Product Sourcing News   

Internet Seminars - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

By: Chris Malta
CEO, WorldwideBrands.com

Internet seminars can be a valuable tool for your eBiz: they give you opportunities to network and meet new contacts in your industry. You can learn a lot about how to improve your business and run it more efficiently.

Unfortunately, for every useful, educational seminar you can find, there's an equally worthless one created to part you and your money. When a seminar speaker offers you an easy all-in-one internet solution, or promises you overnight riches for very little work, you need to hold onto your wallet. Don't buy anything on impulse — at the very least, sleep on it. No matter what they tell you, if you can get it at this special price today, you can probably get it for the "special" price tomorrow and next week too. These are usually high pressure situations, and you can really help yourself if you just away and get some perspective.

Knowing What You're Getting Into
Some seminars give you very little constructive information for the money you pay. The people that create these seminars want quality speakers, but they don't want to pay them. So they let them spend the entire time pitching their product or service and then split the proceeds they make with them. Rather than being educated, you're inundated with "opportunities" to spend more money. That's why it's always wise to research a speaker before you commit to attend a seminar:

• Make sure the speaker is a professional in the area he’s speaking on, not a paid marketer or a motivational speaker hired to pitch an idea.

• Look at their website and read comment forums and reviews. If they are an internet guru, they should be easy to find online. If most of what you find is positive, a few critical remarks are probably no reason to worry. But if you find pages of angry comments, beware.

• Look at the price tag — seminars are costly to put on, and a good speaker is worth their speaking fee. If the speaker is an expert in their field and you're not paying for their expertise up front, realize they're probably planning to make their money on the back end. Often these seminars are nothing more than pitch fests.