Probably the world’s best free beginners course in Internet Marketing, The Challenge, is about to open it’s doors once more…
The Challenge
The Challenge is an online course in the basics of Internet Marketing for complete newcomers to the field. It’s a professional, practically-oriented program which is packed with know-how about how to set up a blog-based online business.
The Challenge is designed to take you through the steps of researching a micro-niche market of your choice and setting up your own website to form the basis an online business.
The course was started by a world-renowned Internet Marketer from Australia called Ed Dale. It’s now been running every year now since 2005. In that year some 927 people signed up. This year the Challenge expects to reach the 100,000 participants mark for the first time.
What’s more, with the exception of the small cost of registering a domain name and booking web-hosting for your site, the course is completely free of charge.
The Challenge is organized to be completed over a period of 14 weeks. You have one week of course activity, consisting of around 30 minutes of course work each day. There’s a small set of videos every day to download and watch. The material is presented by Ed Dale together with a team of other people. Each week of course activity is followed by a one week “rest” to give you a chance to catch up and also to have a break.
Market Samurai is The Challenge’s Tool of Choice
A feature of the course is the use of the excellent Market Samurai research tool. This is a real time online market research utility that has become the quasi industry standard for Internet Marketers and e-commerce. Market Samurai is provided free of charge for use during the course, with the option to purchase the tool at a preferential discount at the end.
However, there’s no obligation or pressure to purchase Market Samurai. It’s entirely up to you.
Take as long as you want to complete the course
You don’t actually have to complete the Challenge over the 14 weeks. I understand from Ed Dale that as of this year, all the materials for this year’s 2011 course will be made available online for downloading right from the start of the new course in September 2011. So you can take as much or little time as you like to work through the course.
The course material stays up online on the Challenge website for the rest of the year. Each year at the end of August the previous year’s course material is then removed and replaced with the new course for that year.
The Challenge doesn’t cover much in the way of pre-selling techniques or permission marking opt-in methods, nor other more in-depth content creation issues, but it still manages to include a large amount of material.
The Challenge course also has a blog and a well-visited forum for participants which is very useful. All the course materials – videos and PDFs – can be accessed online or downloaded directly for free from the site.
I’ve done the Challenge course myself and I found it to be an excellent course. It was my introduction to the concepts of Internet Marketing.
By the time you complete the course you’ll have a solid, practical grounding in the basics of Internet Marketing. Plus you will have a website of your own that should have the potential to generate revenue.
So if you’re looking for a free and well produced Internet Marketing course that covers the basics, then this is one course I definitely recommend.
As the Challenge slogan goes: “There’s no charge for awesomeness!”
This year’s new 2011 Challenge Course begins on 1 September 2011 and can be found at www.challenge.co Go and sign up now!
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Written by kevin
Topics: Entrepreneurship