A few years back I read a few books about blogging. I have read a large number of books since then, but here are a few mini reviews:

The Why of Blogging:
The Weblog Handbook – Rebecca Blood’s guide to blogging. Talks about the ideas associated with what is important in blogging. Things like using an authentic voice, why people would want to blog, etc. It is a book more about ideas than a how to guide. Hard to define or describe exactly, but somewhere around the same timeframe I also read David Weinberger’s Small Pieces Loosely Joined and Rebecca’s book reminded me of being a bit like that.

If you read a ton of blogs for a long time you will probably already get much of what Rebecca is talking about, but if you are new to blogs it is a great book to read.

The How of Blogging:
Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content is Biz Stone’s book about blogging. Short reviews of the various platforms and a few tips on using HTML. A few years dated, but still decent info. Geared more toward beginners.

While he reviews a number of platforms if you want to use a blog to make profit from it is important to keep control of your own data. I would probably recommend buying a domain and using WordPress on it. Free, fast, and easy to use.

The ? of Blogging:
AdSense and other contextual programs like Chitika have made it easy for anyone who writes original content to make a few dollars off their blogs. Recently I noticed that there are starting to be more how to blog products advertised across various websites on how to make fat cash with blogs. Some of them are a bit questionable though.

Yesterday I saw an ad for a guide to blogging from a site that looked like it copied it’s design from Blogger and had a comming soon page for the blog on their site. Why advertise a site before it is even put together? I mean it only takes a few minutes to make an intro post…especially for a site selling something about blogging.

I think I am going to read and review a few more books. I always learning from the perspectives of a wide number of other people.