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What’s the Best Way to Get Started With an Online Business?

Written by kevin

A friend asked me the other day about the best way to get started with an online business.

He has some knowledge of computers, online technology such as webinars, audio visual etc, but when it comes to Internet Marketing he’s a complete novice.

Before you can launch an online business, you first need to have a basic practical understanding of what’s involved and how it works.

And the best and quickest way to do this is to take an online training course in Internet Marketing.

My suggestion to him was to take a look at the Challenge Course.

In fact, there are two courses in Internet Marketing for complete beginners that I can recommend: The Challenge and Chris Farrell Membership.

The Challenge

The Challenge is one of few Internet Marketing training courses for beginners that I unreservedly recommend (and I don’t receive any payment for saying this).

The Challenge course was started by a world-renowned Internet Marketer from Australia called Ed Dale and it’s been running now for a good five years or so. It’s a very professionally presented practically based course in the fundamentals of Internet Marketing. What’s more, the course is completely free of charge.

So where’s the catch, I hear you ask. No such thing as a free lunch and all that.

Well, The Challenge makes it’s money through promoting the use of an online market research tool called Market Samurai – of which more later. However there’s no obligation to purchase the tool. The only outlay involved is the small cost of registering a domain name and web hosting for your site.

The course is programmed 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 then followed by a one week “rest” to give you a chance to catch up and have a break.

The aim of the course is to guide you through researching and identifying a micro-niche market in which to set up an online business by launching a blog-based website.

One of the key aspects of the course is the use of the excellent Market Samurai research tool. This is a real time online market research utility, provided free of charge for use during the course, with the option to purchase the tool with a preferential discount at the end of the course. However, as said, there’s no obligation or pressure to purchase Market Samurai. It’s entirely up to you.

You can start the Challenge course at any time. You don’t actually have to complete it over the 14 weeks, you can take longer if you want – or complete it in less time, entirely as you wish.

The course isn’t strong on pre-selling techniques and the more in-depth content creation issues, but it still covers 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 very first 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’ll have a website of your own by the end that should have the potential to generate revenue.

If you’re looking for a free and well produced Internet Marketing course that covers the basics, then this is one course I can definitely recommend.

The Challenge Course is a www.challenge.co (that’s not a typo by the way, the address is actually .co, not .com).

Chris Farrell Membership

This was the next course I took after completing the Challenge. Chris Farrell Membership is a paid-for course, but the price is very low and competitive and the material is truly excellent value for money.

Like the Challenge course, Chris Farrell Membership is strongly video-based. In some ways the course material is more indepth than the Challenge. In contrast to the Challenge, the course focuses on building an email opt-in list from the start so that your business will have it’s own email permission marketing channel.

Chris Farrell Membership also places much more emphasis on explaining and mastering the IT computer technical side of the procedures and these are explained very well indeed. For this reason Chris Farrell Membership is particularly well suited if you aren’t so well up on the technical Internet aspects.

Chris Farrell is an English guy based in the US, from where he runs the course and produces most of the videos and webinars. He has an easy to follow style which has made his course very popular. In fact, Chris Farrell Membership was voted the Number One Internet Marketing Service Online by IMReportCard.com in both 2009 and 2010.

The course also provides unlimited web hosting for an unlimited number of domain names. This alone is worth at least $10 or more per month.

There’s also a discussion forum and Chris holds a regular live interactive training webinar for members.

You can work through the material freely choosing the modules as you wish and in the order that suits you. Alternatively the program provides a 33 Day Course Plan to work through day-by-day.

Chris Farrell Membership is a paid-for course, but the price is very low, at just $37 per month. There’s no minimum membership period and you can cancel at any time. There’s also a trial period of one week for just a nominal $4.95 to give you a chance to sample Chris Farrell Membership first.

I did this course myself after having completed the Challenge Course. Although much of the IT technical stuff was already familiar to me, I was impressed with the competent way that Chris explains everything. The Internet Marketing course content was also excellent and I learned a great deal in a short space of time.

All in all I rate Chris Farrell Membership as an ideal training course. You’ll learn a heap of practical know-how and which will get you started easily and quickly with an online business of your own. And all this at a very low price.

Chris Farrell Membership is at www.chrisfarrellmembership.com

Two Great Internet Marketing Training Courses Worth Checking Out!

So, there are two practical-based courses that are well worth taking a look at if you’re interested in starting your own online business and are new to Internet Marketing.

Both of these courses are of truly excellent calibre and will get you started and on the way with an Internet business in no time.

Here are the URL addresses once again: