As the internet became more widely available and data transfer speeds increased, video telecommunication became a thing. The savvy among us to reach a wider audience experimented with turning a traditional face-to-face seminar into something they could host on the internet. The age of webinars started.
You can make money through webinars as long as you have something to offer to potential viewers. It could be anything from something physical to a self-help guide for everyday life. Ensuring that your webinar offers actual value to your viewers, leads to a steady flow of profit.
To make money from webinars, firstly understand how the economics and logistics of such an operation will work. There is no point in having a great idea for a webinar when your basic understanding is incorrect, because then whatever you do will depend on luck.
Economics and logistics of webinars
To begin any operation, an initial investment is required. Fortunately, webinars require very little monetary investment. The basic tools you need to invest are:
A camera and audio recording tools of excellent quality are key to getting trust as a first impression. No one wants to watch a blocky mess and crackly voice at the end of their screen. They would like a clean, professional-looking webinar and that comes with a cost but not an enormous cost. You can easily use your smartphone, which has a pretty decent camera as your primary shooter, and a microphone kit does not cost a lot of money
The logistics of producing a webinar and making money off of it get harder the bigger your audience becomes. There will be a tipping point where you might have to hire more people and if that’s not your thing you may have to hire different services that can manage payments and audience registrations and ensuring a certain amount of customer service if you are selling products
Just be prepared and go in with the mindset that you will not make any money off the first few webinars, so focus on quality and keep in mind return on investment might take longer than you expect but stick to your philosophy and your principles
3 Tips on How to Build a Successful Business from Webinars
Honesty breeds loyalty
Be honest with your potential viewers. Do nothing to or for them which you would not do for yourself. This caring attitude can seep through virtual boundaries and be felt by all your viewers. If your viewers trust you, then they will open to new ideas and directions that you explore, ensuring a firm baseline audience. Whatever you intend to do in your webinars, just remember one thing. Build trust and be honest.
Make money a non-priority
There are a lot of “how-to make money quick using webinars” guides out there. But they all have a fatal flaw. You cannot sell anything if no one wants to buy it. So work on the quality of your webinars. Strive to deliver an exceptional experience or product without the intention of making money.
You should aim to give your audience something of value rather than making a quick profit off of them. That model might work for a little while, but the revenue flow will dry up quickly. The reason is there will always be someone who will sell a similar product for cheaper. Competing with them will just cause financial loss.
Be passionate About the Topic
Passion in your work is what will separate you from the common bunch. Passion is something that will cause money to be made from webinars. Think about it like this:
Two people talking about pillows. Let us name one of them feathers and the other person as wool. They have been given the same script. Feathers read the script in a monotonic voice and an expressionless face. Wool reads the same script, but with energy and expressions, wool is passionate about his pillows. So imagine yourself being there, who would you want to hear talk pillows for 30 minutes? No one wants to hear a lifeless robot on the end of their screen. So work on something you truly believe in.
5 Key Steps for Making Money With Webinars
Pre-marketing
Pre-marketing involves selling your product before the webinar even starts. You can perform this task by going on different social media groups such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. Go onto niche groups where the size of the community is relatively small and after you have got permission from the admins of the group. What you need to do is promote your webinar and products on those pages and give community pages a shout out as well in your webinar and on your respective social media accounts
Now what pre-marketing does is create anticipation for your product or program. The odds are such marketing can increase the audience or even include new potential long-term followers.
Another way of pre-marketing and a pretty efficient way of making money from a webinar is to have a personal blog well beforehand. You can market your webinars and the product you intend to sell on this blog as well, and odds are you will get a certain amount of traffic it might not be a lot. But every bit counts.
Sponsors
Sponsors are a great way to make money off the bat before you even start your webinar. If you have a certain product from another company to sell, try approaching the said company and asking them to sponsor your webinar. You could also ask for responses from completely unrelated places like a local restaurant you liked or a company that just approached you. It does not matter as long as it’s a reliable and legal method.
Another advantage to sponsorships is that if your webinar is successful, then it results in the sponsor getting a lot more traffic on their product page as well. This can start a new partnership, potentially a long-term partnership with you and a sponsor. Allowing you to leverage more from other companies and building a reputation in the sponsoring space.
If the relationship between you and the potential sponsor becomes fruitful, you will get access to products before release, for you to review or even to distribute sometimes on a small scale. This will help increase the credibility and the popularity of your webinars. This creates more potential for you to make money off of a webinar and diversify your portfolio, potentially starting another series of webinars.
Affiliate to Products or Services that are Relatable
For those of you who do not know what affiliations are or affiliate links are, they are a commission a supplier or a company pays you for posting web links to their products. For example, you wear some shoes in your webinar, you like them and the audience likes them. You can just put an affiliate link in the description of your webinar, it takes anyone who clicks it to the page of the manufacturer of said shoe.
You make a small commission off of these purchases and the best part is you do not have to market anything you do not have to have customer support service, not. It just needs to be a quality product that you are behind.
It does not have to be something so obvious as wearing brand new shoes. Could be something as simple as the camera you use, the microphone, or any other thing you are using to produce your webinars. You can have affiliate links to the manufacturers of these products as well. If someone from your audience wants to buy them, you will get a small commission off of it. These would be tested tools since you use them to produce your webinars. They automatically get your seal of approval.
These affiliate links could cause a sponsorship deal with these companies, because of the additional traffic and sales they are getting because of your webinars. They may want to partner up. That is one of the few low-risk benefits of affiliate links because you are not losing anything you are just posting a link to a description.
Products sell!
Maybe you have created a product on your own or collaborated to produce a product. You could just talk about the benefits of said product, maybe hold a little live demonstration presenting the effectiveness or the usefulness of the object you are trying to sell. Remember, be upfront about all its shortcomings and all its advantages. As said before: honesty is an extremely important building block for your webinars.
You can leverage several online sellers like Amazon eBay or you could create your website and sell your product school for that and use a webinar to market. So the actual logistics of selling are no issue in today’s world.
Another way to sell a product is to include it as a small portion of your entire webinar. Just casually talk about the product a few times and mention that you are selling this. Just like that, be on your way talking about whatever you want to. Most viewers prefer this subtle way of selling products, but it depends on your audience.
Since you are so in sync with your community due to live webinars you can get quick and honest feedback about your products from your followers allowing you to improve them or maybe even remove certain products so it is a very robust way of making money off of webinars. The only catch is you need to be a trustworthy individual beforehand in the webinar space.
Subscription model
It is also called the pay-per-view model, people have to pay to sign up for your webinars. This may be a great way to make money, but it has a prerequisite that you have a certain authority in the community and a strong following that guarantees sales.
A better way is to have a subscription model. A subscription model can include a small monthly fee and every month you give out some small product in return or maybe even a mini Ask me anything every month. Whatever it is, it does not have to be elaborate. This way you keep costs down and maintain a steady flow of income.
The webinar subscription model also allows you to remain in touch with your community throughout the year rather than just having those huge annual webinars. You should still have those. But those mini webinars are more personalized to your community. Strengthening the relationship between you and your followers. All the while you are getting a steady stream of income from all your webinars. Without having to alienate any part of your community with expensive tickets. Unfortunately, some producers and creators in the webinar space just focus on the big pay-check.
Mistakes to Avoid in order to Make Money from Webinars
Quick money schemes, Selling any Product without testing or having some honest reviews about it, betray the community that decided to follow the Webinars, just for the sake of earning more… After all, trust builds loyalty.
A few things to avoid foremost: do not try or go for those quick money-making schemes, for example making X amount of money in two days easily. First, it is extremely difficult to deliver on such a promise. Second, the people who do this are mostly scamming you, baiting you with sizable sums of money so you just click on some links that they want you to click, or sometimes buy something that just creates a spiraling chain of buying useless products.
You gain nothing by just trying to sell some products. What your goal needs to be is: honesty with your community, always remember that no matter how popular you are, maintaining honesty is the key to maintaining popularity. Only then can you ensure a steady flow of income.
Remember, as a creator you handle a sizable community. Some people look up to you. So promote responsible behavior. Such simple goals go a long way towards building a legacy. When people feel they are being cared for by an individual that is a stranger, they feel loyalty to that person who will go above and beyond to support them. That is a much better business model, compared to making a quick buck.
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References
https://mariahcoz.com/blog/make-money-with-webinars
https://easytoretire.com/how-to-make-money-with-a-webinar
https://medium.com/finding-tom/how-to-make-money-with-webinars-as-a-beginner-57dcffca3754
https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-webinar-3486257
https://www.textrequest.com/blog/ultimate-guide-profitable-webinars/
