I just spent the last three days at Yanik Silver's Underground Seminar her in Washington, D.C. This was my first "Internet Marketing" Seminar, and I was both excited to go to and skeptical. Excited because I almost never meet anyone who does what I do - online retailing. Most times, when I tell people what I do and explain it a bit their eyes start to spin from information overload. So I thought it might be a lot of fun to meet a bunch of people in my field and shoot the breeze. But I was a bit skeptical also because I had read online that a lot of these "seminars" are really pitchfests where speakers tell you enough just to get you excited about their stuff and then they pitch their "comprehensive course" in whatever that is available at a terrific low price at the back of the room.
After attending, I can tell you that both of these pre-seminar feelings came true. I did have the chance at the "Underground Seminar" to have nice conversations with a few people and hopefully made a few contacts. But I was overall very disappointed in the content of the seminar, or lack thereof. All in all I felt only three speakers (out of 12 - two had to cancel at the last minute and will be interviewed susequently by teleseminar) really offered up solid information - of the "underground secret" type that the seminar advertised. The other speakers either offered little information at all, or just too much information too fast without getting into any useful details on any.
In the spirit of the conference, and its confidentiality agreement, I won't be going into the details of what was discussed. But I wanted to try to give you a flavor of what happened so you can get some inkling of whether one of these Internet Marketing Seminars might be for you.
The "Underground Seminar"
I met and talked with Yanik a few times, and he seems like a genuinely nice guy. And when I told him about my concerns (that I was getting nothing from the first days speakers and was trying to decide whether to stay for the last two days or ask for my refund) he was gracious and told me he would extend the money back offer so I could see for myself whether the other two days might make it worthwhile. In the end I've decided not to ask for my money back - although it was a very close call. I really got little out of most of the speakers - and got up awful early in the morning for it (if I had known that the seminar started at 8 am and lasted till 7pm the first day and past 6 pm on the second when I signed up I may not have signed up at all).
But there were three speakers who I did like and got some ideas from, and this was just enough to make it worthwhile. Still, I would feel a lot better about spending the $3,000 to $4,000 that I did spend (to bring myself and one person I work with) to the seminar if I could feel like the seminar really delivered as it had promised to. Most of what I heard was nothing very new, and even that was glossed over so quickly that it was hard to keep up. Very little was of the "underground secret" nature advertised, and those few things that were, were often glossed over quickly so you had to really listen hard or miss them.
Which brings me to a basic point - are you better off getting information from "real" people who are making money on the internet or from professional speakers such as those found at most other Internet Marketing seminars? I opted for the "real" people at the "Underground Seminar" since I thought they might deliver the good stuff that they had learned in the trenches. I know that I come across something everyday that I didn't know before, so I was really interested in hearing the little nuggets they might have come across. And I did hear that this sort of nuggett from time to time (one really interesting one I did hear, for example, was how to get your customers to make video testimonials - a wonderful step up from written testimonials and something we are definitely going to try to look into for our site), but they were very few and far between.
But the downside of "real" people speaking is that they don't necessarily make good teachers. They may be very good at what they do, but very bad at explaining it and teaching it. I saw this with a few of the speakers; notably the two youngest who seemed exceedingly bright and who were doing very interesting things online. But I guess they thought they should try to cover all the aspects of their businesses, so they had way too many points that they raced through way too fast. The first speaker especially had a bunch of points, including the audio testimonial one, that I thought might make great points to go over in detail. But instead he just raced from one to the next, without time to give us a real understanding of any particular point or how to pull it off.
In comparison, I've bought some CDs of other Internet Seminars featuring the "professional speakers", and I found that these speakers did have a much better feel for teaching and conveying information. They often would just cover a few points in their lectures and really go into some detail on them (some in excruciating detail), but while they didn't cover as much material you really got something out of the points they did cover. For example, I've gotten quite a few good points about copywriting and conversion strategies from these "professional speakers" lectures they did at other seminars. So even if these speeches were a way to set up their pitch for their latest product or service, I have to say the content they offered (the best I've heard so far was the information from the X10 seminar - really some interesting and good stuff) was better than the vast majority of what I heard at the Underground Seminar. I can't say if all the other seminars offering "professional speakers" have the type of quality content I heard from the X10 seminar (which after all was an incredibly expensive seminar and so had to really shoot to offer great content), but it is something to consider. The one seminar that I'm intrigued by that does shoot for this sort of quality is the "System Seminar" that Ken McCarthy puts on. I've never been, but I certainly like his approach in trying to put the content first and not having it be any sort of pitch fest. I don't know what sort of level he shoots for (I heard a few people say it was more for people starting out - to give them a good foundation in the different aspects of running an online business), but it still sounds like something worth checking out.
The Speakers
Which speakers did I like? Well I really don't want to name names and give of each speaker. Because I just don't think that is fair - its just not comparing apples to apples. A couple really were speaking for the first time while others were seasoned speakers. And I can't say whether the material they presented was wholly their own idea or whether they had had input from Yanik on the subjects and content. So rather than name and critique each speaker, I thought I would give you my general impressions of the ones I felt the most strongly about.
Day one was pretty bad - one speaker covered endless points too fast, another had an interesting consulting business but offered no content on Internet Marketing that I could discern, the next duo speakers seemed just to be pushing their Marketing course, Yanik offered up some information on Joint Venturing that I'm sorry to say I hardly remember (except that I had heard it before), and the last speaker (whom I will talk about more below) I liked and thought had a great website, but really offered up no information on implementing this kind of approach.
As a result, I had just about given up on the seminar after the first day and thought about spending the rest of the weekend at the zoo with my young daughters. But we decided to give it one more shot and got there bright and early for the lectures starting at 8 am Saturday. And am I glad I did - the two morning speakers on the really got me excited. The first talked about his memberships sites, and really did walk us through in some detail as to how to go about setting up one, the pitfalls to watch out for, and the crucial things you need to do right to really make a membership site work. I have been working on a membership site for my wife's latest venture, a site for learning how to sign with your baby, so this was manna from heaven.
The second speaker on Saturday was also really interesting. He talked about how to go beyond AdWords and Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing) and really drive affordable traffic through other online advertising options. This was a world I knew nothing about, and it was clear that this speaker really knew his stuff. I have no idea if this sort of less targeted advertising might work for my businesses, but it was really interesting to hear what other options exist and how these kind of deals are put together. I can't say I walked out feeling I could put one of these deals together, but it definitely got my mind working on the different options that he laid out.
The last speaker I really got something from was one from the last day. Unlike all the other speakers, he just focused on a few things that he had come across that really had helped with sales and conversion. While a lot of them didn't apply to my site (some focused on a particular shopping cart system I don't use), others were really useful and I'm going to test them to see if they help. I really liked his approach - he wasn't trying to cover everything, but instead presented a few things in detail and told us exactly what we would need to do to implement them. If only all the speakers had taken this approach.
Yanik himself spoke twice more - and to be fair, I don't know if he intended to speak this often, but two of the speakers cancelled at the last moment. My luck - both were physical products etailers and one the main reasons I came to the seminar. Yanik is getting them to do teleseminars to cover the material they were going to do, but it was still disappointing.
Yanik definitely knows how to speak from the stage, and didn't make the mistake of trying to go into too much too fast. In fact his turns were the opposite - one basic point over and over. And while I wouldn't mind this approach if the one basic point was new and "underground", his points were about as standard as marketing gets. Don't get me wrong, he presented them well and was entertaining. But I've heard and read about both points he made many times - in some of The ClassicBed by Tempur-Pedictm books of marketing. Good points, yes, but hardly "underground" secrets.
I should mention the other speaker I liked - and I guess others did as well because he got voted best speaker. I loved his site, and I couldn't agree more with his basic point that quality content is the key. But as much as I liked and agreed with what he said, he didn't go into any real information on how he implemented this on his site. I can't think of one "secret" he talked about except for at the end - he discussed an AdWords keyword strategy he uses. And I did find this interested, but I had heard it before from "AdWords experts" and explained in a lot more detail (as in how to use and implement this strategy). So while I heartily cheer him and what his site stands for, I didn't come away from his lecture with any additional insights or ideas to implement on any of the sites I work with.
I really have to say something about one other speaker - it was the last speaker who spoke about my area, selling physical, tangible products through an online store. While he seemed very smart and obviously knew his stuff, his lecture was such a disappointment. His lecture was so mundane and without any real spark of passion or interest. I found I just couldn't disagree more with him on his most basic of points: 1) Let someone else develop and design your website - your time is best used to market your business, and 2) his crowning achievement - that he had so outsourced his business that he now had only to spend 1 hour a week running a near million dollar a year business. I just wanted to stand up and give the other point of view: 1) Your website is the key to the success of your online business, and you need to immerse yourself into this to make sure that the website brings to life your knowledge and passion on your products or services. You simply can't let someone else do this - in my experience, your website will live or die by how well your "voice" comes through on the site. This doesn't mean you can't hire someone else to help you with the page coding or design elements, but at a minimum you must have a very clear and detailed vision of how your want your site to look, how the navigation will flow, what sort of product information you will have, write the copy, etc. 2) As for his second point, my experience has been just the opposite. I don't want ever want to be just working my site an hour a week - if the site has some real potential for growth I want to put my hours into to try to tap into that growth. While I did hire someone over a year ago to take over the daily customer service tasks and help with product development, I saw quickly that this allowed me to take my time and use it to really grow the business. And this is something I just couldn't get from outsourced help - the knowledge that I had gained in 10 years of the business and on the internet was really the key to pulling off some of our new ideas for growth. For example, due to the Hurricanes we saw our wholesale prices go up over 50% in one month. And they have never gone back down. I simply had to raise prices and I saw our orders fall in half immediately. But I got sales back up in one month. How did I do it? Just come to my seminar and I will tell you .... Just kidding, here's how I did it. I rewrote my product page and brought in all the information I had put all over my site on my products (different comparison page info, buying guide info, FAQs, etc) and put this all on the product page. And this different approach, to my surprise, worked. People just liked having all the information in one place and not having to click all over the site, and I guess having the information on one page also made the products value clearer (and the increase price easier to accept as fair). I can't say if someone else could have done all this as well (or maybe better), but the point is that I could do it since I had such an intimate knowledge of my business and customers. And this is the advantage of staying close to your business - where better to spend your time than in continuing to grow your business rather than only working it a bit before leaving it in other people's hands before walking away to set up your next business. And I think that this really is the most profitable path at the end of the day also - I've seen over and over again the value focused entrepreneurs can build up in their business compared to businesses that are left for others to run. I'd rather go narrow but deep while this speaker advocated going shallow but wide.
Will I go to another Internet Marketing Seminar? I'm tempted to try another type of seminar because I've seen that just one piece of information (such as the audio testimonials) can really make a huge difference. One entire business I've put together, that did over $2 million in its first year, came from an idea I got from a $79 teleseminar (actually from just a couple of minutes of this seminar). So I'm a big believer in learning as much as possible. But this experience has jaded me a bit on the seminar format - the information I've gotten from teleseminars seems to be more targeted, more useful, and for the most part the teleseminar speakers (being pros in this format) are really pretty good teachers. But I do miss the personal interaction you get at a real live seminar, so maybe I will go give one that has a different sort of spin (the professional speaker spin or the educational seminar spin) to see if I enjoy them more.
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