Well, I finally got around to checking out Mark Joyner's blogging course, and I must say that it is an excellent introduction to the subject. Mark teaches you what your blog needs to have, how to drive traffic to your blog, and how to make money with it. Here are some of the things you'll learn:

Creating your blog

• Why your blog needs to focus on a specific topic, and why you need to choose a topic that interests you.
• Why it is important to develop a list of keywords for your chosen niche and use them in your titles and your text, and how to develop such a list.
• Why quality is all-important, and why you need to post regularly to your blog.

Drivng traffic to your blog

• Why the right keywords and incoming links from quality blogs are vital for traffic generation.
• How well-chosen keywords and regular postings increase your chances that you are "spidered" by search engines.
• How you can submit your blog to search engines.
• Why you should alert your readers to other blogs that you find relevant and interesting, and how this gets you inbound links and a higher ranking.
• Why you should participate in forums related to your niche.
• Why you should turn your posts into articles and give them away for free.

Making money with your blog

• How you can earn advertising revenues with programs such as AdSense.
• How you can join affiliate programs with major companies, such as Amazon.com, ClickBank etc and earn commissions.
• How you can earn money as a professional blogger.

There are also a couple of topics that I would have liked to see discussed in more detail. For example, for some purposes it is better to use a website; for others a blog might be more appropriate. That topic could have been treated in more detail. Secondly, there are traffic-generating tools that work for blogs but not for website. That subject too might have been worth a separate lesson.

But these are mere quibbles. The bottom line is that this is an excellent introductory blogging course. Follow Mark's guidelines and you will end up with a first-rate blog. I for one am going to use this course as a blueprint for improving my own.