In the previous post of this series, we took a revealing look at the painful truth that only the fewest bloggers manage to achieve the results they expect from the online entrepreneur classes they take.
Within that post, I also shared a powerful discovery I made for my own blogging breakthrough and still only very few people know about. It mainly refers to certain triggers our minds receive and somehow misinterpret, which leads to failure on autopilot, even if you are very serious in trying to succeed.
If you haven’t read it yet, I strongly recommend catching up on it before you move on. You find it here: Professional Blogging Courses: Why We Buy And Abort Them.
Before we leave all the asking why about failure of the previous post behind, there is one WHY I quickly want to recap:
Why you have to stop chasing for the ultimate blogging training now!
Blogging business itself is a very complex thing to learn. Being in permanent search mode for helpful tutorials, programs and courses is sort of nature of the beast here.
With every new skill source, we store in our huge “knowledge-bookmark-directories”… we think to gain more assurance about what’s right to do. But this information overload leads exactly to the opposite:
We get stuck by overwhelming and confusion. And once the amount of resources we collected is big enough, the day will come where at least two of them recommend conflicting strategies, leaving us perfectly paralyzed.
But that’s not all the trouble: Your always on search mode gets additionally propelled by certain triggers attached to almost every training offer you feel attracted by. These triggers (unintentionally) make you dig for even more sources you increasingly judge all not working (we extensively examined that in the previous post).
This unfruitful process goes on and on while what really would help you grow your business – applying and executing one lesson after another – is not taking place. You are busy with screening resources, instead of applying them…
It’s quite obvious that we have to stop this highly stressful endless loop ASAP! And here comes the relief part of this episode: From now on, with what I’m going to teach you, you can picture your journey to blogging success like this:
You will select training resources definitely delivering the goods. Your working through a training will not be accompanied with chasing for other, better resources anymore. You will dive into the courses and apply them with growing effective routine. Your learning and executing will be made of one sense of achievement after another, making you even more confident about the training you chose and you performing great in it. Your belief in the profits you are going to generate from your blog finds its all-time peak. And finally, you will see these profits of your successful blogging efforts happen for real.
Sounds great? Believe it! Now let’s take the steps needed to make this dream become reality!
It all starts with specifying your blogging business model!
This is your first drastic action against overwhelm and paralysis: Make the streams of overwhelm smaller by specification. By that I mean you should first decide what blogging business model you want to go for to then search for training focused on that (and only that!) business model.
Successful blogging can be done in many ways. You can do great in affiliate marketing or create and market your own digital products. You can also create your own online courses, or even build a fully fledged membership site. (Find more details about awesome blogging business models here: 5 Best Online Entrepreneur Business Ideas.
And with your growing expertise, you can even start to combine some of these business models some day, to lift your business to the next level.
In the beginning of your blogging career, however, you are well advised to focus all your learning (and applying!) on only one model, until you make it a profitable business.
This means, if you want to start out with affiliate marketing, don’t distract yourself with consuming lessons on creating digital products. Learning affiliate marketing is a huge mission.
Without good guidance you can easily get lost in information overload, only focusing on affiliate marketing. So don’t make things doomed to fail by trying to multitask-learn several models at the same time. I see many starters making this mistake over and over again. They want it all pronto and finally end up in giving up.
Take your time to explore the different business models and match them with your goals and individual strengths. Then pick the best suiting model and dive into it!
How to spot training courses that work (so you can stop chasing for more)
Now that you know what model you want to apply for your future blogging success, you can move on to pick proper training you can stick to.
Although blogging business is probably the most value oriented community within big online business, the training offers you find for blogging are very much contaminated with dubious offers.
It’s the scam business we all know from internet marketing, not sparing our holy blogging world. And whether we like it or not, these so called gurus are very successful in luring new bloggers into their ripp off schemes.
Maybe you already have been scammed too (don’t blame yourself, this happens to thousands of starters every day) or were lucky to expose a scam just in time before buying it.
Howsoever, the more low-quality products you spot along your way, the more suspicious you become. This quickly can lead to questioning all training resources in general (and therefore, missing out the good stuff).
The only thing that helps against this is setting up some kind of “valuation system” so you can confidently divide the good from the bad resources. Only by that your time-consuming pondering about “is it worth trying?” will become history.
The legit and helpful training programs share some strong common attributes. You can easily spot them by asking the following questions:
- What information about the creator of the product can you find online? Does that person have a “tangible” authority website / blog with a visible, strong profile?
- Does the creators blog provide lots of information about his own story and the products he offers?
- Does that person have existing social media profiles pointing you to his authority blog?
- Are the testimonials real people or just fake profiles with no reference to existing blogs?
- Do you receive valuable information after joining the creators email newsletter or is every email only about hard selling on you?
- Are there other marketers recommending the training? Do these marketers have a transparent, tangible online profile (authority blog) too?
- Is the product promotion upfront with “some work to come” or is it all about getting rich quick with no skills needed (scam alert!)?
- Are there many scam reviews and complaints about that product popping up along your online research (scam alert!)?
- Do you get response when sending a query to the support account?
- Do you get a detailed preview of what’s to expect inside the training?
Make use of this checklist for all the training you want to put on the shortlist, and you are on the safe side. If you still feel insecure about a course program, leave me a message below, maybe I know about it and can help you with some advice.
Don’t know where exactly to start searching for good training?
Knowing how to leave out the scams is a huge step towards finding the ultimate source of knowledge for you.
However, very fresh starters often feel at a loss where to start and stop searching for good training. If that’s you, I recommend you first get familiar with blogging in general, to then search in more specific terms in the next step:
1. Do some generic research
Try to deeply dive into everything you find about building money making blogs (with no limitations or rules for your searching process). This is all about becoming familiar with your new business environment and it’s own terms and lingo.
This intense research phase not only helps you getting an overview about all the subtopics that need to be covered for your blog building. As a side effect, it also points you to blogging celebrities very much worth to follow.
2. Do some specific research
Now try to avoid generic search terms like “professional blogging courses” or “blogging training classes”. Instead, try to be more specific. Search terms like “generate blog traffic” or “how to create good blog content” or “how to create a podcast” or “how to create information products”. These phrases can quickly lead you to some excellent mentors and their programs on the first pages of the search results.
With every new training you find, there are mainly 2 things you have to check: First, make a validation if it’s a legit program (with the checklist above) and then check if it’s suiting the blogging business model you have chosen. If it’s for a different model than you want to start it, skip it (or if you are immune against distractions, bookmark it for the future).
If you can’t wait to find some true blogging celebrities to learn from, check this small selection of mentors that offer excellent help:
– Yaro Starak from Entrepreneurs-Journey.com
– Ramit Sethi from iwillteachyoutoberich.com
– Pat Flynn from smartpassiveincome.com
– David Siteman Garland from therisetothetop.com
– Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.net
– Neil Patel from quicksprout.com
– Jeff Bullas from jeffbullas.com
– Brian Clark from copyblogger.com
It’s absolutely worthwhile inhaling all the advice these celebs share on their blogs. Some of them may not have own training programs, but they often recommend highly reputable courses of their peers you can trust right away.
Beware that the process of finding good mentors and their course offers is not something done overnight. Hasty decision-making is no good way to go here. At the same time, getting lost in research mode without finally stepping into a promising training should be avoided by all means too!
If you are not sure if a particular program suits you well, go and find some students who already participated in it. Or ask one of the blogging experts you detect along your way. Or just drop me a note and I will come back to you.
Collect many solo training products or go for comprehensive all-in-one programs?
I have been very spoiled with the comprehensive course programs I took. Having all you could possibly need in one spot popping up at the right stage of your progress is simply awesome and very time saving.
But, you don’t forcingly have to choose the comprehensive all-in-one solution for blogging. If you find training products that address only one aspect of blogging skills, that’s okay.
For instance, you can take a solo course for writing outstanding content, another one for generating targeted traffic, another one for marketing your blog, etc. Just make sure you cover each topic with only one training, to prevent you from confusion.
However, the huge advantage of a comprehensive all-in-one solution is that it not only shows you what steps to do but also in what order they are best taken. You get all the knowledge you need in one place and with a detailed road map for applying it step-by-step.
In a wealth of blogging skills and tasks to manage, this very detailed schedule can protect you from feeling puzzled. You are taken by the hand, what really can boost your progress. If you want to take the fastest way to see first results of your blogging efforts, this kind of one-hits-it-all solution will definitely suit you best.
How to stick to the online entrepreneur classes you spotted
Phew, this was a long one about picking proper training! But since the selection process is a very tricky thing often leaving newbies stuck, I really wanted to make sure you get detailed guidance for finding your best matching resources.
Once you have picked a program, you can move on to the final and most important step:
Starting to learn and apply the training and not stopping to follow through it until you reached the end of the program.
Doesn’t sound like rocket science, right? Well, it is no rocket science to start and finish a training with focused execution of tasks. All the same, most bloggers fail exactly in doing this.
Good news is, with all we discussed up to this point, you will not join the failing masses. You are well equipped now to make a training, hence your blogging success work:
You know how to follow a selection process that almost guarantees you picking excellent resources. You may not trust it yet, but the training you choose will deliver the goods. Period.
What about the doubts and fears still coming from your mind?
Remember the negative loop your mindset wants to lay on every training you try to follow? We discussed it in the previous post of this series (you can find it here)
Just because you have all reason to be calm and confident with the courses you choose doesn’t mean your mindset gives in and stops flooding destructions over you. Mindsets like to operate like automated programs. They establish strong and very resistant habits that can not be changed just by a great moment of self-awareness.
To really change your mindset for the better you have to strictly follow a specific set of actions over and over again. It takes several weeks or month of persistent work. (I do this within my BloggingMastermindSet Course, where my students learn to completely reset their mindset to set it up all new and combine it with unbeaten effectivity hacks, perfectly suited for executing smart blogging success.)
However, at this stage of your journey, we simply want to outsmart your mindset. All we want is you moving forward, no matter what struggles your naysayer mindset wants to blow up.
And to do this, you simply have to consequently ignore the whiner in your head. This happens by cutting off your behavior from your thoughts and emotions. Whatever noise your mind creates (and it will desperately try to annoy you), never let it have any impact on you doing what you have to do in the training.
All your active behavior should be focused on absorbing the lessons you take and executing all the tasks the trainer is asking from you. Find tasks not really worth doing? Do them anyway. Find a task too challenging? Even if your fear is trying to eat you, do it anyway.
Tell your mind “You can tell me anything, I won’t listen to you, got work to do, got results to generate. I’m too busy to pay attention to your nagging.”
Simply aim for being the king of checklists checked! You will see, accomplishments will come in more frequently and in a growing extent. You now really do pure business and you get used to meeting your goals. In this new working mode, you will complete the training with the results expected.
And whenever you decide to take another course (not before finishing the first one!), you will make it a surefire success too. And if you master to apply the skills needed, you will also master tricky blogging business! Remember: More than 95% of Bloggers Fail. Your route has left this trail of failure now!
Are you discouraged by all the harm your mindset can put on your actions? I know. But, don’t let that little monster make you resignate from online business! At this stage, the most important thing for you to do is to follow through the process of building your business. Hence, learning, applying and finishing one step after another, no matter what destructions your mind fires at you.
With Finisher Mode for Bloggers (update coming soon!), I have created a step-by-step guide that shows you exactly how to set up and maintain this crucial, undisturbable working mode. If you want to focus on doing your business instead of being sidelined by the threats of your mindset all the time, this guide is your ultimate hack.
Coming up next: some real stuff
In the next post of this sequence, we go into a real case study so you can see what happens with your progress once you start to win out over the tricks your mindset wants to play on you. It’s powerful knowledge in action and all you have to do is applying it to your business too!
Now it’s your turn, I would love to hear about your progress in training selection / execution! Do you need help or feedback on a certain program you consider taking? Please leave your questions in the comments below, I am more than happy to help you!
To your very blogging success,
Vera
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