Building a Framework: The Ultimate Blogging Handbook Review

My Honest Review of Building a Framework: The Ultimate Blogging Handbook

Strategies I’ve learned to make money on my own blog that you can implement today!

2019 UPDATE: Building A Framework Has Been Retired

Abby and Donnie made the tough decision to retire Building a Framework in February 2019.

I do have recommendations for other blogging courses to consider.

Elite Blog Academy is the best comprehensive course on how to blog for money.

You can check out my full review How I Become a 6-Figure Blogger with Elite Blog Academy.

Blog By Number this course leads you through the step-by-step process for starting your blog. Suzi breaks down all of the behind the scenes tech details to make getting your blog online easy peasy. Blog By Number is an awesome pre-course to Elite Blog Academy.

Browser to Buyer is a new course offered by Abby Lawson (creator of Building a Framework). Abby and her husband Donnie are experts when it comes to converting website traffic into email subscribers. The one thing I am the most passionate about in online business is growing your email list. Unlike social media, your email list is an asset in your business that you own. In this 3-part series, you’ll learn exactly how to turn causal website viewers into loyal fans!

50+ Blogging Tools

Over the last month, I’ve implemented many strategies in Abby Lawson’s Building a Framework: The Ultimate Blogging Handbook and they’ve made such an amazing impact that I had to share this wonderful resource with everyone!

If you are looking to start a blog or website but you are feeling overwhelmed, this is the ONLY resource you will need to get started!

*This article contains affiliate links. I am sharing these resources with you because they have helped me tremendously through my blogging journey. I do not recommend any products in this review that I do not use myself.

So What is Building a Framework: The Ultimate Blogging Handbook?

Abby Lawson began blogging in early 2013 over at Just a Girl and Her Blog. Within months, she started to realize that blogging could lead to a full-time income. When Abby’s husband, Donnie, wrote a very detailed article about how to go paperless using Evernote, which led to thousands of dollars in affiliate sales, they realized that what they’ve learned in online business would be useful to other bloggers. In 2014, Abby launched the first version of Building a Framework.

A lot of the information presented in this book can be found online for free. I’ve been blogging since July 2013 and at least half of what was written in the book I have never tried. Using Abby’s book made it so that I didn’t have to go searching, wasting hours of my time. Plus learning how Abby turned her blog into a successful business sparked a lot of ideas I would not have thought to Google.

Lessons I’ve Learned

Social Media Strategies

Sigh, social media can be the best thing that ever happened to your business or your worst nightmare, depending on how you look at it. If you plan to succeed in the online space, it’s a necessary component of your marketing plan. With the constant changes, it can turn into a huge time suck. Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat… where do you even start?

My problem was not where do I start but how do I keep up? Unfortunately, I caught myself spending more time on social media than I was creating new content for my blog. That is a big no-no, but I also don’t have a budget to hire help, so what do I do?

First, I’ve decided to primarily focus on 3 platforms: Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. Many people may argue with my decision to leave Facebook out of my top 3 but after spending many hours trying to drive traffic from Facebook, it has become obvious to me that you have to pay to play on Facebook’s platform. That’s totally okay and one day I may pivot my strategy back to Facebook but in the meantime, I’ve more than doubled my social page views by concentrating on Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram (in that order).

How did Building a Framework help me build a social strategy?

Abby offers 20 step-by-step video tutorials as part of the Advanced and Master packages. In addition to covering her social media strategies in the book, she records several “how-to” videos that save a ton of time in implementing the social media strategies she teaches in the book. In the videos she covers the following topics related to social media:

Scheduling with Buffer
Scheduling with CoSchedule
Scheduling Pins with BoardBooster
Scheduling Pins with Tailwind
Facebook Insights
Facebook Open Graph
Abby’s Social Media Posting Routine

Woah! Immediately after watching her Tailwind video, I signed up for a year’s membership. I’ve been using it for three weeks and my repins have increased 300%!

A little secret: Abby gives people who purchase her book access to an exclusive group Pinterest board called Best of Blogland! Oh, there’s more…anyone who purchases the Advanced and Master packages also gains access to the exclusive Building a Framework Facebook group!

It’s All About the Photos

A close second to producing quality content for your site is using amazing photos to compliment your content. There is a ton of research that suggests the best-clicked pins are those that have high quality, colorful images with an easy to read text overlay.

How did Building a Framework help me build a social strategy?

Abby dedicates an entire chapter to photography. She explains how she takes the amazing photographs for her own blog, the equipment she uses and how she edits her photos. In addition to that, she offers two video tutorials as part of the Advanced and Master packages.

Editing Photos in PicMonkey
Editing Photos in Photoshop

Additional resources:

Copyright issues are a huge concern for bloggers. You can’t use any photo you find on the web and don’t even think about using Google Images! The best way to legally use photographs is to take them yourself or invest in a stock photography subscription. These are the photo sites I use for the majority of photos on Redefining Mom.

GraphicStock a yearly subscription to this stock photo site only costs $99/year, sometimes $49/year if you sign-up during one of their specials. The options are decent, not the best but a great place to start for the price.

Depositphotos this stock photo site has much better options than GraphicStock but it is also much more expensive. You can buy pay-as-you-go credits as needed which is what I do.

How to Install Google Adsense in Multiple Places

Whether you’ve been blogging for a long time or you are new, you will come to realize that there is so much to know that it is impossible to know it all. One of the strategies I’ve wanted to implement forever (like for over 2 years!) was adding more ad spots to my site. It was a total mental block I had about figuring out how to code my site to allow me to do that.

I use a StudioPress child theme built on Genesis. I highly recommend that you use Genesis for your WordPress framework. It’s the most popular and most people teach based on Genesis, so there is a lot of help you can find through Google searches. One of the benefits of using Genesis is a WordPress plugin called Genesis Simple Hooks. There are many cool things you can do using simple hooks that don’t require you to modify the code on your site. Still, anything tech related can be intimidating to me.

Abby broke down how to use Genesis Simple Hooks and I had 2 new prime ad spots added to my site (top of the header and underneath the content of each post) within 5 minutes. She introduced me to the Genesis Simple Hook Visual Guide and the process was so simple!

update May 2016: a few weeks after I added these two premium ad spots, I had a popular blogger share one of my articles and I earned $30 in AdSense revenue in one day (basically what I’ve earned in the last 3 years from ads) and it was all from the ad spot that I added on top of my header thanks to this book!

Some people may wonder if they could just find this information through Google. Of course, I’m sure you could but I most likely would have ignored doing this for 2 more years and missed out on a ton of ad revenue. Even though a lot of the information can be found online, when using Abby’s book you don’t have to go searching for it and wasting hours of your time.

Here is what my header looks like now:

I’ve Only Scratched the Surface

For packages as low as $25 (with lifetime updates) you really can’t go wrong. I’ve only talked about 3 out of many strategies I’ve learned from Abby’s book but truthfully, it’s a goldmine of information! The best part is if you decide to upgrade later you can without repurchasing the new package at its normal price, just pay the difference!

The Packages

Starter Package

Includes:

209-page eBook
32-page blog binder
9-page course outline
Lifetime book updates

Advanced Package

Incudes:

209-page eBook
32-page blog binder
9-page course outline
Access to Building a Framework’s exclusive Facebook group
20 step-by-step video tutorials
Lifetime book updates and access to all future tutorials

Master Package

Includes:

209-page eBook
32-page blog binder
9-page course outline
Access to Building a Framework’s exclusive Facebook group
20 step-by-step video tutorials
18 video interviews with expert bloggers
.mp4 audio files of the expert interviews
Lifetime book updates and access to all future tutorials and expert interviews

Check out the video previews from the Master Package

What are you waiting for? Purchase Building a Framework now and start building your business!

Don’t Have a Blog Yet?

No problem! It’s super easy to get started. Check out my Ultimate Beginners Guide to Blogging: How to Blog for Money where I guide you through the steps of setting up your hosting account with inMotion Hosting and registering your domain with GoDaddy. If you are looking to monetize your blog, you absolutely need to be self-hosted and inMotion is the perfect solution for you!

Want More?

For more of my favorite resources check out my resource page for blogging and freelancing.

And checkout my free goal planner…