December 28, 2009 67 Comments

Beyond Blogging Now Available

As of today, the new ebook Beyond Blogging (affiliate link) is now available. Nathan Hangan and Mike Cliffe Jones compiled advice from over 15 professionals in the space (including me), added their thoughts to the story, and have compiled it all into a very useful product. What would you be able to do with the thoughts and ideas of over 15 bloggers who’ve made their business success using the ideas covered in these pages? And who are these people?

There’s advice from:

  • Chris Brogan (hey, that’s me!)
  • Gary Vaynerchuk
  • Chris Guillebeau
  • David Risley
  • Penelope Trunk
  • Chris Garrett
  • Darren Rowse
  • Pete Cashmore
  • Jonathan Fields
  • Shama Kabani
  • Michael Dunlop
  • Steve Pavlina
  • iJustine
  • Brian Clark
  • John Chow

and more(?).

What’s covered in the book is:

  • Detailed analysis of 15 A-List Bloggers – You Get the Whole Story
  • Video, Audio, or Text for your blog? – We Help You Decide
  • How to Monetize – Find the Revenue Streams that Work for You
  • Learn from Their Mistakes – Cut Your Learning Curve in Half!
  • The 5 Step A-List Blueprint – It’s All Laid Out for You

In reading that list of bullets off their promotional site, I thought about bullet #4, “Learn from Their Mistakes,” and my first reaction was, “Oh sure! NOW you can learn from our mistakes, after I made them for 11 years.” But don’t worry. I’ll keep making new mistakes, in case Nathan and Mike want to write Beyond Blogging 2: Electric Boogaloo.

The book is over 200 pages, and comes with some bonus materials that I’m too lazy to list out. If this kind of thing is for you, scrape up some of your holiday gift card money, trade it for paypal dollars, and rush over to their site to pick up Beyond Blogging.

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  • http://www.lookwhatmomfound.com Rob Babiak

    Chris….Thanks for sharing. I am going to need to pick up this book. Sounds like a really good read.

    Hope you and your family are having a Happy Holiday season!

  • http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

    Doing just fine. : ) How about you?

  • vishi96

    Thanx a lot Chris, i really appreciate it, after reading this post it sounds like a really good buy.

    Regards
    Vishal Sanjay
    http://www.dumblittleblogger.blogspot.com

  • http://www.johnpaulaguiar.com John Paul

    Learning from your mistakes and other top bloggers, works just fine for me..lol That right there makes the book a great read, “learn what not to do”

  • prosperitygal

    Chris thanks for the heads up. Funny how mistakes was a question that Chris Garrett said he had never been asked when I interviewed him is showing up. Good, it reveals great opportunities.

    What is one thing you will do differently this year Chris?

  • http://kathynicholls.com Kathy Nicholls

    This sounds like a grew book. I have ordered mine and can't wait to dig into it. Thanks, Chris, for telling us about it.

  • http://www.decodecarhire.co.uk/car-hire/greece/kos/kos-airport-kgs.html Daina

    This book looks great and useful. I will think about buying it. Thanks a lot.

  • http://www.responderx.com ChrisDonaldson

    Found under the Christmas tree this season: Socionomics, Crush It, and Trust Agents. Surely I shouldn't turn any of these in for this? :)

  • http://blog.optimalupgrades.ca Elie

    Perhaps I'll pick it up after reading this review… after all, you need to learn from other people's mistakes as you won't live long enough to make them all yourself.

  • http://www.bruceflinn.com/blog/ Bruce A Flinn

    Chris, first I would like to wish you and your family a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

    I bought the book and look forward to unearthing all the gems of knowledge contained within its' pages – thanks for sharing.

  • http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

    Who am I to tell you what to do? I'm glad you have those books. : )

  • http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

    I'll reveal that answer on 1.1.10

  • http://www.mikeslife.org Mike CJ

    Thanks for the generous review Chris – things are manic but going well, thanks in no small part to you!

    I'd be happy to answer any questions about the book everyone, so please feel free to ask away.

  • http://twitter.com/EverywhereTrip Gary Arndt

    Why is it that all the A-list people are in the same general niche? Meta blogs, internet marketing, personal development, etc.

    Where are the mommy bloggers? Sports? Entertainment? Travel? Politics?

    People who try to teach other people about blogging seem to only follow other people who talk about blogging or marketing. I've seen this same general list of people interviewed over and over, and put on the same lists. Andrew Sullivan, Perez Hilton, Dooce, and blogs like that are the real A-Listers, but the marketing gurus ignore them because they only read other marketing blogs.

    The problem with this whole space is that it is a giant echo chamber with meta bloggers pointing to others in their niche as examples of successful bloggers.

  • http://www.mikeslife.org Mike CJ

    You make a very good point Gary. And I suppose the answer is that because it's the space I'm in, and therefore where I interact and know the people I can approach for help, then that's what I have to write about.

    I don't read or know the bloggers you mention, so I couldn't have written a Beyond Blogging about them.

    If you do, maybe there's an opportunity for you?

  • http://nathanhangen.com/blog Nathan Hangen

    I can't disagree that those listed are A-List blogs, but not all of them are approachable. By adding Pete Cashmore, iJustine, and others, we thought we had a pretty nice group.

    There's only so much room in the first edition and we wanted to go with names people would recognize. There will be more to come and we'd be more than happy to take recommendations.

  • http://twitter.com/fittorrent Liana Lehua

    Thank you for the heads up, Chris. I've just downloaded mine and am ready to get reading.

  • Dave Kingston

    Hi Chris – It looks like a great book. I'd love to get it but it looks like there's a typo in the price. It says $47 when I go to checkout. That's got to be a mistake, right? $47 for an eBook has to be a mistake since there are no printing costs involved. If it's not a typo (which I suspect it's not), can you talk about why it's $47. I'm sure the information is great but that seems like a really high price.

    Thanks!

  • http://www.virtualitassistants.com/ Amber Whitener

    I agree with you on the savings for paperless, . . . but maybe it's because they are paying so many contributors. That's quite a list of them, and they are all very fun/informative bloggers to read. *shrug*

  • http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

    Hi Dave–

    It's not my product, so I didn't set the price, but I can talk to you about it.

    First, do you think the cost of a book is in the paper? Definitely not. In mainstream books, it costs about $4 to print a book (at volume). They charge you that amount to pay the creator for their effort, to pay the salespeople for their effort, for their distributors for their effort. The cost of something is rarely (if ever) at all related to the production medium.

    Is college? Does it really cost $40,000 every four months to get smarter?

    Prices are set by the value determined by the creator.

    $47 is a limited price. It'll be $97 soon. I've paid as much as $150 for an ebook that I felt would help me get more business.

    Remember, you can just read everyone's blog for free. The hope with a product like this is that you'll figure out how to get more than $47 worth of value from what you buy.

  • http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

    Paper isn't what makes a book cost money.

  • http://www.nowsharethisblog.com/ John Nemo

    Chris, I gotta say that $47.00 for a book on blogging seems insane. Also why isn't the book available on Amazon.com or any other retailers? I know you said “e-book” but hte artwork makes it look like a paperback/textbook. What gives? Do these guys really think people will pay almost $50.00 for a book, let alone an e-book?

  • http://www.nowsharethisblog.com/ John Nemo

    Gotta weigh in on this. I think $47.00 is a HUGE mistake, especially for an e-book. It also rankles me when Chris and so many others give away so much content for free and then the pricing exlpanation makes it sound like a money-grabbing scheme “Buy this and make your blog a success overnight!” Not the type of product/pricing scheme I'd expect Chris to endorse!

  • http://zen-marketing.blogspot.com Brian McDonald

    I think this is next on my reading list after I finish Trust Agents. Hope you and your family had a great Christmas.

  • http://www.mikeslife.org Mike CJ

    I think Chris was probably more eloquent in his answer than I can be. But to reiterate the point, the value of the book is not in the design or the format (although they're pretty good!) but it's in the information. Chris put some hours of his time into it, as did the other featured bloggers. I couldn't begin to put a value on that, and then you need to add the months that Nathan and I put into pulling it all together.

    At the end of the day, however, the only person who can judge it's value is you. If it's not worth the price to you, then you shouldn't buy it. Fortunately, a lot of people seem to think it is good value.

    And at the risk of sounding like a cheesy internet marketer, I would also add that there is an unconditional guarantee. If you buy it, and don't feel it has been worthe the price, then simply let us know and you'll get a full refund, without question.

  • http://nathanhangen.com/blog Nathan Hangen

    Hey Chris, I wanted to weigh in on this because you shouldn't be taking the flak for our price point. I apologize for that.

    John, and others…the reality is this:

    The information in the book is more valuable than $47, at least that's what the dozens of early reviews have said.

    Also:

    Mike and I spent a lot of money and 4 months worth of our time creating this book. We don't have a literary agent putting us on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, which means that if we priced it like paper, we'd have ended up losing money.

    I don't mind giving away for free, and obviously Chris does an awful lot of that, but at some point bloggers have to sell something to stay in business, right?

    Take a look at the distribution of profit on this book, and you'll see it's far from a money grubbing scheme.

  • http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

    How much would you pay for education? Education is often just a textbook and some notes pushed across several weeks. You're not required to pay $47. Don't buy it. It's perfectly free not to buy it.

  • http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

    You must not be buying many ebook programs online. I can show you the last few I bought, one of them for $150.

  • http://www.geciktirici.net/ geciktirici

    Learning from your mistakes and other top bloggers, works just fine for me..lol That right there makes the book a great read, “learn what not to do”

  • http://www.zayiflamashop.com/ solea

    Learning from your mistakes and other top bloggers, works just fine for me..lol That right there makes the book a great read, “learn what not to do”

  • http://www.nowsharethisblog.com/ John Nemo

    Chris and Nathan and Mike, thanks for the speedy replies. I confess I have never “bought” an e-book program, and perhaps that's the whole problem for me – I'm comparing the $47 price to other “books” and not online learning programs/products? Is that right? If so I apologize if my rant was off-line. And Mike I like the 30-day money back guarantee! I respect your guys' openness and transparency with everything!

  • http://www.nowsharethisblog.com/ John Nemo

    Chris and Nathan and Mike, thanks for the speedy replies. I confess I have never “bought” an e-book program, and perhaps that's the whole problem for me – I'm comparing the $47 price to other “books” and not online learning programs/products? Is that right? If so I apologize if my rant was off-line. And Mike I like the 30-day money back guarantee! I respect your guys' openness and transparency with everything!

  • http://www.emarketingcolombia.com Fabio Rodriguez

    Just picked up a copy of 31 days to build a better blog (like 3 hours ago) and can't wait to put my hands on Beyond Blogging, I bet it is really worth the price. Happy New Year to you Chris, to your family and the folks over at NML

  • http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

    I haven't picked up my copy of Darren's book, but will. In fact, I'm going to bundle something soon. : )

  • http://www.valnelson.com/ ValNelson

    Interesting discussion about the pricing of “e-books.”

    I agree with Nathan that things like this e-book can't be compared to books sold on the mass market. I've heard people suggest that “e-book” is the wrong name for this type of thing because it begs the erroneous mass market book comparison.

    Info product is another name for it. It's the highly specific and timely insider info that warrants the added value.

    Imagine what you'd have to pay to have someone do all this research for you! It's a great deal from that perspective.

  • http://www.virtualitassistants.com/ Amber Whitener

    Very true. He had just mentioned there was no printing cost. . . but I'm sure there are copyright & significant editing costs.

  • http://twitter.com/EverywhereTrip Gary Arndt

    I'm not in the blogging advice niche, so I have no desire to do that. Not every blogger wants to blog about blogging.

    The fact that you don't know who Andrew Sullivan, Perez Hilton or Dooce are doesn't bode well if you want to dish out blogging advice. They run some of the largest blogs in the world.

    Blogging advice sites using other blogging advice sites as case studies is only of value for people who want to build other blogging advice sites.

    The niche I blog in is travel. It is totally different than technology or other related marketing niches. In my niche, I have to compete against giant media companies and newspapers. There are no cable channels, magazines, or weekly sections of major newspapers devoted to internet marketing. That reality renders much of the advice I get from internet marketing/meta blog sites irrelevant. I can't say I've ever seen an internet marketing blog address or even acknowledge this reality, because it doesn't exist in their world and they don't bother to look outside of their world. This same reality also exists for people in politics, sports, and other lifestyle niches, or to put it another way, most of the internet.

  • http://twitter.com/EverywhereTrip Gary Arndt

    I don't blame you for picking the people you did, because the market for this book are the people who read the blogs of you the people you picked.

    I'm just saying there is more wisdom to be had from people outside the echo chamber than there is to be had from inside of it.

  • http://nathanhangen.com/blog Nathan Hangen

    Sounds like an idea…like the Dummies series, only for bloggers. :)

  • http://www.mikeslife.org Mike CJ

    Woah there Gary. I said I don't read or know those bloggers, I meant in the way that I know and talk to Chris for example. I know who they are.

    And I don't agree with you – are you really suggesting that advice from the bloggers listed above is only of use to people who write blogging advice sites? Surely not. This isn't a blogging advice site, nor is Mashable, Penelope's or Gary's. Chris Guillebeau, Jonathan Fields? Come on.

    Interestingly I also have a travel blog, so I do know quite a bit about your field, and I have a real estate business which benefits greatly from a blog. If you want to check them out, just Google “Lanzarote Information” (that's the name of where I live) and you'll find them. Both are quite successful already, but I've started applying some of the things I've learned in writing the book and they are becoming more so. In fact, until today, the travel blog was my primary source of income.

  • http://www.virtualitassistants.com/ Amber Whitener

    Your idea to compile it all into one place is really good. Of course we can and do follow a lot of these blogs, but you have taken the most valuable information (good or bad – can't wait to read more about the “learn from their mistakes”), and you end up with the business blogger's “laws for effective communication”. As a virtual IT assistant, I work hard for my money. . . soooo, as soon as I finish it I will review it and I'm sure let the world know it's worth every penny. ;) At first glance, the case studies look awesome. They contain exactly the kind of analytic graphs and behind the scenes info I need to educate and promote my clients. And it saves MUCH valuable time in research!

  • http://dannybrown.me Danny Brown

    Perez Hilton an A-Lister? Well, I guess if you count someone who uses ghost bloggers and A-lister, fair enough… ;-)

  • http://josephrooks.com Joseph Rooks

    I'm looking forward to that. I've got my three words in my private blog already, so 'll have to come back to share them when you make your post.

  • http://josephrooks.com Joseph Rooks

    It makes sense to me that they would also choose people they know will be fully capable of discussing the topic on a level fitting for people looking to implement it into their business, without having to do trial-and-error with the people who blog in other niches. These are some of the most obvious choices.

  • http://josephrooks.com Joseph Rooks

    Surely being resourceful to get more extensive coverage of more people isn't necessarily grounds for knocking someone down to a B-rank blogger.

    Not that I'm speaking for the quality. Celebrity blogging is icky.

  • http://dannybrown.me Danny Brown

    Not knocking resourcefulness; just questioning whether Perez Hilton can be classed an A-list blogger when it's others doing the majority of the writing for him. Perhaps they should be the A-listers… ;-)

  • http://www.onlineinvestingai.com/blog/ George

    Looks good! Can't wait to read it! Sounds like a great resource to increase our traffic. Thank you!

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  • marryroy01

    I've seen this same general list of people interviewed over and over, and put on the same lists. Andrew Sullivan, Perez Hilton, Dooce, and blogs like that are the real A-Listers, but the marketing gurus ignore them because they only read other marketing blogs.I want other to show some interest and leave the useful comments.

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  • http://www.riverwoodwriter.com RiverwoodWriter

    I got on the list when you first mentioned it and bought it last night soon after it became available. Great value!

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