reading this chapter I had stuck primarily to article marketing but now I have my first Squidoo lens out there and I am getting a lot of extra traffic from social bookmarking sites. My main criticism about this chapter is the section on DIGG (a social bookmarking site). Whilst Rob did open my eyes to a very good resource he did not make it clear that DIGG will ban you if you just submit your own blog posts, which is what happened to me.

Rob finishes his ebook by discussing some advanced techniques including outsourcing the creation of your blogs, creating your own product in the market you are blogging for and even selling your blog. I have not tried any of the techniques in this section yet but I am planning on creating some of my own products to sell to my blog readers.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend Blogging to the Bank 2.0. if you are looking to start your first blog, or even get more serious with your current blogging. After reading Rob's ebook I decided to make my first serious blog (i.e. a blog in a niche topic that I would be updating regularly) and whilst I am not making nearly enough to retire on, I am generating an increased amount of traffic and revenue each month as a direct result of Rob's techniques. My main criticisms of Blogging to the Bank 2.0. are that Rob seems to miss certain things out. A section on how to ping your blog automatically would have been really useful to some readers and there are a number of helpful WordPress plugins I have come across that Rob does not feature in his ebook. However, these are only small criticisms. By following the instructions inside Blogging to the Bank 2.0. I believe a relative beginner could quite easily get a monetised blog online in a short period of time.