28. Let’s Pay Less: Do I Need to Pay for a Blogging Course?

Stephanie 0:00

In the days where you can find an online course to learn pretty much anything, there can be a lot of temptation to open your wallet and buy a course that will solve each and every one of your blogging woes. But is that the right move for your business right now? Let's chat about it.

Stephanie 0:19

Hey there, teacher business owner. It's time to give your bank account a break and pause that ad campaign. I'm your host, Stephanie Royer, and I'm going to show you how to pay less for traffic.

Stephanie 0:30

Welcome back to the podcast. If you have been celebrating this holiday season, I hope it's been a wonderful time of year for you and your loved ones. Now, not only is this the last Saturday of the month, it's the last Saturday of 2024 and that means it's time for another installment of the Let's pay less series where we analyze popular budget busters to see if they should be a part of your marketing strategy or if it's something you should skip. I do want to start off with just a little disclaimer, so you can see from the title of this episode that we are talking about whether or not you should pay for a blogging course, and I have a blogging course, but I don't want you to worry, because this is not going to be a 15 minute pitch for bring your own traffic. I genuinely want to walk you through the pros and cons of blogging courses in general. I hope that this will give you some important food for thought as you make plans for your marketing dollars in 2025 so let's just dive right in. There are three questions that I think you should ask yourself when it comes to a blogging course.

Stephanie 1:45

And the first question will probably sound familiar, and that is, will this course help me reach my current goal? So if you remember from Episode 26 that little arcade quarter analogy that I shared. Well, I want you to think about whether a blogging course is that arcade game that's right in front of you right now, or is a blogging course something that you're throwing a quarter at from across the room and hoping that it will solve your problems. But when it comes to blogging courses, this decision can be a little bit tricky because courses, in general, cover a lot of different topics, and there are a lot of important things that you can learn in a course. And so it just seems obvious, well, I want to get more results from my blog, so I should take a course that teaches me how to blog. And so that's why I wanted to bring up that arcade analogy again, that it might not be the exact right time, that maybe you can get started with your blogging journey and discover where your hiccups are in your blogging workflow, and then you'll be able to better select a course that fits those needs that you're having.

Stephanie 3:09

So if you've asked yourself that first question and you've determined the answer is yes, the course is the next best step for your goal, then you're ready to move on to the next question, and that is, do I have the time to take and implement a course? So many course creators focus on how long it will take to just get through their course. They'll say things like, learn my strategies over the weekend, or in just five hours of video, you'll learn everything you need to know. And yes, it is very helpful to know how much content is in a course, and it's helpful to get a general idea of how long it will take to just get through the content, but you also need to take into consideration how long it will take you to actually implement what you're learning. Because I don't know about you, but when I'm watching a video that shows me how to do something, I'm pausing it every step of the way and working through it. And so it's not just hit the play button and let it fly and then magically you know how to blog. You've got to give yourself room in your schedule to implement everything you're learning. So before you purchase a course, I would suggest that you already have your blogging window already set aside in your weekly work schedule, and so this would be the time that you are planning to write blog content and to work on your website. And so then when you do purchase a course, you have a window of time already where you can be taking the course and then implementing what you're learning. And then once you're done with the course, then that will just naturally transition back into your regular blogging efforts. Because, as we all know, a blogging course isn't going to magically give you more time for blogging. If you don't have room in your schedule to write a blog post right now, a blogging course is not going to solve that problem for you. I wish it could, but it won't, and so just make sure that you've just taken a long, hard look at your capacity before you commit to a blogging course.

Stephanie 5:34

Sometimes you'll find that a course is the next best move for your business, but you feel like you don't necessarily have the time to take or implement the course, and so in this case, you need to ask yourself another question. Is a knowledge gap preventing me from moving forward, and will a course, help me close that knowledge gap more efficiently, because the fact of the matter is that you can find anything you need to know about blogging for free somewhere online that information exists. You know, you have this expert over here with a free training on topic x, and this expert over here, they have a free ebook on topic y, and then there's the expert who's hosting a free webinar on topic Z next Friday. And the reason I know this is because I have been the freebie collector. I get it, but there comes a point when it might be more advantageous for you to just pay for a course that streamlines everything you need to know into one tidy solution. Your time would be better spent moving on with a clear and cohesive roadmap, instead of trying to build a blogging workflow with one free puzzle piece at a time, because when those puzzle pieces are gathered from different sources, it can be hard to get them all to fit together into one cohesive workflow. In blogging, there's this delicate balance between moving forward with the knowledge you have and just doing your best and then knowing enough so that you don't have to go back and fix everything you do later on down the road. Because no one likes to feel like they're wasting time. They want to do it well from the beginning so that they don't have to backtrack. And so if you feel like you're not ready to move forward with your blogging efforts until you've had a chance to close a knowledge gap of some kind, then it might be time to invest in a course. Because I know that time is limited, and it can feel like you don't have the time to take a course, but if you think about all of the time that it could save you in the long run, because you're not trying to chase down all of the free information that exists on the internet about blogging, instead, you can get in, get out, learn what you need to do and move on with a really good blogging workflow.

Stephanie 8:25

As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I do have a blogging course called Bring Your Own traffic, but I don't think it's the next best step for every teacher business owner out there, you definitely need to ask yourself these three questions before adding even my course to your cart. But I did want to take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about it, just to see if it would be a good fit for your traffic goals in 2025. So I designed BYOT when I realized that there was a need to help teacher business owners with just the big picture of their blogging workflows, from finding topics that people are actually looking for to writing a high quality blog post that will convert to sales and then marketing that post on Pinterest. Now there are excellent resources out there that talk about some of these topics individually, but I've found that it really is essential to treat blogging SEO and Pinterest as one cohesive workflow. And so this is why I only blog for clients in a package that includes blogging SEO and Pinterest, because I have seen firsthand how outsourcing each step of the blogging workflow can actually dilute the effectiveness of it. And so in order to give my clients the best transformation possible, that's why I treat it as one cohesive package. And so I wanted to do the same thing for busy teacher business owners who don't want to hire blogging help. Right now, I wanted them to be able to create an efficient and effective blogging workflow so that they could see results from their efforts as soon as possible.

If you've listened to this episode and you're starting to feel like it's it might be time for a blogging course I would love to help. Just head over to stephanieroyer.podia.com That's stephanieroyer.podia.com and you can just take a closer look at everything included in bring your own traffic if a blogging course truly is the next best step for your business. I am confident that BYOT will give you the most value for your time and money.

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love it if you could share it with a teacher biz bestie. You have created high quality resources. Now let's help teachers find them. I'll see you next time.