Thank you for telling the truth. I did take a course that made me a better blogger, but like most people that take these courses, I learned taking a course in itself does no good unless you put what you learn into practice and your teacher has the same blogging philosophy as you do. The gurus make it appear too easy, and most make their money from selling courses and books, not blogging.

The teachers I chose had demonstrated their ability to do well at affiliate marketing and were able to teach me where I was making mistakes. I believe one reason I’ve not made the kind of money they did is that I was not willing to just sell stuff on my blogs. I wanted to say something worth reading and selling was a necessary evil for me to be able to meet blogging expenses.

I like Medium because I don’t have to worry about selling stuff and can just concentrate on the stories I have to share. What I learned in my blogging course still helps me tell the stories more effectively. Many bloggers say they will not pay to earn money so they don’t want to write at Medium. But they will pay for websites and software and blogging courses. Go figure.