UPDATE: They’ve opened the doors again until Friday 5 December: Save $100
Elite Blog Academy has opened it’s doors at its introductory price of $299 until midnight on December 5th at which point it closes. Next time it becomes available it will cost $399.
It has been almost two years since I’ve found training for bloggers that I’ve considered good enough to promote as an affiliate.
I’m very fussy with who and what I promote (because there is so much hype and dubious practice in this space) but today have a recommendation for an authentic and valuable program that I know will help many ProBlogger readers.
The Short Story
The Elite Blog Academy is one of the most comprehensive blogging courses I’ve ever come across – and it’s available to enrol in with an early bird offer for just over 48 hours.
Check it out here
The Longer Story
Earlier this year after running a ProBlogger Training day in Portland I had opportunity to grab a coffee with Ruth Soukup.
Ruth shared with me the story of starting her blog Living Well Spending Less in 2010. Like us all she made her share of mistakes but persisted with it and struggled on and four years later has built a blog with over a million visitors a month that generates her a full time income.
I was really impressed with both Ruth’s success but also the clear and strategic she applied to her blogging.
Numerous times as she spoke I wanted to take notes as she’d been experimenting with techniques I’d not come across before – particularly around Pinterest and social media.
At the end of her story I remember thinking ‘I wish we could bottle what you’ve done and share it with ProBlogger readers’.
No sooner than I’d thought this Ruth slid across the table a white folder with an outline for her Elite Blog Academy course. Yep – she’d bottled it!
The Elite Blog Academy: Enrolments Close in 48 Hours
Ruth’s Elite Blog Academy is literally her stepping you through her process for building a profitable blog in 12 wonderfully crafted lessons. You can learn more about it here.
The course is delivered through 12 fantastic videos, 12 very detailed workbooks, 16 helpful handouts, 30 assignments, a series of 4 live webinars with Ruth an a private Facebook Group where you can interact with Ruth and other attendees.
This course is practical and actionable. Really meaty stuff.
Update: if you’d like to hear what others are saying about it, check out this post I did on Facebook where a couple of ProBlogger readers have already chimed in with their experiences of previously signing up to Ruth’s Academy.
This course is not designed for the faint of heart – it requires work (as does successful blogging) and a willingness to really buckle down. That said, for those who are willing to do the work, it also comes with a 100% money-back guarantee.
Anyone who completes the course and has not seen measurable results in both traffic and income growth will get your money back, no questions asked. That’s a pretty incredible promise, but it means that you’ve literally got nothing to lose.
If you are ready to finally take your blog to the next level, sign up now to secure your spot here
PS: as stated above – I am an affiliate for this product but do so having checked it out and genuinely recommending Ruth it’s creator and the program itself.
Update: What to Expect
A few people have been asking for more information on what’s in the units. Here’s what I just shared over on Facebook to give you some insight into what to expect:
1. Start with Awesome – Learn the secret to successful blogging and master the 3 steps to starting with awesome. Understand what makes YOUR blog unique (and therefore marketable), and create the framework for a powerful platform that gets results.
2. Content is King – Discover why the key to a successful, popular, and profitable blog starts with amazing content, master the four essential strategies for creating content that rocks, and learn exactly how to FOCUS™—the secret to creating a killer blog post every single time.
3. Presentation is Everything – Uncover the three visual areas every blogger must focus on in order to be successful and learn not only why Pinterest is the most powerful marketing tool ever created,
and how to harness that power through creating the Perfect Pin™.
4. Grow Your Platform – Learn how to increase, diversify, and stabilize your platform through eight proven strategic growth strategies. Develop the confidence to promote your core message with an authority that draws people in, master field-tested techniques for networking and collaboration, find out exactly how to grow your subscriber list, and discover why good SEO really isn’t as complicated as everyone makes it out to be.
5. Social Media & Viral Growth – Uncover the mysteries of capturing and retaining viral blog traffic through social media and learn to determine which social media platforms are most valuable for your own audience. Find out the ten crucial steps to take if your blog post goes viral, then create comprehensive marketing plans for both Facebook and Pinterest in order to develop a cohesive social media strategy that gets results.
After that it gets more into monetising through ad networks, affiliate sales, private advertising and creating products.
Lastly it gets into working smart/efficiently and being strategic to grow your business.
Thanks, will check it out.
And 200% money-back guarantee? That’s a first I’m hearing. Great way to market your product. Shows how confident you are about its effectiveness.
It is definitely a vote of confidence in her own work Salman – having seen it, it’s deserved.
The key is to make sure you’re going into this willing to apply what you learn.
I won’t be purchasing the course at this point, but you could you elaborate on the social media experiments she was doing?
Yep – there was some good success with Pinterest collaborative boards Jade.
To start a blog and prosper 4 years later with making money online full-time is an absolute blessing. Especially when you’re starting out from scratch and struggling with building a blog business from the ground floor up. I absolutely love hearing about her story on ProBlogger, because it inspires me to keep going the extra mile witn my site.
I’m pretty confident she experienced many nights sitting at her PC typing her blog posts away and creating “lots and lots of transformation blog content,” keeping her blog readers inspired. I just stop by her blog which looks like a coupon blog and has a lot of interesting coupons for blog readers to print out. Coupon blogging is one of the most profitable niches in the industry of affiliate Internet marketing. She made the right choice by getting into this kind of business and continuing the journey of doing the transformation entrepreneurial work at full strength.
Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn or all best social media marketing mediums no blogger or Internet marketers should ignore. If you call yourself an Internet marketer and don’t use the aforementioned social networks to promote yourself effectively, you’re pretty much a stock flop.
I just checked out her Alexa rank and Google page rank as well as domain age. I’m very proud of her for hanging in there and continuing the journey of doing the transformation work faithfully as a female entrepreneur. It’s inspiring me to continue my journey as an Internet entrepreneur of creating quality content and building and sustaining meaningful relationships with people on social networks and readers from across the web.
Darren, thank you for sharing this inspiring blog post about this inspiring coupon blogger build her business from zero and is now potentially an Internet millionaire.
Sounds great, but still trying to decide if this would be much different to what was presented at Problogger. Decisions decisions.
I’ve been on the fence about this course since I read about it a few weeks back. Still thinking….
Ruth’s story is really inspiring. Will definitely check the details on EliteBlogAcademy. 200% money back is something I heard first time!
I tried to sign up and entered my PayPal details – then while the payment was processing the screen froze. I can’t see any contact details on the site – please advise what to do next!
That happened to me too! I can’t remember whether I refreshed the sales page or what I did, but when I went to re-buy, the details had already been filled in. I think it had something to do with my computer blocking pop-ups, but it ended up working. I saw there had been no money taken from PayPal so I went ahead and tried it again.
Carolyn – there have been a few people having issues today. I’ve passed details onto Ruth and her team.
I have had one person say that they had the issue on their mobile device but when they switched to their computer they were able to make the payment. Hoping it works for you!
I am currently enrolled in this program and have to agree. This is the best blogging program I have purchased to date. Ruth offers honest, authentic blogging tactics and not here-today-gone-tomorrow gimmicks. I’m super pleased with my purchase and am already seeing results from her marketing schedule.
thanks for the feedback Angie – I’ve heard nothing but good things from those enrolled, appreciate your feedback!
It does look good Darren. I am sort of wary of blogger training programs as they often just rehash the same old stuff -but this does actually look like it could be well worth looking at in more detail.
Kostas – there would certainly be some elements of this course that anyone who has been blogging for a while would be familiar with – but there’s also a real freshness about it too. Hope you find it useful!
Quick question for either Darren (or Ruth). Would you say that this class is geared to the beginner blogger looking to start or the mid-sized, established blogger looking to take their site to the next level?
I find it hard to believe that it could be both…
I’m not really interested in a beginner class, but might be interested in getting help and collaboration taking my blog from mid-sized food blog (300Kish views/month) to the next level.
Thanks!
I think it’s relevant to both in different ways – a beginner will get some good techniques on the content and finding readers side of things and will get some good teaching on how to monetize it in the longer term in the monetization units. While monetization might not be relevant for beginners to apply immediately it is good for them to see where things might be headed).
The more intermediate blogger will get some good refreshers on the content side of things but also learn from Ruth on the finding readers (I found her stuff on Pinterest particularly good and new to me even as a blogger who has been at it 12 years). The monetization stuff is probably more for those who’ve been at it a while and want to take it up a notch.
Thanks for the reply Darren. I’m in. I think I need to take the plunge into Pinterest…
All I would add is that there’s some good feedback on our Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/problogger/posts/10150614067339945 from those who’ve enrolled.
This comment from Rachael Holland might be relevant:
“I’m in the course and there are many levels of bloggers in it. There are those who are just starting out (even a few without blogs yet), and then there are those who are already making a full-time income with blogging. There is definitely great info for everyone!”
thank you!!
I enrolled in this last week after seeing someone else write about it and I’m completely inspired by it.
I’ve been blogging a year on a small blog that never went anywhere but what I’m learning here has given me the inspiration and more importantly the practical way forward to completely reinvent what I’m doing.
I’m currently giving my blog a complete overhaul (which is why I wont link to it here as it isn’t ready yet) and this course was just what I needed to get it done right!
Thanks for sharing that Barb – looks like it’s helping a lot of people.
I’m one of the ones having a problem with payment. Got a Paypal receipt but nothing else has come through. Hoping you’ll see this to rectify problem – can’t wait to get started.
Hi Melissa – could you email me at [email protected] and I’ll pass it onto Ruth and her team.
Interesting. Trying to decide if this would be the best to what was presented here.
Hey there!
I was trying to sign up, and when I came back to it, it says that it is closed. Is there anyway I can sign up?
Great article. This is the most effective way to know and learn on how to improve your business. This will be very useful and helpful for bloggers. Read and understand the article and you will get a brilliant idea. Thanks for sharing this article. I will share this information with my friends. Very informative.
First time I hear about this blog training program, will check it out now.
Content is KING, SearchMetrics last study revealed that, on page seo 2nd ranking factor and 3rd ranking factor is backlinks.
Hi Darren I checked out Ruth site only on the basis of your reccomendation. If you think is a good program thats good enough for me. I have been on Ruths page and have read all about the program and it sounds like just what I need. I have recently resigned from the ‘day job’ and will soon be able to pursue my web site and blog full time. I am both exited and terrified. I will deffinately be doing Ruth program.