Review: A warren of enticing rabbit holes
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 24, 2014
I laughed at some of the lines in Blogmaster Blueprint -- not because they were laughable in the sense of ridiculous or lamentable, but because they were actually humorous. ""Don't skip ahead!"" pleads the author, Will Paoletto, in the introduction. ""You'll ruin the whole damn book."" And in the end: ""Congratulations! You made it through the entire book without skipping a single sentence."" A little presumptuous, don't you think, Mr. Paoletto?The humor definitely helped with the readability of the book, along with the clear, straightforward, no-nonsense advice on starting, operating, and cashing in on a blog (or taking it to the next level, depending on your goals.) I was able to read Blogmaster Blueprint in under an hour. It runs through everything you need to know -- tools, plugins, policies and procedures, philosophies -- to be successful. (It even recommends -- with tongue in cheek, mind you -- the use of recreational drugs when chasing the writing muse. Okay, so perhaps that was a bit of wasted prose, but why not have a little joke break?)I thought the advice on selecting a niche or topic was especially helpful. It recommends picking a topic you are already passionate about, because it will be easier to supply consistent content that way than if you pick a topic based strictly on how well you think it will do in the search engine rankings. And then it suggests not narrowing your topic too much, because you do want to be broad enough to capture a steady traffic stream. If you want to get more specific, you can add blog categories and segregate your posts within the blog accordingly.Likewise, the ""Generating Content"" chapter seems to encourage having fun with the topic. Of course, it also covers the basics of finding and hiring writers to help you beef up your content selection, so that you don't have to be responsible for the content all by yourself. Blogging is a lot of work, believe me.Sometimes while reading BB I felt a sense of panic. There are so many aspects to blogging, and BB touches on most if not all of them. The SEO, driving traffic, monetizing the blog, and other technicality-heavy jobs are involved with the process. You can't just ""set it and forget it"". You have to love and care for your blog as if it were a newborn baby seal. Ignoring it is akin to clubbing said baby seal. How dare you!If you're anything like me, you've spent many a bleary-eyed midnight poring over CSS and HTML just to tweak a plugin so that it aligns properly and looks just right.Blogmaster Blueprint will not help you with any of that. For technical procedures, you're on your own. Or more accurately, you have to go elsewhere. Luckily, Mr. Paoletto refers you to everything you'll need. No matter what, you'll have to burn some midnight oil experimenting, but BB introduces you to all the proper rabbit holes to go down.