When we first got this review request, we thought we were in for some vegetable-related treats. On the contrary, QuickSprout.com has nothing to do with greenery – it’s all about branding baby.

First up: what is branding? Merriam-Webster defines it as “the promoting of a product or service by identifying it with a particular brand”. Neil Patel is the man behind Quick Sprout and he’s a guy who claims he can teach us all how to become “rock stars” in our chosen industry. From Neil’s “About” page:

If you think about all the people that have high paying jobs, you’ll notice that some are talented and some are not. Regardless of how good they are, they are all perceived as “rock stars” and sometimes looked up to like celebrities.

Neil says that he holds the key to achieving this rock-star status. So who is Neil Patel? He certainly doesn’t look like a rock star, but he’s already something of a legend in the online marketing sector, having been covered by a number of publications, including the Wall Street Journal.

At just 21 years old, Neil has already had job offers of six figures – and this dude is still in college. He must be doing something right.

An average Joe with a mission

Neil, an Internet marketing consultant living in Southern California, is just a regular guy, dedicated to his work. He has been blogging on Quick Sprout since April and already looks to have quite a following judging from the large number of comments left on each post. A few of his recent gems include:

• How to obtain a speaking spot, which outlines how to get those conference gigs that are great for personal branding.
• Build a Facebook profile you can be proud of, in which Neil demonstrates a few tips for using Facebook to enhance your personal branding.
• How to choose the right job so that you can have a successful career, in which Neil tells us what we should be looking for in a job in order to get on a successful career path.

Quick Sprout uses a clean, simple, two-column layout with its own, unique logo and the tagline “building yourself for success”. The blog is easy to navigate and the post are split into six categories: General, Fame, PR, Blogs, Social Networks, and Money.

Although Neil’s posting tends to be sporadic, there is some great information to be found there, such as Neil’s post about business cards. We never gave our business much thought, but maybe that’s why we’re not rock stars yet. John could certainly do with a bit of a rock-star makeover.

Telling it like it is

A lot of the time, what Neil writes isn’t anything revolutionary, but it’s the small details most of us overlook in our day-to-day lives that can make the most difference. Neil’s tone is a bit like that of a motivational speaker, but at times he can be inspiring, such as when he outlined five branding errors that make you look dumb.

We’d like to see more consistent posting on Quick Sprout. The blog is popular, with an Alexa rating of 78,958 and a Page Rank of 5. Quick Sprout makes for a good read and is worth checking out and subscribing to the RSS feed. One problem we found is that the “Consulting” tab from the main nav menu leads us to a 404 error. What joys might lie on that page we may never know.

Neil isn’t a make-money blogger. His blog has no ads; it doesn’t even have many links to external sources. While the color scheme is a bit drab, everything you need is easy enough to find.

All this talk of sprouts has got us thinking about Christmas. We’re off to have a lie down to dream of all the presents we’re hoping to get this year. In the meantime, go and check out Quick Sprout and start branding yourself to become a rock star. Let us know if Neil’s techniques make you famous, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Quick Sprout RSS feed.

Oh, and Neil asked us to use “nofollow” on the links, so don’t shoot the messengers! Usually we use regular “follows” for paid reviews.