The answer to this question is of course that “It all depends… on which particular seminar you are considering”. The best of them represent the most effective investment that you can possibly make in yourself and your earning potential, but many on offer are mediocre and some of them can be downright ruinous.

A good seminar can be the fastest way to learn specific tools and techniques that are essential for implementing an internet-based business, as well as learning about the various business models to choose from, and deriving inspiration from meeting people who actually walk the talk. They can also be a great opportunity to network with other entrepreneurs and explore ways in which you might be able to work together for mutual benefit. Bearing in mind that commercial techniques on the internet are evolving at a terrific pace, it’s essential to keep abreast of developments, as the things that worked brilliantly a few months ago may now be completely counter-productive.

On the other hand the field is rife with offerings which have been cobbled together to provide a semblance of content, but which in reality fail to provide really actionable strategies that you can get on with. Even worse than this are the gatherings that purport to be educational events but are no more than excuses for the speakers to bamboozle the audience with a series of high-pressure sales pitches.

This is the notorious “platform sales presentation”, where the speaker appears to impart legitimate content, but closer examination reveals that he actually only tells what to do without revealing how to accomplish it. Then, lo-and-behold, he announces that an additional training program will reveal all the details, and you can buy it now at a bargain price. I have seen seminars where many attendees ended up parting with several times the money that they had already invested in paying for the event itself.

Arguably this is a legitimate tactic at free or nearly-free events (but even then you’d be well advised to examine carefully the value of the content being offered). It is certainly outrageous at seminars that delegates have paid hundreds, and sometimes thousands of pounds to attend.

Sometimes these operators are so unscrupulous that they are prepared to fob off products that will not even work. I was disgusted to see one speaker pitching a product to beginners (at enormous cost) that was a complete waste of time. It was for a software tool that (supposedly) would automatically generate vast numbers of web-pages that would be highly ranked on the search engines, and could then generate advertising revenue. The reality was that this approach had indeed worked for a short while, but was already obsolete by the time I saw it being offered. Google is run by a bunch of very smart guys and they don’t appreciate attempts to subvert their system - it doesn’t take them long to spot operations like that and ban them from their search results.

In fact there’s a general principle at work that - on the internet, just as anywhere else - you build an enduring successful business by providing genuine value, rather than messing with flashy schemes that have no substance to them.

So, having said all that, how do we sort the wheat from the chaff and choose which ones are worth going to? As with everything else in life, you can either learn by a process of trial and error or you can take advantage of someone else’s experience. I’ve been to seminars that have been ok, ones that have been poor, and ones that have been deplorable. But the only seminars that have been so consistently excellent that I haven’t missed a single one since I first encountered them in 2002 are “The System Seminars” hosted by Ken McCarthy.