Official Reviews Online

The name is pretty self explanatory as to what this product focuses on - bogging. But essentially this guide is split into two parts aimed at beginner bloggers and advanced bloggers. The guide aims to take you through all the necessary steps to build a blog with a serious presence in your chosen niche, to the point where your traffic levels are through the roof and your subsequent sales (whether affiliate commissions or your own product sales) are truly explosive.

Essentially, many of the steps that you are taken through share the same approach as any other website building process, but with blogging there are many details and tactics that can be implemented to have a dramatic effect on your success.

Because of the social nature of blogs, along with their in built ability to communicate automatically with other blogs and search engines, the potential to ramp up serious traffic with blogs is tremendous. However, we're not here to hype but instead to find out if this guide can actually deliver on its' promise.

After all, not everyone who creates and works on their blog becomes as rich as Rob. So what is it that he knows that you don't? Will he reveal such secrets in this guide or is this just one of those "rub it in your face" types of products that are a total waste of time and money?

On arrival to the main product (which is a PDF), you are introduced to Rob Benwell and are told about his previous success with blogging and teaching others how to blog for big money. At this point, you probably couldn't care less and never believe a word until youknow whether the techniques actually work or not.

Then Rob quickly proceeds to point out some big changes that have happened since his last publication (Blogging To The Bank 2.0) and hence why he felt the need to release a 3.0 version. This is understandable, although we would be interested to know if previous owners of 2.0 got 3.0 at a discount?

One thing that we noticed is that there a several spelling mistakes early on, which makes us feel a little sceptical about someone who professes to make millions by writing. But that's probably being picky, because it's not always the grammar but the content itself that matters.

There's also a nice lead into the first chapter called the "5 Blogging Commandments" for 2009, which gives a nice outline of what types of blogs will be successful in the coming years. But at this point, this information means nothing until you get down to the details.

The general layout and order of the content seems really well planned and this seems to be carefully put together. This should make for an easier read and although we didn't manage to get our hands on the bonuses (some are very limited time only anyway), the main guide seems more than enough to cover off everything you need to know in order to get really deep into this blogging game.

Does it Work?

So the first step we're shown is finding a product to promote and an affiliate. At this point, we didn't realize that this guide was aimed at people who want to be affiliates and not product owners themselves, but this is ok as the same principles apply once you've got your own product.

So, we're shown the usual steps required to find a profitable product on Clickbank (popular affiliate network). So far so good, but to the most seasoned marketers, you'll likely skip right past this step.

The next thing, which again is standard practice in these types of guides, is keyword research. The system shows you how to identify broad keywords and pick out themes for your upcoming content for the blog.

It's pretty basic stuff still, at least for the most experienced marketers amongst us, but either way it's solid advice so far and very important...especially the points about search volume for your given keywords as getting that part wrong could mean failure in itself.

There's also a couple of other crucial points mentioned here that are crucial when picking keywords, but possibly some beginners might totally overlook, such as keyword profitability etc.

The following few steps cover the technical aspects of physically setting up your website and blog properly. Again, nothing particularly ground breaking here but I suppose useful for newbies or people unfamiliar with blog installs.

The value in this section is where Rob talks about how he sets out to optimize his blogs using a specific set of plug ins. These are all used for a specific purpose and benefit so it's worthwhile following along and installing what he suggests. We never heard of some of these plug ins before, but Rob assures us that they are key to a successful blog.

So far, speaking from experience we can say that the way Rob has introduced us to market research and setting up a website blog is spot on. There's no skimming info and not too much rambling, so at this point the guide definitely works...but we've not really got into any in-depth specifics yet.

Before we even get to writing our first post for our new blog, Rob goes through setting up the blog to be Search Engine friendly and to be ready to be monetized. He lists several steps which allow the blog to be found easily in the search engines and also several methods of monetizing your blog, some of which we didn't actually consider in the past. Let's just say that it's not all about Google Adsense!

Once the set up is complete, the next logical progression is the actual content creation. This is always a tough aspect of blogging (or any type of online marketing). We were pleased to see that Rob outlines several methods of obtaining fresh and quality content that you can use for your blogs.

Whilst one or two methods involve money, he also explains how to make the most out of the free resources online such as republishing articles. This section dispels a few myths about using other people's content and did make me realize that content creation for your own blogs or websites really doesn't have to be the struggle that people make out.

At this point, you've got your blog set up, monetized and full of content. You can get to this point in about a week part time or if you do this full time probably in just a few days at the most.

So Rob then takes us onto the promotional side of things.

This section is all about getting links back to your blog. We know that there are numerous ways to get traffic to your site but we do agree with Rob's methodology that backlinks help with not only direct traffic but of course with rankings too. Rob covers all of the fundamental ways to get backlinks which although not ground breaking, certainly well proven and time tested.

This is probably the most time consuming part of the course so far and we'd look at this as an ongoing task more than a one off section.

Then Rob talks about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but from the viewpoint of what you can do when you write/publish your content so that your posts get a better ranking in the search engines naturally. This is where Rob talks about LSI, which is a new technical term for the way in which search engines read web pages to determine what the content is all about and whether the content is actually worth ranking in the results.

Rob does a good job of explaining this and gives a great example of how to write your pages with this new LSI approach in place. It's actually not as complicated as it sounds, honestly!

Next, we're onto Web 2.0 marketing strategies which has always been a confusing subject for many fellow marketers both novice and professional.

Rob details several of the most powerful Web 2.0 websites that you should start working with to get traffic and backlinks from. Although in this entire section, we do feel as though he could have gone into a lot more detail, because the majority of his advice covers things like how to set up an account or post content...which is pretty self explanatory to most of us.

However for what it's worth, on some parts he does go into some impressive detail about his strategies to using these sites to gain more traffic than usual.

This section leaves us with mixed opinions - both that he could have left out a lot of the basic info and replaced it with more detailed material, but on the other hand he does give some great advice and specific tricks to use on these Web 2.0 sites to get the most out of them as possible.

Either way, we still got some useful tidbits to take away from this Web 2.0 section of the guide, but we do still feel that even with all of the techniques he describes for Web 2.0 marketing, you still need to be able think a little creatively, so don't expect a complete paint by numbers approach here if you want to get the most out of this section.

At this point, after a few weeks of work you should be on your way to seeing some initial money roll in, providing you've set things up properly. This is where most people get tired and drop the ball That's why we openly welcomed Rob's section on outsourcing, as this is the missing link that many intensive guides seem to forget about.

The thing about outsourcing is that it lets you win back your time but still keep the ball (and the money) rolling. Rob's advice on outsourcing is impressively detailed and shows you how to get it set up properly and maintain it effectively. This is a fairly short section, but invaluable if you're new to the idea of outsourcing and does contain some clear cut and sound advice.

Finally, we're onto the selling of your blog. Whilst we never saw the point in selling something you've worked so hard to create, Rob explains how this final step in his system has created so much money for him and can easily do the same for you.

So again, this is a solid section on selling your blog including where to sell for the best profits and numerous steps to take to make sure you get the highest bids for it. In particular, Rob mentions three aspects that you need to address before you even think about listing it for sale, which we doubt would be things that spring to mind for many people.

Before the end, there's a series of bonus chapters which cover some very specific tricks and tips to accompany the main guide. These include:

1. Getting your blog indexed in 24 hours. This means getting the search engines to list your blog in their database literally overnight, so you can start getting traffic and ranking from the search engines immediately. We've never seen this particular approach before but it seems to work like a charm and actually costs nothing to implement, which is great news.

2. Thousands of free links to your blog. This is a great addition to the main backlink building section which can mean major rankings for your blog's keywords in a very short amount of time. We do however question this technique a little as getting so many links to your blog too quickly could raise a flag in the search engines eyes, so proceed with caution and don't be tempted by greed here!

3. The sneaky theme sponsor trick. We've heard of this many times before, but funnily enough we never got round to trying it out for real. This is all about sponsoring blogs in a particular fashion and we would say that the effectiveness of this is more down to luck and trial and error more than anything else and if you've already followed the other techniques properly, you will probably not need to implement this sort of trick to be honest...still worth a try though if you've got the time/money.

Bad Points

At first, we were expecting a huge manual with content bursting to the brim. However, we were quite surprised when we managed to get through the entire manual in just a few hours. We also felt that some areas of the manual were a little under developed and could have used a little more detail to really drive the point across more.

Although there's a lot of neat looking bonuses, unfortunately we had to base the review on the main guide itself and so we can't comment on exact value for money.

We also felt that Rob could have targeted more advanced bloggers and marketers a little better, as even after his previous blogging guide, it still feels a little on the basic side and much of the content is still squarely aimed at beginners, particularly the market research and blog set up sections.

Despite the light content and the fact that we were able to fly through the main manual in a matter of hours soon pales into insignificance when you actually sit down and start implementing what you're taught.

The truth is that the techniques that Rob teaches take time to roll out and see results so it's no longer about how many words are printed in the guide or how many chapters they are but about what value these techniques bring to the table.

In our honest opinion, an advanced blogger will find little value from this guide but to anyone new to blogging and who wants to get a simple, firm and lasting grip on the often complicated world of Web 2.0 marketing then this guide is a great tool in your marketing arsenal.

We think that some of the small tricks and techniques Rob details amongst the more basic material is really powerful, particularly the Web 2.0 marketing tactics he uses to pull down big traffic from sites such as Digg.com and Technorati.com.

We also welcomed the reassuring approach to getting your blog filled with quality content which can hold people back from ever trying to launch a blog in (due to all the talk of how you need to regularly add content to your blog in order to keep it alive).

So there are certainly a lot of smaller sub sections of this guide that we think Rob really does provide value on, if only he'd just beef up the more mundane, obvious stuff this guide would be truly mind blowing.

Who Is it Right For?

Without doubt, this is a guide aimed at newcomers to blogging and possibly even internet marketing in general.

It would probably benefit those who know a little about Web 2.0 (really basic understanding) or those of us who have a small amount of experience in creating sites and making dribbles of cash, but still struggling.

We are sure that a switched on total beginner could pick up this guide and run with it too, but the only people we think this guide would not benefit is advanced bloggers.

The presentation and the fact that this is not crammed with technical mumbo jumbo or hype is a perfect match for busy people who just want the bare essentials to get started with blogging for good money instead of dribbles of cash on an inconsistent basis.

It's also ideal for people who have very little cash to spend on advertising or want to generate traffic without advertising at all, but are prepared to put in some time of their own to get the ball rolling.

Conclusion

Whilst we feel this guide could have been so much more than it is, there's certainly a lot of specific advice in here that will definitely help you in your blogging ventures. Some of the info was just too basic for an advanced marketer, but for someone coming into this fairly new and wanting to exploit the potential of blogging right out of the gate, then there will be massive potential here.

Only people willing to follow through and actually put some time and effort into this guide should actually invest in this product. Whilst it's not perfect, the advice that it shares is solid and proven so you can be sure that you'll see positive results from following along.

Again, some creativity may be required for certain techniques, but in general it's a paint by numbers follow along approach that would very difficult to get wrong considering the simplicity of the layout and teaching style.

A perfect investment for beginner bloggers on a budget and a welcomed addition for those of us who would like to exploit the massive hordes of traffic lurking among the Web 2.0 world and beyond without getting bogged down in technical jargon or complicated systems.