Blogging can help you get that book deal you’ve always wanted, and in this book we will show you how it can be done. You can create an empire of big or small money making websites so that you can help people and make money doing what you love. Turn it all on auto-pilot and you’ve figured out how to make a living while spending more time having fun. That’s really the dream, isn’t it? Most of us want to find a way to make money without having to sacrifice personal or family time. We want to be able to take trips, spoil our wife and children, and slow down and enjoy life. We’ll show you how to do that.

The book profiles 15 high profile bloggers, including video blogger and wine merchant Gary Vaynerchuk, world traveler Chris Guillebeau, new media expert Chris Garrett, social media superstar Chris Brogan, the breathtakingly candid career blogger Penelope Trunk, six-figure blogger David Risley, money-maker John Chow, Mashable founder Pete Cashmore, marketer Shama Kabani, young entrepreneur Michael Dunlop, career renegade Jonathan Fields, original problogger Darren Rowse, Internet video star iJustine, self-improvement guru Steve Pavlina and copywriter and master online businessman Brian Clark. I was already very familiar with many of these bloggers before I read the book, but a few of them (especially Kabani and Dunlop) I didn’t know at all. While I had heard of iJustine and Cashmore, I didn’t know the details behind their stories.

These are all people who, one way or another, make a lot of money (and usually their living) from their blogs. Many of these bloggers make money the conventional way — they run ads, have affiliate links and sell content. But some of them (most notably Penelope Trunk) use their blogs as platforms on which they have built non-blogging businesses. The profiles are fairly detailed and lay out how these individuals got started blogging, their successes and failures along the way, and how they ended up making money. The book also includes a series of key lessons derived from those bloggers. A second workbook has forms to help you work through key questions for your own blog.

So, the question is, does it live up to its promise of showing you how to make money and do what you love? Yes, and no. Some people will read this book and say to themselves “I already knew all that.” Others could benefit greatly from it (assuming, of course, that they applied what’s in the book). And many, including myself, fall somewhere in between those extremes.

Who should not buy this book?

It’s not for you if you:

• Are already deeply familiar with the above-mentioned bloggers and their practices
• Have already immersed yourself in blogging best practices and have extensively read the advice and tips on sites such as Problogger, Copyblogger and DavidRisley.com
• Are looking for detailed technical information and step-by-step instructions
• Are not interested in making your blog into a serious business platform

Who should buy the book?

It is for you if you if you:

• Are not familiar with these A-lister bloggers and their stories
• Are new to blogging and haven’t immersed yourself in best practices
• Are committed to making an investment of time (and maybe some money) in your blog in return for building a real business of some sort
• Are committed to an “authority blogging” approach — NOT a ‘make money quickly and easily by blogging’ approach

Is it worth buying?

If there’s one place the book falls short, it’s in the ‘here’s how to make money and still have lots of personal and family time.’ Though some probloggers may eventually achieve that goal, the profiles in Beyond Blogging make it clear that most of these folks have worked very, very hard for quite some time to achieve their success. Once they pass certain income levels, they may be able to hire others, set-up some things on autopilot and slow down a bit, but getting there required a lot of time and energy. However, let’s be honest: If this was easy, everyone would be doing it, and no one would be making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars annually through these online platforms.

But if you are truly interested in building a real business (whether a blogging business or an offline business) using online media, Beyond Blogging is a great primer in the key practices involved in doing that.

If you want a fast-start on the authority-blogging practices — creating authoritative content, building a strong brand and leveraging that over time into an income-producing business — without having to slog through hundreds of individual blog posts and interviews, then this book is for you. There’s lots of good advice and tips that, if implemented seriously, will help you to earn back what you spent on the book, and a lot more.

If you’re interested, here’s my affiliate link: Buy Beyond Blogging. The authors do offer a money-back satisfaction guarantee, so your risk here is pretty low if you’re still not sure but you think it might be for you.

If you’ve read it, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Related posts:

• Most useful online marketing posts of 2009
• How bloggers are handling the new FTC affiliate disclosure rules
• Review of "Seven Content Strategies to Build Trust with Today's Savvy Consumers"
• 12 things to do when you don't feel like blogging
• Five mistakes newbie bloggers make

Though Seven Content Strategies is short, it manages to provide a lot of actionable information. It starts out by explaining why brands should use content. As brands seek to establish relationships online, Pulizzi argues, providing useful content can position those brands as trustworthy sources of information for customers. By doing that, brands create trust, and trust is required before customers will buy.

“If you want consumers to think of your brand as a trusted information provider, you must begin to think like an information provider, not just a provider of goods or services,”Pulizzi writes. He says the first step is to listen to customers, find out what their needs and wants are, and then tailor information to meet those needs. The information may be in the form of custom magazines, websites,webinars, blogging, social networking content efforts and more. Pulizzi warns against the traditional approach to marketing where brands only talk about themselves and don’t address the concerns of their customers. He also suggests establishing “listening outposts” online to hear what people are saying about, and suggests several free tools to do so.

Besides the mistake of producing content that’s not relevant customers’ needs, Pulizzi outlines several other landmines businesses should be aware of as they become information providers: being unclear or making it difficult for the audience to understand what the company does, providing poor quality content (either in design, the content itself, or by failing to keep content updated), inconsistency in providing content and failing to do anything at all.

Pulizzi argues, rightly in my mind, that with cutbacks in traditional media, companies have an opportunity to step into the void and provide some of the information that people used to get from more robust media outlets. I would add that bloggers and other new players in the media ecosystem are already moving to fill in the gap, so that if companies don’t act quickly they can risk losing an opportunity to become trusted information providers.

Pulizzi then goes into his seven strategies:

1. Assign a conversation champion.
2. Make sure you really know your customers.
3. Conduct a content audit.
4. Try new things.
5. Stick to a schedule.
6. Take care of your customers.
7. Get help to execute your content strategy.

Pulizzi goes into detail with each one of these. He provides a 10-point checklist to ask yourself before deciding whether your company should blog or not, and a 10-point questionnaire that can be used as part of a content audit.

Even if your company is not going to engage in a full-blown content strategy, Pulizzi’s e-book is still worth a read. Some of the suggestions, such as establishing listening outposts and conducting a content audit, are steps nearly all businesses should take. If you’re one of those people trying to make money via content online, say by blogging, the e-book offers some good ideas that can be applied to that process, as well.

Pulizzi wants an email address before you can download the e-book, but so far he has respected that and I haven’t been deluged with sales come-ons, so it seems a very small price to pay. Here’s the link: Seven Content Strategies to Build Trust with Today’s Savvy Consumers.

Related posts:

• What my English teacher taught me about brands and branding
• Guidelines for personal branding at work
• How to use personas in blogging
• How to strengthen your relationships
• 30 content ideas for an email newsletter

What’s Circa

First, it’s worth explaining what Circa notebooks are. The Circa system uses plastic disks of various diameters to bind together notebook covers, tabbed dividers, and a wide variety of pages. Pages have to be specially punches to fit on these rings, which function similarly to the way Rolodex cards are attached to a Rolodex.

The beauty of this system is that it allows you to create custom notebooks. This is more than just a fancy version of a three-ring binder. Because there are generally several Circa disks involved in creating a notebook (11 in the case of a full-sized 8½ x 11 notebook), pages of different sizes can easily be inserted into the same notebook. This turns out to be surprisingly useful.

What I ordered

There is a wide variety of Circa products available from Levenger, but I started out by ordering a Circa Simply Irresistible Sampling Kit. This is a very low-risk way to start experimenting with Circa. The package is $40, but comes with a $40 Levenger gift card, so you end up paying just for shipping (assuming there are other things Levenger sells you might be interested in if it turns out you don’t like Circa). This kit includes the disks, a variety of different sized papers, notebook covers and other items.

I liked the first sampler pack so much that I ordered a second one, plus a packet of 300 letter-sized 8½ x 11 sheets with the special Circa punching. I ordered the note taking style sheets, which I find are useful for not only taking notes, but lots of other things, too. On my second order I also ordered some additional compact size “Things To Do” refill packs. I use these for my daily to-do lists. (In another post I’ll write about how I use a single Circa notebook to manage all of my projects and tasks at work and at home.)

What I think of Circa

A number of people have said to me that Circa is simply a fancy, expensive, overpriced version of a three-ring binder. I suppose that criticism is fair in some respects. You could do what I do with my Circa system with a much cheaper three-ring binder, mostly. But I think Circa does have several characteristics that make it superior to an ordinary ring-style binder.

1. The rings in the circa notebook are more compact, and the whole package is more compact — more like an actual notebook, less like a binder.
2. The pages can be moved about the notebook more quickly than if you were using rings you had to snap open and shut repeatedly.
3. The ability to easily insert multiple sizes of paper into the notebook, which is difficult with a ring-style binder, is both useful and attractive, and allows me to create a notebook that does exactly what I need it to — no more, no less.

In addition to the qualities of the Circa system itself, Levenger does a great job of providing paper sheets that are ideal for organizing, brainstorming, taking notes and planning. The paper is beautiful and a little heavier than run-of-the-mill filler paper from your local office supply store. It comes with a variety of unusual and useful printed forms, like the notes style sheets and various planner inserts — calendar pages, to-do lists, etc.

There is one big downside to the Circa system: The Circa punch. The punch that’s required for you to punch your own Circa paper costs $58 from Levenger. That’s a lot of money for a hole punch. I’m looking for alternatives that aren’t quite as pricey, and for the moment am fairly happy ordering inserts from Levenger. The quality of paper and the preprinted templates are worth the extra cost. But it would be useful to have a punch (though my boss has one that I could probably borrow if needed). If I stick with Circa in the long haul I’ll probably end up buying one.

Bottom line

If you’re not a big paper person, you may find the whole set-up a little over the top. That’s fine — different strokes for different folks.

If you like to organize on paper and take notes on paper (and I do), and if you appreciate the quality of the paper, pens and other items you’re actually using, I would definitely recommend Circa. It’s attractive, functional and flexible. For my money, given how it allows me to be better organized and gets me off the computer, it’s worth it.

Any experiences with Circa or similar products you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts:

• How to use Circa for tracking tasks
• Don't let a good idea slip away