Professional Blogging Courses: Why We Buy and Abort Them

Are you working yourself off in taking heaps of professional blogging courses, all not working out? Are you frustrated, because you simply can’t manage to achieve the results these training programs claim to be a fool-proof no-brainer?

Well, you are in good company… Most people who try to make money from blogging undergo exactly the same experiences. I know, cause I’ve been there myself.

In my early blogging days I virtually “inhaled” tons of training. I call that the “roller coaster” period of my blogging life: On top of the world with every new training resource I declared to be my final savior – down in the dumps with every program (again) not leading me to the promised land…

But what is it that we often find ourselves in this endless loop of buying and then aborting all these resources? Are all the classes a flash in the pan? Or are we all just too stupid to apply the guidance we consume?

This post is made to entirely answer these questions. The answers are based on a discovery I made and had my final blogging breakthrough with (You can read my full story here: How I Started To Really Make Money From Blogging). That discovery refers to one big (and not at all complicated) AHA moment that changed (not only) my life, so to speak.

Most bloggers, especially starters, are not aware of this little but powerful aspect. That’s why I want to share it with you in the following, so you can leave out some common struggles along your blogging way.

But before we go into details I want to take the pressure off you: Not all the training you find for blogging is useless! Actually, there are plenty of excellent resources to learn from.

If you’ve already bought several blog training courses, chances are, there are some valuable resources among them and you haven’t wasted all your money. (In the next post of this series I will help you to spot good training resources.)

And, to give you even more relief: Success in blogging business is not about a certain level of intellect you have to bring in. This might sound confusing, but for the execution of your blogging success, a very high level of intellect can even be a millstone sometimes (I will go into that later.)

What really hinders you making one of these blogging training courses work, is a certain trigger that comes along with almost every training product. This trigger leads to two very contrary reactions:

1. Firstly: We strongly want to buy that product.
2. Secondly: Once we have it, we want to see it fail.

What kind of trigger can cause this weird behavior? That’s what we look at now!

 

A certain trigger messing up your subconsciousness (and your progress)

To expose this trigger you have to take a close look at what exactly makes you desire and finally buy a product. Look back to the moments you decided to buy a training program. What triggered your final buying decision? Most likely, the products you bought were promoted with several features, benefits and outcomes you will get as its user.

Of course, you check the product creator’s credibility and if there is enough proof for his success bringing concept. But the final reasons why you take action and buy a training are the promises and expectations attached to that particular product.

Tangible benefits like “A blogging success formula that lifts your monthly income to a 5-figure level.“ or “A blog traffic strategy leading to 1.000 targeted daily visitors.” are good examples for these triggers.

By nature, we seek for solutions (training) delivering tangible results. This mostly happens within our subconsciousness. So if you say “these promises products make don’t have impact on my buying behavior” (what I once claimed for myself a lot!), you may can state that about your conscious behavior. Your subconsciousness, though, reacts on these result driven promotions, whether you like it or not!

To sum it up: We buy training products for the promises and expectations (triggers) they stand for. Unfortunately, these promises and expectations are exactly what we stumble over: We desire them the most but actively hinder them to become reality.

What a muddleheaded species bloggers are, right?

…Please don’t blame yourself. It’s your subconsciousness leading to this weirdo behavior. Your mind is getting something very wrong and I tell you what it is now!

 

The “too good to be true” syndrome

Why does a statement like “This blogging training course teaches you to make a five figure income working less than 4 hours a day“ turn our world upside down and hogtie us?

Because, we desperately want it to be(come) true. It announces such an overwhelming AWESOME outcome that we go nuts over it. We are downright obsessed by the expectations caused by that statement.

Having found a formula or resource that almost guarantees to make a five figure income from blogging working less than 4 hours a day is the ultimate dream come true and simply UNBELIEVABLE!

Yes, it is something we full heartedly want… but DON’T BELIEVE IN.

And this is the paradox part of the “found the ultimate course” dream we go to bed with. We are happy to join the members club of that resource but can’t stop asking ourselves “how on earth does this program make the impossible possible?”.

All this stunned “it’s unbelievable!” thinking reverts our expectations into implementing a habit of doubting the outcome of that ultimate program. Our disbelief starts a never ending process of digging for proof that the program doesn’t keep its promises.

Instead of “eating” all the tips and value provided by the training, we constantly lie in ambush to detect its discrepancies, errors and flaws.

No doubt, we are very busy with the programs we buy. But it’s not a constructive, fruitful kind of being busy with them. We are not working with the training. We are working against it. We are not busy in learning and applying the training. We are busy in judging it (before we really tried it).

All our energy is carried away from working step-by-step towards a REACHABLE goal with rewarding small and big accomplishments along our way to this final goal.

 

Scientifically: all the good vibes killed by 2 parts of your brain

The really bad thing about all this going on is that we don’t really see through this game of our mind. All we realize is that we are desperately trying to apply the training but it just doesn’t work out.

In reality, though, there are 2 very contrary parts of our brain fighting each other:

The first one is the part of your brain you consciously have no bearing on. It’s called the limbic system, controlling big parts of our subconsciousness. This system is all about our desires, dreams and all other emotions we tend to dismiss. Other than we like to admit, though, the limbic system has HUGE impact on our behavior.

The second involved part of your brain is the center for rational thinking. It’s responsible for our “cost-benefit-analysis” thoughts. While the limbic system can catapult our heads in the clouds, the rational part brings us back down to earth.

And this is exactly the fight between them: While the limbic system celebrates the “five figure income working less than 4 hours per day”, the rational center alerts “this is impossible, I’ll show you why!”.

The fact that you bought the product is a victory of your limbic system. The fact that you can’t apply it is your rational system disturbing you.

Your rational brain section backfires critical statements to your limbic system, which converts these into destructive emotions and behavior. It’s like an unsolved arithmetic problem the rational part wants to solve. It keeps on saying “this doesn’t work out” until the limbic system gives in and the case can be closed.

And all the while these two parties argue, our doubts get good company from fear of failure, we “work” unfocused, are easily distracted and in the lack of some good progress our overall motivation and performance hits ground zero.

All you need is going through one or two training programs with this negative spiral procedure working in the background. Then you have installed destructive habits strong enough to make all your future training a guaranteed failure.

You may have heard it before – negative events don’t only spread much better in the news, they also love to occupy the most prominent spots in our memory to sum up stronger with new negative experiences, faster than you can say STOP!

 

Better stay away from products that trigger expectations?

Now that you know how triggers take strong impact on your behavior, you might think it’s best to give offers using triggers a wide berth.

Depending on how long you are exploring blogging universe, you may already feel overexposed to products and courses promoted with more or less bold statements. We all know that blogging business, as part of the hyped “make money online” niche, is a scam mined field. Maybe you even have come to the conclusion that all the promises coaches and marketers make about their training products are all the same nothing but hot air.

This conclusion, though, is wrong. In fact, you find pretty bold statements of highly reputable, successful coaches about the training they offer. But: They provide training products that keep their promises. Some of them even over-deliver the ambitious benefits and outcomes they stand for.

You simply have to accept that both, the good and the bad resources (which you always find plenty of in online business), are working with triggers. Your job is to pick the good sources and turn off the paralyzing doubts your mind creates about “too good to be true” triggers.

 

How to really achieve the promised results of professional blogging courses

I could imagine you feel a bit overwhelmed with all I told you about triggers and your mind going wild. Many of the things I described above happen behind the scenes of your awareness. That’s why most people fail and never realize why.

The typical process of this failure is that, once your mindset activates its negative spiral, you lose focus and your day-to-day work on your blogging business is made of interruptions. This leads to most people not following through the training.

This is crucial: Most people who fail don’t finish the step-by-step training they buy. Once their doubts gained the upper hand, they skip the training and reach out for other, more promising resources. They buy new training programs, but soon prove them “not working” again… and again.

FINISHING the training is the first ultimate step to change course from failure to success. It’s all about “maintaining operations” and following through, no matter what tricks your mindset wants to play on you along the way.

I call this activating your finisher mode in one of my training products (Finisher Mode For Bloggers) and it’s absolutely amazing how bloggers start to smoothly execute their success, once they have found and turned on this mode.

This post has been all about analyzing the reasons why most bloggers can’t succeed with the blogging training programs they buy.

The next post of this series (How to Finally Succeed with the Training You Take) is all about how to solve the problems we have located. I will give you guidance to spot reliable training resources so you can, once for all, eliminate the endless “better training to come” search loop. And I will tell you more about how to activate your finisher mode and cut off doubts, fears and other interruptions from your active, result driven behavior.

I’d love to hear about your individual experiences with taking blogging courses, please share your thoughts in the comments below! And if you have questions or need help, just drop me a note below and I am more than happy to help you out!

To your very blogging success,

Vera