The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging

Important update: The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging is now totally free. If you click through any of the links to the course on this page you will see that it is now available at no cost to you. Happy days!

In May of 2003 I decided to enter the world of blogging with the imaginatively titled “Chris’s Blog”. It was a dumping ground for anything and everything I wanted to say and, as a brand new blogger, I did fairly well. I wasn’t heading for A-list stardom, but I did get a fair amount of traffic and interaction.

Then I decided to start a new blog related to my role as a pastor. That was much more focused and niche-orientated and turned out to be about as successful as my first blog.

Eventually I moved on again and started this blog – Geek-Speak. I’m telling you this because I want you to know I’m not brand new at this blogging thing, but I don’t mind admitting that I’ve made a ton of mistakes along the way to building a successful site. What would have been very handy is some sort of guide to help me focus my thinking and avoid some of those pitfalls.

I picked up the Beginner’s Guide to Blogging in October of last year. It’s a course of sixty daily e-mails from Mike Cliffe Jones, or you can opt to have it as one e-book that weighs in at nearly 250 pages. The daily e-mails walked me through the basics of blogging and, I have to say, would have been an absolute godsend in my early blogging days!

Now, let me quickly qualify that phrase, because it reads like I effectively wasted my money on a course that was too basic for me. That’s not the case at all. I did find the early lessons covered things I had already got a handle on, like choosing a topic, setting up a blog, generating ideas and getting into a posting routine, but as I moved through the lessons I started to learn stuff that was genuinely useful to me even after six and a bit years of writing online.

What did I learn?
I learned, among other things, some ideas on how to interact effectively on Twitter, how to publicise my blog both online and offline, how to develop an e-mail newsletter list, and how to go about writing free and paid-for e-books. I even learned of a whole new (to me) concept where people write a product, you buy the rights, and then offer it as if it were your own.

What’s the outcome been?
Well, first let me tell you that I haven’t implemented everything from the course. I know, that’s bad, and there are a number of items on my to-do list that I need to work through. So I haven’t done everything, but in my first two months of using what I learned through The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging I experienced a 60% increase in traffic to this site! That’s not some marketing number I just pulled out of my hat – I really did get 60% more visitors. And I’m pleased to say that, after that initial sharp jump, the traffic has been slowly growing since.

I’ve also found that I’m much more methodical and focused in my blogging. I now follow a routine that makes coming up with articles and keeping up with administration much easier. That’s not such a tangible results as the traffic increase, but it’s made me much more effective in the time I do have for blogging.

The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging is a fantastic resource for new bloggers. It will guide you from thinking about starting a blog to actually doing it and, if the results I had are any indication, will help you make it pretty successful! For “veteran” bloggers, the course starts out a little bit too basic, but then moves into some really handy stuff. All I can say is I’m glad I took part!

If you’re looking to start a blog or move your existing one on, I’d happily recommend the Beginner’s Guide to Blogging to you.

The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging comes as either a 60-day course (you pay $8.50 per week for six weeks), or a PDF e-book priced at $47. If you purchase the course through links here I will earn a commission on your purchase, at no extra cost to you.