Believe it or not, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to keep your blog safe from most hackers. It just involves you taking a few simple steps and a few safeguards to make sure that you don't have problems in the future.

Here are a few things you can do right now. Make sure all your WordPress usernames and passwords are strong passwords, keep your email secure, lock anyone else's IP address in your backend C-Panel and install the Akismet anti-spam plugin.

You would be amazed and surprised at how many people simple passwords such as their name, pet's name or names like test, or test1234 as the password to their WordPress blog. And in fact, there are robots or spiders that comb the internet trying to find these websites that have named their passwords in these simple names. That means when you set up your WordPress account, don't call it Admin, call it something that is non-standard such as your name. And when you have a password, name your password something with at least one number, one uppercase letter or even one punctuation character to ensure that no one can guess it.

The next thing you should do is make sure that no one has access to your email account. It does you no good to have a strong WordPress password but a weak email password, because someone can always gain access to WordPress by using the lost password tool. This means if someone has access to your email account, they can use the lost password and reset your WordPress password and now gain access to your website.

This means that you should secure your email, change your password regularly and be very careful who's computer and whose wireless network you use to check that email.

Now here's a great thing that any paranoid webmaster can do, using your C-Panel backend, you can in fact block access to what's called the WP-Admin Folder in your WordPress site. Basically you can go to a site such as what is my IP.com and it will show you a series of numbers. Now this number corresponds to you on the internet. And you can in fact block everyone on the internet from accessing your WP-Admin Folder, your administrator dashboard, and then only allow this specific IP address that is yours to access it.

This means that even if someone happens to have your WordPress password, even if you have a weak password, you are the only person who can login to that backend.

And finally, one thing that every blog owner should do that enables comments on their blog, is to use what is called the Akismet anti-spam plugin. What this does is checks any new comments coming to your blog for spam. And if you don't have a plugin like this, your blog will at some point be flooded with thousands and thousands of spam comments flooding your site with all kinds of nasty links and garbage. Install this Akismet anti-spam plugin or turn off comments entirely and that will help your blog from being spammed to death.

Those are some very simple tips to help secure your WordPress blog. Use strong passwords, secure your email, block the WP-Admin IP addresses except for yours in C-Panel, and use the Akismet anti-spam plugin.

You should definitely backup, clone and protect your WordPress blog right now by going to... Backup Creator.

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Chances are you've already joined someone else's web seminar training. But if you have not yet hosted your own, you might be thinking what exact steps am I going to have to take in order to set up this live presentation. It's easy. Luckily, there are only four steps: Print the webinar, get the registration link, send people to that link, and run your webinar.

Setting up a webinar is very easy especially if you leave most of the settings at their default and don't try to customize your webinar all that much. Services like GoToWebinar allow you to get crazy and ask attendees for their full address, phone number, allow you to create your own backgrounds when people register for the webinar. But really, you don't need all that extra stuff. You can leave most of these settings at the default.

All you need to do when creating a webinar is think of a title, think of a time and date, and think of what you want to ask the people who register. Personally, I only ask people who register for the first name, last name, and email address. And that's it.

Once I've created that webinar, once I have the title, time, and date, I get a special link. When people click that link, it shows a form where they fill out their first name, last name, and email address, then they're given the time of the webinar and they are later on sent reminders to come to the webinar.

So all you need to do is, step 3, send traffic to that link. The more people who go to that link who are targeted, the more people will sign up and the more people will show up to your live webinar. And the GoToWebinar service will send reminder emails automatically more and more often as the webinar day approaches.

Then when it's time for them to join, they click a link, they join your webinar, and they see your screen. They'll hear your audio which you can use either from a microphone plugged into your computer or from the telephone. You can dial in a special phone number and talk on your telephone and they will hear exactly what you say while you show your screen. And it's that simple.

And those are the four steps to running a webinar: Create the webinar, get the registration link, send people to that link, and finally run your webinar.

Don't webinars sound fun and easy? They are. Find out just how easy and fun at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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It's hard enough to decide which service provider should host your webinars, your live online video presentations. But even if you find the right service such as go to webinar, how can you decide which type of webinar you're going to run? Citrix has three flavors of webinars: They have a service called GoToMeeting, a service called GoToTraining, and a service called GoToWebinar. So which is right for you?

GoToMeeting only allows a maximum of 15 attendees. This means you definitely cannot have a very large audience. But I find GoToMeeting useful if I need to meet one on one with someone such as a business partner and show my screen in addition to talking.

The big difference between GoToMeeting and the other flavors of webinars is that with a GoToMeeting, all of your attendees are automatically unmuted. And that's pretty much the only special thing about GoToMeeting is that it's capped at 15 attendees and all of those attendees are unmuted.

GoToTraining is a relatively new service provided by GoToWebinar which gives you extra features such as tests built into the webinar and you can share files as well. GoToTraining only allows up to 200 people in a training session. Honestly, you don't really need these features such as testing or file sharing because if you're running a training program already, you probably have a blog or membership site that has these features already. Therefore GoToTraining doesn't excite me all that much.

GoToWebinar is the service I use for all my webinars. With GoToWebinar, you can choose between plans that allow for up to 100, up to 500, or even up 1000 attendees. More than a thousand people can register for a webinar, but when it comes time to get on the webinar you're limited to 1000 people.

And GoToWebinar includes everything you need: You can poll your audience, you can unmute people, you can read questions. It has all the features you need and GoToWebinar includes access to GoToMeeting, that way you can use the meeting features to meet one on one with somebody to plan your upcoming webinar and then use your actual webinar to show your presentation to a large audience. GoToWebinar has a free trial so you can try it for a whole month to decide if it's right for you.

And those are the differences between GoToMeeting, GoToTraining, and GoToWebinar. In a meeting, you're limited to 15 people and everyone's unmuted. In a training you're limited to 200 people and it has extra features you don't really need, but with GoToWebinar you have everything you need and you can present up to 1000 attendees.

I hope that helped you make a better informed decision about what kinds of webinars you're going to provide. Get the exact training you need to run your own webinars at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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If you're not the technical genius in the house, you still can run a webinar. The reality is, you only need to make sense of a few screens when presenting your webinar and most of the fancy features can be ignored. Most people who tell me they are not technically skilled enough to run a webinar can overcome that by using one of three strategies: By reading the manual and finding out just barely what they need to know, by having a dry run of the webinar, and having a buddy to handle questions and do the fancy stuff.

Reading the manual works wonders. I always tell my customers before asking me a technical question, read the manual first. And the funny thing is when most people ask me a question, I can find the exact part of the manual they did not read because the manual explained it.

Training companies like Citrix, which provides GoToWebinar, is always adding to their manual. And if they have a question that comes up very often, they add it to that documentation. So chances are, your question or issue has already been addressed inside the help manual. It can't hurt to read it just to make sure.

The next thing you should do before running your first webinar is run a practice session. Get a friend to join your webinar and act as if it's real: Practice starting the webinar, showing your screen, running through your presentation, polling, and even ending the webinar just to make sure everything looks okay. You will be a lot more prepared and a lot less stressed out when it comes time to run that webinar.

And finally, have a buddy or a co-presenter who can look at questions from the audience or even start the webinar for you and show your screen. You probably have some computer friend you can pay $10 to be with you on your webinar or use your neighbor's son or someone who knows computers. Even if you are technically skilled, it is way easier to ignore the questions and ignore all the fancy controls and simply present and allow your co-host to interrupt you or tell you about questions that are coming in.

Go ahead right now and run your first webinar even if you aren't technically skilled at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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If you have never attended a live training presentation or a webinar and if you have never hosted a webinar, you might be wondering what do people need to install on their computers to view this presentation. And I hope it's not the one thing holding you back from webinars because nowadays, people don't have to install anything to attend a webinar.

That's right, it's a zero-install process but there are a few difficulties you should know about. When I say there is zero installation when someone attends their webinar, that means that when their browser comes to the webinar join page, a Flash or Java applet appears depending on which service you used. Then the webinar client installs in the background while the webinar is loading up.

The first time you join a webinar, it might take a few extra seconds to install the software and you might be prompted to run something, but other than that there is no program to install. It installs on its own.

Most webinar services, including GoToWebinar, will install their software easily on a Mac just as well as a PC. But because these technologies are Flash and Java based, these will not install on any phone including smart phones like an iPhone, Droid, or BlackBerry, but it will install on a desktop or laptop computer.

One thing that you should be aware of is with GoToWebinar, the technology is not 100% Mac compatible. As a presenter, the screen sharing doesn't always work properly and the USB headset you will be using does not always sound properly. They might fix these issues in the future but for now I definitely recommend that if you want to present on a webinar, you run a PC or at least a Mac running Parallels. However, if you are joining a webinar or if your users are joining your webinar and they are not going to be showing their screen or speaking, a Mac will do just fine.

I hope that opened your eyes and made you realize that your end users do not have to install any special software to attend your webinar. The software installs itself as long as they are on a desktop or laptop computer, meaning not a cell phone. They need to be running a browser that can run Flash or Java, and if they are presenting, to not use a Mac.

Now that you're ready to become a star and run your own webinars, go right now to www.webinarcrusher.com.

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Once you've recorded a webinar or two which is a live online video presentation, you're going to discover new features that you didn't notice before with webinars. My favorite of all these features is the ability to poll the audience that's in your webinar meeting right now and I use polls for a sales letter survey, for a before-and-after demonstration, or even as a game for the people on the call.

When you poll your audience, what happens is they are seeing your screen but suddenly the screen changes to a very simple questionnaire which usually allows them to choose one bullet point and submit their answer, then your webinar service will total up all the answers and show percentages of who answered what. For example, if you're asking, "Are you awake on the call tonight?" and the prompts were "Yes" or "No", people would see the ability to answer yes or no. They would submit their answer then you would see what percentage of your audience answered "Yes", what percentage answered "No".

I use these to write better sales copy. For example, I was running a webinar about list building about setting up an autoresponder and I asked, "How many of you have an autoresponder?" And almost everyone answered "Yes".

Then I asked, "How many of you have subscribers in your autoresponder?" And a very small percentage answered "Yes", most answered "No". Therefore I was armed with these exact statistics and I could revise my sales copy to reflect those exact numbers.

Using the before-and-after technique with polling works wonders as well. A student of mine ran a webinar and at the beginning asked, "How many of you are capable of creating a graphical logo?" Only 25% answered "Yes".

Then he demonstrated the process of making a logo over the next hour or so, all the time showing how easy it was, then the end, pulled again and 95% of the audience said they could now create a logo.

This is a great tool because it not only shows you that your audience learned, but it also shows themselves that they got something out of the full hour webinar with you.

And finally, you can use polls to create a game to increase interest during your webinar. One of my favorite games to play is called "Which Test Won?" And this is a guessing game that I play on the webinar.

What I do is I show two versions of my sales letter and one brought me more sales than the other. I show both versions of the sales letter and I ask my audience which variation of my webpage brought in more money. The audience guesses, then I show the results. Sometimes the audience is right, sometimes the audience is wrong but it gets people to form an opinion and see if they were right or not.

Those are three awesome ways you can use the power of polling to keep your users entertained and engaged in the webinar in real time. Use a survey to improve your sales letter, run a before-and-after test, or play a guessing game. Find out what else you can do with webinars at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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When you are making a live presentation over the internet, not all webinar services are created equal. You might be tempted to go with a free or cheap webinar solution just because it's low in price, but aren't you investing in your business? What's the right price for you for your webinar service and how do you justify the cost?

For me, $99 per month is fair to start out with webinars. Think about it. If you were selling a DVD or ebook for $33, you would only need to run one webinar per month and make at least three sales for a total of $99 to get your money back.

When you think of your cost in this way, how am I going to justify the $100 per month to get an extra $100 or $200 from my business this month from the webinar that I run? The service that I use which is GoToWebinar has a $100 plan for when you're starting out and a $500-per-month plan for when you get better, have more traffic and need to run larger webinars.

Many people I deal with are simply thinking too big and gravitate towards $5000 per month webinar services simply because the service allows them to have 100,000 people online, when in reality, they probably won't get more than a couple hundred ever. Many of these high-end webinar services charge per attendee or per signup and many of them are lacking in the features that services like GoToWebinar provide. $5000 per month is too much to pay for webinar services even if they have silly features like fake live webinars.

What about cheaper solutions? Should you pay $50 or even use a free webinar service every month? And the answer is no. Many of these free webinar services try to attract you with the idea of a free webinar but they're lacking in features.

The ones I've checked out will allow you to run a webinar and have a replay hosted on their site but will not allow you to download that which means you cannot edit, you cannot host on your own site, you cannot burn to a DVD. You're really limited in what you can do and many of these free webinar services even cap the number of attendees that can come to your webinar at something very low such as 10 or 20 people. And that's the problem you get with low-cost webinar services.

On top of all the missing features, the support also sucks. I know that with Citrix GoToWebinar, I can call a number and after a very short wait time I can talk to someone if I'm having difficulty setting up a webinar or if some feature in a webinar is not working. With the free or low-cost webinar, the company simply does not have the ability to give you that technical support.

Therefore, you should pay around $100 per month to start off with your webinars. Not $5000, not $50

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When any technology gets popular, you're going to have a lot of choices as far as which service provider you use. Whether this is your internet service provider, your web host, your autorespondent provider, and choosing a webinar provider or web seminar or webcast provider is no different.

Now the question is, which webinar service should you use to broadcast your live presentations to your audience? Should you use GoToWebinar? Adobe Connect? Dimdim? Ustream or something else?

The service I recommend above all others is GoToWebinar. It has most of the features you would want to run your web seminars. You're not going to have all the features you want but it will get the job done. It's reliable and the service is relatively bug free and inexpensive for what you get.

With GoToWebinar, you can easily run a meeting, show your screen, unmute guests, have panelists, pass the screen to other people, poll your audience, remind your audience about an upcoming webinar, send them follow-ups about a webinar that's already happened and much more. GoToWebinar's pricing starts at around $99 a month which is an easy cost to justify if your webinars can make you a few extra sales.

Adobe's version of webinar such as Adobe Connect are difficult to use and way too expensive. One thing I don't like in particular about Adobe's webinar service is that they show the chat to all attendees.

What's great about GoToWebinar is that when somebody types in a question in the question box, you're the only one who sees it and you can decide whether or not to share this question with everyone else or ignore it or delay it. One advantage of Adobe's service is that you can use a camera to show yourself presenting the webinar, but I found that I usually only care about showing my screen, not some goofy guy in his office with a headset on. Adobe's pricing structure is also very high with some plans going up to $5000 per month.

What about the service Dimdim? In my experience, Dimdim is way too hard to use. They use unfamiliar terminology with me and every time I try to join someone's Dimdim webinar, I can't figure out what the heck I'm supposed to do. Dimdim might be a good alternative in the future and I see many people going to it because it's very cheap but it's simply way too hard to use.

Ustream is a free alternative to webinars. They will allow you to get on camera and talk, and they will broadcast your live presentation to your audience and record it for you as well. But the problem with this

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When you run a live online presentation or webinar, you literally can show people anything you put onto your screen. This means you can show your desktop, web browser, or any particular desktop program.

To get started, I would recommend you show people your Mind Map outlines until you get the hang of real presentations. But when you get good at webinars, you're going to want to use PowerPoints to present most of your content. Using PowerPoints in webinars allow you to dramatically display your bullet points, show exactly what you want every time, and talk as you show information.

What do I mean by dramatic bullet points? I mean, you've seen plenty of PowerPoint presentations, maybe back in school, at work, or at seminars where the presenters who are presenting it live on stage only show the bullet points one at a time on the presentation slide. This way, they can make a very specific point and then show that bullet point right there on the screen to drive the point home. For me this is way more effective than popping out a set of Mind Maps notes or even displaying an entire PowerPoint slide at once, you show the bullets one at a time.

Another reason why PowerPoint is far better than Mind Maps on webinars is because with PowerPoint, you only have to show what you want. In a Mind Map, even if you're only focusing on one area of the map, you can't help but show what's before and after. So people watching the webinar are going to be able to guess or read ahead about where your presentation is going.

One thing I like to do especially in PowerPoints is to take screenshots of some kind of software program I'm presenting about and put each screenshot on a different slide of the PowerPoint. This means I can demonstrate functionality of a piece of software and I know that every single time I demonstrate it, it's all going to go the exact same way. Nothing can break because I'm only showing screenshots and I can use this presentation not just on webinars but in real life from the stage as well.

After all, when was the last time you saw somebody on stage running back and forth from the stage to the computer to pop out the Mind Map note? Never. PowerPoint is the industry standard and that's why you should use it.

But like anything else, it's always open to abuse. Use common sense. Don't use tons of bullet points, don't use ugly templates. And whether you're now an expert at PowerPoint or a beginner with Mind Maps, use the visual aid as a tool, not as a crutch.

Get started with webinars at first using Mind Maps and then with PowerPoints at www.webinarcrusher.com/blog.

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So you're ready to start your own webinar. You're ready to run your own live online presentations to promote something or teach something. Besides your webinar service, and I recommend GoToWebinar, what other software do you need to run a webinar? The answer is you really don't need any other software.

But I prefer to have PowerPoint, a web browser, and Camtasia Studio at the ready. PowerPoint is the easiest presentation tool to run your webinar. When you're showing your screen, you always have to be worried about what exactly are you showing. But with a PowerPoint, you know you're showing just a few bullet points.

If you can talk and you can click the mouse button, running webinar is easy in this sense. PowerPoint comes as part of Microsoft Office in most new computers. There is a presentation tool for the Mac called Keynote, and even if you have no money, there is a free alternative called OpenOffice that does basically the same thing.

The second tool I use a lot on webinars is my web browser. Think about it. You can show anything that's on your screen in a webinar. That includes your web browser. You can demonstrate how to accomplish a certain task on a website.

For example, how to register for a form, how how to create an AdWords ad, even how to send a simple email. These are all things you can teach using just your web browser.

In addition, if I'm presenting something on a PowerPoint and I lead into a pitch or an offer for people to find out more about me and buy from me, it helps a ton to go to the URL I'm talking about. I open it up in my browser, I show people what's there and what to do once they are there.

And the final tool which you might want to hold off on until you get better at webinars is a tool called Camtasia. GoToWebinar has built-in recording software but it records at a somewhat low quality. Camtasia on the other hand records in high quality and in a format that you can later on edit and burn to a CD, upload to your blog or websites, or even dump the audio and use it as a podcast, or get it transcribed.

And that's the exact software that you need besides GoToWebinar, definitely PowerPoint for presentations, a web browser which is free, and possibly in the future, Camtasia, so you can record your live webinars for later playback.

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