Over the last few weeks, I've been on a secret mission. I've been subscribing myself to many different e-courses to see which courses offer quality, valuable content for free, perfect for bloggers and business people alike, and which just aren't quite hitting the spot. Today, I'll be walking you through my experiences with 21 Day Brand Detox, Prepare Your Blog For Transformation, Boost Your Small Biz, Increasing Sales Through Social Media and Vision Clarity, how each of these course either helped or didn't help me, what kind of blogger they'd be perfect for, and how they could help you achieve great things. You don't want to miss this!
I would just like to mention that I'm not receiving any sort of commission, bonuses or special treatment for the featuring of these courses. All opinions are my own and they are provided with 100% honesty.
21 Day Brand Impressions Detox with Olyvia.co
This 21 Day Brand Impressions Detox was the first e-course I set my sites on when checking out which courses to give a shot. I liked the idea behind quick, easy to follow, daily emails giving short, but snappy instructions on how to seriously improve the look and feel of my brand to other people, rather than just myself, and it definitely made a difference to how I blog and brand myself online.
For 21 days, I received stylish, yet fun emails with clear, concise and easy to follow advice from Erika, every day different, and not at all epically scary. I was definitely afraid that I was dropping myself in the deep end, and I admit, I expected heavy content that might have intimidated me, but I was pleasantly surprised - this Brand Impressions Detox was nothing of the sort.
For me personally, the best days emails were Day 2, which focused on about pages, ditching insecurity and lack of authority and being much more active - something I was nailing 100% already which was great to know, Day 11, removing bad social media updates, something I SO needed to do, and Day 17, focusing on creating a brand style guide, something I'd been avoiding for a long time, but finally decided was worth the time.
Sure, there were some days when I thought the lesson itself was a little.. obvious to me, but generally, I found the course pretty interesting, and I know I'll be referring back to the course in the future when more of the content becomes relevant to my blogs future. It's definitely a great course, and I'd probably say it's better for bloggers who either want to become business people, or those who are a bit of both, but I wouldn't put bloggers off the course itself - it's definitely worth more than it's freebie price tag.
Transform Your Blog with AutumnLeavesBlog.co
Rebecca's e-course was one I stumbled across when it came to picking and choosing which ones to try out, and I admit, I wasn't really sure what the course would offer me in terms of my blogging future, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality information I was sent, although I do wish the course itself had been just a little longer - but bah, can we complain when you get a quality e-course for absolutely nothing in return? I'm not so sure we can, but either way, Prepare Your Blog for Transformation was pretty good, just not my favourite sadly. Boo..
Who is the course best catered then you ask? Well, I confess, I'm not 100% sure. I do think it's super great for bloggers looking to achieve more for themselves and for their growth, but the advice is also really easy to use in terms of growing your blog into a business, or wanting something more from your time. Rebecca's handy resources, her attention to detail and in depth lessons were really great, and yes, I knew bits and bobs already, I did definitely learn a thing or two I wouldn't have without.
I've been working a lot behind the scenes on content upgrades and creating goals, so days 3 and 4 were SO good for me personally. I love achieving things while helping others, but I never really had a firm grip on what it was I wanted to achieve, and why, but Prepare Your Blog really helped streamline the process and get me thinking about what I wanted to have done and where I want to be 3, 6, and 12 months from now. I'm always looking for ways to switch up my content too and revamp older posts, and content upgrades are such awesome ways to do this, and I was so pleased to find out through Rebecca that they can be so so simple and really easy to implement - without a doubt my favourite lessons during the course.
I do feel as though the e-course lacked a bit of fun and personality that other courses I experimented with had - something that felt more 'here's some advice' rather than some lessons, but that's probably my only unhappiness with the course itself. It was chock full of great tips, lots of tricks to get me thinking about my blog so much more than I had been previously, clearly a good thing people. It may not have the course I enjoyed most, but it definitely solidified my strong opinion that Rebecca and Autumn Leaves is awesome.
Boost Your Small Biz with KristaRae.co
Krista Rae is a new-to-me blog, and when I saw her freebie Boost Your Small Biz course, I was hesitant to give this one a shot. Why? Nellie and Co. is not a business, and although I do like to treat it as so from time to time, I wasn't sure that this course would offer me personally, enough to help me achieve greater things, but alas, I'm pleased to say that through her 8 days of emails, worksheets, tasks and quizzes, I definitely found this course to be super helpful.
You're probably thinking 'but Amanda, I'm not a business, and I don't treat my blog like a business, this course is no good for me' - but you're wrong. Sure, the course is catered to the more business minded bloggers, but Krista's detailed, in depth and super interesting insights, advice and experiences she included in her daily emails are so beneficial to bloggers just interested in keeping it cool, they were really some of the best I received throughout the entire experiment.
I love reading things on branding, whether that be defining it, improving it, selling it, or creating it, I love what I can learn and what I can do to make Nellie's brand so much better, and without a doubt, that was one of my favourite elements of this ecourse. I really enjoyed learning how to network a lot more too, how to create a solid homebase for myself and for followers to enjoy, and how I could start to invest in my blog in the future if the want ever came about, for now though, I'm content going freebie.
I definitely had to invest more time when it came to checking out Krista's emails, but this was not a bad thing whatsoever. I was so impressed by the amount of content, the depth she went into, and the care and attention to detail she put into each lesson. Every email could have been at least four posts worth of quality content - you can imagine how much time each of them would have taken to create - and I learnt something new through each and every one of them. Boost Your Small Biz is definitely worth checking out for bloggers interested in or on the business road, but it's also one bloggers alone should without a doubt be checking out. The quality is too good to miss.
Increase Sales Via Social Media with CaitlinBacher.com
I was extremely excited to get involved in Caitlin's freebie social media e-course because I do feel as though social media is something I want to improve upon. It may be my highest ranked channel for pageviews and new visitors, but you can improve upon everything, am I right? The sad truth is, as much as I quite enjoyed the course, and really love Caitlins content on her blog, I don't feel as though I learnt as much from this e-course as I did the others, and it also, at times, felt a little sales-y to me, something I'm not quite sure I liked all that much.
That's not to say that sales-y is a bad thing - of course, I appreciate that she had a great opportunity to target her readers and promote her course to people - after all, she was in my inbox, I can't blame her for that at all, I just felt as though a lot of the content hinged on eventually buying her product, at least in order to get the most out of it, and I didn't always like that because I'm not a big 'purchase' person. Her content was super great, and I did learn quite a bit more than I thought I would through them, and I've even managed to implement some the advice into my social media usage - it's worked, and so it should.
This course was on the shorter scale in comparison to some of the other courses, and the emails were quite snappy and short too - which absolutely was not a problem - but I never felt as though I really got into the details about a few elements (which obviously is why she featured her course quite a bit, makes a lot of sense!), but I did have a stand out day personally. Day 3 was probably my favourite in that it taught me a lot about targeting my audience and getting the content people want out there.
This definitely wasn't my favourite of the courses, either through experience or through the overall package, but it was a great source of content and her blog is awesome. It feels a lot more targeted towards people wanting to turn their blog into a business, or business minded-people already, but for those looking for quality, free content, this course is worth the 5 days worth of emails for sure.
Vision Clarity with TheAlishaNicole.com
TheAlishaNicole was a complete stumbleupon find when checking out other bloggers I thought I could learn a lot from, and surprise surprise, I have, and her Vision Clarity course has helped me in abundance. She focuses a lot more on making sure your blog is doing all the super good work for you and your continue to love what you do, motivate yourself and grow into something amazing, and she's a force to be reckoned with. Her course is nothing different - informative, easy-going and oh so chill, I learnt a lot and never felt out of place on her course.
The best part? It's so perfect for any blogger, hobby and business alike. The information available was crisp and clear, the emails were of an almost perfect length (great for reading on transport!) and were set out really well. Sometimes I felt as though the emails only went so far concerning depth and detail, but it is a free ecourse after all, so expecting all the information under the sun is being a little cheeky really, however, the emails and lessons themselves were really awesome, and are great to refer back to.
I really liked how Alisha went about her emails too. Each day was like a step on the vision ladder and each step only really made sense if you'd done the one before, making the whole process so much easier. I especially enjoyed Day 4 as it focused a lot on branding and how you appear to people. (Have you guessed by now what one of my favourite blog subjects is?!) Her content was really clear, extremely helpful and never felt unfinished or as though she was hiding loads of details. Sure, every day was a great day, but that day was by far my favourite.
I would never turn around and say that every blogger needs to find their 'sweet spot' or that they should be careful to sound the same on every platform, but a vision and a place you want to be is super important, and knowing the steps to getting their is just as too. Alisha's course is insightful, enjoyable, and oh so helpful, and it's a definite great start for bloggers looking for ways to make little tweaks to their blogging ladder so they can find themselves somewhere awesome.
Free e-courses can absolutely fabulous, not only for we who make the most of them, but also for bloggers who're thinking of getting ahead and offering something of value that few others bloggers do. I'm always looking for new and fantastic ecourse to try and learn from, and I'm always checking out new skills, new knowledge and new lessons I can introduce other people to too, so these courses are just what I look for. I would recommend these five courses without a doubt, and hopefully you'll give them a go!
However, a word of warning. Free e-courses will never require any personal details from you, such as credit or card details or your address. If you see a course asking for information like this, do not sign up! Free courses are just that - free, and the people behind them will never need anything more than your email address and your name, so please, be careful who you hand out details to. I've never seen courses asking for those types of details myself, but I don't doubt they exist.
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