Recently I came across the latest product of Darren Rowse.
It’s called The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers. The product was created by Darren Rowse, owner of Problogger.net, and Glenn Murray, owner of Divine write.
To be honest up front I purchased the book because I was interested in improving my writing skills. And I believe the ebook did help me to become a better writer.
The only question you need to ask yourself is: Do you want to improve your writing skills?
What Is the Scorecard About?
The ebook is basically a guide to writing better copy. The idea behind it is that you will have a Scorecard by your side, which you can print out. Every time you write a post you will simply take that Scorecard and rate your post. Once you see the mistakes you have made you can then go back and fix them. If you constantly keep on doing this on articles then you will definitely become a better writer.
In order to make it easier to understand the ebook I divided The Problogger Scorecard into 3 main sections (they are not according to the table of contents, it’s simply a suggestion on how to divide it):
- Thing to Understand Before Writing Your Post
- Writing Your Post
- The Scorecard with in-depth explanation (in the previous chapter)
My First Impression on the Problogger Scorecard
When I initially purchased the book I thought that it was a bit too short. That was probably because of all the other ebooks I have read within the first two years of blogging. They were usually longer and this ebook only has 55 pages (it now has even more since it was recently updated).
When you start reading the ebook you will immediately notice that Glenn is a professional copywriter. It’s very easy to read and you can easily understand what Darren and Glenn are pointing out.
The Bad
One thing I didn’t like about the ebook is that a lot of the things that were covered in the book simply referred to grammatical issues. They solely focus on simple problems such as using “your” instead of “you’re”. On the scorecard there are around 20 of these grammar mistakes mentioned. Of course are these things important to know yet they are rather basic. I would have liked to get a little bit more copy writing specific information.
I also had trouble when sitting in front of my laptop trying to edit my posts. On the Scorecard you have lots of small bullets like “Use Emotive Language” and the problem with that is the implementation. I know what “Emotive Language” means yet it’s hard to translate that abstract idea into a post. This is not a problem that I would attribute to the ebook but to life in general. And now that the ebook has been updated it’s easier to integrate this abstract idea since Darren has now added an example on how he ranks his posts and with an explanation of why.
The Good
The great aspect of this ebook is that you can read it quickly. Because of the great writing you will be able to easily consume the information given in the book. But that’s of course also a risk. People will simply read it and they’ll be like “well I guess it didn’t help me that much.” And that’s exactly the problem. In order for this book to work you need to use the Scorecard on your blog posts.
Glenn and Darren updated the ebook a few days ago. The update included a section on how Darren uses the Scorecard with a certain post, as I’ve mentioned above. And this makes the ebook much more useful to me. Since I bought the ebook early on I also got the update for free.
I personally like the idea of having a Scorecard because it gives you something to measure your writing skills with. It also gives you the ability to use the card on posts and to compare it to your articles in order to improve your writing.
Remember when you buy the ebook you’ll also get a 50% discount on Darren’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and on Glenn’s Practical SEO Copywriting. This alone makes it worth to buy the book (at least for me because I got it for $9 when the price was still low).
Conclusion
What you are not going to get with this ebook isn’t something theoretical that you are not going to apply. The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers was made for people who want to improve their writing right now. For people who want to take action right away. That’s why I truly enjoyed the book.
If you don’t want to improve your writing right away then don’t get this ebook. Check out the Scorecard and tell me what you think about it. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
