Please note:

This post does NOT include an affiliate link (Perhaps, one day, I’ll include such a link. But not today) … Instead, this post is a BIG, Loud shout-out for one of the best blog courses online, its brilliant creator, Jon Morrow and his team of splendid folk who help him run it, to say “THANK-YOU!”.

You may have noticed that there’s one particular person I mention in a lot of posts I write. Who is that person? Why, it’s Jon Morrow of BoostBlogTraffic.com (and a former Associate Editor of Copyblogger.com).

Jon Morrow has taught me a lot about what it takes to become a successful blogger, about getting traffic and turning it into a real, income earning business and why it’s vital to your blog’s success that Writing and “making money online” go hand-in-hand.

And by far, the most effective way Jon teaches this is through his brilliant course, Guestblogging.

Yes, I’m a student of Jon’s course and I want to make this review to be as honest as I can so that you can really get as good a picture of Jon’s course and what it can do for you as you can.

Even if you’re not stoked on guest blogging (a.k.a. guest posting) Jon’s course will teach you a lot about how you can become a better writer; a popular writer and grow your blog into the success you want it to be.

Obviously, we’re all different. Your experience of the course will be different from mine because we’re different people, with different life experiences, talents and ways of thinking and dealing with things. But I think you’ll get a lot out of it and learn a great deal about growing a successful blog, just as I have.

Introduction To Jon’s Guestblogging Course

As it’s name suggests, Guestblogging teaches you:

1: How to write high quality guest posts for top notch blogs in your niche and…

2: How to use your guest posts to attract traffic back to your own blog and build an audience of your own (including an email list of engaged subscribers).

And, the best bit is that you don’t even have to have your own blog set up yet, or any content written on it. Something that goes against the well-trodden advice many experts give you such as “You need to have at least 5/8/20 (delete depending on which “expert” is telling you this) posts already on your blog before any quality blog will entertain you.” But, if you do have content already there, you’ll discover how to increase the number of people coming to read it, growing your audience too.

Guestblogging is a fantastic way of growing your blog and its audience. But the truth is, it’s not as easy or as simple as it’s made out to be by many of the people would have you believe. It takes a lot of work. And practice, practice, practice. What Jon’s course gives you are the steps and strategies to make it a great deal simpler and more affective.

What’s more, you’ll be learning how to guest blog with one of the greatest writers online teaching you everything he knows.

Inside his Guestblogging course Jon teaches you how to increase your skills in writing and finding blogs to write for that will bring these rewards to you.

A Quick Overview of the Guestblogging Course

Jon Morrow is the guest blogging master. He built an email list of 13,000 by guest blogging which let him launch his own blog, BoostBlogTraffic with a bang. His first post has got 485 comments and counting.

Guestblogging is about Writing. It’s about writing great content. It’s also about how to start, launch and grow your blog by teaching you, not just how to write great guest posts, but how to blog.

You’ll discover more about Writing in general and about Blogging than you will from most courses out there.

Jon Morrow makes you feel at ease with his gentle, hawk-eyed wisdom and business wit and humour. He’s got his eye fixed firmly on one goal - making you a better blogger, not just able to write guest posts.

And he gives way more than you expect.

Not only do you have access to techniques and strategies for building your business online and growing your blog, but you get to talk to Jon live. At least every 2 weeks Jon invites his students to join him on live calls via InstantTeleseminar.com. These live calls are “Question and Answer” training calls (Q & As) and are usually on a Thursday, although times vary to allow for the fact that Jon’s students are world wide in countries as far a field as the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Holland, France and Asia.

The Guestblogging course went through an update recently. This is so that changes in guest blogging (guest posting) can be catered for, keeping you up-to-date with everything you need to know in order to be on top of your game when it comes to …

1. getting your guest posts accepted by host blogs,

2. read by their huge audiences and …

3. growing your own audience and …

4. email list because of the interest your guest posts create

… once you’ve been through the excellent training inside the Guestblogging course.

How The Guestblogging Course Is Laid Out

In modules, covering everything you need to know for writing outstanding, popular, traffic generating, list-building guests posts …

From finding the best blogs to write for in your particular niche, to finding your unique voice and selling point, to staying motivated, to pitching and getting your posts accepted, to growing your blog.

And there’s Homework.

Yup, you get to work on all the great ideas and advice Jon and his team give you. Once completed, you upload your Homework to the forum topic related to your assignment for feedback from the Guestblogging editors.

The Modules

Each module takes you through a specific aspect of guest blogging, from defining what you want to achieve by having a blog, to giving you tools and insight into planning your guest blogging strategy, to honing your writing skill, to choosing which blogs are right for you to pitch, to getting accepted on some of the top blogs out there.

Each module has a set of lessons. You have to complete each lesson’s assignment before you can progress to the next. This can be a little frustrating, especially if you’re hungry to get on to whatever topic might be “the best bit” for you.

Patience pays off though.

The Feedback

Its honest, right on the mark and, at times, can stretch you (and your ego and confidence a little) and be frustrating.

But, if you’re willing to step back and look at what you’re being advised to in order to make your guest posts more likely to get accepted and published on the right blogs for your topic, then you’ll find this feedback pays off big time for you.

This feedback comes from Jon’s team, including Glen Long , a former BBC copy editor and now editor for Jon’s own blog, BoostBlogTraffic.com and course, Guestblogging. You’ll also have feedback from Liz L, Robert van Tongeren and Theresa, the Guestblogging course assistant editors and forum moderators. Once your posts pass the editing process, they get a final edit polish from Shane Arthur, editor extraordinaire.

What you’ll probably find useful and rewarding is that Glen, Liz and Robert also write guest posts. Liz and Robert are also both Jon’s students and have gone through the course too.

All in all, they’re a good bunch of people to have on your side. They’re all widely experienced in what’s going on out there in the bloggosphere and in the guest blogging world. You’ll find their knowledge and experience really useful and puts you in good stead for creating quality and stand-out guest posts.

Talk To Jon & Get His Feedback During Live Calls

UPDATE: Jon recently passed these live call Q&As over to Glen

What I found really helpful (and what surprised and impressed me most is Jon’s generosity. He delivers so much more than you expect throughout the course butespecially on the live calls.

These live calls are probably my favourite part of this course because you get to pick Jon’s brain on everything to do with guest blogging. Jon is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to everything blogging.

Your investment in Guestblogging is returned 10 fold with all the tips, techniques and insider’s information Jon is willing to share with you. I have learnt so much from Jon through just listening to the Q&A calls that I regularly go back and listen to them in the Archives (and now that I’ve downloaded them, in my own archives).

Jon also holds Guestblogging Clinics too. These are invitation-only live calls, approximately once a month, via InstantTeleseminar.com and to get invited you have to have gone through the early stages of writing your guest posts and having them reviewed from the Guestblogging course editors. During these clinics Jon gives you his personal feedback with hints and tips to really knock your guest post out of the park. I’ve had the pleasure of being on one of these calls and I found it incredibly inspiring and motivating.

Students’ Forum

This is bustling with active and supportive fellow students. Many openly share their experiences, offer their constructive and helpful advice and feedback. They also talk about their successes.

What Else Is Included?

An archive of all the Q&A Calls that Jon has held for students. You’ll find that the answers Jon gives compile into a brilliant blogging course all by themselves. They are worth the course investment alone.

There’s a ton of useful bonus content too, including interviews with popular bloggers like Leo Babauta on how they grew their hugely influential blogs with guest blogging. And there are interviews with some of Jon’s most successful students on how they used what they learnt through the course to grow their blogs.

What you’ll discover as you listen to these live call recordings is how much time and know-how Jon is willing to give you as one of his students.

I haven’t come across any other teacher as willing as Jon to give you so much of his or her time, wisdom and know-how. A few come close. But Jon stands out.

Some of Jon’s students include …

Todd R. Tressider of FinancialMentor.com

Danny Iny of FirepoleMarketing.com

Henneke Duisteraat of EnchantingMarketing.com

Mark Hermann of RockandRollZen.com

… And many more people, having great success online with up and coming and influential blogs in their field or topic.

Why I Bought Jon’s Guestblogging Course

Three failed blogs. No traffic. No readers. No subscribers … Blogging, I decided, might work for some people but it didn’t work for me. I felt a failure.

But, I didn’t want to give up.

I wanted to find out what it was that made those few genuine successful people online the successes they were.

In this search I registered for a webinar Corbett Barr was hosting on his blog ThinkTraffic.net (now Sparkline .) in which he introduced Jon Morrow.

Jon talked about his course Guestblogging and made an instant impact on me because he because what he said during this webinar was a breath of fresh air. Blogging, he said, wasn’t about writing boring, mediocre, keyword stuffed crap just to try and game the search engines, hoping people would be persuaded to read it - and even buy products. It wasn’t about sharing links on Twitter and Facebook till your fingers bled (or until the dodgy tactics the guru-squad “experts” persuaded you to use got you banned).

No, the way to really being successful online, Jon said, was by building relationships with popular bloggers who, once they got to know you, would then promote your content (if it was of a high enough standard). And, the best way to do this was by writing guest posts for their blogs that were popular with their readers and got shared a lot on social media, which in turn increased promotion and reader for them.

Jon shows you how this is done in these guest posts he wrote for Problogger.net and Copyblogger.com. Both these guest posts have become hugely popular and have got a lot of shares on social media attracting a lot of attention for both blogs. Inside the course, Jon gives you the reason why attracting positive attention for blogs you write guest posts for is important.

On that webinar he and Corbett Barr held, Jon confirmed for me what I had been thinking - and he gave me a sense of validation. Hope. A new sense of purpose and self worth.

After reading more of his awe-inspiring posts on Copyblogger and Problogger, I signed up for his course.

By the way… Corbett, I can’t thank you enough for hosting that webinar but your doing so has helped change my life.

The Best Course You Could Buy

Guestblogging is far and wide one the best courses I’ve ever enrolled on (and it’s still going strong). Why? Because it goes beyond expectation in what you discover and learn, the techniques and strategies for being successful online.

And Jon’s greatest skill as a teacher is that he understands his students (and what they need to know) so well.. I think that’s one of his greatest gifts - understanding where you’re coming from, what you’ve failed at in the past and what you need to finally succeed and believe in yourself.

Guestblogging is a course about learning how to write great guest posts that are of a quality and standard able to get accepted on the top influential blogs in their niche.

Which means that if your guest posts get accepted on these blogs, you’ll get more traffic, readers, sell more products and make more money than any guru-squad tactic could ever hope to get you … 100 times over.

But that’s not all it teaches you.

You’ll discover your whole reputation and influence increase. People begin to see you in a different light because of your appearance on those top influential blogs. And they start looking to you for answers. And they’re willing to pay good money for them too.

You’ll discover your confidence and sense of purpose increasing. You’ll see your future and your business, your reason for existing, increasing. By the day.

And even if guest posting is not something you want to do, I still can’t recommend Jon’s course enough because its beauty is Jon’s ability to teach you how to become a far better writer than you think you are.

What Jon Morrow and his Guestblogging Course Teaches You

If you’ve got talent, Jon nurtures and cajoles it out of you. Sometimes this process is simple and fun. Sometimes it’s tough and frustrating.

Whatever your writing ability, Jon’s course is a must because he teaches you how to write and how to turn your writing into a profitable online business. He’s one of the most successful writers online and inside this course he teaches you everything he knows.

Jon is a master.

Guestblogging is a master’s class.

You Can Learn How To Become A Better Writer

What makes Jon’s success story such a compelling one, and why Guestblogging does such a brilliant job of teaching you how to write is that …

He wasn’t born a brilliant writer. He had to learn how to write.

His first blog failed. He struggled to get traffic, sell his products and make money just like I did and you might be.

His first guest post that he submitted to Copyblogger was rejected.

Inside the course, Jon talks about how he taught himself to write by reading endless blog posts and practicing, practicing, practicing until he became good. Good enough to become an associate editor at Copyblogger, the blog that had rejected his first guest post submission.

And he became better. So much better that he has written some of the most moving and popular posts ever on the internet. Posts that have gone viral. He’s also helped launch blogs on the strength of his writing genius, blogs that have become popular and influential in their turn.

And then there’s his own blog, Boost Blog Traffic. If you want an example of how much of a writing genius Jon is, it’s this one. Jon didn’t start BoostBlogTraffic.com and then try to get traffic to it and turn it into readers, subscribers and customers (like that stuff the tired old guru-squad advice bangs on about).

Instead, he wrote for other blogs and in a short space of time had got “the most fanfare of maybe any blog in history. Before even writing the first post, it’s gotten over 13,000 email subscribers,” before he launched BoostBlogTraffic. Now that’s proof if ever you needed it, right?

For all these reasons I signed up for Guestblogging and Jon has been a mentor.

I’ve never met Jon in person but I’ve had the privilege of talking to him on one of his many live Q & A Calls. He’s a nice chap. He’s spends time getting to know and helping students get results.

Jon’s ability to teach you how to write popular, quality blog posts has been what’s made Guestblogging such a brilliant course for me. Because it teaches you to raise your game it can be a tough learning curve.

Jon’s Advice Brought This Turning Point …

As I mentioned earlier, guest blogging is not as easy or as simple a task as made out. But Jon Morrow gives lots of ways for how to make easier.

One that resonated with me was to look for gaps. Gaps in what’s being talked about in content that’s already out there. Gaps in information; in the steps to how to do, be or have what’s being talked about. To find those gaps and fill them with your knowledge and know-how.

Using this advice helped me get a guest post published on one of the top small business marketing blogs, FirepoleMarketing.com. Several more have followed since.

So, that’s what Jon Morrow’s Guestblogging course has done for me (so far). I know there’s more to come. He has set me on the path. Now it’s up to me to keep going. And it helps a lot that he holds his regular fornightly Q&A sessions for all his Guestblogging students to join in and get the chance to ask him questions and get his answers live.

What can Jon’s course do for you?

Well, only you really know that. But here are some questions to ask yourself to see if his course is for you …

Are you ready to put in some hard work?

Are you ready to have your confidence knocked and still persevere, even if you’re left wondering if you’ve got what it takes?

Can you afford it? It’s a hefty investment but doing the work and making it work for you will make it a worthwhile investment. One important point to remember when considering whether a course is right for you, or worth the money, is to think about who you’re buying a course from? For example, is the course creator an influencer in their field and can they prove what they’re teaching you? Jon Morrow is both an influence in his field and a great example that what he’s teaching you works.

Could you use the open doors that might otherwise be closed to you (and everyone else) that Jon and his course can open for you?

For example, some of the best blogs to write for have closed their doors to guest posters – but, will accept pitches from Jon’s students just because of his reputation and his connection with them (especially if the guest post being pitched is awesome, which it tends to be once it’s passed through the rigours of the feedback and editing steps.).

Can you learn the steps, tactics and techniques without investing in this course?

Possibly. If you know where to look and you’re ready for a lot of trial and error. If you’re not sure about the guest posting side of the course, then rest assured that this course will also make you a better writer and a more successful blogger.

But, It’s Not All Been Roses, Unicorns and Little Furry Kittens…

Moments of frustration and lack of confidence have come regularly for me as I’ve gone through this course.

Doubting yourself will be part of the process. And this is not something Jon would be sorry for. He makes it clear often that anyone joining his course should prepare to be challenged.

It’s not just challenge for challenge’s sake though. It’s intended to teach you how to become a better Writer and more, to give you the skills to build a real business online that makes money for you. I realise that. Still, it’s hard when you struggle and get knock backs, right?

Sometimes, the Feedback Can Be Tough

Honestly? I have had my confidence knocked by some of the feedback I’ve got on some of the guestblogging post drafts I’ve submitted.

I’ve had to step back and re-consider where and what I was doing, where I wanted to go as a blogger. As a result, I’ve changed my goals for where I want my blog to take me.

Often the best teaching pushes and pulls you about but gives you strength and makes you better. Of course, I do realise that part of my success as come as what the Guestblogging course teaches you.

There have been highs too. Like having Jon describe my writing as “excellent” which has been a great boost to my confidence.

What’s It Done For My Blog, Getting Traffic and Building An Email List?

Just putting one of Jon’s many genius strategies to work brought me success in getting a guest post accepted by one of the top blogs in its field, FirepoleMarketing.com. More have followed.

My email list has grown from 19 members to 74 members and growing. Yes, my email list is still tiny compared to many others. But it’s responsive and engaged. And, as Eric Grey shows, you can grow a very profitable income online with a tiny list (if you do it right).

And I’ve had great feedback on my content so far, which is also inspiring and motivates me to continue.

You’ll find success at your own pace

Be honest with yourself. Know your strengths and weaknesses.

Yes, you might need to step back and rethink and regroup before finally making it happen as you work your way through this course. But keep on doing the work. Follow the advice you get. Ask questions. Interact with the editors, Jon and fellow students.

This Guestblogging Course Has Been Updated

I’m working my way through the updated version of the course. There are some significant changes.

You progress through the course modules once you’ve done the homework and had it assessed and passed.

In the previous version, you got access to all the modules at once. I enjoyed this more because I like being able to go through all the course in one go for an overview before going through module by module.

Also, Jon is not as present in the videos as he was in the previous version and I miss his humour and presence. You still get to talk to him, ask him questions and get his feedback in the live Q & A training calls and the Guest Post Clinics.

Also, I can see why the format’s been changed too because, I think, some people may not have had the success they could have had because they rushed through and left out certain crucial stages. But this is just my guess.

Personally, and because I’ve got experience of both versions of this course, I prefer the previous version. But it’s been updated to make it more relevant to what’s going in guest blogging now.

Well, that’s about it for now. I could wax on lyrical about Jon’s course for ages but what’s important is what it can do for you. Check it out. Get on any webinars that you hear that Jon’s doing.

Read BoostBlogTraffic.com and Google Jon’s name along with the term “guest post” to read some of his brilliant posts. I’d also recommend you add your name to his email list because you’ll get a lot of information, help and advice just from the emails he sends you.

If you’ve got questions about Jon’s Guestblogging course, guest blogging in general, or about taking the frustration out of getting traffic to your blog? Ask below and I’ll be happy to answer.

I’d also love to hear about your experience with the Guestblogging course if you’re a student or alumni.

If you have other courses you recommend checking out because you’ve got results you dreamed of, please tell us below about those as well.