Thinking about purchasing By Sophia Lee’s Perfecting Blogging course? Read my Perfecting Blogging course review to make your final decision and get a better idea of this blogging course’s benefits!
I remember finding By Sophia Lee’s pins way back when on Pinterest during college and seeing how she made so much money blogging. Ever since I was a child, I wanted my own website or blog to share advice and content with an audience. But it was so hard to find a relatable blogger who wasn’t a mommy blogger, a huge fashion influencer on Instagram, or one of those “here’s how to start a blog” bloggers with no other blog to back up their course about launching a profitable blog. But Sophia was different, relatable, and inspirational.
Sophia was a college student who wrote about things that most young girls wanted to know. She also was doing the majority of blogging while people her age were doing mainly YouTube. I immediately related to her. Hence, I couldn’t believe that she had a blogging course, Perfecting Blogging.
Who is Sophia Lee?
Sophia Lee is a blogger who makes over 6-figures blogging after 5 years of blogging. Sophia started her blog, By Sophia Lee (BSL), as a sophomore in college and spent the first year doing it all on her own. She now runs an entire blogging business and drops helpful blogging tips on one of her YouTube channels: By Sophie Lee Blogging. Her blog has helped her grow other businesses selling stationary and an interior firm. Sophia also has courses on the basics of blogging, her detailed Pinterest strategy, and her meticulous email strategy.
Why did Sophia stand out?
Again, Sophia was a new kind of blogger. Before on Pinterest and even when I was in high school, it was mainly mommy bloggers who had a community of other mommy bloggers behind them already or a huge IG fashion influencer who blogged but mainly got their audience and money from Instagram. There wasn’t much other representation, especially if you were younger. If you are a Gen-Zer like me, everyone was doing YouTube (and now TikTok) and it seemed like blogging was over.
But Sophia popped up one day on my feed about dorm stuff or college and I discovered that she made a decent amount (back when she made $5k-9K a month) from blogging and wasn’t a huge IG or YouTube influencer. Sophia also kept it real from the beginning and didn’t hold back info like most bloggers.
Perfecting Blogging Course Review (aka The Best Blogging Course For Beginners)
My Experience with Perfecting Blogging
I bought Perfecting Blogging when it first launched in 2020 and when cost $97. I was living in my own college apartment when it dropped for the first time. I followed Sophia for about a year or two around that time and she gave me hope for my blogging dreams.
Use the promo code: SUMMERBLOGGER to get 20% off of all Sophia’s courses until August 2nd!
I can wholeheartedly say that By Sophia Lee’s Perfecting Blogging course is what got me back on track blogging. I had a small college blog at the time where I wrote about random things, and I didn’t do anything for weeks. But after taking Perfecting Blogging, I kicked everything into overdrive. I redid my entire college blog, and I deleted most of my content. I grew the blog enough to sell it a few months later. Then, I grew this blog within 10 its first ten months to have thousands of page views and hundreds of email subscribers. Now, I make over $500 each month and have about 20k monthly page views.
This course was perfect for beginner bloggers, especially those who are starting with no knowledge of blogging, SEO, and content strategy planning.
Related: What I Wish I Knew Before Starting A Blog in 2021
The Best Course for Beginner Bloggers: A Perfecting Blogging Course Review
Perfecting Blogging breaks down By Sophia Lee’s blogging strategies that led her blog to have over a million page views during its peak season. She breaks down everything from choosing a website theme, naming your blog, selecting a niche, starting a blog content calendar (aka the honestly best part of the course), writing a blog post, and much more. Sophia also has a Facebook group and updates her course.
Use the promo code: SUMMERBLOGGER to get 20% off of all Sophia’s courses until August 2nd!
Pros:
This Perfecting Blogging Course Review will include both the pros and cons of Sophie Lee’s course. This course is honestly my top recommendation for beginner bloggers because of these pros:
Setting Up Your Site’s Look & Brand:
The first pro of taking By Sophia Lee’s Perfecting Blogging course is that she starts with the basics. Sophia goes into creating a cohesive brand for your blog. I like how she gives questions about whether or not you will want to write about this topic in 5 years. It’s a nice approach to starting a blog and making it more realistic.
Related: How To Start a Blog in 2022
Detailed Keyword Research:
Sophia provides an organized section dedicated to keyword research. She has a printable just for keywords and one that’s a content calendar. This is ideal for new bloggers because I remember way back when I started my blog, I didn’t know what keywords were. This honestly is the best part of the course because Sophia also tells you tips on when you schedule content. This section is where I learned a lot and still most of it still to this day.
SEO Writing & Blog Writing Basics:
One thing I appreciated the most is that Sophia shows how she writes her blog posts. She spends about 20 minutes showing how to write a blog post. It’s great to see how she does write her posts because I remember as a beginner I would write as if it was like a social media post and everything was about me. Instead, it’s the other way around, and Sophia’s blogging/content creation strategy centers around the idea that content should be helpful to others. She also goes into detail about how to add affiliate links to your paragraphs and explains the different headlines to use.
Facebook Group:
Having taken a few other blogging courses, Sophia was smart to include this feature in her class. I am in the Facebook Group and have learned so much from other bloggers and helped others as well. Sophia also pops in and answers questions that students ask.
Printables:
The Perfecting Blogging course includes several useful printables (e.g. checklists) students can use while watching the course. For most of them, Sophia says how to use them and includes a video on how to fill them out.
Videos and Video Transcriptions:
One of the best things about this course is that Sophia has videos. It’s similar to her YouTube channel, but more educational and interactive. It’s also considerate, especially for those who have accessibility needs. It’s great also if you are skimming through the course for a refresher (like I do at least once a month) to have the text, compared to sitting through a long video waiting for something that only lasts 2 minutes.
Learn All Her Strategies:
Another thing I like about the Perfecting Blogging course is that we learn all of Sophia’s strategies. She doesn’t hide some things or hide her website’s analytics and has plenty of screenshots to prove what she does.
The Bonus Content:
The final section of the course is a bonus section that was added last year in 2021 where Sophia answers questions that she receives from students. The topics go into more of the mindset you need to have to be successful as a blogger and lean on the advanced side.
Honesty:
Sophia doesn’t sugarcoat the process of becoming a blogger. She even says it’s not easy to be a blogger and it takes a long time to make money in the course, and she keeps it real. She doesn’t come off as sales-y at all, which I appreciate. She doesn’t constantly remind us to check out her other courses (which are also helpful) or to her store. Perfecting Blogging is solely focused on blogging and that’s it. Sophia is honest about the blogging process and brings in her expertise.
Encouraging:
Anyone who is a blogger knows that it’s hard. Blogging is different from any other online content creation. It’s simple but takes a lot of work. Sophia all throughout Perfecting Blogging has an encouraging tone. She even gives realistic advice and compares it to running an actual business. She also shares moments when she was working hard in her first few years which is encouraging.
Cons:
As much as I love this course, this is still a Perfecting Blogging Course review and I need to call out a few things.
Return policy:
So the return policy is honestly the biggest con. “If you are unsatisfied with your purchase, contact me within 30 days from enrollment and you can receive a full refund if you have not gone past Unit 1.”
So, if you actually go through the course and don’t see any results, it might be hard to get your money back. It’s a contrast to most bloggers who have a 30-day refund policy. You can read the entire return policy on her website.
Lack of in-depth SEO aspects, especially on the technical side:
The other con of Perfecting Blogging is that Sophia covers the basics of SEO. She doesn’t know some things about SEO (such as disregarding backlinking and didn’t mention anything about technical SEO or even Google Search Console). Sophia is likely still learning about Google Search Engine Optimization since her website is slowly relying more on Google SEO than Pinterest (which she mentioned in a video on her blogging YouTube channel.)
However, I only say this because I have a degree and work in social media. This con is just nitpicky. But overall, Sophia knows a lot and knows when she isn’t an expert in a specific area (e.g. blog legal issues or any coding/WordPress plug-in issue) and encourages people to outsource or do their own research. It would have been nice for her to have some more info about SEO since it plays a big part in blogging, especially if your niche doesn’t fit Pinterest’s lifestyle categories. I hope in the next update she gives more insight into what BSL does for its SEO strategies.
Related: The Best SEO Course for New Bloggers That’s Under $200
Lack of social media & email marketing mentions:
Sophia has a course for each part, which I respect. Having a whole course with everything in it could be overwhelming, but I wished she would have included maybe a short video explaining a little bit about how both are beneficial to bloggers.
Not enough detail about monetization:
When I first finished the course, I expected to learn more about persuading readers to buy products with your affiliate links and more about affiliate marketing. However, there is only a 5-minute video where Sophia explains her experience and process with affiliate marketing and the programs that she uses.
Most of Sophia’s income reports show that she makes a great deal of money from affiliate marketing, which is also how most beginner bloggers will make their first few dollars. I think that Sophia should have an additional detailed section about how to write to get readers to click links and buy and more about that aspect.
Sophia offers a lot of free blogging tips prior:
If you are an avid watcher of the By Sophia Lee Blogging YouTube channel and you bought her printables on blogging and sign up for her blogging email newsletter, then this course will maybe only help with the blog writing section.
Who is Perfecting Blogging for?
Honestly, if you have a blog with at least 10k a month and/or have a consistent income coming in, then you can skip. If you are a completely new blogger who is looking for an in-depth course on how to write blog posts and make it manageable, then Perfecting Blogging Course is the best course for you. This is the first course I recommend that anyone interested in blogging buys first. You can use my affiliate link to buy it today!
Use the promo code: SUMMERBLOGGER to get 20% off of all Sophia’s courses until August 2nd!
Related: 11 Common Beginner Blogging Mistakes You Should Avoid To Become a Successful Blogger
Are Blogging Courses Worth It?
Of course! Again, this blogging course is the reason why I’m still blogging today. Without the Perfecting Blogging course, I would have quit blogging. There are so many components to running a blog that most other bloggers won’t mention. It’s more than writing. It’s strategy, patience, email marketing, and social media. Blogging also won’t happen overnight.
I think that anyone who takes a blogging course like Perfecting Blogging is going to stick around longer because
1.) you’re not alone aka a Facebook Group
2.) you have a blogging expert’s strategies broken easily and
3.) you’re not going to likely make better progress than if you were doing this all by yourself with trial and error.
I remember when I first started blogging as a broke college student. I was like “There’s no way I’m pay that much for a course when I could Google it!” WRONG. I spent at least 7-8 months struggling and barely getting any views when I could have taken a blogging course and struggled less. Free content can only get you so far. Trust me, I learned the hard way.
Use the promo code: SUMMERBLOGGER to get 20% off of all Sophia’s courses until August 2nd!
This blog post was a By Sophia Lee’s Perfecting Blogging Course Review which also discussed how this course is the best blogging course for new bloggers.
Before you go, I have many other useful blog posts for new bloggers:
My Blogging Journey: 6 Month Update
10 Productivity Tips For Bloggers That’ll Make Blogging Easier
Lyrical Host Review (with a Promo Code Inside) | As Told By Ariel Blogging
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