Blogging To The Bank Review

Blogging to the Bank 2.0 Book by Rob Benwell

Name: Blogging to the Bank 2.0
Creator: Rob Benwell
URL: www.bloggingtothebank.com
Purpose: Learn how to make money blogging using Rob’s blogging system.

I’ve been eager to get a hold of some of the blogging information products that have begun to surface lately, mainly targeted at the Internet marketing world, but certainly of interest to the blogging world or anyone who wants to make money online.

Rob Benwell’s Blogging to the Bank 2.0 book is the sequel to his original Blogging to the Bank book that did really well – it was a Clickbank best seller (I’d say his affiliates had a big hand in helping him with that because the book was everywhere!). As with most information products like this the pretense is how much money you can make and how little you have to work to make it, all backed up by the author who is walking the walk – living proof that his or her system works. That’s pretty much the case here with Rob claiming income of over $30,000 per month from his blogs.

Given I’m the lead mentor in a make money blogging program, Blog Mastermind, and a big chunk of my income also comes from blogging, I was very curious to see what Ben does to make his money from blogs and compare it to how I do it. I had some assumptions about his system and after reading the book they were pretty much confirmed.

I have to thank Ben for offering me a review copy of his book as well, so thanks Rob and as promised, here is the review.

Blogging For Money

There is a key distinction that must be made between how I work on blogs compared to the system presented by Rob, and in fact Rob’s system, or something reasonably similar, is pretty much what you will find in nearly all information products currently out there about making money from blogs, although I think Blogging to the Bank is the most well known.

Blogging to the Bank proposes to use blogs to tap in on search engine traffic (and other sources of traffic) to sell affiliate products. The idea is to research a niche, find a good product at Clickbank or similar and aim to grab to some traffic and make some sales. Then rinse and repeat, finding new niches and building a blog empire.

Sounds easy right?

The key distinction is the way the blog is produced and the motivation behind the process. Generally with a system like Blogging to the Bank you focus on money, find niches that could be profitable, fill your blog with content from all kinds of sources (more on this soon) and then do it all again.

What I teach in Blog Mastermind is more about building one authority site about a topic you love. It’s about creating a blog that you personally contribute most of the content to, build up traffic over time, interact with your readers and essentially build a solid long term asset. Although Ben and other blogging teachers are beginning to teach the importance of ongoing work on a blog, to the extent of at least keeping a fresh flow of content coming and creating something more stable by adding an email list, there is definitely a difference in the mindset behind a Blogging to the Bank blogger and a Blog Mastermind blogger.

I’m not here to tell you one method is better than the other. They both have there merits and suit different types of people who want to use blogs to make money in different ways. The real difference I see is the value that a blog offers to it’s readers if one core fanatic is writing the content and lovingly taking care of the one blog, compared to building a blog to tap into income sources and not focusing much on long term community and value. I think the Blogging to the Bank strategy is sound, but perhaps not as long term as what is taught in Blog Mastermind, although it’s possibly easier to make money quickly using a Blogging to the Bank strategy.

It’s certainly worth being aware of all methods to make money from blogs and there is a lot of overlap between what Rob teaches and what I teach, so what you learn with a book like Blogging to the Bank is still very relevant if you just want to build one authority blog.

With that out of the way, let’s jump into a review of what’s inside Blogging to the Bank 2.0.

Target Audience

Blogging to the bank is definitely targeted at beginners, however it’s motivated beginners. You don’t get the entire drilled down process handed to you with a step-by-step guide for doing everything. You do get the overall big picture process with a few of the more common and critical tasks explained in some detail, but for people completely new to the Internet marketing world, there will be a technology learning curve to go through in order to implement what is taught in the book. You may have to do your own research to learn how to do certain things, but none of it is that challenging, and if you want to make money online you are going to have to learn this stuff eventually.

The Process

Without giving away the entire book, here’s a rough breakdown of what you will learn as you progress through Blogging to the Bank 2.0. The book breaks down each of these areas into more detail.

• You go through the research process to find high-paying affiliate products using Google searches and Clickbank, looking at what current Google AdWord sponsors are promoting. This is a good breakdown of how to find a potentially lucrative niche you can tap thanks to the search engine power of a blog.
• Rob then teaches how he populates his blogs with content, which includes sourcing articles from PLR (private label rights), article directories, writing content yourself and outsourcing the production of fresh articles. This is definitely a good way to mix up your content between fresh and re-purposed, without doing the majority of writing yourself.
• Rob emphasizes the importance of capturing an email (building an email list), which is great to see. Of course Rob is a good Internet marketer so he understands the power of email marketing and teaches the importance of this through his book. This is a principle I strongly agree with also talk a lot about in Blog Mastermind.
• You then go through the optimization process, which includes some solid plug-in recommendations to optimize your blogs for search engines (he also recommends WordPress as the blog platform of choice, which is a change from his original Blogging to the Bank book). If you already know your blogging well you will know the plug-ins he recommends (or if you are working with me in Blog Mastermind), however for someone new to blogging Rob provides a solid list of the most critical plug-ins.
• Next comes the monetization process and Rob offers a nice and clear outline of where to place advertising on your blog to get the best results. It’s not rocket science, but it’s definitely helpful and makes it very clear for people who like to have their hands held through the monetization process.
• The book goes through the very important back link building process. Since the focus with this system is search engine traffic, generating backlinks is crucial, and Rob outlines several processes he uses to build links for his blogs, including some of the usual culprits like article syndication, press releases and buying links.
• The last section in the book is quite current and reviews some Web 2.0 style marketing tactics you can use to gain traffic from sites like Squidoo, Digg, Netscape and Del.icio.us.

The book is thorough, without being comprehensive, and definitely goes straight to the point. There’s no waffling and the writing is not perfect, but that’s not what it is about in this case – it’s a breakdown of Rob’s methods, not a story.

Made For Monetization

Blogging to the Bank 2.0 is a book that follows in the footsteps of a long line of information products that essentially teach you how to capture search engine traffic and monetize that traffic with affiliate programs. It’s modernized for today’s Web because the tool used is blogs and the marketing techniques are up to date for what’s going on in the Google and social bookmarking dominated world.

Will You Make Money?

Will most people who buy this book make a lot of money? – No, probably not. That’s not because the system doesn’t work, it’s more a case that most people will not work long enough and do enough to make it work. A small percentage will and as always they will do so not because of what they learned in an information product, but because they kept working, testing and learning.

Blogging to the Bank is a good starting point introduction to the world of affiliate marketing, which is a great way to make money online, if you are comfortable using blogs as the tool to drive traffic. It will definitely provide you with the steps and simply following the process guarantees you will begin to better understand how people make money through affiliate marketing.

Best Bits

For me, the best part was Rob’s research process. I found it interesting and refreshingly simple how he researched what products he was going to focus on and build blogs for. It’s very easy to do because you just use Google and Clickbank to find all the answers and then get to work building a blog that is optimized for the phrases you determine are key.

Worst Bits

As always the worst bits are the hype that goes along with an information product like this, but for now it’s a necessary evil that most internet marketers make use of (I do too!). I also worry about the long term viability of creating blogs that are not full of A-class content. It just doesn’t sound like a recipe for stability and I’d worry if all your income was dependent on Google search results too.

I prefer to work on sites where the topic is a passion for me, that I want to write about and build an authority site around. That’s why I personally have never gone down the multiple blogs, multiple niches path, like what Rob teaches. That being said, Rob makes a lot more money from his blogs than I do, so if money is your main motivation, then following a system like Rob’s is possibly ideally suited to you, just be prepared to work on topics you don’t care about besides making money from them.

Is It Worth It?

At $47 it’s not too much money to invest and as always, if you find a few tips that you can leverage you easily make your money back.

As a book for absolute beginners it’s not bad, although given the amount of choices beginners have to get into making money online it’s tough to say where you should start. If you get blogs and you want to see how someone uses them as an affiliate marketing tool to make lots of money, Blogging to the Bank is worth the investment.

You can get your copy and read more about the book here -

http://www.BloggingtotheBank.com

Yaro Starak
Blogging to the Passion