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Create Your Own Blog: 6 Easy Projects to Start Blogging Like a Pro |  | Author: Tris Hussey
Publisher: Sams
Category: Book
List Price: $21.99
Buy New: $12.63
as of 9/7/2010 15:17 CDT details
You Save: $9.36 (43%)
Seller: msin
Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 24491
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7.3 x 0.7
ISBN: 0672330652
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.7
EAN: 9780672330650
ASIN: 0672330652
Publication Date: January 10, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| | ISBN13: 9780672330650 | | | Condition: New | | | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
Want a personal or business blog of your own? It’s easy! In this simple guide, one of the world’s most experienced bloggers walks you through every step, from getting started to building a worldwide audience. Tris Hussey covers it all, from low-cost blogging tools to high-powered writing tips! Get this book, and get started fast–with a professional-quality blog that meets your goals, whatever they are! Build great blogs like these, the easy way! - Personal Blogs
- Business Blogs
- Blogs for Podcasting
- Video Blogs
- Portfolio Blogs for Artists
- Lifestreaming Blogs
Learn from a pro! Discover tips, tricks, and great solutions for: - Setting up your blog the right way–in just minutes!
- Writing blog entries people want to read
- Handling comments–even nasty ones!
- Creating a conversation and building a community
- Publicizing your blog
- Choosing the right free or low-cost blogging tools
- Avoiding beginner mistakes
- Earning cash from your blog!
You won’t believe how easy it is to create your own blog… or how much fun!
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 42
 Useful for Beginning & Experienced Bloggers Alike September 2, 2010
Sallie R. Goetsch (San Francisco, CA USA)
When I first discovered blogging and podcasting in 2005, Tris Hussey was one of the first bloggers I learned about, so I knew he had the chops to write a book on the subject of blogging. (No, I don't know Tris personally; my only disclosure in writing this review is the usual one, that Pearson Education sent me two free copies, one to review myself and one to give away at the East Bay WordPress Meetup.)
Even so, I was honestly surprised by just how useful I found this book. After all, I've been blogging for a while now, so I mostly expected to be evaluating the book in terms of its usefulness for newbies. But even experienced bloggers have rarely done as much blogging as Tris has, since he does it for a living, on many different blogs. Not that many of us have set up a personal blog, a business blog, a podcast blog, a video blog, a portfolio blog, and a lifestreaming blog just for ourselves, but Tris has.
Those, in case you're wondering, are the 6 easy projects. I don't think Tris picked the title, because nowhere in his text or his table of contents does he refer to these as the six projects, even though he has a chapter for each one--and also a chapter, which he mercifully leaves for last, on making money with your blog. I say "mercifully" because there has been far too much written on the topic of how to get rich quick by blogging. Tris knows that if you want to quit your day job in order to blog, it's going to take both time and hard work, and probably luck, too.
In any case, the "6 Easy Projects" are not what get you started: they form the second half of the book. The first half covers important basics of blogging, including domain names, hosting, and different blogging platforms--though like any sensible person, Tris uses self-hosted WordPress for most of his examples.
The book is nicely designed, with new terms defined in callout boxes and bright blue sidebars addressing topics ranging from the worst domain names of all time to the Paste from Word button to reasons not to have comments on your blog. Tris' style is friendly and accessible, and he explains things well. He would, however, have benefited from a more eagle-eyed proofreader, as there are a number of word substitutions of the sort that spelling checkers rarely catch. The funniest comes on page 121, under the heading "Writing."
You don't want a perspective client saying to themselves, `Jeez, they couldn't even spell check their posts. How will they handle my business?'
That should be a prospective client, though people in a few fields do have clients for whom they do perspective work.
The six projects overlap quite a bit. Tris actually covers all forms of multimedia in the personal blog chapter, but doesn't go into detail about them. Likewise, any business blog might use photos, audio, or video, but in this case Tris introduces some new elements, like screencasting, as well as discussing comment policies and corporate blogging policies. He also tells you how to get Google Analytics to e-mail reports to you.
The podcasting chapter is a good capsule treatment of that subject. Tris describes some basic audio editing techniques, introduces the concept of podsafe music, enjoins readers to make sure they use correct ID3 tags, laments the shortage of hosting options for audio, and shows you how to submit your podcast to iTunes and use the Blubrry PowerPress plugin. If you're serious about podcasting, there are more books to read, but all this advice is sound and will get you off to a good start.
The video blogging section introduces us to the rule of thirds and the importance of good audio quality for video, as well as providing more important reminders about copyright. The surprise takeaway for me was the reminder that Windows Movie Maker does more than create slideshows from still images. I don't record much video myself and haven't bothered to learn how to use Adobe Premiere; the little video editing I've done has been in Camtasia. The idea that I might be able to do something useful with Movie Maker is encouraging.
Tris also addresses the vexed issue of video formats and makes a good argument for taking YouTube's guidelines as a useful set of standards. As in the podcasting chapter, he covers hosting and iTunes. (The basics of embedding a video into a WordPress post are back in the chapter on setting up a personal blog.)
The chapter on portfolio blogs spends a little time on themes, and a little time on plugins (note that Featured Content Gallery, which he mentions on page 194, is getting a bit long in the tooth; I just tried SlideDeck for WordPress and like its ease of use and versatility), but also addresses issues like shopping carts and photo-sharing sites. On the whole, Tris appears to be of the belief that you should host your media files somewhere other than your own server if you possibly can, and not just to avoid storage and bandwidth charges.
Tris moves away from WordPress in the lifestreaming chapter, pointing out, rightly, that this is primarily the realm of a variety of hosted services that aggregate your content from other sources. He covers Twitter, Friendfeed, Posterous, Tumblr, and Cliqset--the last of which I hadn't heard of until reading this book. But he also tells you how to create a DIY lifestreaming blog in WordPress, then wraps up with a quick look at the comment-aggregating services Disqus and Intense Debate.
The final chapter is, as I said, "Making Money Through Your Blog." It's a refreshingly sensible and straightforward approach to the topic. My only quibble is with his division of methods into "direct" and "indirect," because I would consider all of them "direct" methods. Indirectly earning income from your blog is getting hired as a consultant or speaker because someone is impressed with your blogging. But there's advertising revenue and then there's fee-for-service revenue, the kind that comes when you are a blogger for hire or when you produce sponsored posts on your own blog.
I highly recommend this book, and believe it will be almost as valuable a year from now as it is today, because most of the guidance it provides isn't about the state of the technology.
Practical, easy to use, and helpful for wanna-be's to experts... August 19, 2010
R. Neil Scott (Murfreesboro, TN USA)
Tris Hussey's Create Your Own Blog is well-worth purchasing as even the most experienced blogger will find the how-to's in this book helpful.
Easy to read and follow, with practical real-life examples and lots of tips and notes set-out for easy viewing in colored insets and boxes, Hussey lays it all out - from walking first-timers through the basic elements of establishing a blog to showing experts refinements to help establish credibility and a professional appearance.
Wordpress is the preferred vehicle (with six projects used as walk-through examples) and there's lots of good stuff to make your new blog a good one, or your old one even better.
While, on the one hand, the screen shots are admittedly sometimes a bit too small, the author is complimented on the excellent sections that go way beyond the basics to focus on use of video and audio clips, blogging etiquette, tagging, RSS feeds, spam-blocking, building a reading community, and podcasting.
Highly recommended for bloggers of all stripes, types and ability. It's a keeper !
Great blogging reference August 13, 2010
Alain B. Burrese (Missoula, MT)
If you want to learn about blogging, "Create Your Own Blog: 6 Easy Projects to Start Blogging Like a Pro" by Tris Hussey is a great resource. For the new blogger, it is fantastic. For the experienced blogger, I bet you'll still learn a thing or two. But it really is aimed at the beginner and maybe intermediate blogger.
The thing I really liked was Hussey provides a lot of detail and information. This book really helped me with the two websites/blogs I just created, and I'm going to use it as a reference if I decide to add some different things like video and audio to my blogs.
Hussey admits that he favors WordPress and the book has more about WordPress than other blogging platforms. With this said, he does mention some of the others such as Blogger or TypePad. Hussey says he's tried all the different blogging platforms and prefers and recommends WordPress, so most of the information refers to this platform for creating a blog, but many concepts and ideas will work if you choose another. This is another thing I like about the book, Hussey shares many resources, and many are free, to help you with what you want to do.
There is a quick introduction about how to use the book, and then a brief history of blogs and how to start your own. There is a basic chapter on installing and setting up your first blog. This is very basic and walks the novice through the setup. Don't know what a plugin or widget is? This chapter will tell you.
Chapter three focuses on writing and creating a conversation, while chapter four is on building community. Chapter five is the first of the 6 projects. The six are: Creating a personal blog; Creating a business blog; Creating a podcast blog; Video blogging; Creating a portfolio blog; Creating your online lifestream; and a bonus chapter on Making money through your blog.
In these chapters, Hussey really does walk you through doing all the things you'll want to do with your blog. He covers the basics, but also how to record, edit and post audio and video, as well as topics like twitter, Cliqset, and ways to pull all your posting and content together. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of information and detail provided. The last chapter, which was a bonus, probably had the least amount of information, but he did cover the basic ways people are making money with their blogs.
I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to start blogging, or for the person who wants to improve their blog presence or take their blogging to the next level with audio or video. Great blogging reference.
Reviewed by Alain Burrese, J.D., author of Hard-Won Wisdom From the School of Hard Knocks and the dvds: Hapkido Hoshinsul, Streetfighting Essentials, Hapkido Cane, the Lock On Joint Locking Essentials series and articles including a regular column on negotiation for The Montana Lawyer. Alain Also wrote a series of articles called Lessons From The Apprentice.
A key part of a four book series July 23, 2010
Dr. Yuval Lirov (New Jersey, USA)
Personally, the Presidential elections of 2008 got me interested in social media, as I saw how a skillful use of social media technology generated a network effect to successfully change the outcome of the elections.
Both the social media technology and the people habits using it continue to evolve daily. The amount of literature about social networking keeps growing in step with the changes in this domain. Unfortunately, none of the books can cover all of this topic alone. That's why these four books make a small course in this most important field starting from
1. Motivation (Gary Vaynerchuk, Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion),
2. Etiquette (Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust),
3. Practice (Tris Hussey, Create Your Own Blog: 6 Easy Projects to Start Blogging Like a Pro), and
4. Encyclopedia (Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo, Friends with Benefits Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook).
The degree of your own interest in the subject would suggest how many of these books would you read. If you are only interested in a general purpose overview, Gary Vaynerchuk's Why Now is The Time to Crush would serve the purpose. If you want to know how to behave and what kind of response to expect when participating in the blogosphere, read Chris Brogan's and Julien Smith's Trust Agents. To figure out how to build your own blog to promote your own product or service, read Tris Hussey's Create Your Own Blog. For a comprehensive reference book, skip the introductory texts above, buy Barefoot's and Szabo's Friends with Benefits, keep it close, and look it up frequently.
Yuval Lirov, Practicing Profitability - Billing Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinics and Chiropractic Offices: Collections, Audit Risk, SOAP Notes, Scheduling, Care Plans, and Coding
 A great how to on writing a blog July 15, 2010
Tim Martin (South Bend, Indiana United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The purpose of this book is to show you how to set up and maintain your own blog. It is well written and clearly laid out. The author is well known in the blogging community and is an expert in field. And, thankfully for us, he is also a talented writer. There is very little "technonese" in the book. It is clearly written and each concept is clearly explained and laid out in concise steps.
The author does an excellent job of explaining each step of setting up a blog---from choosing what blog engine to use to targeting your audience. There are also six projects for you to do to help you understand the concepts of setting up a blog. The projects are easy and will get you pointed in right direction.
Simply put, this book explains everything that you need to know about setting up and maintaining a blog. The only thing it doesn't do, is write the blog for you. If you are curious about blogs or looking to start your own blog, this is the book for you. You will enjoy it!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 42
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