Wish this class had a European Time zone version? Add a comment down below and let me know! If we can get enough interested people, I’ll create another class

Have you ever thought about starting a blog? Have you started a blog but wondered why nobody’s visiting it? Why nobody’s commenting? This 8 week course will consist of one meet-up a week (of approximately 80-90 minutes each), and will have you start a blog from scratch and bring it into success! There will be a series of lectures every week, including a guest speaker in one of them, but most importantly you will get lots of hands on experience as well. Think of this class as part lecture, part lab.

If you’ve never thought about starting a blog, now’s the time to do so. Blogs are quickly replacing resumés, and it’s amazing the difference a blog can make in a job interview (or even for potential employers to find you!). You are doing yourself and your future a favor by starting and keeping up a great blog.

Included in the class is:
-1:1 Help getting your blog set up, hosted, and working (I normally charge a $300 flat fee for this)
-A Premium Wordpress Theme valued at $70!
-Individual consultations / help (which normally costs $40 / hr)
-$97 off your first year of hosting (brings your first year of real hosting to approx $22)
-A group of classmates that will help you get Stumbled, Dugg, and get comments going on your Blog. Really, getting those initial readers is the hardest part, and with this class, we hurdle that problem no problem :)

Each class will end with homework assigned, including projects, writing blog posts, and relevant readings. Readings will come from the Internet, so you won’t have to pay for any books (wouldn’t that be lame?). I look forward to working with you and everyone else to create some really great blogs!

Homework Before the Class Starts:
Choose 3 topics / niches that you’d be interested in blogging about and send them to koichi@edufire.com. No “personal blogs” about your life allowed (unless you’re already famous in some way). Pick something you’re interested in – doesn’t matter if you’re an expert or not, though experience in the subject is definitely helpful. You aren’t going to do all 3 topics, but I really want you to bring several options so we can talk about them and discuss the possibilities.

Week 1:
-The Joys of Wordpress, and why you should be using it
-Hosting your blog (paying for hosting vs. free hosting)
-Picking a great (and brandable) domain name (and registering it EVERYWHERE)
-Creating a Logo
-Picking your niche and researching it (please choose 3 topics you want to blog about before the first class, see above)
-Share Contact information

Week 2:
-By now we’ll (hopefully) have all our blogs set up, and we’ll be ready to post. I’ll be helping you throughout the week.
-Writing a great “About” section
-Feedburner & Tracking your RSS feed (plus, why RSS is so important).
-Google Analytics & Tracking your blog stats
-Plugins to make your blog POP!
-“How to write” in a blog

Week 3:
-Social Marketing
-Youtube Strategies
-Twitter Strategies
-Choosing a Social Media Market to focus on. We’ll each choose one we want to concentrate on. You can choose either Youtube or Twitter.
-Helping each other with StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, and Twitter

Week 4:
-Individual Stats Checks (how are we doing?)
-Share what’s working and what’s not working with each other
-How often should I post?
-When should I post?
-Getting more comments on my blog
-Thinking about making money with your blog
-Coming up with ideas

Writing Weeks
We’ll have two weeks “off” to write a lot of posts. Think of these two weeks as intensive writing weeks, definitely not as a break! It will be important (as I will tell you) for your SEO, pagerank, as well as making your blog mature enough for the rest of the lessons we’ll be doing!

Week 5:
-Guest Speaker (Topic TBD) – might move down to week 6

Week 6:
-Interacting with fans
-Turning readers into evangelists
-Individual 1:1 conferences. Other students will be working on a group project.
-The contest! Giving something back to your readers, and gaining more readers in return!

Week 7:
-Thinking about SEO (search engine optimization) in your posts (what’s your stats breakdown?)
-Creating great Linkbait
-Doing something to garner the attention of a bigger blog
-Networking with people your own “blogging age”
-Presentations: Pick a topic to present in the last class for next week.

Week 8:
-Final look at statistics. Where did we fail? What did we do well?
-Individual Presentations (5 minutes long, though this depends on the class size)
-Assessments & Conclusion
-What do we do post-bloguation?
-Bloguation! Congratulations!

If you have any questions, please e-mail me at koichi@edufire.com or message me via the eduFire message feature.