Operation LoliBlog: E-Book Review- Blogging in Style with Violet!

For this series, I've been making a point to connect with other bloggers that inspire me. I'm such a brain-picker; I'm that girl who opens up hypothetical philosophical discussions at lunch with my friends because I love hearing differing opinions, just for funsies. This series has been a lovely excuse so far to get out there and talk blogging with some of the people I'm most inspired by. I'm happy to say that the line-up I'm gathering is, well... maybe not "star studded," but very exciting to me as all of the people I'll be working with are very inspirational to me as bloggers, whether they have 500 followers or just a few. I'm focusing on gathering unique voices with many viewpoints behind them and putting them all together into a concise collection for all of you fellow LoliBloggers!

One of the lovely ladies I've been corresponding with it the ever-charming Violet LeBeaux of "Violet LeBeaux: Tales of an Ingenue." When I approached her about being interviewed as someone who subsists almost entirely on her blogging income (though she runs a graphic design business as well), she informed me that I had perfect timing, because she was going to be releasing her e-book on blogging in just a few days! She sent me an advance "copy" of the e-book Blogging in Style with Violet for review, and review I have!

One of my first impressions of the book was how accessible it is. Despite the fact that she's dealing with information that's taken her over six years to gather, all of the content is very easy to understand and put forward in a similar tone as her blog is: like she's chatting with friends. It's a very endearing style, and it made me enjoy reading the book all the more. It doesn't hurt how cute it is! Every page is a lovely, angelic pink with a lace border and tons of hand-drawn illustrations and different colors; it's very visually-appealing and one can tell immediately how much work Violet has put into it. It deals largely with beginning and starting your own blog, but despite that, even as a seasoned blogger I found new information that was very helpful and options and opinions that I hadn't considered before. Since Violet uses a Wordpress-based blogging platform, some of the information is more WP-geared and can be difficult to translate to blogger; that being said, on the post important parts (such as posting) Violet has made an effort to include information for us Blogger gals too.

Topics include:
♥How to start blogging
♥Discussions of blogging platforms
♥Cute-ifying with HTML as well as advice on headers and graphics
♥Introduction to posting and blog photography
♥Ways to find traffic
♥How to make money on your blog
♥Glossary of common blogging terms and terms discussed
....and lots more!

Bang for your buck

So, is it worth the money? If you're a beginning blogger who is very serious about learning more, yes. If you're a less-experienced blogger, I recommend it as well. In fact, even if you know what you're doing, I really recommend purchasing this book anyway because you can never know anything and you can always learn more. I read this book thinking I'd get a few tips, maybe some website recommendations, but nowhere near the amount of information I actually gained from it. Things like information about monetization, information on getting traffic, and some great information on HTML and blog design were some of my favorite sections. And, like I said above, it's 76 full-color pages of comprehensive information on blogging. It's interesting, funny, and a much better read than, say, Blogging for Dummies would be.

As far as cons go, all I can really comment on are a few typos and some broken URLs. I was unhappy that a few of the links I was interested in wouldn't connect, but at the same time, it was really not damaging to my reading experience; Violet always has a few different websites listed for these topic, probably for this reason exactly, and it's likely that the failure to load could have been an internal problem with bandwidth, etc. Even still, I haven't failed to realize that, were I reading a paper copy of a book on blogging, I wouldn't have any links to click at all, so this is a definite improvement!

As I've said, I really recommend this book for people of all skill levels. Like everything, it has its glitches, but for the most part, it is definitely worth the meager price tag, and I recommend anyone with any interest in blogging (especially those who blog about cute things, like us LoliBloggers!) pick up and peruse one. It was just released this past Thursday for general consumption; to purchase, check out to her store!