Darren Rowse :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

It’s good to see that my friends Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse are back with their Six Figure Blogging teaching program to help people make a living, seriously, with blogging.

Andy Wibbels is, straight up, one of the best online teachers of blogging – and other mysteries of the online world – you could find in a day’s march. He lives and breathes this stuff and has a marvellous combination, as a teacher, of huge enthusiasm and amazing, cheerful patience with newbies (I know, he had to be very patient with me). He is the author of Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging.

Darren Rowse is of course the original Six Figure Blogger and is also, through his immensely popular Pro Blogger site, an accomplished and generous sharer of information, guidance and insider clues to making blogging a real business proposition. Darren is also one of the founders and a current owner of the b5media blogging network, which I believe at last count had over 300 bloggers on the list.

Believe me, neither Andy nor Darren is going to blow smoke and tell you that you can make six figures (or even five) without much effort or overnight. In a recent post, A Reality Check about Blogging for Money, Darren spelled out five facts about blogging as a way of making a living:

It takes a concerted, long term effort
It takes luck
It takes a lot of work
Many don’t make much money blogging
It’s hard

Darren Rowse Just so you don’t think that reads “impossible”, in the same post Darren mentioned – and did not dispute – the recent Wall Street Journal article that said he “earned roughly $250,000 in 2007 off ads on three blogs he writes”.

The emphasis of the course is on how to make a (very good to excellent) living through blogging, rather than on how to use blogging as a marketing tool for other businesses. But from being aware of the scope of Andy and Darren’s knowledge and the very practical business sense they both have, I know there would also be terrific value in this course for someone wanting to – if I may make the distinction – blog for business, rather than blogging as business.

What the course is about, in summary:

How blogs make money – sometimes thousands of dollars
How to drive and convert blog traffic
Blogging as an occupation (not just a marketing activity) including blog networks

Some key elements:

Six 1-hour calls starting in April + extensive transcripts in PDF format
Archives of the 2005 run of the course are also available audio recordings
Instant, anywhere, lifetime access – archives are available forever from any internet connection on any browser

And there is a preview on April 2nd at 8pm EST (US)

In case it’s not obvious, I’m really happy to promote this course enthusiastically. That’s not just because I am an affiliate of Andy’s, so have some potential personal benefit, but because:

I know that there are a lot of people who would like to do this kind of course with knowledgeable, trustworthy teachers
I have great respect for Andy and Darren and know they will deliver what they promise
The value for money is amazing (I actually did not believe the price – at the early bird price it is truly a steal and I hope regular readers of this blog will agree I don’t go in for hype)

For more information and your questions answered, go to this link for the Six Figure Blogging course.

(picture of Andy and Des at BlogWorld Expo 07 by Suzie Cheel: picture of Darren by Technosailor via Flickr)

If your idea of a good weekend does not include reading blogs or checking your emails, you probably missed the flurry of activity around the launch of John Reese’s BlogRush.

The BlogRush deal is that you install in the sidebar of your blog a widget which displays titles of posts from other blogs with BlogRush. You can see the widget in the sidebar of this blog. Yes, I have signed up so as not to miss out!

A master of creating eager anticipation for the launch of a new product or service, Reese has not disappointed his many fans. Trying to get some information on BlogRush today was not a problem – there was no shortage of posts about the new product, in line with the advice for new signups:

*** We highly recommend you make a blog post on your blog to tell others how you have joined BlogRush — and make sure to link to BlogRush using your direct link so you will be credited if anyone signs up from following your links!

No surprise then that the tone and content of many posts was upbeat, not to say boosterish.

Not everyone was swept away. There were some bloggers asking some questions about whether this new product was really the answer to the blog traffic seeker’s prayer or something rather less than overwhelming.

Eschewing the “BlogRush is amazing!” posts which you can find easily by checking, for example, Google Blog Search, I sought out and found a few blog posts about BlogRush, ranging from “what’s it about?” through “worth a try” to sceptical. In no particular order, here are some of the posts which I found interesting:

Scott Hendison – Blog Rush, What’s the Story?

Darren Rowse with not one but two posts -

Find New Readers for Your Blog – BlogRush First Impression Review

Tips for Using BlogRush to Generate Traffic for Your Blog

As I’ve been pondering the new BlogRush traffic building service (which I did a first impression review of earlier) over the last few hours I am increasingly thinking that it has potential to help bloggers find new traffic.

Krishna De – Blog Rush Teething Problems

Antone Roundry, White Hat Crew – First Impressions of “Blog Rush”

Sean P. Aune on Mashable – Blogrush: Traffic Generator or Pyramid Scheme?

Has some spirited comments by BlogRush owner John Reese, obviously put out by implications of the post header.

Pete Cashmore on Mashable – BlogRush: 8 Reasons to Be Wary…and Optimistic

Comments include an interesting “been there, done that” comment by someone identifying themselves as the “original owner” of BlogExplosion.

“It will take this program months to ramp up before it has enough users to make it worthwhile.”

Cashmore’s take:

While we’re skeptical, BlogRush might be “worth a try”. Although traffic exchanges are notorious for driving poor traffic, BlogRush’s targeting means you may get more interested readers, not just passers by.

Yaro Starak’s very thoughtful, sober piece, probably the most useful I found – BlogRush – Will It Increase Your Blog Traffic?

Will You Get Traffic From BlogRush? The short answer is yes, of course you will get some. However don’t expect miracles. Even if the uptake on BlogRush is significant, which it will be, in my experience the click-through rates on these sorts of traffic exchanges are terrible.

I’ll give it a run and report back here. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from others using BlogRush about your experience.