Some Good Free Resources for Online Marketing Newbies

There is a scary amount of information out there about Internet marketing, and a lot of it is garbage. In fact, probably 95% of it is garbage, beating out even Sturgeon's Law.

But some of it is very worthwhile, so I thought I'd share the best links I've found over the past six months or so. The latest fad from successful (and rich) marketing gurus is to give away a ton of good free stuff to entice you into buying their (generally very expensive) paid stuff.

Now I can't tell you if any of these people is worth buying a product from. (Except Caroline Middlebrook, who strikes me as insanely honest.) But I've found solid, usable advice in each of these. None of the links below is an affiliate link, by the way, in case you were curious.

Also, I haven't found any of these folks to be too horrible about sending 20 emails a week, a practice I cannot stand. If they do go a little overboard with the email, you can always unsubscribe.

• Frank Kern's Mass Control blog. I think I received more frantic emails to sign up for this expensive (and now theoretically sold out, although something tells me we'll get an opportunity to spend more money down the line) e-course than I get for Viagra, Canadian lottery winnings and philanthropic Nigerian millionaires combined. Not from Kern, but from the army of affiliates he lined up to promote this thing. However, I will say that the guy puts a hell of a free series together. There is a tremendous amount of useful stuff here. I AM NOT TELLING YOU TO BUY HIS PRODUCTS, which might be great and might be mediocre, I have no idea. But the free stuff is good.
• Thirty Day Challenge. I'll be honest--I think there is an awful lot more to creating an Internet-based business than you're going to learn in the Thirty Day Challenge. But the information given is mostly solid, especially for beginners, and the technique they use to research keywords (for free) is the best I've seen. It's day 7 or 8 of last year's training. Well worth a look. (After you sign up, click the Training link.)
• Caroline Middlebrook's How to set up niche marketing sites on WordPress. I've linked to this before, it's a very handy free little resource and everything I've seen from Caroline tells me she's an honorable person who likes to help people. You can use this to set up any kind of blog or static site on WordPress, it doesn't have to be a money-making or niche marketing site.
• Ken McCarthy pre-seminar interview series. My new friend Laurie Weiss turned me on to Ken McCarthy. I haven't bought his stuff and I don't know if it's good, but Laurie can vouch for his seminar and I can vouch for the quality of this free audio series. Lots of in-depth material with minimal shilling for the seminar. Classy series from someone who seems like a classy guy.

Comments

[Practical Archivist (Sally J.)]

Thanks for cutting through the dreck, Sonia. I'm a big fan of the last three, and can't wait to check out Mass Control which is new to me.

FWIW, I like Robert Middleton's More Clients blog and his newsletter. He teaches marketing to all kinds of consultants, coaches and other professionals. I just paid $7 for a "prelaunch secrets" ebook yesterday and my reaction was: "Robert Middleton gives away better content than this for nothin' -- Feh!"

[Sonia Simone]

Hi Sally! Very cool, I will check him out.

The free stuff out there is amazing, it's just *finding it* and sorting it from the junk that takes some time. It does make it hard on those of us who aspire to sell marketing how-to info, but on the other hand, it keeps us on our toes!