Welcome to the Blog Marketing Academy.
Join thousands of other creators, membership site owners, coaches and marketers growing their businesses on the WordPress platform.
My Core Values
Integrity is everything.
I believe in a business standing for the values of it’s owner. Stand for what you think is right in all business decisions.
Power lies in simplicity.
I believe complexity is a symptom of a system breakdown. When things have gotten overly complicated, it is best to re-evaluate your approach.
Be an owner, not a renter.
I believe in building an online business platform which is “digitally sovereign”, and not dependent on a host of rented software or “big tech”.
Make business personal again.
People do business with people they feel like they know, like and trust. Not big, anonymous corporate blobs.
About Blog Marketing Academy
I founded the Blog Marketing Academy in 2008. My goal was to simplify building an online business and building a profitable blog… something I had already been doing for a decade by building up and monetizing a popular technology blog called PC Mechanic.
Since then, I have created multiple training programs, worked with thousands of students, spoken at conferences, done multiple webinars and office hours and….. everything in between.
Through all that time, one of the biggest areas of confusion for my students was the tech of actually building their site. We could talk strategy all day, but in the end it came down to the nuts and bolts of actually building it. I resisted getting into that aspect of things. Frankly, I was tired of talking about tech. I had spent so long doing it already. 🤪
But around 2021, I decided to loosen up. Slowly, I began to offer services to help my students actually build the stuff we were discussing in the articles, courses and videos. Over the next couple of years, this small move evolved into an almost complete pivot of the business.
Today, the Blog Marketing Academy remains a source of training on both business and tech. However, I no longer focus on making a majority of my revenue selling courses. The business side of the Academy has turned into a WordPress service agency… with Concierge being the primary focus.
What You’ll Find Here
Articles
Videos
Newsletter
Done With You
About David Risley (that’s me)
I’m a bit of an “old man”, in internet years. I founded a technology blog in 1998 and grew it into a six-figure, multi-author business which was found in publications like PC World, PC Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal. While it started as a college hobby, I turned that blog into a commercial success using a combination of advertising, affiliate revenue, online courses, writing and selling books and CDs, and even a membership site before it was cool.
In 2008, I founded the Blog Marketing Academy and launched my first training course for bloggers. That ended up being about an $80K launch, so I came into it with a bang. 🤓 Since then, I have created multiple training programs, worked with thousands of students, spoken at conferences, and helped build a bunch of different websites. The Academy continues today in my quest to simplify online business and the tech that powers it.
I’m a big believer in keeping business human. In transparency and keeping things personal. I also believe in using modern tools to scale and serve better.
We are based out of sunny Tampa Bay, Florida. I love going camping and traveling in our RV (I’m a bit of an RV nerd). I’m a shorts-and-sandals guy, and I’m most at home sitting in a folding chair, in a campsite, smoking the occasional cigar.
To learn more about my background, smack the button…
