I noticed there are two common problems faced by newbies when starting a blog; they don’t know which platform to use and how to start a business with it. So I am actually glad to find an online training called Beginner Blogging that seems to cater for this group of people. But, can this course actually show you how to profit with a blog? Let’s see what are the offers inside.
What Is Beginner Blogging?
Beginner Blogging is a seven part tutorial that walks you through the process of setting up a self-hosted WordPress blog. It’s created by Tom Ewer, a blogger turned online entrepreneur, who started his article writing business in 2011. The course is offered for free through the main website itself or through email subscriptions.
Here are the topics that he covers;
- Part 1 – Creating a WordPress blog – Setting up domain and web hosting
- Part 2 – Getting to know WordPress – Navigate through the user dashboard
- Part 3 – Setting up Your WordPress blog – Fine-tuning your blog settings
- Part 4 – Creating Posts and Pages – Learning how to create your first article
- Part 5 – Installing WordPress theme – Finding the right theme for your blog
- Part 6 – Installing and configuring plugins – Finding the right plugins to use
- Part 7 – Setting up menu and widgets – Learning how to create navigation within your blog
Tom and his team can even set things up for you, granted you purchase the domain and hosting through their recommended provider. It’s a win-win situation – they make an affiliate commission and you get their technical assistance.
What I Like About the Course
(1) All the topics are well organized in text that are easy to read and links that are clickable. They also include a lot of screen captures to help you understand better.
(2) Although WordPress is a powerful blogging platform, it’s not the most visual friendly software for beginners. So I salute Tom for going into great depth and length to show EVERY single technical aspects there is to setting up a WordPress blog.
I’ve seen other tutors do the same thing before and most just brush through the surface without elaborating as thorough as him. While it might seem boring for some, this knowledge is crucial for building a strong foundation of a successful blog.
Most of the time, you just have to learn it once, fix the settings and leave it be. My point is, getting started with WordPress isn’t difficult at all as the tutorial clearly demonstrates how it can be done easily on your end.
(3) I like Tom’s ‘out-of-the-box’ approach on WordPress. He’s more focus on blogging, not the designing aspect. For example, he doesn’t encourage (beginners, especially) to spend time customizing themes and suggest that they should just use them as is.
I can personally relate to this because in the early stage of my blogging career, I was quite obsessed with changing themes and somewhat felt that the success of my blog is determined by its look. That’s vain – I know. Well, as it turns out, there’s really no such thing. As long as the code is up-to-date, most WordPress themes are quite presentable in their original format.
(4) Tom wears many hats as a blogger. He’s an affiliate marketer, a WordPress plugin author and he creates (paid) blogging courses. Despite the credentials, he doesn’t over-promote within this free course. You could tell from the tone that he’s genuine in sharing knowledge and experience instead of trying to up sell you.
What I Don’t Like
(1) Sometimes, lengthy tutorials can be confusing. Try reading more than two pages in a row and you’ll know what I mean. That’s not really the tutor’s fault; it’s just the way modern people engage with internet learning these days. If there’s a mixture of video tutorials, I think it might be easier for beginners to absorb a 5 minute information watching rather than reading the entire article.
(2) The course recommends using BlueHost for domain and hosting, which is a fairly reputable service provider, but there are a few caveats. First, their WordPress hosting services come in several packages and it’s difficult to choose one if you don’t know the language of web hosting. Often times, people would choose the cheapest plan, might not realized the limitations that come with it.
Secondly, I am surprised to learn that the pre-installed plugins offered by BlueHost doesn’t include a SEO plugin. For those who don’t know, search engine optimization (SEO) is a technique that you can implement to make your site more visible to the search engines and there are special plugins to help with this.
Without it, people would take forever to discover your blog. Tom did briefly mentioned on what SEO plugin to use, but he didn’t show how to set up one. I think this is such a huge disadvantage, especially for people who want to take blogging seriously. Considering that most SEO plugins are free, this could have been easily integrated on BlueHost or within the course details.
(3) This last point is what I feel that’s truly missing for a new blogger. Creating content is a big part of blogging and it’s more than just producing long articles. You need to know what you are writing and who you are writing for. That’s where niche and keyword research comes into play – two vital subjects that are not covered in this course which is a huge disappointment.
Even if you have a fully functional WordPress blog, without these types of content, it’s going to be very tricky to drive targeted audience to your site. Do you want a blog that doesn’t get any interested readers? I am pretty sure not.
My Overall Thoughts on Beginner Blogging
The Beginner Blogging course is one of the most elaborated free training where you can certainly learn a lot about setting up a website, but I did have a higher expectation for the content creation part. Considering Tom’s background in online entrepreneurship, I was hoping that he could show more details on how to profit with a blog.
Having said that, I feel that newbies are likely to have a better start with Wealthy Affiliate as their tutorials are more comprehensive, ranging from WordPress to building online traffic to your site.
Here are just some of the tools and resources that you can benefit from their program.
I hope you’ve found this review to be useful. If there are any questions or thoughts you have about starting a blog, please leave them in the comment below and I’ll be happy to help out.
You may also be interested to read;
Fizzle.co Review – What Is This Online Program All About
The Pros and Cons of The Starter Academy
What Can You Achieve With The Marketers Paradise Online Training
Now this is very neat: some place that provides training in making money online for free. But, I was always wondering how anyone could profit from a blog in a reasonable amount of time? Maybe I’ll find the answer to this question here, but, I never really pursued it, thinking that it would be lots of work with little to no financial return, thus, a huge waste of time.
But, I’m always willing to learn something new. Two critical things this course doesn’t seem to go into is monetizing the blog and bringing traffic to the blog, two issues that has frustrated me and kept me from really running full stream ahead; or, does this training course go into generating traffic and monetizing a blog? Does it go into this person’s experience and techniques for using a blog to make money?
Well, long tutorials can be a good, in my experience, as I’m a very mechanical learner. The trick is that it needs to be proceeding to the next step, in a logical fashion, and not assuming what the reader should not about certain topics. But, that’s just me, I learn better to more detailed and explicit the directions.
And speaking of an SEO program, again, does this course go into bringing traffic to your blog, because, based on the seven topics covered, I’d be wondering what was the purpose of an SEO plugin? Ok, I just got me answer, which is no, SEO plugins are not covered.
Hi Cathy, thanks for making a great blog dedicated to blogging for beginners. Wealthy Affiliate seems like a better option as the comparison chart clearly shows that the program offers more features. I am wondering though, how much would be the price for joining the Wealthy Affiliate program?
Thank you for your interest Amit. There’s a monthly and yearly fee to choose from. For more details, please head over to my Wealthy Affiliate review here.
Thanks for sharing. I used BlueHost once for my WordPress site hosting and I wasn’t a fan of it. Like you said, it doesn’t come with an SEO plugin which I think is a major downfall in my opinion.
Going through Wealthy Affiliate has been very beneficial for me. Since I’m already with their training, I don’t think I’m going to try Tom’s service for Beginner Blogging. While Tom seems like he offers a few benefits, I’m not sure if it’s totally worth it.
Tom’s 7 part tutorial, at first glance, had me very interested in giving it a shot. The fact that he goes into great detail on how to set-up a WordPress blog is extremely helpful. But, unfortunately, there is one thing that would prevent me from hitting the ‘join here’ option.
SEO plugin, I would hate to go without this essential choice. For a beginner blogger, I would most definitely expect a tutorial about the importance of search engine optimization.
What were your first thoughts about the SEO plugin?
Thank you for the helpful info.
Hi David,
I surely had my fair share of now knowing what SEO is all about when I first started blogging. But the classes at Wealthy Affiliate had me covered in the first phase of training and it was all set to go after that. Most who are not using this feature are probably not using WordPress or have no idea the importance of having one for building organic traffic online.