Book Review of The Foolproof Guide to Monetizing Your Blog by Cailin Koy

Blogs can make money by hosting ads from various companies on the blog site. The different models,  Cost per click (CPC), cost per action (CPA), and cost per thousand impressions (CPM), are explained in detail, which is particularly instructive if you don’t know how the commercial advertising schemes work, for example those ads that appear at the top of a Google search results listing. In addition, Koy explains just where on your blog pages these ads should be placed and, briefly, how to get them to appear there.

I found one passage particularly relevant. Koy states: “How much advertisers are willing to pay you per one thousand impressions is strongly based on your existing traffic and what marketing gurus refer to as your reach. Reach is defined as the number of unique visitors your site receives per month.” I believe this is a key concept to know well. You must know your blog’s monthly number of views, visits, and unique visitors before you contact companies whose ads you want to obtain.

Some of the many forms ads can take are discussed, along with a listing of them. Particularly valuable, Koy provides a list of the major ad companies and roughly their requirements a blog needs to qualify for their business. In most cases, the monthly traffic is rather large, and thus, Koy presents some entry-level possibilities for the beginning bloggers as well.

The distinction between sponsored posts and guest posts is clear; plus Koy provides a valuable listing of networks to use to hunt for sponsored posts for beginners. Koy has a section on the relatively new method of Related Content as well. Contextual Links, Info Links, and Banner Ads are covered. Commission and Affiliate Links are explained; these are important for new and emerging blogs with “low to no entry requirements,” which work well until your blog site develops a large monthly traffic, allowing you to enter the bigger ad leagues. Then, there are the Paid Social Interactions, where you are paid to promote something on your social media sites.

Koy’s “Name your price” and Media Kits contain how much a blog proposes to charge to run these ads. I would love to have seen some actual numbers here, both for lower traffic and higher traffic blogs, or where one could discover that data.

Being an “ad-hater” myself, I found Koy’s admonition quite relevant: “You need to be careful in choosing what kind of ads to run and how many you’d like to run.”
Why? “You want to build a site your readers can trust in and enjoy for years to come.” And I believe that Koy is dead on: “Your traffic has a considerable impact on your earning potential. Building traffic is all about creating a great site with unique content that attracts visitors.” This is backed up when Koy suggests you always click yourself through the link your advertiser is giving you to ensure the content is related and what your readers might desire, to avoid misleading your readers.

So, if you have a blog and are interested in running ads that make you money or in selling your own products, this is a gem of a book to have and study. It’s loaded with key tips and relevant data to enable you to do just that, make money with your blog. I give it 5 stars and am glad to have it on my ebook-shelf.

Vic

Book Review of Go From Blog to Brand in 30 Days by Cailin Koy

This is a must read for anyone who either wants to start a blog or who has one and who wants to make a real go of it. Here is your step-by-step guide to getting your blog branded, well-known, and possibly even making you money. Koy defines all of the relevant key terms and explains each step fully. As a beginning blogger, I followed each logical step with ease. Koy presents both a methodical and a simple series of steps taken over a 30-day period, covering the initial setup of the blog (or modification to existing ones), all the way through to the final success phase. Koy provides a simple worksheet for you to use to get your own blog branding going properly.

My first reaction was just what does blog branding mean? Koy defines this: “A brand is the essence of a company, website, person or anything someone could ever want to market.” “It is a promise to … your readership. It sets the expectation for what readers will get from both your blog and from you in every interaction.” Koy makes the keen distinction between “brand identity,” which is the concept that a brand owner wants their public to embrace, versus the “brand image,” which is how the public actually perceives the brand. The goal is to make these to points of view the same, which you can do if you follow the steps Koy provides.

The book also presents in easy to follow steps how to use social marketing, and to use analytics to obtain actual statistical results. It covers many of the varieties of web traffic “conversion” (Google Analytics) and how to use them to help turn your website traffic into actual income. Koy discusses how to use opportunities to blog on other sites, basics of merchandising, and the promoting of your products or services. No step is overlooked, as far as I can tell.

This is a very readable book that can help you go from an idea into a working, successful blog, one that can also make you money. I give this book 5 stars.

Review of Fire’s Love by Alex E. Carey

This is a tale of the bright, sixteen year old Kira, whose mother and brother died recently and her father leaves her, declaring that she reminds him of her mother and finds it too painful to be around her. Kira finds consolation in a mysterious book in her parents’ belongings and moves in with her dear friend, who recently had a traumatic event that forced her to dive into witchcraft and who now hates Kira. She wisely departs for college, leaving her awful past behind her. What she didn’t know is that there are demons, good and evil, lurking within human disguises and that they are all around her.

Arriving at her new college, she meets and befriends Lowell Hew, a demon known as Ulric, the Wolf, who also has a tormented past. She also meets and falls in love with Pyre, a fire demon with a fiery temperament and one of Lowell’s close friends. At this point, darkness begins falling over Kira. Someone wants her dead. Someone continues to secretly spy on her and her activities at college. Both Lowell and Pyre strive to protect her and to help her discover the mystery behind her parents, her lineage, and this eerie presence threatening her. Slowly, pieces fall into place in this young love romance with Kira providing the ice to cool off the fiery Pyre.

Fire’s Love is an enjoyable read and I give it three stars. It is really refreshing to read a novel that can target all ages from young adults on up, especially in these times where too many novels make use of immorality and abusive language for shock value. I’m looking forward to the sequel.

Review of The Melding of Aeris by D. Wallace Peach

Long ago, this world endured the Burn, a fire that destroyed the lush world so genetically manipulated by man that it threatened to poison all life, hence the Burn. Now recovering, again the unscrupulous have invented a new way to alter human bodies: transfiguration. That is, via special chemicals including the Pathway, one can meld anything onto the human body’s surface, replacing skin and hair for example. But it goes far beyond any sentient reason. The wealthy Worthy graft skin of animals onto themselves, such as snake skins, wolf pelts, and much more. While some animals are raised to supply these needs, others called Skinners kidnap, flay, and kill other humans to obtain the next set of hair or eyes or face that some Worthy just has to “have” on their body.

Worse, children born to these people inherit a merging of the grafts from their parents bodies. The son of one of the most powerful rulers, Aeris, is born a man but whose exterior is that of a monster, and he longs to have human skin. When he turns eighteen, his father gives him his wish, but to Aeris’ horror, his new skin is that of a murdered man. Horrified and appalled at the price he must forever pay, Aeris flees his plush life and joins the rebellion, whose members are mostly other transfigured renegades. Their goal: put an end to this diabolical process.

The tale is replete with tales of evil, of greed that knows no bounds, and of impossible loves. In places, I found it a bit dark for my tastes. Still, it is an exciting read, one that you will find hard to put down until you reach the surprise ending, as I have come to expect from this author. Peach’s endings just never seem to be quite what I anticipate them to be! Yes, another “I didn’t see that one coming!” Here is another 5-star novel from D. Wallace Peach.

Vic