[guestpost]Update: This ebook is no longer available.[/guestpost]
Overview
The Blog Business Funnel is a 93-page ebook by Skellie (an experienced blogger and freelancer) about turning your blog into a business, selling services as a freelancer.
The price
$29 – an good price for a very practical, business-focused ebook of this length.
What’s included
The Blog Business Funnel is split into eight chapters:
- Why Aren’t Bloggers Filthy Rich?
- Setting Yourself Up for Business
- The Blog Business Funnel Explained
- Trust and Targeted Traffic
- Turning Readers Into Clients
- Using Business Launch and Re-launch Formulas
- Advanced Blog Business Strategies
- Scaling Up!
It starts at a very beginner-friendly level (if you’ve already started freelancing, you may want to skim the first couple of chapters), but quickly gets into details that even veterans will find eye-opening.
Note – you can get the first page of each chapter free by clicking on the download links by each chapter here.
Good stuff
As usual with the products which I choose to review here, there’s plenty of great stuff in this ebook. I’ll limit myself to a few key points.
An Authority Guide
I’ve been reading Skellie’s work since my very early days as a blogger, and she’s one of my writing/blogging heroes. A lot of advice about blogging is unmemorable and pretty obvious – but Skellie has always made me think and pushed me to improve. I’ve seen her work on many large blogs, including Freelance Switch and ProBlogger, and I know that she definitely has the credentials to write this ebook.
There were several great ideas which were new to me (I won’t spell them all out, because that’s hardly fair to Skellie!) and, while I’m not taking on any new clients at present, I’ve now got some thoughts on how I might market my services in future.
Great Price
For $29, this is a really nice ebook. It’s an easy, clean read, and doesn’t include many graphics etc (meaning you can print it out without selling your first born child for ink…) As with Skellie’s blog posts, she really overdelivers here, packing in information which I’ve never seen so concisely and clearly explained – like how to track your adverts’ success using Google Analytics.
Lasting Value
In the later chapters of The Blog Business Funnel, Skellie focuses on ways to take a successful business further. She offers guidance on raising rates (and working out the “sweet point” where you’re neither undercharging nor charging so much that you’re losing clients), and she also suggests ways to extend a business when you’ve run out of hours in the day.
Skellie delivers a straighfoward guide which can take you from the earliest days of a business (when freelancing may still sound like a dream) right through to a successful product line and high-paying clients.
Bad stuff
I had very few quibbles about The Blog Business Funnel. As an established freelancer transitioning into more entrepreneurial work, though, I found it too beginner-focused at the start. Skellie patiently explains what freelancing is and how it works, and I found myself skimming these parts.
Of course, the “bad stuff” for me might well be a good point for you – Skellie (rightly) doesn’t assume any prior knowledge, and makes everything clear as she goes along.
Verdict
If you’re a blogger and you’d like to make serious money, follow Skellie’s advice and start freelancing. I spent eleven months on my first blog before making $100 from advertising – but by that point I was making a living from freelance writing (which I only got started with due to my blog). If I’d had this ebook back then, I’d’ve got ahead much faster!
The $29 price tag on this is low – whatever service you’re offering, you’ll make back that money in one hour of freelancing. Go grab your copy of The Blog Business Funnel, and get going – you won’t regret it!
