Blogging e-courses, books and workshops for a better blog

Is one of your New Year’s resolutions to improve your blog? Or maybe start a blog from scratch?

If it is, you’re definitely not alone!

Many of us want to revamp and re-energise our blogs in the new year so I’ve put together a list of blogging workshops and e-courses to help. Even if you’re an experienced blogger, I think it’s a good idea to take a new course, learn a new skill or read a book to re-motivate yourself. You never know who you’re going to meet or what you will discover!

One of the only ways to keep growing, achieving and developing is to keep learning. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how busy you are or how successful you are, if you stop learning, you’re putting yourself on a path to disaster.

I’m not just talking about professional learning either. I’m talking about learning new skills and hobbies and trying new things for the first time.

Working for myself makes me even more motivated to take courses and learn new things. The world moves so quickly and when you’re not constantly surrounded by colleagues it could be easy to get left behind without even noticing.

Here are just a few of the blogging courses I’ve got my eye on. And, let’s face it, I’m actually just a bit of a geek and really miss uni. Any excuse for new stationary…

 

The Blogger Course – £125

Of course, the biggest and the best is The Blogger Course! This is my 12 week course and is for bloggers wanting to take the leap from hobby blogging into professional blogging. It’s about taking things one step further and is ultimately a guide to earning more money through your blog to enable you to blog full time.

 

 

BLOGSHOP – The Photoshop course for bloggers – £192

Whether you’re a blogger or not, this Photoshop course looks brilliant. I’ve read so many positive reviews and I’ve seen how bloggers have massively improved their photography once they’ve done the course.

I used to be kind of purist about photography and I thought editing photos was cheating. And then I realised everyone edits their photos and not editing them is just silly. You can do the course in person (mainly in the US) or online.

 

Travel Writing Workshop – £115

I’ve always wanted to take a travel writing workshop and I’m tempted by this one in central London. You can choose between a one-day course and evening classes.

 

Start Writing Fiction – Free

I signed up to this course earlier in the year but I didn’t get round to completing it. I’m not about to start writing novels but I find fiction writing really relaxing and I think any writing practice can help a blog.

 

DSLR Basics – £60

This is an e-course by the bloggers behind the hugely successful crafting and lifestyle blog, A Beautiful Mess. I find most photography guides to be so boring it’s difficult to follow but this one looks fun and inspirational.

 

Documentary Course – £350

This is an expensive one and takes place over 5 weeks so I’m just dreaming at the minute but this looks like a really interesting course. I’ve said it a million times now that I’m really interested in making videos for The Travel Hack and this looks like a great course to help.

I took the street photography course with City Academy and I really enjoyed it and I think you’d learn loads with a 5 week course.

 

Blog Bootcamp – £253

This blog bootcamp from Secret Blogger Business is one of the few blogging bootcamp courses that looks pretty good. I’m really wary about most of the courses because they’re often run by bloggers with tiny blogs which makes me suspicious.

Enrolment starts in April or May next year.

 

The Dextrous Diva 10 Day Blog Challenge – Free

I’ve actually done this challenge with Jo from Dextrous Diva. If you’re new to blogging or you’re struggling to find time to blog then I would definitely recommend this challenge. Each day for 10 days Jo will send you a little challenge. It won’t take you long, maybe half an hour, but the regular email contact will keep you on track. Experienced bloggers may not find so much value but as it’s free there is no harm in signing up.

 

How To Blog For Profit: Without Selling Your Soul – £7.07 or free with Kindle Unlimited

If you have Kindle Unlimited (it’s like Netflix for books and costs £7.99 a month with a 30-day free trial) you can download over 650,000 books, and hundreds of those are about blogging. The majority of them are a pile of shite but ‘How to Blog for Profit’ is a really good read. I’d recommend this for both beginners and intermediate bloggers looking to take their blog to that all important ‘next level’.

 

EPIC BLOG: One-Year Editorial Planner – £10.87

The Epic Blog planner helps you brainstorm ideas for new content but also helps you to set goals and stay on target to achieve them. It includes everything from a blogging business plan, progress reports, income reports, blog maintenance tasks and a weekly schedule. You could create your own planner using Word documents and Excel but I’m a big fan of this handy planner.

 

Are there any courses you’d like to take in 2015?