Click Here To Purchase or Find Out More About Blog Blazers

Author: Stephane Grenier

ISBN: 978-0-9810852-0-3

Publisher: Levac Publishing House   

Candidly, I have to admit that before picking up a copy of Stephane Grenier’s Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets to Creating a High-Profile, High Traffic, and High-Profit Blog, I didn’t have a clue as to the unique culture of blogging and its implications. In truth, I was blown away with Grenier’s metrics wherein he states that there are 70 million weblogs and about 120,000 new ones each day or 1.4 new blogs every second. As Grenier cites, you can find these statistics and more interesting ones from Technorati.com.  Undoubtedly, many of these blogs are a one shot posting, however, what about the ones that have been around for a long time?Why are the bloggers of these blogs successful and what makes them tick?  

Grenier is the founder and CEO of Landlord Max Software Inc, a long-time builder and promoter of numerous blogs (including his own). As he points out in the Preface to his book, blogging has become his main source of marketing and advertising LandlordMax. His blog, FollowSteph.com drives a great deal of traffic and sales to his business and in fact it gets more traffic than LandlordMax. As a result, he came to the conclusion that if you can blog successfully, this would prove to be more effective in generating traffic to your company than by the usual methods of direct marketing and advertising. However, it is not as simple as it looks as you not only have to attract people to your blog, but you need to have them convert. And this is the tricky part about using blogs to promote your business or in other words, what makes a blog effective? 

Consequently, Grenier decided that instead of sharing his own personal knowledge about blogging (although he does insert an interview with himself), he was going to reach out to many outstanding bloggers and interview them in order to find out what worked for them posing such questions as:  how they differed in their modus operandi, how they defined success, what turns them off, what was their most successful blog, who in their opinion are the most successful bloggers, what books should we read about blogging, which websites would they recommend for new bloggers, what is their biggest tip on writing a successful blog, what advice would they give pertaining to content and writing, how important are blog headlines, do they spend money and time on marketing, what are the main methods of marketing their blogs, which marketing tactic has surprised them, what are their give quick short tips on blogging, what are the most common pitfalls new bloggers fall into, if they knew what they know now when they first started, what is the one biggest tip they would give themselves today, do they make any direct money from their blogs through advertising, product placements, etc and what is their most effective monetization method (ads, affiliate marketing, etc), and what was the biggest opportunity that came to them through blogging. And, after sending out invitations to scores of bloggers, some very familiar others not as recognizable, Grenier was able to put together his book comprising forty interviews presenting their answers to these queries.

Throughout the book I detected a few common threads and agreements such as the popularity and usefulness of Problogger.net where most of what you need to know about blogging can be attained from this site. Moreover, one of the most respected bloggers and whose name kept on popping up several times was that of Darren Rowse of Problogger. It is too bad that Darren didn’t participate in the interviews; I would have liked to read what he has to say about blogging. As to the format of your blog, most of these experts emphasized the importance of short blogs that are well written with something original to say. All mentioned the importance of headlines, which is your only opportunity to pull in readers. Another widespread thread pertained to what “bugged” these bloggers and most hated to see distracting “in your face advertising” and poor blog designs.  What I found particularly interesting was the different replies concerning the question as to how you measure success where all didn't agree that it boiled down to the numbers or the money earned from the blog. 

With his forty exceptional interviewees, Grenier’s approach allows for an enlightening peek into the world of blogging presenting it as being in a constant state of change. Intended to be a learning experience into blogging, this book delivers in spades and is a rewarding and well-rounded contribution to the subject matter.

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