(I only talk about blogging a few times per year. If you’re completely uninterested, feel free to skip this post. We’ll be back our regularly scheduled programming next time!) 

The hardest part of learning to run a profitable blog is tuning out all of the noise and finding the right people to listen to. Everyone who has ever made $10 seems to be ready to offer their advice!

I used to get overwhelmed to the point of tears reading all of the things I should be doing immediately if I was to make money as a blogger. And then I would spend hours trying to do it all, only to see no results.

Eventually, I learned to find a few people to listen to and completely ignore everyone else.

After reading countless articles and taking who-knows-how-many courses, I’ve narrowed it down to the three very best blogging courses I’ve ever taken. If I could start my blogging journey over, these are the only three courses I would take. 

Update: Don’t miss this mini-guide about how I nearly quadrupled my blogging income in one year! You’ll be able to apply 5 income-boosting tips to today!

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The Only 3 Blogging Courses You Need

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is the first blogging course that I ever paid for. At the time, it seemed scary to pay for a blogging course when I hadn’t earned much yet. I’m so glad I did!!

Why Listen to Michelle?

Michelle is basically the (say it like ‘thee’) person to learn affiliate marketing from. She has been blogging since 2011 and currently earns around $50,000 per month (!!!) just from affiliate marketing. I had followed her income reports for a while and when she came out with her course, I decided to go for it since she obviously knows how to do affiliate marketing.

What is Taught in the Course?

What I found to be the most helpful topics taught in the course are:

• The legal stuff. It’s so important to make sure you’re using the proper disclosures as well as using no follow links in the right places. It’s explained simply and Michelle shares exactly what she does for her blog. This is scary stuff if you do it wrong and I was glad to have it all laid out for me.
• Getting readers to convert into buyers. You can’t just drop links randomly and you obviously don’t want to sound like a sketchy salesperson. Michelle shows you how to help your readers in a way that also makes you money. Win-Win, right?
• Strategies to promote affiliate links. I had no idea how to be strategic about using affiliate links. There are so many examples and ideas to use in the course.

I went through Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing quickly and my head was spinning with all of the ways I could be using affiliate marketing immediately. I loved the worksheets that helped me apply the lessons to my own blog.

What Results Have I Seen?

In the few months after I went through this course, my income went from being almost nonexistent to being in the $600-1,000 per month range. That’s so huge! Considering that I made my money back from Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing in a month, I’d definitely say it’s worth buying!

Pros

• The price is reasonable.
• The info is great! It’s not a huge course. Everything is concise and to the point.
• You can start applying the lessons right away and see immediate results.
• The private Facebook group for the course is so helpful with all things blogging. If you buy Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, don’t skip the Facebook group.

Cons

• I truly can’t think of any with this course!

Pinning Perfect

I’ve tried multiple different Pinterest strategies to gain traffic, with mixed results. There are many decent courses out there, but there’s one very big reason I love Pinning Perfect….

Why Listen to Anna & Melissa?

Not only are Anna and Melissa two very successful bloggers, Melissa actually works for a company that has contacts within Pinterest. So while I see other people trying all different strategies to gain traffic, I can actually get the real info from Melissa who talks to people within Pinterest! Anna and Melissa are the people to listen to because they get information straight from the source, which I haven’t seen from anyone else.

What is Taught in the Course?

Pinning Perfect is very thorough! So much good stuff is in there:

• Setting up your account
• Understanding keywords and how/where to use them
• Should you worry about gaining more followers and/or joining group boards?
• Creating amazing images
• Making your blog Pinterest-friendly
• Creating pinnable content quickly
• Exactly how often to pin + how much to pin of your own content vs. other people’s content
• Understanding analytics

The course is taught through text and video tutorials. Pinning Perfect recommends using Tailwind for scheduling pins. I found it incredibly helpful to have video tutorials explaining every step of the process since I was new to Tailwind at the time.

What Results Have I Seen?

I’ve seen older content on my blog that hasn’t gotten any traffic for months suddenly become popular again!

Also, my traffic usually drops significantly at the beginning of January. While there has been a drop in traffic, it has not been near as significant this year as is was in the past, which is very encouraging.

Overall my traffic is much better. In December of 2016, I had 69,500 pageviews. In December of 2017, after taking Pinning Perfect in the fall, my pageviews were at 94,500!

Pros

• The course is very thorough. It covers everything you need to know and includes tutorials and examples every step of the way.
• Reasonable price.
• Getting information that comes straight from Pinterest is so valuable. It’s what sold me on the course.
• Anna and Melissa provide extra information and support throughout the year. They give out worksheets of keywords that are popular. They are on Facebook live each month in the private group to answer questions and explain any changes.

Cons

• Getting set up with their pinning method took some time. They provide a spreadsheet to use. It took a while to get in the groove of pinning in a different way. Updating descriptions and keywords in older content took for.ev.er. I’m definitely seeing the benefits and I’m still using their system. It was just a lot of work at first to get going. #worthit

Elite Blog Academy

If you’ve been in the blog world for a while, you’ve heard of Elite Blog Academy (EBA). It’s the most massive blogging course out there and has helped many bloggers make tens of thousands of dollars per month. The doors to this course only open once per year, but you can join the EBA waitlist here (I highly recommend doing this as you’ll get many helpful freebies while you wait!)

Why Listen to Ruth?

Ruth started a personal finance blog as a way of keeping herself accountable because she was overspending. She eventually made enough money blogging to retire her husband! Ruth now runs a crazy successful blog as well and Elite Blog Academy to teach others how to make an income blogging.

What is Taught in the Course?

Elite Blog Academy is HUGE. It took me about nine months to get through because there is so much information to digest as well as assignments to complete. Here’s some of what you’ll learn:

• How to create amazing content and make sure your blog makes a good first impression
• Gaining traffic
• Creating and marketing your own product
• Monetizing your blog
• Treating your blog like a business and working smarter

What Results Have I Seen?

First, I know you’re dying to know: Have I made more money because of Elite Blog Academy? Yes!

The best results I’ve seen are this:

• I now make hundreds of dollars per month from my very first product!
• My blog is a business. I’ve been more successful as I’ve learned to treat is that way.
• I get to connect with thousands of my readers through email. My email list was tiny before I started.

There were portions of the course that I knew were coming up that scared me. I didn’t want to network and I had no clue how to create a product (so intimidating). The great thing is that you just have to follow the course and do the assignments as they come. Things that I was nervous about turned out to be no big deal because I did them one step at a time.

Pros

• Step by step. Everything is broken down into assignments that you complete and then build on. It makes big scary things, like the idea of creating and launching a product, manageable.
• It is thorough. Elite Blog Academy covers so many areas of blogging. Even though I had been blogging for a while before I took the course, it filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge.

Cons

• Let’s talk about the price. It’s not cheap. That’s not to say that it’s not worth it though. If you’re willing to put in the work and do every assignment, you’ll see great results!

One Question to Answer:

“If Elite Blog Academy is such a huge, wonderful blogging course, do I need the other two courses?”

Yup! Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing and Pinning Perfect go much more in depth in each of their topics. I learned so much in EBA about becoming a better writer, growing my audience and email list, creating a product, and running a business. While affiliate marketing and Pinterest are covered, there is so much more detail in each of these courses, which is why I firmly believe that all three are necessary – though I would recommend only going through one at a time.

I don’t often give blogging advice because I don’t want to add to all of the noise out there. I am, however, happy to point you in the direction of the people who have created courses that have helped my blog be successful!

If you only ever take three blogging courses, I truly think that these are the best ones out there. 

You Might Like These Posts Too:

5 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Blogging

I Made Money With My Blog! 

5 Ways to Make Money from Home (that actually work!)

⇒ Are you overwhelmed by blogging info? What are the best courses or books you’ve found? Please ask me any questions about these courses in the comments!!