Over the last few days I’ve been watching a series of blogs by Jon Symons called RealBlogVideos (aff) that he’s put together to help new WordPress.org users set up their blogs – I suspect quite a few readers will find them useful (note: not everyone will – so read on and I’ll tell you who they’re for and who they are not for).
Jon makes his living from blogging on blogs like Art of Money and is a regular here at ProBlogger.
The videos cost $15 (US) to buy but for that you get 5 main videos and 3 bonus ones (a total of 162 minutes of instruction).
The main videos are on :
- Find Keywords for Your Topic & Domain Name Research
- Register a Domain Name
- Sign up for and Configure a Hosting Account
- Install a WordPress Blog, Add a Theme and Do the First Post
- Configure Your Blog for Security & Do a Backup
Bonus Videos
- Blogging Copy & Paste Tip
- How To Install WordPress Manually
- How To Install WordPress On Dreamhost
What are the videos like?
You can see from Jon’s sales page a sample of one of the videos that will give you an idea of what you’ll be buying. Here’s a few comments:
- Production Quality – the production of these videos is not super high. There were a number of times I wished Jon had done some more editing but other times where I appreciated the rawness of them as it showed me how a real person’s workflow is.
- Usability – Jon is pretty good at putting technical things into a language that most people will be able to follow.
- Usefulness – depending upon your level of expertise (see below) – these videos are quite helpful and useful on the topics you see above. If I’d been given these videos two years ago I would have lapped them up as I’m a visual person and find reading these types of more technical instructions more difficult to follow. Seeing someone else do it is how I learn best.
- Value for Money – I think $15 for two and a half hours of tuition is worthwhile. If you don’t agree once you’ve seen them Jon does offer a 100% guarantee.
So who are these videos for?
I’ve mentioned above that they are not for everyone but that they will be helpful for some readers.
New bloggers who have never had a blog will find them useful as will bloggers who have been using a hosted blog service (like Blogger.com, TypePad, WordPress.com) who want to get their own domain and hosting to give themselves complete control over their blogs.
Who are they Not for?
Bloggers who are confident at setting up a WP blog, registering for a domain, organizing hosting etc will not learn a lot from these videos. Having said this – I actually did learn a few things about it even though I’d set up a few WP blogs now (keep in mind that the technical side of blogging is not my strength).
These are not advanced videos and they don’t coontain unique or exclusive information (it’s all floating around the web already in different forms) but they are helpful if you’re at the beginning of your blogging journey. If you’re at that point you can buy them via RealBlogVideos.
