Free Entrepreneurship Web Seminars and Teleclasses - Week of 3/5/07

I'm a big believer in the bootstrap approach to entrepreneurship, and one of the basic tenets of bootstrapping is this: don't pay for anything until you absolutely have to. I'm also a big believer in constantly learning how to be a better entrepreneur, as well as keeping up with new trends and technologies. Fortunately, there are a lot of people out there who are willing to share that knowledge with you free of charge as a means of promoting their business.

I'm starting a new weekly feature today in which I'm going to list upcoming free web seminars and teleclasses that you can take advantage of to further your education. I'll try to stay away from ones that I know are a hard-sell, but I can't promise to have vetted all of them in advance, either. This is just intended to be a centralized source to help you determine where you might want to take an hour or two out of your week to learn more about a topic you're interested in.

I'll publish the list every Friday for the following week so you have a little bit of advance notice to plan your week, or at least know that you can stop by and check it first thing Monday morning.

So here are my picks for next week (all times are U.S. Eastern Standard Time):

• Tuesday, 3/6
  • 11am - Mashups: A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That - Darlene Fichter of Blog on the Side will explain "what a mashup is, how they are popping up everywhere, how you can build mashups with or without programming know-how, and how they can be used by web developers, researchers, teachers and librarians. Learn how to combine feeds, maps and services like lego blocks to build new information resources." Sounds cool!
  • 12:30pm - "Take Your Online Retail Business to the Next Level of Performance and Profitability" ( info - register ) - iLink Systems will present the design of a search engine friendly eCommerce site without compromising on user experience and talk about different online marketing channels that are available to online retailers. This sounds like it has a lot of depth to it, even if it is a bit of a sales pitch.
  • 1pm - Web Analytics Demystified: Ten Simple Strategies for Using Web Analytics to Improve Your Online Marketing Efforts - Join Eric T. Peterson, author of the best-selling book Web Analytics Demystified and host of the popular blog Web Analytics Demystified, to learn how site measurement and analysis can dramatically improve your online marketing efforts. Hosted by American Marketing Association.
  • 4pm - Punctuate Communications without Punching Anyone - Office Depot's weekly webcast this week features Bonni Montevecchi on how to really get your point across and be listened to for effective communication.
• Wednesday, 3/7
  • 12pm - Web Marketing to an Older Market - Microsoft hosts Dick Stroud, author of The 50-Plus Market, discussing how companies can adapt their online marketing to appeal to an older audience.
  • 1pm - Intro to Videocasting - Learn about this emerging Web 2.0 technology with Annie Jennings PR. Annie provides some of the best free teleseminars out there. Highly recommended if the topic is of interest to you.
• Thursday, 3/8
  • 1pm - Maximizing the Impact of Paid Search Listings - Chris Sherman discusses various ways to maximize the success of your paid search listing campaigns, which analytics tools to use to measure your success, and why it's so important to test different creative aspects of your campaign.

If you attend any of these events and have feedback, positive or negative, or if you'd like to let me know about an upcoming event you'd like to see listed here, you can contact me directly or leave a public comment.