Blogging Masterclass: Build A Successful Blog In 2023 And Beyond
Brad Merrill · Media Entrepreneur
A decade-of-blogging veteran hands over his full WordPress-to-monetization blueprint, but the delivery is dated and the audio quality undercuts the substance.
Brad Merrill built a technology blog that reportedly reached half a million monthly readers, and this course tries to hand over everything he learned doing it. The scope is genuinely broad: mindset and niche selection, WordPress setup, content ideation, writing craft, content repurposing, SEO, promotion, email list building, and monetization, all inside roughly three and a half hours split across more than eighty short lessons. For a beginner who wants a single map of the entire blogging process rather than a deep dive into one piece of it, that breadth is the main selling point.
Where the course earns its keep
The strongest material sits in the ideation and content-strategy sections. Rather than telling students to "just write about what you love," Merrill offers a specific diagnostic: check your Amazon order history, your bookshelf, and your YouTube watch history for recurring interests, since these often reveal a niche you would not have named off the top of your head. He extends this into an audience-first alternative to topic-first blogging, using Maria Popova's Brain Pickings as an example of a blog built around a worldview rather than a single subject. The later ideation lessons on mining Quora's topic FAQ pages and lurking in relevant subreddits for recurring questions give students an actual repeatable workflow, not just inspiration.
The monetization section is similarly concrete. The case-study lesson breaks down structure (profile the customer as the story's main character, use specific numbers like page views rather than vague percentage claims) in a way that is directly usable. The affiliate marketing lesson is honest about the ethics involved, insisting that any product promoted has to be one the blogger actually uses, and pairs the advice with a specific plugin recommendation for managing links.
Where it falls short
The WordPress section is the weakest link. It walks through domain registration, theme installation, and plugin setup at a pace clearly aimed at someone who has never built a website, and Merrill says as much himself when he tells students to skip ahead if they already know this material. That is useful self-awareness, but it also means a meaningful chunk of the runtime delivers no value to anyone with even minimal WordPress experience.
The bigger issue is that the course is explicitly built around 2010s blogging tactics: guest posting pitches, expert roundup posts, Buffer-scheduled Twitter teasers, and building an email list as the primary traffic-independent asset. None of that advice is wrong, but a course titled for "2023 and beyond" leans heavily on promotion channels and platform dynamics that have shifted since the underlying content was recorded, and newer discovery channels get no real treatment.
Production quality is also a real drawback. The narration runs long and repetitive in places, with the same points about discipline and consistency restated across multiple lessons rather than tightened into one. Students who want a crisp, modern playbook will find themselves wading through more filler than the subject strictly requires.
Taken as a whole, this is a legitimate beginner's foundation from someone who did build a real audience, not a rehashed template. It rewards patience more than it rewards urgency, and it is best treated as a reference to dip back into section by section rather than a single sitting.
The standout
The 'follow the money' niche-finding exercise, mining your own Amazon order history and YouTube watch history for patterns, turns an abstract brainstorming problem into a concrete five-minute audit.
What you will learn
- How to choose a blog niche by mining your own purchase history, reading habits, and skills for recurring patterns
- How to set up and configure a self-hosted WordPress site including themes, plugins, security, and backups
- A repeatable system for generating content ideas using tools like BuzzSumo, Quora, and Reddit to eavesdrop on audience questions
- How to structure a case study as a customer-story narrative that builds social proof without sounding like an ad
- The mechanics of on-page SEO including internal linking, anchor text, and image alt-text optimization
- How to build and pitch guest posts, run expert roundups, and use affiliate links inside tutorials as a monetization path
Best for: A true beginner who has never touched WordPress and wants one linear path from blank page to a functioning, monetizable blog.
Skip it if: Anyone who already runs a WordPress site or has published content before, since the early lessons on installing plugins and picking a theme will feel like a rehash.