Are Webinars For You?

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to make good money online is by doing webinars.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell: You choose a date and topic for your webinar, promote it, give great information on the webinar and then promote a product at the end. It’s like one big informational sales letter, in that you begin by giving away a great deal of awesome info, and you close by offering them even more information or a service or membership they can use to implement what they’ve just learned.

If you either have a skill that others want to learn, or you can interview an expert who has the skill (or information) people want to learn, then you can do a webinar.

Here are the steps to ensure your webinars generate income…

1. Make the webinar an experience. There is so much I can say about this, but it might all boil down to the following: Do NOT be boring. As you put your webinar together, think about your customers and what they want to learn and experience. Make it interesting, exciting and fun. Plan to show major enthusiasm for your topic, and to answer questions. Remember, they can leave the webinar any time they like, so make sure it’s worth staying for.

2. Provide great tools. If you’re partnering or using affiliates, provide great blog posts and emails so they can drive as much traffic as possible to your opt-in page. And provide a good variety – you don’t want every affiliate sending out the same email, since they begin to look like spam. Instead, consider helping each affiliate to write a unique email tailored exclusively for their list.

3. Spend time on your registration page. This is the page you and your partners or affiliates will be sending traffic to, and it’s do or die. Prospects decide whether or not to sign up for your webinar based upon what’s on the page, so spend a little time fine tuning it to produce the most sign-ups possible.

4. In creating the slides for your webinar, try to have a new slide every minute or two with one or more important points on it. This keeps the webinar moving and interesting.

5. You can do the webinar by yourself or with a partner. The nice thing about having a partner is you can have a give and take of information, adding in bits that the other might overlook. Of course whoever the expert is will do most of the talking, but the second person can ask questions and add a different dynamic to the call.

6. Promote the webinar. Begin promoting no more than a week in advance because frankly, people have short memories. And as the webinar gets closer, promote it more often with increased urgency.

7. Send reminders. The day before the webinar is the time to send the first reminder, preferably in the early evening. Send the second on the morning of the webinar, and the third reminder 30 minutes before it begins. “Did you forget?” Is a great subject line for the last minute email you send out. Also remind them that there are far more people signed up than there are open webinar slots (assuming this is true, which it usually is.) Suggest they get on the webinar early to ensure they get a “seat.”

8. Start the webinar on time. Don’t wait for stragglers, you’ll just irritate those who bothered to show up on time.

9. Give some of your best stuff. Seriously, you want to majorly over deliver, because the more you give, the more your listeners will want to know. If you hold everything back then not only do you run out of things to talk about – your listeners also wonder if you know anything at all.

10. Be a tease. Seriously, while you’re delivering great content you will also be inserting teasers here and there for the pitch that comes at the end. For example, you’re telling them how to do “a, b and c,” and of course they’ll need “d, e and f” which you don’t have time to cover here but you’ll give them a chance to learn all about it at the end of the presentation. For example: Your webinar is on traffic, so you teach several basic methods on the call and allude to the many advanced techniques they can also use – when they know how.

11. Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about your audience. If your webinar system allows questions to be typed in (such as GoToWebinar) then the person who isn’t doing the talking can keep track of the questions and make sure they get answered. Great trick: Imagine you are a new listener hearing you for the first time. What do you want to know? What isn’t clear? What questions might you have? Always keep your listeners in mind, and even periodically check in with them to see if they’re following what you’re teaching.

12. Make your offer deliciously irresistible. The entire webinar should flow nicely into the offer you’re making, and the offer itself should be as irresistible as possible. Pile on the benefits, make it clear what this will allow them to accomplish, and back it with a super strong guarantee. Place the URL of the order page on the screen and tell them exactly what will happen when they order.

13. Give a bonus to the first “x” number who grab your offer. This is a great way to get them off the fence and moving fast. Depending on the price point and the number of listeners, limit your special bonus to the first 10 to 50 people who sign up.

14. Stay on to answer questions and give order updates. If one person has a question there’s a good chance others have the same question. Plus you can be there in case they have a problem ordering. And as the orders come in, update the listeners on how many of the bonuses are already gone. This provides proof that others are buying and they should as well. You might even close out the webinar by letting them know you’re confident the bonuses will sell out this evening.

15. Follow-up. Send an email thanking them for attending and reminding them of the URL to order if they haven’t already.

16. Post the replay online for a few days and inform all those who did not attend to listen to it before you take it down.

It’s fairly common to make several thousand dollars from one webinar, depending of course on your offer and your listeners.

What if you don’t have a product to promote? Then you’ve got a couple of options:

1. Choose an affiliate product and ask the product owner to do the webinar with you, splitting the profit between the two of you.

2. Make your product a series of teaching webinars. These are additional webinars that they pay to attend to learn the rest of what it is you’re teaching. Record them and get transcriptions, and now you’ve got a product you can sell on future webinars.

So, are webinars for you?… If so, these tips will help you get started on the right track!