“Net Breakthroughs” by Terry Dean is some of the best material I’ve read in a very long time.  I’m a sucker for processes and I enjoyed his online diary that details a years worth of advertising.  This diary shows some critical stats, such as how much am ad cost, where the ad was placed, a copy of what the ad looked like and the response rate from the campaign.  This is awesome because he’s doing the online testing for you!   

This information could potentially save new marketers thousands of dollars as it really can highlight some of the do’s and don’ts of the industry.  He discussed lead source websites, e-zines, banner swaps, mailing lists and numerous other ad sources. 

One weakness with Dean’s material is that by the time I got his Net Breakthroughs course it looked a few years old (2 by my standard), which on the internet, something as little as 2 years is equivalent to 10 years in the offline world.  So while his diary concept was great, it may be useless.  The evidence I have that it could be a few years old is that it refers to Yahoo Search Marketing as Goto.com. Goto changed there name to Overture Services in 2001, and was bought out by Yahoo which then became Yahoo Search Marketing in 2005, so this is some seriously outdated information.

Even if this course appears antiquated, I still give Dean a thumbs up for his creative style and teaching ability. Terry Dean is a marketer we can really learn a lot from, especially if he updated his material!