16 Best Blogging Courses in 2020 – Make a Full-time Income (& Beyond)

If you’re looking for a comprehensive list of the best blogging courses to make a full-time income, you’re in the right place. Here at How to Entrepreneur, I’ve reviewed LOTS of different courses (some good and some bad) in effort to protect consumers and help entrepreneurs learn how to blog for business purposes. This list will be based on my experience reviewing blogging courses in the market, but I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments section below!

 If you know additional courses or you have suggestions on the order, please kindly leave it in the comments section below this post. I’ll check each one of them out and add it here (possibly re-ranking these) if it proves to be better than any of these at helping bloggers to make a full-time income or more. The goal is to help those who want to make a full-time income online to find a course that’s a good fit for them.

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The internet has exploded and it continues to explode! More and more people are gaining access to the internet, and new people are beginning to use it everyday. In fact, InternetLiveStats shows 4.1 billion users on the day of this writing,  a 7-8% annual growth rate in the US, and higher than 15% annual growth in other countries!

Businesses and individuals all across the world are learning about the potential of the internet as a medium for commerce, to learn other cultures, and to commence all kinds of changes in the world, which makes the internet a very interesting medium to study. Unfortunately, of the 4.1 billion users, a small percentage of those people know how to use the internet to get messages across to large percentages of the population, and there are many methods for doing that.

Blogging is one such method that enables internet users to reach millions of people every month. Unlike other internet marketing strategies, blogging can be fairly inexpensive to start, and it can transform a digital property that costs less than $20 into an asset that’s worth 500% more! Take a look at these blog income reports for a great examples of that…

Unlike other traffic generation methods (like paid ads, radio ads, television ads, or others), with blogging, continued effort compounds to create an asset that can offer an ROI for years and years.  As a result, it’s a great idea to learn how to blog from someone who can teach you:

• How to create a blog
• And, how to make the blog an asset (not just a job)

In my 10-Step Course on How to Start a Business, I talk about how easy it is to get “stuck” being a technician, and never really create a sustainable business that operates without you–blogging is no different.

How I Evaluated the Best Blogging Courses

While there are many courses out there, this is my opinion of how they stack up. These courses have been chosen as the best blogging courses based on these criteria:

1. Tactical Skills

Some courses only teach a fragment of the technical skills you would need to be successful as a blogger. They might exaggerate on publishing schedules, writing skill levels, or with other details that might actually stop a person from being a successful blogger. Instead, the courses on this list demonstrate to enthusiasts a realistic view on the tactical skills required for a full-time income and beyond as a blogger.

2. Technical Skills

In addition to tactical skills such as content creation, it’s also important to learn technical skills such as SEO, WordPress skills, hosting configuration, and more. The courses in this list will address the technical components of blogging in a sufficient enough way that those who aspire to blog for business or make blogging a career can do so.

3. Strategic Skills

Creating content, publishing it consistently, and installing the right software isn’t sufficient to make a full-time income or grow a business online. The technical and tactical skills are may not even be enough to give you a job, it requires strategic skills to take a blog from an idea to a full-time income, and from a full-time income to a business that can make money (even without its founder).

Some of the blogging courses on this list will offer insight on how to blog and how to scale a blog into a profitable enterprise, others at the lower end of the list will have less instruction on the strategic skills of the blogging business.

4. Customer Service

When you’re learning new career skills, it’s important to have good customer service: people you can ask questions to, somewhere to resolve billing issues, and opportunities to boost confidence by verifying the skills are acquired. The courses in this list will be weighted based on their customer service.

5. Student Success

A course isn’t a proven system until there’s proof students are using it to achieve their goals. In most cases, people who sign up for blogging courses are looking to create a full-time income blogging, to make blogging a profession, or to grow beyond a full-time income into higher echelons.  The courses in this list will have proven success: newbies who have successfully learned to make money and the highest recommended courses will have larger numbers of students who have achieved a full-time income or beyond.

6. Added Tools (SaaS Tools or others)

Nowadays, there is a gamut of information and metrics bloggers can use to gain insight about their audience, about what content to create, to track their progress, and more. The courses in this list provide tools (some have software as as service tools) and others have checklists, downloads, printables, and more to help improve productivity as a blogger.

7. Features

Some courses have nice extra perks. Some examples might be:

• Comment threads
• Feedback threads
• Live training
• Engaged communities
• Great affiliate programs
• Continuous updates
• Owner involvement
• Competitive pricing
• and More…

Overarching Skills that Are Taught in Blogging Courses

After reviewing several blog training courses, I was able to evaluate these common core competencies product creators commonly teach as necessary skills in the blogging profession.

Core Competencies

Mindset

• Realistic Expectations
• Positive Thinking
• Work Ethic

Website Setup and WordPress Technical Basics

• Plugins
• Hosting
• Website Setup
• How to use WordPress

Getting Traffic

• SEO
• Paid Ads
• Video Marketing
• Market Research
• Economics – Supplying what’s in Demand
• Professional Collaboration
• Social Media

Converting Traffic & Increasing User Engagement

• Email Marketing
• Copywriting
• Photography
• Videography
• Reading and Applying Analytics Data

Website Monetization

• E-Commerce
• Blog sponsorship
• Affiliate marketing
• Ad sales
• Selling services
• Freelancing
• and, more…

Strategic Core Competencies that Enable Scaling

• Documenting processes
• Outsourcing
• Training writers

The How to Entrepreneur List of Best Blogging Courses

The highest recommended courses will have the most of each of the above criteria: tactical skills taught, strategic skills taught, technical skills taught, customer service, student success, added tools, and features. They will also have the highest amount of core competenties addressed. Here goes the list…

1. Wealthy Affiliate

Wealthy Affiliate is my #1 recommendation because it has all of the core competencies required to make money online blogging. Other courses require payment for each specific core competency. Wealthy Affiliate has two plans and no upsells. You’re either a basic free member who accesses some training and benefits or a premium member who accesses everything they have.

Who is this best for

• Newbies to advanced bloggers
• Affiliate marketers: aspiring to advanced
• Local businesses
• Those who need a hosting solution
• Those who want to blog as a business

What They Offer

• Tactical, Technical and Strategic core competencies, so you can go from idea to enterprise
• 1000’s of hours of training
• Weekly Live Training with Q&A
• Access to the Owners
• A highly engaged social-media style community of 1.4 million+ people
• Members are paid for contributing training (based on how many people use and like the training)
• 1000’s of success stories: newbies making money online for the first time up into people who generate $1M+ online
• Web hosting (comparable to many leading VPS hosting solutions) included
• Free SSL
• Free domain privacy
• Site Content – A proprietary technology that enables you to write content, then publish your content to any of your Wealthy Affiliate hosted sites from one central login.
• Site Feedback – A proprietary technology that works based on a pay-it-forward system. You give feedback to other site owners and you can get feedback on your site on-demand.
• Site Comments – A proprietary technology that works based on a pay-it-forward system. It connects you to site owners in your voluntarily given interest categories, comment on their blog, and you can request comments on-demand.
• A Domain registration platform
• Unlimited Business email addresses
• A great affiliate program – 40% recurring revenue per sale for the lifetime of the customer
• Excellent tactical, technical, and strategic level training on Blogging including content writing, copywriting, basic graphic design, social media marketing, lots of WordPress technical training, lots of website monetization strategies. basic video marketing, and paid ads
• Very fast customer support (averaging less than 10 minutes for a response)
• You control your billing and you can cancel at anytime
• Free Membership – There is a lifetime free account where you get access to the platform for free to try it out

What They are Missing

• Not alot of information on Blog Sponsorships
• Not alot of information on photography and videography

Costs

Reviews

Wealthy Affiliate has lots of third-party reviews from customers. Majority of the reviews are positive by a wide margin. Customers of Wealthy Affiliate appreciate having the combination of training, the SaaS tools (like the keyword planner that pulls data from all search engines, the website builder, the sitecontent feature, and more).

They’ve been in business for nearly 15 years and the biggest complaints I’ve found have to do with the difficulty of navigating the site (which has improved based on feedback), the spammers that try to come into the platform and operate against the rules until they’re banned, and some people feel the strategies taught by Wealthy Affiliate are too hard, or they’re skeptical and unwilling to try.

How to Get Started

Wealthy Affiliate is the easiest of all of the choices to get started. You simply CLICK HERE and enter your email address, and you can get started. No billing information is required. If you decide you like the platform and you want to unlock the premium benefits, you can do so at any time.

For more information on Wealthy Affiliate, check out their website here, or read my full Wealthy Affiliate review here.

2. Dare to Conquer

I’ve watched Dare to Conquer evolve from its early days into a very strong competitor in the space. Paul Scrivs is the founder. He offers a no-nonsense teaching style alongside the proprietary systems he codes into DTC himself.

Who is this best for

• Those who want to use content marketing, SEO, or Pinterest Marketing to attract leads and clients
• Those who would like the support of a very engaged community
• Those who want ongoing training from people with different skills to improve beyond the core competencies for success
• and, those who can appreciate an instructor with a no-nonsense, informal teaching style

What They Offer

• They offer a comment exchange platform
• A link exchange platform
• A guest post exchange platform
• Courses on Enough of the core competencies to make money online: Affiliate Marketing, SEO, Content Creation, Paid Ads, Sales Funnels, Website creation and setup
• A managed Slack Community where users share their challenges, wins, tips, and tricks
• Ongoing webinars to improve upon the core competencies and more
• Constant updates and addons
• An affiliate program with 40% commission (one-time)
• A very engaged community (probably 1000 or so members)
• and ongoing challenges with accountability

What They are Missing

Unlike my #1 recommendation or others on this list, Dare to Conquer doesn’t offer:

• Cloud hosting
• A Site Feedback platform (although you can coordinate feedback informally)
• Courses on Sponsorship/Influencer Marketing
• A consistent schedule for webinars – They are starting out, but seemingly are weekly or bi-weekly
• A self-hosted community with as intuitive of an interface as my #1 recommendation
• Strategic level skills like hiring, training writers, or documenting processes to prepare for hiring

Costs

Prices have been changing. Current pricing is $547

Reviews

Third party reviewers are raving about Dare to Conquer. They compare it to other courses on this list (especially Elite Blog Academy since they’re marketed to a similar audience), and those who have taken both say DTC is better. I sum up positive and negative reviews in my full Dare to Conquer review. My review is probably the most critical of all of the reviews you’ll find because I’ve been able to see several high-level courses, so I try to accurately portray the advantages and disadvantages of each.

How to Get Started

Dare to Conquer isn’t open all year around. Instead, you have to get on the Dare to Conquer email list and wait on Scrivs to open the doors. He doesn’t yet seem to have a regular “open and close” date, so you’ll have to be on the look out.

For more information on Dare to Conquer, check out their website here, or read my full Dare to Conquer review here.

3. Income School

If you need laughter and entertainment intertwined into your internet marketing training, then Income School may be your #1 choice. Jim and Ricky from Income School have created their Project 24 community where they have very high-quality video, an engaged community, a step-by-step system to grow a niche website, and continuously added content.

Who is this best for

• People who want to start a niche website around a passion or problem topic because they don’t encourage you to start authority sites with broad lifestyle topics
• Those who want to laugh while going thru training
• Those who want to be a part of a community of like-minded entrepreneurs
• Intermediate bloggers who might be making money and looking to scale or outsource

What They Offer

• 94 Videos and 123 steps
• Addresses the technical and tactical core competencies to create a business online
• Dicusses Strategic core competencies like outsourcing and hiring
• A 60-step plan to replace your income in 24 months
• A highly engaged self-hosted forum community

What They are Missing

Training on how to turn a niche site into a broader authority site. They focus mostly on passive income-low competition niche sites.

Costs

$449 for year 1 and $199 annually

Reviews

Third party reviewers spoke great things about Income school. They appreciate their teaching style, their content, and students are getting results. Some students have even earned their full-time income online!

How to Get Started

To get started with Income School, you visit the website, fill out the application, and checkout.

For more information on Income School, check out their website here, or read my full Income School review here.

4. Create and Go

Alex Nerney and Lauren McManus went from CPA and Personal Fitness trainer working a 9-5 job to earning $100,000/mo+ from their blog in less than 3 years! Now, they teach others to grow 6-figure blogs as they’ve done.

Who is this best for

• Those who want to start a blog and monetize it with affiliate marketing and digital product sales
• Those who are self-motivated and self-disciplined
• and, those who could use the inspiration of a young couple with exponential business growth

What They Offer

• 4 courses and 2 course bundles
• Addresses the technical and tactical core competencies to create a business online
• No strategic core competencies discussed
• A moderately engaged Facebook group community

What They are Missing

• Training on outsourcing or hiring

Costs

$97-$297

Reviews

Third party reviewers spoke great things about Create and Go. They appreciate their down to Earth style and how they don’t use manipulative sales tactics.

How to Get Started

To get started with Create and Go, you visit the website, decide which course you want, and checkout.

For more information on Create ad Go, check out their website here, or read my full Create and Go review here.

5. Making Sense of Cents

Michelle Shroeder-Gardner publicly shared her journey of joing from making no money online to making over $100,000/mo and she’s rallied lots of supporters as people have been able to read her success and watch her grow. She publicly shared her strategies for success with Affiliate Marketing and working with blog Sponsors in her paid courses, and she shared some technical training on Blog setup in her free email courses.

Who is this best for

• Those who want to learn affiliate marketing
• Those who want to learn from Michelle and her community’s experiences
• Those who want to learn how to work with Brand sponsors

What They Offer

• Michelle’s courses offer some of the technical competencies and a few tactical competencies, but no strategic
• Training on how to do affiliate marketing
• Training on how to get sponsors who want to pay for content to be posted on your blog

What They are Missing

• The training is 100% written so this won’t be a good option for those who like video or audio intertwined
• The training doesn’t teach blogging fundamentals so you’d take these courses after having a little understanding of how blogging works

Costs

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is $197 and Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is $159.

Reviews

Michelle’s students are seeing results from her training (especially Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing since its been out longer). They are saying they learned how to make money with affiliate marketing and crediting her as the instructor. Students also say Michelle is very active in her online communities.

How to Get Started

To get started with Michelle’s courses, you’d visit her website, pick which of the two courses you want to take, and after payment, you’ll be enrolled.

For more information on Making Sense of Cents courses, check out their website here, or read my full Making Sense of Cents review here.

6. Udemy

Udemy is one of the largest course libraries online. It’s an open marketplace where instructors from many diverse backgrounds have come to teach professional skills for an affordable cost. You can take courses from coding to website monetization, and many other topics in between.

Who is this best for

• People who want to learn a specific skill
• Those who aren’t looking to learn an entire profession in one swoop
• Those who want to improve or master something like video, photo, social media ads, search engine ads, graphic design, coding, project management, bookkeeping, or others

What They Offer

• Tactical, Technical, and Strategic level courses
• They offer a broad array of courses, instructors, and backgrounds

What They are Missing

There’s lots of instructors, so it could be hard to get continuity, and to find a clear path with all of the core competencies. It’s best to go to Udemy with a clear skill in mind you’d like to hone.

Costs

Courses range in price. There are many free courses, many in the $10 range, and some up to $200.

Reviews

There is a monopoly of good reviews of Udemy. Overall, most people like that open marketplace business model of Udemy, however, some negative reviews show students who may have picked a low quality course or instructor. It’s important to read about the istructor, and even check out their course reviews on the platform before purchasing a course.

How to Get Started

To get started with Udemy, you would visit their website, scroll until you decide on a course you like, then enroll.

For more information on Udemy, check out their website here, or read my full Udemy review here.

7. Authority Hacker

Authority Hacker is a step-by-step system that teaches people who want to create bigger authority websites. Niche websites typically target narrower topics, but what about those who want to have a broad website that addresses a full mission of some sort? That’s where Authority Hacker comes in.

Who is this best for

• Those who have a passion-based, problem-based, or lifestyle-based website they want to build
• Those who feel they need a little direction on how to grow their idea website into an authority site
• Those who could appreciate a step-by-step plan (even including the daily tasks) you’d need to do

What They Offer

• • Technical, Tactical, and Strategic core competency training
  • Training on list-building
  • Video and written lessons
  • A task management board in Trello
  • Ongoing updates

• Blog templates for the most successful post types

What They are Missing

• An engaged community
• Hosting
• SaaS tools

Costs

$997

Reviews

Third party reviewers and customers of Authority Hacker say very positive things about the platform. Notable internet marketers like Miles Beckler say Authority Hacker is his go-to training for training his writers.

How to Get Started

To get started with Authority Hacker, I’d recommend you check out their free webinar (even if you decide not to purchase it). Their free webinar is packed with valuable nuggets!

For more information on Authority Hacker, check out their website here, or read my full Authority Hacker review here.

8. Fizzle.co

Fizzle is for people who want to start a successful online business. Chase Reeve and Corbett Barr create very engaging content and have highly notable people in the internet marketing space that teach various blogging skills. John Lee Dumas, Pat Flynn, and others augment the core competency training with things like podcasting, affiliate marketing, and more.

Who is this best for

Those who feel they need more entrepreneurial skill development – Fizzle goes over things like unique selling propositions, market positioning, and more that’s not normally taught in blogging courses.

What They Offer

• Courses on strategic business development
• Technical and Tactical core competencies
• They have a hosting partnership with Flywheel
• Live weekly meetings
• A newsletter
• Weekly podcast

What They are Missing

• The community isn’t very engaged (in comparison to the others), but since they added the peer to peer mastermind, things may be different
• There’s no training on the strategic competencies to scale
• There’s not much SaaS support tools (aside from hosting)

Costs

$39/mo or $349/year

Reviews

Fizzle has very good reviews online. People like the high quality videos and the ease of navigating the website.

How to Get Started

Fizzle starts with a 14-day free trial, and you can cancel at anytime. For more information on Fizzle, check out their website here, or read my full Fizzle review here.

9. Thrive Themes University

Many people know Thrive Themes for their plugins and WordPress themes, but they have a powerhouse training platform behind it all. Included with membership, you get access to all of their plugins, all of their WordPress themes, and their courses to help increase the conversion rates on your website.

Who is this best for

• Those who want to improve the aesthetics of their websites
• Those who want to increase the conversion rates on their website
• Those who want to grow their email lists

What They Offer

• Classes on course creation, conversion optimization, copywriting, web design, and sales funnels
• Plugins
• Themes
• Conversion Optimization Tools (pop ups, website ribbons, analytics, etc.)

What They are Missing

• Basic technical courses on WordPress setup and installation
• Content Marketing and Strategy, Traffic generation, or Website monetization training
• Hosting

Costs

$228 for product use on up to 25 websites. An agency plan is available for those who need more than that.

Reviews

Thrive Themes ha a monopoly of good reviews, but there are bad ones too. The good reviews are about the beauty of the sites you can make, how you can customize them, the A/B testing features, and customers are noticably seeing a big change in how many conversions they get with Thrive plugins installed. The bad reviews are about the ease of use, the learning curve it takes to understand Thrive, and how the plugins slow down your website.

How to Get Started

To get started with Thrive Themes courses, you visit their website, choose annual or quarterly membership, then checkout. Once you’ve paid, you’ll have access to all of their plugins, WordPress themes, and the Thrive University.

For more information on Thrive University, check out their website here, or read my full Thrive Themes review here.

Honorable Mentions

• Elite Blog Academy
• The Blog Village
• Clickfunnels courses
• FIMP Free Internet Marketing Project
• Chris Farrell’s Internet Marketing course
• Affilorama
• Smart Blogger Courses
• Become a Blogger Coaching Club
• Problogger Courses
• CopyBlogger Courses
• Blog By Number
• Allison Lindstrom Courses
• Gillian Perkins Startup Society
• Pat Flynn’s Courses

The Bottom Line

Each of these training programs offer some of the core competencies and some have been proven to teach people to create full-time incomes online. While each of these training programs are good, I wouldn’t advise you to try them all at once.

They each teach a slightly different process, and trying to attempt them all at once can leave you unproductive and without the results you want. Instead evaluate these courses, the core competencies you think you need, and the skills each offers. Decide on which one is the best fit for where you are, and go for that one. My #1 recommendation has an absolutely free membership option, so at the least, you can try it out. CLICK HERE TO TRY MY #1 RECOMMENDED BLOGGING COURSE.