Update 7/9/2020:
Billionaire Blog Club (or Dare to Conquer) has changed multiple times since I took it in 2018. It’s gone through various rebirths and is now a program called OddNoodle.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to revisit it since these various changes have happened. It was helpful when I initially took it, but now I am unable to provide accurate and updated information on the courses.
However, I know you came here for blogging courses to help you, so I’d like to share my current favorites:
SEO: If you’re looking for help in the SEO realm, I absolutely love Stupid Simple SEO by Mike Pearson. This course gets into the nitty-gritty of SEO and has step-by-step instructions. My traffic has doubled since taking the course, and I love how easy it is to implement, not to mention the hands-on approach of the private Facebook group!
Affiliate Marketing: Getting started with affiliate marketing isn’t as tough as you’d think, and you don’t need significant traffic to start pulling in some income. Michelle of Making Sense of Cents has a great course called Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing that covers everything you need to start making money.
Looking for more blogging help? Check out my favorite blogging resources here:
https://www.debtfreeforties.com/side-hustle-resources/
Updates to Dare to Conquer (formerly Billionaire Blog Club) (1/9/19)
Dare to Conquer includes bootcamps, courses and journeys. Bootcamps get you started, and include blogging, pinterest, SEO and affiliate marketing. Perfect for someone starting out.
Courses are more in-depth, and include Pinterest, SEO, affiliate marketing, and sales funnels.
Journeys are challenges to help you achieve a specific goal within a certain time period. They include “$1,000+ a month with ads” and “Business Launch Blueprint”.
Not to mention all the community aspects that make DTC unique. There’s member exchange, where you can exchange tasks to help each other grow. Member services to hire out any paid services you want to outsource (I’m looking at you, Pinterest).
And don’t forget Slack! Think of it as an online chat with different topics to discuss. There’s a channel just for email monetizing, Pinterest, SEO, wins, just about every niche possible, and more! You’re sure to find your personal tribe of like-minded bloggers here.
Sign up for the Dare to Conquer blogging group now before the price goes up or you have to buy the courses individually. Doors to BBC/DTC are officially open again!
Update on 10/5/18: The Billionaire Blog Club (BBC) has now officially become Dare to Conquer (DTC)!
So what in the world is DTC?
Dare to Conquer is a new, holistic approach to not only building a blog, but creating an online business from the ground up. Rather than focusing on individual chunks (like SEO or Pinterest), DTC will help you to create a strong business foundation to build up on.
Currently, Paul Scrivens is updating the courses in chunks and spurts to reflect all the changes that have been going on. So far, the Pinterest course has been completed and SEO is partly updated.
Looking through the Pinterest course, I see a lot of new content. No more Boardbooster (RIP), but there’s an entire module dedicated to Tailwind – pinning strategies, statistics, and tribes, as well as more.
Paul also has plans to create a brand new, online business from scratch and let us watch how it’s done. This is from his latest email:
You ever notice that Facebook Groups have a weird panic trickle down effect? If one person sees something going wrong then that must mean everyone is seeing something going wrong.
It’s why I never say “this is the exact way or the only way to do something”. I show you and tell you what I’ve experienced through my own work on my own sites. That’s why I’m comfortable teaching what I teach but I also know that things change. It’s why you always get lifetime access to my courses. It’s why I always experiment.
I don’t want you to be a cynic about everything that you read, but I do want you to question things until you understand why they are happening. Way too many of you take things at face value right away and it’s why you are scared to experiment. This whole business thing is YOUR JOURNEY and that means YOU HAVE TO DO THE LEARNING.
The reality is that almost nobody expects you to succeed because the outside world doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do. That means you’re playing with house money. This Monday (don’t worry you’ll get an email) I’m going to start my path to a 7-figure business.
The journey is going to be a winding road that loops around. It won’t be a straight line because things change and evolve. Some of you won’t like it because it’s not a user manual for every single exact step you need to take to do this business thing. I don’t think those truly exist.
Update 7/24/18:If you are interested in signing up for the Billionaire Blog Club, it’s undergoing a huge change next month. Paul sent this in an email today:
The soul of BBC isn’t disappearing, it’s just moving to a new domain because the word “blog” is too limiting. It limits your mindset. It limits your strategy. It limits your revenue.
You’ll be able to buy courses on an individual basis with the idea being that the basics to help you get started (Pinterest, SEO, etc) are more affordable than the more advanced courses (branding, product creation, sales funnels) that will take you to the next level. Essentially, as your revenue grows, you can continue to scale up the Momo course list.
Purchasing now also gets you lifetime access to the Slack community which is the gem of the Internet. You’ll also be able to purchase access to the community without purchasing a course but you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription fee.
Courses that will be inside of Momo when it officially launches:
- SEO
- YouTube
- Affiliate Marketing
- Building Your Tribe / Growing Your List
- Niche Selection
- Building a Brand You Love
- Creating Sales Funnels
- Product Creation & Launch
- Running a Service-Based Business
- Using Facebook Ads
- Ultimate Webinars
- Amazon Kindle Publishing Success
- Killer Content Creation
- Google Analytics
Hopefully you understand why buying everything will cost you over $2,999 now. Every single course is being built from the ground up.
This doesn’t even go into the other features that are going into DTC.My goal is to help you get closer to your dream every single day so when the time is right you can jump into the DTC ecosystem.
Bloggers are often seeking out the next best course or ebook to boost their blogging game. Every blogging Facebook group has members asking for advice, reviews and feedback about different courses. Often found at the top of this list is request for a Billionaire Blog Club review and feedback.
I joined the Billionaire Blog Club, or the BBC as members refer to it, in December 2017. I was looking for a new Pinterest strategy to help boost my pageviews.
The BBC is run by a man named Paul Scrivens, who successfully runs a multitude of blogs in different niches. His blog topics include health and wellness, personal finance, beauty/fashion, and motherhood, just to name a few.
After reviewing several ebooks and courses, I decided to opt for the BBC due to the variety of content that was available. I liked that one price got me a lifetime membership to multiple courses and the Slack community, unlike the singular courses and ebooks that I knew I would not be likely to go back to. This would be a resource I could use daily.
I began by signing up for the free 12 day bootcamp email series to see if I liked the format, the way information was presented, and if I liked Paul’s personality and approach.
The 12 Day Blogging Bootcamp Email Series
I’m annoyingly tight with my money, so I wasn’t just going to cough up my hard earned cash by reading a couple of sales pages. I decided to start my journey by signing up for the free 12 day bootcamp series.
My blog has been up and running since July 2017, so I was past the majority of the information provided in the email series. A lot of it deals with the initial steps needed to get a blog up and running.
I was able to pull some new tidbits, tips and tricks from the emails that I hadn’t run into before. But what I liked even more was Paul’s bluntness in his emails.
He began, in the very first email, admitting that his goal was to convert me from a subscriber to a customer. And I appreciate that. He says that he doesn’t sugarcoat things, and that’s absolutely true.
What I’ve come to find is that blogging is a business. You can find people who are “yes men” and take your money, all the while agreeing with everything all the time.
Or you can find those rare folks that know it’s not about agreeing or pacifying others; it’s about being honest, treating your blog as a business, and doing what it takes to set it on the right path to succeed.
This refreshing perspective found in the email series drove me to eventually sign on for the full Dare to Conquer membership. While honesty can sometimes ding your pride just a bit, I feel it’s worth it in the long run to build a successful blog and business.
What is Dare to Conquer?
The Dare to Conquer community is refreshingly different from any other courses, ebooks, or Facebook groups I’ve had the privilege to partake in. This is what makes it so unique:
First and foremost, it’s a community.
The DTC has a Slack community tied to it. If you’ve never used Slack, think of an IM app or chatroom that has categories. Members can post questions in the various threads (SEO, Pinterest, General, etc.) and other members can answer.
What makes this a unique feature is that Paul is generally in there all the time. If you need to ask him directly, you can reference him in your message and he’ll answer quickly.
I’ve used this to not only ask him questions directly, but to bounce ideas off of the other members. Bloggers from all levels of experience and backgrounds are present, making it an amazingly diverse and knowledgeable group.
DTC is a resource center.
Think of a giant library of all of your blogging resources. Then triple it, and you’ll have the DTC’s resources. At the time of this writing, there are 123 lessons spread over 9 courses:
- SEO
- Boardbooster Masterclass
- Niche Selection
- Affiliate Marketing
- Intro to Email Marketing
- Google Analytics
- WordPress
- Content Creation
Each of these courses are comprised of lessons with videos. You are able to not only understand the content behind them, but you get real life examples in different blogging niches to help you apply them.
It’s an all-in-one strategic blogging resource.
Not only is the course content well thought out, it’s also easy to use to build a strategy.
For example, you learn how to find content ideas that will appeal to your audience. Then you learn how to search for keywords to use in your content, and build your SEO. Once the post is written, you apply design tactics to your Pinterest graphics, and strategically pin them to get the most traffic possible.
All of this creates a cohesive blogging strategy, helping you to build each article into a traffic magnet, creating a snowball effect.
Rather than just writing any old article idea that comes to mind, you learn to strategically pick topics that you know will build traffic, build readership, and ultimately build monetization.
What Makes Dare to Conquer/Billionaire Blog Club Unique from other Courses
There are several pieces that make the BBC unique to any other blogging resources that can be found online:
Blogging Challenges:
For the month of February, Paul posted four challenges that we could choose to participate in:
- Launching your blog and getting 10k pageviews
- How to Reach $1,000 in revenue and beyond
- How to gain your first 1000 subscribers
- Creating your first paid product
Each of these challenges has a daily video with a blogging task associated it with. It’s a great way to break down big goals into smaller, more manageable bite sized chunks. Not to mention it’s a great motivator to reach for the next goal!
Community:
As I mentioned, the Slack community beats any blogging Facebook group, hands down. A large majority of members participate in discussions, and having access directly to Paul is worth its weight in gold.
Other DTC community perks include:
- An exchange section where members can help each other with specific blogging tasks for community points.
- A directory of all the members so you can message someone directly with questions.
- A Pinterest Group Boards area where members can see open group boards owned by other members.
Paul’s experience in different niches.
One final piece that makes the BBC truly unique is Paul’s blogging experience and ability to analyze data. Rather than becoming a one-off blogger that specializes in one niche, Paul’s built successful blogs in multiple niches.
He’s also created a list of the niches that are most likely to make you money. Obviously some are easier to monetize than others, and he’s able to tell you what’s worked for him in specific instances, rather than in just one niche.
This gives him real world experience in the majority of niches and can tell you what’s really worked for him in that particular niche, rather than a blanket statement that might not apply to all niches. And he tells you what the best type of blog to start or best blog subjects that make money in because he wants you to succeed.
What I Love about Dare to Conquer/Billionaire Blog Club
Videos. Lots and lots of videos.
I am a visual person. You tell me about something, I might be able to do it. You physically show me it? I’ve got it down pat.
I hate the lack of interaction with ebooks and some courses. With the BBC, I can see a descriptive video of Paul’s Pinterest or SEO strategy and apply it.
Slack and how easy it is to reach Paul.
I love the ability to ask questions and get direct responses from Scrivs. I can also email him directly and he answers quickly. The personalized response is awesome and I love that I know it’s specific to my situation, because he actually reads and responds to my specific situation.
I like mastermind groups.
I am a big fan of mastermind groups. The Slack community is similar to a mastermind group without the weekly structure of calls. If you want accountability, the members will volunteer to give it to you. If you want support, you’ve got it. You need tough love? They’re in. You need a more experience blogger to give you feedback? They’re there and participating.
It’s all encompassing, unlike one-off courses.
I truly have been able to understand and create a strategy for my blog. Previously, I was just writing about whatever topic I could think of every week. Now, I have a strategy for the long game.
What I Dislike about The DTC
I’m not going to be one of those bloggers that just blow smoke and hope you’ll go with it. There are pieces of the DTC that I find difficult to keep up with. In keeping honest, these are the pieces of the DTC that I struggle with:
I don’t have the bandwidth to keep up with Slack.
Just like with Facebook groups, I check into Slack when I have a spare ten minutes every couple of days with the app on my phone. I just don’t have the bandwidth to read all the comments, all day long. And that’s ok.
I know that if I need to find something, I can use the search function to see if anyone’s discussed the question I have previously, or if I should ask again.
This does mean that I miss out on some of the comradery of Slack. I’m also an introvert, so putting myself out there on Slack can be a little difficult as well, but I’ve gotten over it.
While I’m not in on the daily banter, I do pop in on occasion to either catch up or post a question. Luckily Slack notifies me if I’ve been tagged in a comment.
All of the courses, challenges and community can be information overload.
With so many courses and so much information, it can be overwhelming at first, not knowing where to start.
A large majority of the courses almost intertwine, so it’s not super clear which to start first. Obviously, it’s going to depend on your particular situation. There are general path suggestions in the course instructions, and you can always adjust as you need to.
The amount of information can be overwhelming, but it’s really just up to you as a blogger to figure out what your weak spots are and prioritize them, so you can get them knocked out.
How DTC has helped my blog game
I finally have a strategy and an overarching game plan.
I know what I need to do, I have a direction, and I have the tools to do it. Now it’s just a matter of me following through, and doing those steps over and over with each post I create.
I know which blogging activities that are worth my time, effort and energy.
Previously, I did so many blogging activities that just weren’t moving the ball forward. They weren’t increasing traffic or income, and they were sucking up so much time. Now that I have a better understanding of what really drives traffic and creates revenue, I have a better understanding of what tasks are going to get me there. And where to spend my time, effort, and energy.
I know how to apply this data to my specific niche.
Other courses and ebooks are generally written by bloggers that major in one particular niche. What works for one niche might not work for another. Rather than risk disappointment, I know that the methods tried by Paul apply to my niche specifically. And if not, I know how to test new ideas out to see if they will work or not for my niche as well.
If I can’t figure something out, I know who to ask.
Rather than posting in a blogging Facebook group and risking tons of random answers, I know I can go right to the source. If I don’t want to ask Paul specifically, I know which other BBC members are in my niche or have more experience than me and can provide feedback.
I’ve learned SEO, upped my Pinterest game, and know how to analyze my Google Analytics to see what’s causing traffic spikes or drops.
I’ve learned to get the hang of my data and utilize it to figure out what’s working – and what’s not – for my blog. I’ve not only picked up things like how to search for keywords, but I understand how to apply them and what makes a good keyword for my blog specifically.
I’ve learned patience.
Maybe it’s just getting more experience under my belt, but I’m learning to have more patience when it comes to blogging. I am understanding that traffic ebbs and flows, and there are seasons to Pinterest. I’ve learned to give new practices some time, and only then, to try and adjust them so that I can make the most of my time and effort.
My verdict on Dare to Conquer/Billionaire Blog Club
Would I sign up for BBC again? Absolutely. The Billionaire Blog Club not only gives me all the knowledge I need to achieve my goals, but Paul is constantly updating the information and videos.
Unlike a singular course, it’s constantly being updated to reflect new information, and I’m able to access data that entails every aspect of blogging that any blogger needs from start to finish. No matter where you’re at on the blogging path, it’s clear that the Billionaire Blog Club is a great and inexpensive way to boost your blogging game.
Interested in joining the Billionaire Blog Club? Join here or sign up for the 12 day blogging bootcamp here.
