I’m often asked by clients how they can increase their blog readership and user interaction to which I’ll rattle off a few tried and true practices that we recommend and I will often create a custom “to-do” list for the client.  If they follow through on those items, it will pay off in the end.

That question is usually followed by the question, “is there a good book that you’d recommend. “  And up until now that answers has been “no, not really”.  While there are more book/ebook products out there than you can imagine, most are overpriced and the few I’ve seen first hand are, how to put it nicely, useless garbage.  Beyond that, there are blogs out there that are helpful, but these don’t typically get laid out in a portable, easy to follow manner, so I can’t really tell a client, “go read this blog and do what so-and-so says”.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

I’ve been following Darren Rowse since 2002 due to a blog of his he kept up frequently at the time and it happened to be the same time I jumped aboard the blogwagon.  Before I knew it I watched his ProBlogger site just explode right before my eyes (in 2004) and Darren was going gangbusters with what seemed to me to be very little effort and he was making a living at it.

All of that to say, Darren is a guy that I trust.  So when I saw his latest ebook offering, 31 Days To Build A Better Blog, available for a mere $19.95, I sent over a few bucks in order to take a look to see if this is something I’d be willing to suggest to our clients who have been begging for something like this.

After giving it a quick run through, I’d classify this more as workbook than an ebook.  It’s laid out very nicely and similar to many print study type books I’ve seen.  Without giving away the subject matter, I can say that it includes many of the tasks I recommend to clients as well as a few I hadn’t thought of before.

But before you purchase a copy, I must preface it with you must be willing to set aside the time and commit to doing these tasks (and no, it doesn’t need to be in 31 consecutive days).  While I stated that it looks like it takes little effort to do, in actuality I can tell you that it does take a time commitment.  If you want to improve your blog you cannot continue to do what you’ve always done and expect different results.  But if you commit to it, you will see measurable results.

As an example, I’m going to personally commit to taking one of the Surge Bucket Media blogs and running through this wokbook over a two month period at least once and then reporting back on the results.  If you purchase a copy as well, I’d love to hear your feedback.

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