I purchased Alvin Phang's Atomic Blogging so I thought I'd share with you my thoughts and feelings.

Overall, I thought it was good value for money, especially useful if you're just starting out in the blogging game. I guess that is my main criticism, if you are an experienced Internet marketer then there is a lot of step by step instructions, with full page screen shots, on how to set up a blog, install a plug in etc. However, having said all that, there are some very useful tips that get shared along the way. A quick run through of what you will find:

Chapter 1 gives 8 powerful tips on the do's and don'ts of blogging. To be honest, there were no great secrets here, but good sound advice instead. Normal suspects included keeping your pages and blog posts keyword focused and yes, blog and post frequently. Stay on topic.

Chapter 2 talks about his 5 step traffic blueprint. Without giving the game away, it is very much based along the lines of what I talk about frequently, namely writing original content and then submitting that article to the article directories and some of the Web 2.0 directories.

Chapter 3 is all about the importance of keyword research. Recommends Wordtracker's free tool and Keyword Discovery too. Both of these tools will only give you the number of searches per day, so of limited use unless you sign up. {My tip is to buy Wordtracker for a limited period and then do all your keyword research at once}. Alvin also talks about the vast disparity in the various results (I agree) so ends up recommending Yahoo and Google PPC. He also provides a free downloadable keyword research tool, which I now have on my desktop. To be honest, it could do with a help file as it is not very intuitive and my version appears to be buggy. However, Alvin does go to some lengths to explain how KEI works and how important that is in determining which keywords you should target.

The rest of chapter 3 is 'filler', basically talking about finding products on Clickbank.

Chapter 4 is 'how to buy a domain'. One good recommendation is www.makewords.com for your domain reserach but the rest of it is 'filler' if you have registered a domain before (it is good training if you haven't). Then we get pages and pages and pages on how to set up hosting and install your Wordpress blog. Again, very useful if you're just starting out but a lot of scrolling if you've been around the block once or twice. One good tip re permalinks.

Chapter 5 started to get a lot more interesting with 6 solid SEO tips for your blog. Mostly about keeping them keyword focused but with some very useful links to some essential plug ins and other SEO resources. Convinced me to update a few of my plugins.

Chapter 6 just goes through some pretty basic stuff on how your blog articles should be constructed. Again, very useful if you're just starting out, but oh hum if you're experienced.

Chapter 7 is all about monetizing your blog. From Adsense to text link ads, it's all covered.

Chapter 8 concentrates on traffic generation. Article marketing, blog commenting, buying and making reviews and forum posting.

Chapter 9 contains some very useful information on how to get the best out of the Web 2.0 Social Bookmarking network. Information in this and the next chapter probably pays for the book.

Chapter 10 contains some advanced traffic techniques. Particularly liked the one with regards to Blog Catalog and I have put that one into practice with some excellent results. This chapter finishes off with some other 'spying' strategies that I was already familiar with.

So, all in all, I think Alvin Phang's Atomic Blogging offers good value for money. If you're new to blogging then it comes with my strongest recommendation. If you are more experienced then there is still enough in there to fund the purchase price.

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