I completed Blog Mastermind

Last night I received the final lesson in my Blog Mastermind course. I feel confident that I’ve applied most of the tactics successfully, although there are still some lessons that I’ll want to go back and review again. One nice thing about Blog Mastermind is that once you complete the course, you have free life-time access to all of the lessons and resources, so I can go back for a refresher any time I need one.

It’s always a nice feeling when you accomplish something. Graduating from Blog Mastermind is a pretty big deal to me… if you’ve read my About Me page, then you might know that I graduated from a post-secondary technical school and never job-hunted in my field due to a better opportunity at the time. Normally it might not make sense to compare a 27 week online course to a two-year trade school, but in this case, I’ve identified blogging and internet marketing as a passion and career interest of mine, so the value of my “diploma” feels much higher.

I am planning to continue my pursuit of education and knowledge in this field. Yaro is presenting a follow up course to Blog Mastermind called “Membership Site Mastermind”, which I’ve already enrolled for. This new course will teach how to create and launch a membership site off the back of your successful blog. I’ve actually already spent time outlining and creating a course of my own on keyword marketing, so Yaro’s announcement about Membership Site Mastermind was very timely. Membership Site Mastermind is currently only open to graduates of Blog Mastermind, but I’ll share information on the new course when it’s publicly available.

Outside of my studies with Yaro, I’ve also been dissecting Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula (which I’ll talk more about later), plus I’m attending my first major industry event, Affiliate Summit West 2008. This period of time for me is all about learning and becoming qualified in my industry. I think that there are a lot of “make money” bloggers who don’t take the time to become experienced and qualified in what they do, and unfortunately, it’s easy to tell when someone hasn’t worked to establish a position as an authority.

Of course, not everyone will take the same path that I do, but the fact is that studying and working to build credibility are both tremendously important. When you want to prove how serious you are in your market, showing that you’ve taken numerous courses and been a participant in the industry will effectively separate you from the “entry-level” class. I believe that credibility is the missing link for a lot of bloggers who presume to teach people how to generate an income online… why would someone take your advice or read what you write if you haven’t pursued your own qualifications?