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Peggy Farooqi is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.

17 February 2014

Title
Blogging for Beginners: Complete Guide to getting started with your Blog 
Author
Susan Beth
Publisher
Amazon for Kindle
Publication Date

Pages
28
Genre
blogging, non-fiction, computer guides


I have been blogging on/off for a number of years. I kind of always liked the original idea of an 'online log' to show stuff related to my hobbies (books and needle crafts) to family, friends and whoever wanted to listen to me. Mainly it was initially for myself, especially with the books, to keep a log of the books I read and share my thoughts on them. Over the holidays at the end of 2013 I decided to concentrate with my blog on books. I did some research and quickly discovered that there is a huge world of book bloggers out there. And I realised that technically, I will need some help with the blogging. Yes, I know, it is very simple now even for someone who has never heard of HTML to set up a blog on the common blogging platforms. But I'm that sort of person that, if I want to do something… I want to read up on it (be it travelling to a country, dieting... or blogging)

The book Blogging for Beginners: Complete Guide to getting started with your Blog by Susan Beth
was free when I downloaded it for Kindle from Amazon UK in December 2013, and I believe now it is £1.88. It is not very long (28 pages) and can be read in one sitting. It is about blogging in general and not just book blogging.

The book is divided into following chapters:


  • introduction
  • what's your goal
  • blogging efforts
  • ways to make money
  • reasons why blogs fail
  • helpful plugins
  • helpful tools
  • conclusion.
The book is a great starting point for anyone thinking about blogging but not sure how to get about it. All blogging platforms are covered. No in-depth or very technical details, in fact I think for some of the more advanced users (or anyone who has been blogging for a while) this may all be information they picked up a long time ago. There were a few very useful things for me though i.e. links and plugins. Also, the section on 'reasons why blogs fail' is very good. One thing I did take to heart is the authors take on poorly written headlines that don't attract attention.

This guide book's point of view is taken from the author's ultimate aim with a blog (and presumed aim of others setting up a blog ) to have a successful blog i.e. grow constantly in followers and site traffic. The author states that if a blog is not growing continuously and has about 300 followers by the 6 months mark, you may consider stopping that blog and set up something else,a different blog. I have to disagree here, as for me, I would continue talking about books on my blog even if no-one is following me :) but that is, of course,my very personal point of view and it depends on what you want with your blog. 



Extract: 

Reasons why blogs fail
The internet is filled with abandoned blogs. Some of them are mine. I want to hit on some of the reasons blogs fail and when you should let them fail and move on. 
Be realistic with timeline. Most blogs (all of mine) took almost a year before they produced what I wanted them to produce. the Internet hates new sites. The ranking system is balanced to produce relevant results. Those results are popular and get frequent traffic.