Review of the Perfecting Blogging Course (By Sophia Lee)

This review of Perfecting Blogging from the six-figure blogger By Sophia Lee tells you everything you need to know in deciding whether to buy it.

(Hint: Perfecting Blogging is the ONLY general blogging course I recommend for BEGINNERS out of 100+ courses I have taken).

Background

I first stumbled upon Sophia Lee when one of her YouTube blogging videos randomly played on my feed. I was totally and completely blown away by her wisdom and business strategy as a full-time blogger, particularly at such a young age (~25).

Here’s a sample video with some of her blogging tips for beginners:

Whereas most bloggers REALLY struggle to gain any sort of substantial traffic and income, Sophia Lee truly seemed to “get” exactly how to successfully implement the blogging activities that provided the most return on her time.

(And it’s NOT wasting time posting on social media and praying it grows.)

I know how hard it can be to learn the blogging best practices and how much trial and error, as well as consistency it takes, to find any sort of success, let alone the amount Sophia Lee has had in just a few years.

(By Sophia Lee is a blog that earns over a million dollars annually.)

So, I wanted to learn ALL of Sophia Lee’s strategies as fast as I could! I started by taking her Perfecting Pinterest master course, because I needed more help on that platform, and thought it was ABSOLUTELY GENIUS. (It covers every step of her exact Pinterest strategy, from how to set up a Pinterest business account, to creating Pins and boards that get massive click-through rates.) I’m telling you, I reviewed it so many times, and right now, several months after implementing her strategies, I have 4x-ed my Pinterest statistics.

Because I was so happy with Sophia Lee’s Pinterest course, it was a no-brainer to purchase her blogging course, which is the focus of this post: to provide a full review of Perfecting Blogging so you can decide whether to buy it too.

My credentials in writing this review of Perfecting Blogging:

I rarely talk about myself in blog posts, but I think it’s important for you to have an idea of why MY review of this course is trustworthy. For over eight years, I have read every book on blogging I could find, listened to literally THOUSANDS of hours of podcasts and YouTube videos on blogging, taken far over 100 courses on blogging, and built a blog that brings in six figures of monthly traffic and thousands of dollars in monthly income, in about 3.5 years since I actually started this blog.

So, I would consider my own personal knowledge of blogging to be pretty advanced.

To date, I have chosen to review and share the courses of only two bloggers, so I hope that tells you something about what I think of By Sophia Lee!

Review of Perfecting Blogging

In this review of Perfecting Blogging, the course from By Sophia Lee, I share the course contents, pros and cons (including what the course does NOT cover), and then exactly who I think this course is best for and who can probably skip it.

Perfecting Blogging Course Contents

Perfecting Blogging contains dozens of chapters plus a bonus section. I took the full course over the course of about 2 days (here and there — not all day during both days).

An advanced blogger will probably finish the course in 1-2 days, whereas a beginner may take up to about a week to really digest it.

Overall, Perfecting Blogging teaches you: the basics of what your blog should look like to the user, how your categories should be organized, how to select topics for your posts, and exactly how to write a super solid blog post from start to finish.

It’s a mixture of video or video transcripts (your preference) and worksheets.

The table of contents (and length of time of each corresponding video, where applicable), is listed below so you can see exactly what’s included in Perfecting Blogging:

Welcome to the Perfecting Blogging Master Course!

• Welcome to Perfecting Blogging!
• What You Need For This Course
• Who is Sophia?
• Facebook Group!
• Glossary

Perfecting Blogging: Really Freakin’ Important Things You Need To Know About Blogging

• The ONE Thing That You Must Know For A Successful Blog
• How I Chose My Niche + What You Need To Know About Choosing Your Own Niche
• THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU WILL LEARN ABOUT BLOGGING

Perfecting Blogging: Setting Up A Website That Your Readers Will Trust

• Why I Think The Way Your Website Looks Is INSANELY Important To Having A Fast-Growing Website
• What To Name Your Blog
• 4 Important Things I Looked For When Buying A Theme
• How I Save Time While Still Making My Graphics Look GOOD
• Branding Guide for Canva
• Branding Guide for Adobe Illustrator
• Where I Get My Fonts + Pictures From
• What You Need To Include In Your Blog’s Menu
• What To Include In Your About Page
• How I Blogged Anonymously for Two Years

Perfecting Blogging: Content, Content, Content (The MOST Important Thing I’ll Teach You About Blogging)

• Why Content Planning Is My Bread + Butter
• Keyword Research Template
• How I Come Up With Post Ideas I KNOW People Will Read
• Printable Content Calendar
• The Power of Content Calendars + How I Plan My Content
• How Far In Advance You Should Be Need To Be Posting Content
• The Three Styles of Posts I Write
• How To Deal With People Copying Your Blog
• Why UPGL’s Are Just As Important as PGL’s

Perfecting Blogging: The Exact Steps I Take When Writing Every Single Blog Post

• You Need To Be Thinking About This The Entire Time You Write A Blog Post
• The Tools I Use For Writing Blog Posts
• My Formula For Titling A Blog Post
• How I Include Keywords In A Blog Post (IMPORTANT!)
• What if my keyword is super weird?!
• What To Include In Every Blog Post Introduction
• How To Write The “Meat” Of a Post
• Exactly How I End A Post (and extra things I add to each blog post to take it to the next level)
• Exactly How We Use Thrive Architect at BSL
• The Exact Checklist I Use When Writing A Blog Post

PERFECTING BLOGGING: The Techniques I Use To Make Money From My Blog

• Affiliate Marketing – How I Make Money From My Readers Without Being Salesy
• The Importance of a Recommendations Page
• Ads
• My (winding) History with Mediavine

Affiliates

• Want to become an affiliate for Perfecting Blogging?

Worksheets + Printables

• Branding Guide for Canva
• Branding Guide for Adobe Illustrator
• Keyword Research Template
• Content Calendar
• Blog Post Checklist
• Glossary

BONUS SECTION!

• Intro To The Bonus Section
• For The Love of “Backlinks”
• The Exact List of Plugins I Use On BySophiaLee.com
• Where do you look at your traffic?
• You’re going to need thick skin for this…
• How To Stay Motivated When Page Views are Low
• All About Hiring
• How We Organize EVERYTHING in Asana + Google Calendar
• Our Growth Path – How We Turned The Blog Into Multiple Successful Businesses
• How We Make 6-Figures With Only Digital Products
• Even More About Google Analytics
• Affiliate Marketing
• Social Media Strategy

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Pros of Perfecting Blogging

First, Perfecting Blogging is very affordable compared to other blogging courses. I have paid multiples of the price to access other blogging courses.

Check the current price of Perfecting Blogging.

Second, Sophia Lee is SO engaging, and it’s SO easy to follow her step-by-step video and written materials, where she shows you EXACTLY how she does everything from start to finish. Not every blogging course is like this, but Sophia Lee really understands how to provide the most impact in teaching her content, and she delivers it in a way that very easily CLICKS with the student.

Third, the course comes with membership in a Facebook group filled with fellow students. This is fairly standard for blogging courses, but I particularly think this is a great group for beginners particularly. Most of the other blogging groups I’m in are fairly advanced and newbie questions can get lost in the shuffle. So, if you are new to blogging, I especially think you will find value in this group. Sophia Lee is also good about jumping in and providing answers to questions, which isn’t always the case with other groups.

Fourth, once you become a student, you get access to all future updates. This is so important since blogging is such a constantly changing space. Updates occur about once per year, and most recently they occurred in July 2023. I especially like that, while this is generally a beginners’ course, Sophia Lee has been updating it with more advanced strategies about how she pivoted and diversified her business after her blog started growing as well.

Fifth, and most importantly, as someone who is fairly advanced in blogging myself, I completely agree with Sophia Lee’s general blogging strategies, which advocate for: focusing on the reader more than yourself, finding the right keywords and optimizing your post to provide the most helpful and relevant content, and working hard for the long haul.

This is EXACTLY how I saw success myself, and so I completely endorse this “big picture” strategy.

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Cons of Perfecting Blogging

Every course comes with cons, so now let’s talk about what Perfecting Blogging doesn’t teach, and what I personally didn’t like about the course.

As mentioned above, the focus of Perfecting Blogging is what your blog should look like to the user, how your categories should be organized, how to select topics for your posts, and exactly how to write a super solid blog post from start to finish.

Some things it does NOT cover, which are also important to the success of your blog are:

• How to actually start your blog from a technical perspective
• How to use the Gutenberg editor in WordPress (Sophia Lee uses the older version of WordPress, which may become obsolete)
• Site speed and other technical components of SEO (To learn everything you need to know, I recommend SEO Jumpstart)
• The business side of blogging
• The legal side of blogging (such as disclosures)
• Email Marketing (To learn the basics, I recommend Email Marketing Jumpstart)
• Sponsorships with brands

Now, for the price that Perfecting Blogging costs, I still think you are getting an amazing value and, more importantly, the RIGHT information to actually see success with your blog, but you should know that once your blog starts to grow, you will likely also need to learn many of the topics listed above which the course doesn’t cover.

And while I think Perfecting Blogging does a really good job of enforcing the importance of keywords and content, I thought it could have gone deeper on how to choose keywords by which you have a really good chance to rank on Google. Sophia Lee does state that beginners should choose keywords with lower search volume, but I think she could have enforced how to choose the lowest competition keywords, which can be a more in-depth process from my experience.

And, in order to fully succeed with Perfecting Blogging, you should note that you may need Keywords Everywhere, which is a paid keyword research service. But, even if you do buy it, it’s only $10. I bought it and find it to be helpful and easy to use for such a cheap price tag.

Lastly, Sophia Lee’s refund policy states that if you contact her within 30 days from enrollment and you can receive a full refund if you have not gone past Unit 1.  Many courses offer cash-back guarantees regardless of how much the course is consumed, so this refund policy isn’t as strong; however, I also understand Sophia Lee’s need for such a policy.

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Is Perfecting Blogging worth it?

Ok, so now we have reached the ultimate question in this review of Perfecting Blogging: Is it worth it?

While I am a superfan of Sophia Lee’s other course, Perfecting Pinterest, and recommend it to almost ANYONE in blogging (even advanced bloggers), when it comes to Perfecting Blogging, I think it’s best for certain people, and others can skip it.

I personally believe Perfecting Blogging is best for:

• totally new bloggers looking to start out the RIGHT way
• struggling bloggers who are really frustrated with their growth
• social media influences looking to start or grow a blog as part of their business
• anyone who doesn’t understand keywords and how to find them and use them properly

And I think you can probably skip it if: you are a blogger who already has tens of thousands of views per month and/or an income of thousands of dollars per month on your blog alone (not including social media) — you probably already know this stuff!

(Instead, advanced bloggers can check out my review of Sophia Lee’s advanced blogging course, Perfecting Email for her most advanced strategies.)

As someone in the boat of a relatively advanced blogger myself, I did know most of what Sophia Lee taught in Perfecting Blogging. I picked up a few good tips about things like how to better time my posts and a few keyword strategies I wasn’t already using, and to me, that was worth it, but another advanced blogger may have hoped to gain more from the course.

I also think you can skip Perfecting Blogging if you are specifically looking to learn the topics that I mentioned are not covered in the course, or if you just want to write what you want how you want to write it on your blog. This course is about OPTIMIZING your blog as a business, so it’s really not for the artist at heart who just wants to create.

The Final Verdict

So, to quickly recap my review of Perfecting Blogging, I find the course to be:

• reasonably priced compared to other blogging courses
• SUPER easy to follow step-by-step
• and focuses on the EXACT topics I (as a fairly advanced blogger) also believe are the best to actually find success with a blog — finding and optimizing your post with keywords, writing super helpful content that focuses on the reader and not yourself, and working really hard for a long time.

And I think it’s best for new and/or struggling bloggers who are committed to working towards real financial success from their blog, but don’t really understand how to choose keywords and write about them so that your posts can be found on search engines to get massive traffic, which, in turn, produces income.

If this is you…