My Thoughts on the Simpleology Blogging Course

In my post yesterday I mentioned this new course on blogging for fun and profit. As I said in that post, the course is currently being given away free to anyone who has a blog, so long as they mention it in a blog post. I promised I'd let you know a bit more about the course after I'd evaluated it, so here's what I thought...

To start with, accessing the course proved more tricky than I expected. As you may know if you've taken up this offer, once you've placed the pre-written post on your blog, you then have to enter the URL on this web page. I assumed after doing this that I would 'simply' be taken to the course material, but not a bit of it. Instead I was taken through a series of steps that involved confirming that I wanted to sign up with Simpleology, setting a user-name and password, viewing a 'one-time offer' of something or the other, and being invited to download various items of free software.

Indeed, so laborious was the process that I was on the point of deleting my original post and apologising to anyone who had acted upon it. However, after jumping through all these hoops, I did eventually arrive at a page where I could access the free blogging course. And I have to say, it's very well done and informative.

The core of the course comprises 15 lessons. Each of these lessons is around five minutes and plays in a browser window (you DON'T need to download any special software to watch them). The lessons start with the absolute basics - i.e. what is a blog? - and move on through topics such as what to blog about, what blogging software to use, how to attract more readers, how to make money from your blog, and so on. Nowadays I'm quite an experienced blogger, but there were a number of suggestions that I hadn't thought of, and I definitely plan to act on these in the months ahead.

Alongside each lesson, there is an interactive quiz you can take to test your understanding of the points covered. You can also download the lessons in printable (PDF) format and as audio files (for listening to on your MP3 player). Some bonus materials are included as well, including interviews with a number of well-known bloggers in the Internet Marketing field.

Overall, it's a highly professional course, and if you have a blog I do recommend checking it out now while it's still free. But - as mentioned above - do be aware that accessing it will involve negotiating what seemed to me an excessive number of hurdles. It's worth noting that you don't have to accept ANY of the offers made to you or download any of Simpleology's proprietary software in order to view the course. Once you're logged in to the Simpleology 'WebCockpit' page, you'll see a heading 'Daily Targets' at the top left. The blogging course can be found in the right-hand column under Electives. Click on Blogging, and the course material will all be set out for you.

Finally, I should say that Simpleology appears to be a personal development system for organising your life, and in particular your business. Their logo has the strap-line 'The Simple Science of Getting What You Want'. By signing up to view the free course, you also become a member of Simpleology, and get access to a lot more course material as well. Personally I haven't looked into this - I'm not sure it's quite my thing really - but if you're interested in learning more, obviously the opportunity is there for you.