Are blogging courses worth it when you are starting out?

Last Updated on August 18, 2025 by Ioana

I started blogging in January 2024. And after 1.5 years I have a travel blog that’s part of the Mediavine ad network, has 80K+ visitors per month, and makes me close to $4,000 per month. In this post I will share my answer to the “are blogging courses worth it?” question to help you decide if it’s worth investing in an online blogging course. This post contains affiliate links. When you make a purchase I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Find out more here.

Ready to grow your blog? Check out these helpful resources:

• Web hosting: BigScoots (use code SSBG9QHYST56 for 40% off)
• Keyword research: KeySearch
• SEO tool for blogging: RankIQ
• Travel affiliate platform for bloggers: Stay22 (get $100 when you get to 100 bookings if you sign up through this link)
• Travelpayouts

My recommendation about online courses to new bloggers 

I think it depends on your style of learning:

• If you like to teach yourself new skills and you enjoy spending hours finding and reading free information, then it’s not worth spending money on a blogging course.
• If you don’t like to waste time finding free information on the internet and just want a complete guide with actionable steps then you should invest in a good blogging course.

For example, I am self-taught. I built a profitable blog using just free information online. But that’s because I love learning new things and doing research (I even have a PhD in chemistry to prove it haha).

At the same time, after I posted on Instagram that I got into Mediavine in just 1.5 years, some of my followers asked me to create a course to help them start their own blogs. 

I never thought of becoming a course creator before this. That’s because I didn’t use a paid blogging course.

But I created this course, The Blogging Roadmap, and made it very affordable to help a lot of people start their blogging journey.

To me, this course is just a way of giving back and helping people. I don’t care how many sales I get. If I’m able to help just 5 people build their own blog and create a life of time and financial freedom, I will be extremely happy. That good karma is going to help me much more in the future.

Pros of blogging courses

• Time-Saving: Courses often cover topics in-depth, from SEO basics to monetization strategies in one place.
• Community Access: Engage with peers who are on the same journey, offering support and motivation.
• Expert Guidance: Learn from experienced bloggers who share both their successes and mistakes they made.
• Motivation: Since you paid for a course you will be more likely to do the hard work

You save time since you get all the information you need in one place

The best thing about a blogging course is that it offers you everything in one place. 

The course materials of well-developed courses will most likely teach you how to set up the blog correctly from day one. And they should also explain what search engine optimization (SEO) is and how to optimize your blog posts for SEO such that you get website traffic from search engines.

At the same time, a good course should give you a sense of affiliate marketing opportunities, email list building, and other ways to monetize your blog. That’s because the ultimate goal is to earn a full-time income from your blog.

I don’t know what other courses teach people, but everything I mentioned earlier is included in my blogging course. At the end of the way I’m teaching everyone who puts their faith in me and my course to build an online business. 

Because that’s what a blog is: a business. 

You join a community of like-minded people

Many courses, including my own blogging course, have a private Facebook group for all students. This is a great way to meet other people who are just starting out in the blogging space and have a supportive community.

At the same time, you can ask questions in the group. I always reply to my students’ questions to help them even beyond the course itself. 

I love to offer a personal touch and actually get to know my students and support them.

Having access to such a community is another advantage of investing money in a course. It saves you a lot of time when you have questions since you don’t have to spend hours googling the answers.

You can just ask the real people in the group since we’re also working the same goal: growing our blog traffic and income.

You will learn from a successful blogger who already achieved what you want

The other cool thing about a course is that you’re learning from a full-time blogger who already accomplished what you want.

That’s very helpful since that person went through everything you’re going to and you can learn from their mistakes.

I personally don’t gatekeep anything. My entire strategy is in my course. Because I believe there is space for all of our voices in the online space. 

And I want all my students to succeed. I believe that only people at the bottom compete, people at the top collaborate and help each other grow.

You building a successful blog does not mean that my own blog can’t be successful too. We can all be successful together.

Since you paid for a course you will be more likely to do the hard work

This statement also depends on your personality. If you tend to be more serious about something if you pay for it, then buying a course is a good incentive.

Some people procrastinate less and put in the work when they pay for a course. But if they just read free information they are less likely to take action and start building their blog.

I don’t operate like this, so that’s why I think this depends on your personality. If I have a goal and I want to achieve something I will put in the hard work even when I don’t spend money on a course.

Cons of blogging courses

• Cost: Some courses can be expensive, ranging from $100 to over $2,000.
• You can find the information for free: But you will save time since you don’t have to search it in different places and the material will be explained to you.
• Some courses don’t have the value you seek: It’s important to pick a course created for your current level of knowledge

Some blogging courses can be very expensive

When I was deciding how to price my blogging course, I did a Google search to see what other people are charging for their course. And I was a bit shocked to see prices ranging from $250 to over $2,000. 

That’s crazy to me because as a beginner blogger who wants to escape their current job or situation, you don’t want to spend a lot of money. That’s why I priced my course only $119.97. I believe this is an affordable price for more people.

I am also a big proponent of keeping your blog’s cost down, especially during the first year when you won’t get that much traffic. In my course I always offer the most affordable options for hosting, keyword research, SEO tools etc. 

Because I was in your shoes a year ago and I know how important it is to not spend that much when you’re just starting out.

No blogging course will have information that you can’t find in free resources

This is the truth in my opinion. No matter how people will package the information in their course, it won’t be something groundbreaking that you can’t find online for free.

Setting up a blog, the basics of SEO, and Google’s ranking framework are all things you can find online. There are many Youtube videos, blog posts, and forums that have this information.

The only thing is that it might take you a while to understand the material and to figure out how to apply it to your particular situation.

That’s why a course can save you time. But blogging is not rocket science, you can absolutely learn everything about it from free resources. That’s what I did too.

You might feel like you’re not learning much from the course

​I think this can happen depending on where you are in your blogging journey and which course you buy. For example, if you know nothing about blogging and you want to start a blog, then a beginner’s course will offer you a lot of value.

However, if you worked in marketing before and you know the basics of SEO you might not learn much from a beginner course since you already know some of that information.

So I think the key is to pick a course that is at the right level for you. For example, my course is perfect for someone with no blogging experience and for people who started a blog as a hobby but now they want to grow it into a business and they have no clue how to do it.

It is not a good fit for more advanced bloggers since they won’t learn anything new. I’m sure there are course created for scaling your blog from 50K sessions to hundreds of thousands or millions of sessions per month. 

As you can imagine the strategy to grow a blog to 50K sessions and to grow a blog to a million sessions per month will be (at least a bit) different.

So if you do decide do buy a course make sure you do your research and pick the course that’s right for you.

My results since I started blogging in January 2024

I started my blog in January 2024 and I built it all myself. I never hired and web developer, SEO expert, or marketing guru. Instead, I taught myself how to do everything.

In June 2024, so 5 months in, I was already making $100+ per month from affiliate marketing. Switching to Stay22 was a game changer for me and my earnings. You can read more about my experience using them here.

In December 2024 I was already making over $500 per month from affiliate marketing. Also in December, I got to 10,000 sessions per month and I got into Journey by Mediavine, and ad network for smaller blogs that is still under the Mediavine umbrella.

So I also started to earn through ads. At the beginning I was making around $250 per month through ads.

My traffic continued to grow beautifully and in June 2025 I got to 50,000+ sessions per month and I got accepted into the full Mediavine program.

I started earning $1,000+ from ads alone. And from affiliate marketing I earn $2,500+ per month. So $3,500 per month total.

As you can see, in just 1.5 years as a new blogger I was able to grow my blog to 50K+ sessions per month, got into Mediavine, and earn close to $4,000 per month.

So based on these recent results you can see that blogging is not dead in 2025. It’s very much alive and I think beginner bloggers that start a niche site and focus on high-quality content can create very successful blogs.

My background

I was born and raised in Romania. We didn’t travel much when I was little, except for visiting my aunt in Vienna. She was living there and those trips were the highlight of all my school breaks.

I think that having the opportunity to visit Vienna so many times made me fall in love with travel.

Then, in high school, I started to participate in international chemistry olympiads. I represented Romania at 4 international competitions and I had the opportunity to travel to Siberia (twice!), Turkmenistan, Istanbul, and Tokyo.

Then adulting happened. In 2010 I moved to the US for college, then I got a PhD, and then I worked a very demanding job in management consulting for 4 years.

And I stopped traveling because I was either a broke student or I had no time to do it while working 16-hour days at this job.

I didn’t travel to any place, except Romania to see my family, for 13 years. My only focus was to get my advanced degree and perform well at this job.

Once I had some savings from my job and flights were operating again post-pandemic, I decided to travel again. 

But I was in my 30’s. My family lived on a different continent (I was in NYC and my family in Romania). My friends were all working and had limited time off. I don’t have a partner. So I quickly realized that I had nobody to go with.

I had to make a decision: I either go by myself or don’t go at all. I couldn’t bear the thought of not visiting new places, not trying new foods, not exploring new cultures. So I decided to take my first solo trip to Paris.

Why I left the corporate world

When I came back home from Paris I decided that I needed to do it again. I needed to continue my solo travel story. It couldn’t have just one chapter. So I booked another trip, this time to London.

Once I realized how short life is and how much I crave exploring new places, I decided to switch jobs and gain my life back.

So at the beginning of 2023 I left my consulting job and I moved to a corporate America job with a much better work-life balance.

However, this office job was not fulfilling for me at all. And at the same time I had a terrible manager who was making my life miserable. What was supposed to be a dream job on paper was a nightmare. 

I spent many sleepless nights thinking that there must be more to life than this. Long meetings, short lunch breaks spent eating at your desk, creating useless power point presentations, and dealing with all the politics that the corporate culture comes with made me so unhappy. There had to be another way of making a living.

How I started my travel blog

So I started to ask myself what I would love my life to look like. The answer was easy: travel more, have financial independence and time freedom. 

Now that I was clear on what I wanted I started looking for career opportunities that would match my desired lifestyle. The first career path that I thought would be a great fit was that of a travel influencer.

So I started an Instagram account. I knew nothing about social media and content creation, but I taught myself. And in 9 months I grew my account to 10K followers.

I thought the paid partnerships would come rolling in since that’s what I heard from all the social media gurus. But this wasn’t the case. While I did have a few paid partnerships it wasn’t enough to pay the bills. This is still true at 80K+ followers by the way.

So I went back to the drawing board and I looked for other alternatives in the travel space that actually make you money. And that’s how I found travel blogging.

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Do you want to learn more about blogging? Check out some of my other articles.

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