I wrote previously about the blogging course I had just started and now, with a month’s experience under my belt, I want to address the question: Blog Curation – Does It Work?

Testing Blog Curation

If you missed my previous post, it’s at Link Building Stopped Working.

Despite several challenges in my private life, I’ve kept to my personal goal of making a curated post 6 days a week to my selected blog: Healthy Eating For Healthy Living Tips and have been rewarded by seeing some of my posts on page 1 of Google within minutes, following the methods in the course. All of which means nothing, unless sales increase….

My traffic has increased steadily, my subscribers have increased, and yes, I’ve seen more sales than average (for me). No, it’s not a life-changing income – sorry – but the move is in the right direction and those posts are out there for new enquirers to find, they’re on my blog, and they’re being tweeted. Also I’m just starting with Pinterest. (Ask me for an invitation if you need one!)

Please note that I say “my own personal goal” for the number of posts per day. This is because Dr Kilstein’s course recommends 4 posts a day. And I’ve seen them do it online in a timescale that shows this is achievable – but it’s not achievable for me with things I have going on in my life at the moment. If I were spending more time, I can see that I would get better results. Also, I still haven’t implemented all the strategies taught – just down to lack of time because I have another business to run. (Three in fact!)

Could I have improved my traffic and sales without the course? Well, I suppose I could have if I had enough knowledge, but I didn’t have the knowledge and haven’t achieved much in the way of income for the past few years online!

That’s largely been because it was such a steep learning curve, but on Dr Kilstein’s course, when I get stuck, “support” promptly wades in to help. Also we get regular emails and updates, plus bonus webinars.

What I can say is that it’s the first of MANY courses and programs that I’ve subscribed to and felt motivated enough, and learned enough, to carry on with it. It’s one of the best value courses I’ve ever bought.

One thing which really impressed me (even though I didn’t need to myself) was that it includes setting up your blog – which was a huge learning curve for me when I first got started. (In fact I paid to have it set up!)

Any downsides?

• Well, I know there are cheaper courses (I bought some!) and software tools out there, including a free trial of blog curation software which you may like to try. I tried it and for a free tool, it’s great, but it won’t give you the knowledge I gained from Dr Harlan Kilstein’s training course – which is what I was lacking.
• I guess Dr K can be a little terse and doesn’t tolerate fools gladly (but neither do I, so that’s no problem to me). Some of the webinar questions he gets asked would make you weep, because usually he has answered them 20 minutes before the question was asked.
• The software included in Dr K’s course isn’t as “pretty” as the free software above, but it’s packed with useful features.
• The webinars are very long and as they’re delivered at an inconvenient time for me in the UK it’s a challenge to stay awake for the live Q&As, but they’re recorded for replay later if you need to break them into more manageable chunks.

One tip I will pass on is to avoid any software that does automatic posting, linking and “scraping” like the plague. I’m surprised how many are still promoting these methods after the latest Google updates.

So, to summarise, if you’re thinking of dipping your toe into the water with the content curation method, from my researches, you have four choices:

1. If you already KNOW how to get onto page 1 of Google regularly and make sales from it, use the free trial of blog curation software to do it faster!
2. If you don’t have the above knowledge, or don’t even know how to set up your blog, grab Dr Harlan Kilstein’s training course with both hands, while he’s still including the free site setup in the package.
3. You could, of course, look at some of the cheaper courses and tools on the market. I’ve not evaluated them all, obviously, but there’s usually some kind of upsell and some of the methods are dubious in the extreme, i.e. likely to get you into “trouble” with Google long-term.
4. Do nothing, in which case, nothing will change for you

Hope my update has been helpful in answering the question does blog curation work.