Reviewed: Blogging Secrets by Jenny Lord-Everything I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Blogging

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There’s a lot of blogging courses out there-so how do you know which ones are worth buying? Well, I’ve reviewed a few: The Blogger Course, Emma Drew’s Turn Your Blog Into Riches and today it’s time for another. After delving in to ‘Blogging Secrets…’, I’ll be honest, although I picked up some tips, I felt this course was more suited to a newer blogger (which to be fair, is how the course is angled!) So I asked Emma-who has just started her own vegan blog to also put it through its paces. Here’s her review!

About Emma

Emma is a freelance writer who created the blog House of Herbivores at the start of this year – a vegan family blog. Emma shares her family favourite recipes, vegan product reviews, tips and tricks for the new vegan and insights into life as a vegan family. Emma has Ulcerative Colitis so hopes to turn her blog into an income source to allow her to work at home around her health.

Getting Started

As a brand new blogger, I jumped at the chance to complete the Blogging Secrets Course by Jenny Lord, Educator and Author of Midwife and Life Blog. Whilst I have been slowly building a social media following since January 2017 I only just launched my blog ‘House of Herbivores’ in February 2019 and my goodness it’s a steeper learning curve than I first expected!

After hearing that the Blogging Secrets Course is ideal for new bloggers and after having a look at the course content I decided it was indeed the course for me. Like the majority of new writers, I intend to be able to monetise my blog as soon as possible, the reality of achieving this seems overwhelming to me at the moment and the logistics of putting the wheels in motion are a little confusing at best and completely mind blowing at worst!

I hoped this course would allow me to develop a clear plan for how to turn my new blog into a business and start earning money as soon as possible. I also hoped to pick up lots of tips in relation to its presentation, security, plugins (apparently these aren’t the smelly things you use at home, news to me anyway), hosting and social media. The course content confirmed it was exactly what I was looking for, it covers everything I felt I need further clarification on and even more.

My Goals

I had three clear aims I hoped to achieve upon completion of the course:
–Develop a clear monetisation strategy.
-Improve my social media presence.
-Increase my knowledge on building a blog as mine is still very basic.

The Review

Sign up is incredibly easy, simply follow the link to The Blogging Secrets Course and you will be guided through the sign-up process. The cost is £118 and there is no set length of time you need to complete the course in. Simply complete it as and when suits you. Once you have purchased the course content is yours forever. You can print sections out, you get a workbook included, which has excellent, well thought out, relevant tasks and a handy bonus section complete with an ebook, an email template, a blog checklist, a pinterest and facebook post guide and (my personal favourite) a Blogging Editorial Calendar 2019.

This calendar sparked at least ten different ideas for social media and blog posts in my mind alone and I had only gone as far as April 2019. As a new writer who has no regular, reliable source of income at present, I am putting all my (vegan) eggs in one basket and have given up my paid work to pursue my dream. I totally understand why spending £118 on an effectively non-essential course may be problematic to many people.

However I feel it’s a worthwhile investment, its aimed at new bloggers, people with little industry knowledge and I can’t tell you how many sections of the course I clicked on and thought it was something I hadn’t even considered up to this point! An example is the issue of self-hosting and how this can affect your ability to advertise on your own blog.

Another example is Google Analytics, I have heard of this but had paid it no attention prior to this course. Now I know how to use it to inform new blog content and how to adapt your content to improve your rankings

The course content includes:
● Brainstorming a name
● Self-hosted vs free hosting
● Finding your niche
● Branding and design
● Setting up your website with wordpress.org
● The business and legal side of blogging
● Blog writing secrets including productivity hacks, content hacks, traffic secrets and SEO
secrets
● Social media secrets
● Working with brands
● Affiliate marketing secrets
● Hosting and running giveaways
● Scaling up your business

So what was the verdict? Did I achieve my aims?

I thoroughly enjoyed the course and found the content valuable as a new blogger. I feel I have much clearer ideas of how I can monetise my blog at a point in the future when I feel ready to do so. I have a clearer vision of my niche, my branding and my plans for managing my social media. I did not realise just how much of a presence you need on a daily basis on social media but now I understand the significance of delivering regular, valuable and follower driven posts and how to go about this.

Blogging Secrets has provided me with a wealth of resources I have
never heard of before that I can utilise in order to improve the professional look, security and user-friendly nature of my blog.

I will be using so much of what has been recommended
including Blog Post Idea Generators, Social Warfare which encourages sharing of blog posts, Social Bee which helps you to manage your social media accounts amongst many, many more.

My list of actionable bullet points in my course notebook is very, very lengthy which is a testament to the relevance of the course.
Finally, there is a great focus to teach you how to improve your domain activity (DA) and Jenny explains how to go about this in such a way that it no longer seems as daunting to me.

I’m no technophobe but when anyone starts talking about Google Analytics and SEO my mind does go into a slight tailspin so I can honestly say after completing the course I am confident I can grow
my DA by implementing some of the tips shared by Jenny and her Blogging Secrets course.

Would I recommend it?

If you are a new blogger or perhaps somebody who is lacking that bit of confidence to take your blog to the next level then this course is for you. You could be an absolute beginner with no blog content in place or somebody like me who has a new blog who is focusing on growing their content and readers. I guarantee you will find many helpful sections and easily implementable actions that will directly affect your blogs brand, reach, niche, security, ability to earn and your confidence as a freelance writer in such a positive way.
You can buy the course here for £118. I’m confident you will find it as worthwhile as I did!