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If you're running for-fee webinars, it's difficult to set a price. Because webinars are fairly new, there is no "standard fee" for a webinar - unlike, say, the price of $25-40 for a business book. This gives you a lot of flexibility in setting your price; but it also puts the responsibility on you to explain the value they get in return for paying the fee.

Here are seven guidelines you can use to help set your webinar price.

1. Cost plus

We'll start with two of the most common pricing methods, even though they aren't necessarily the best.

The first is margin - in other words, setting your price on a "cost plus" basis. However, webinars themselves have a very low cost, so it's hard to justify your pricing based on your cost, because almost everything is pure profit to you.

However, you might consider this as one factor in setting the price, especially if there are other costs involved - such as advertising, paying guest presenters, or paying somebody to be the host while you're the presenter. You should also factor in the cost of your own time.

2. Competitor pricing

A second common method is to look at your competition.

This works well for well-understood products and services, where customers do make decisions by comparing prices.

Unfortunately, this usually isn't the case for webinars, because they are still novel. Your customers probably can't find another competing webinar to compare with; and even if they did, it's not like comparing breakfast cereals, cars or mobile phone plans.

The other danger with looking at competitors is you don't know the competitor's underlying strategy behind their price. They might be setting a low price because a sponsor is backing it, or they're building a database, or they're making the real money by selling products during the webinar. They might also be pricing it high because they want people to buy a cheaper service instead, or they want them to upgrade to a slightly more expensive service, or because it gives them more negotiating room when selling tickets in bulk, or because they sell on commission.

3. High demand

If there is a high demand for your topic area, obviously you can charge a higher price. However, business owners often over-estimate their value, and are disappointed when their market doesn't share their belief! It's easy to fool yourself into thinking your topic really is in high demand. So when assessing demand, be sure you're doing this from your market's viewpoint.

This doesn't necessarily mean you need to conduct an expensive market research campaign. If you're already actively working in this area, you'll see the signs from things like:

• The most common questions your clients ask you
• The blog posts you write that generate the most comments and discussion
• The common audience questions from your face-to-face presentations
• Common topics of discussion in on-line forums, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook groups and other on-line communities

4. Scarce supply

This is the flip side of the supply/demand balance: Is your material so rare they can't get the same value elsewhere? In this case, it's more valuable, and hence you can charge a higher price.

Your audience isn't only comparing your webinar with other webinars; they are comparing it with other ways of learning the same material. You might be competing with a YouTube video, a book, an e-book, a Facebook discussion group, and myriad other delivery options.

On the other hand, even if those options exist, some people will prefer the interactive nature of a webinar. So don't write off the webinar's value altogether; just remember to evaluate it in context.

5. Your reputation

Does your market know, like and trust you as an expert on this topic? As with any other marketing, when you've established a reputation as an authority, you can generally charge a higher fee.

One word of caution here: Be sure you're seen as an authority in the market where you're promoting the webinar. Many a presenter with a well-established business and a strong client base fails miserably when they try to sell on the Internet. The main reason is that, although their clients and audiences love them, Internet users don't know them.

Even if you work diligently at your on-line reputation - for example, with your e-mail newsletter, blog and Twitter - don't expect those users to automatically pay money for your webinar. Some will, but most won't. It's not that they don't like paying money for anything; it's just that you've got a different relationship with them. They might be your subscribers, readers, fans, followers and supporters - but they're not necessarily your customers.

6. Duration

Within reason, the longer your webinar, the higher the fee you can charge for it.

This is an important factor in many attendees' buying process, even though it shouldn't necessarily be. A 90-minute webinar is not necessarily worth three times as much as a 30-minute webinar, and there's even an argument the shorter version jam-packed with value should command the higher price.

But most of your audience won't think this way. They will equate a longer webinar with greater value. And in many cases, they are right - because the longer webinar will probably offer more interactivity, more chance for them to ask questions, and probably more material.

7. Marketing effort

Consider a $20 webinar and a $100 webinar on the same topic. All other things being equal, you'll probably get more people at the $20 price than you would at $100. But you need five times as many to make this worthwhile. Is that likely?

That's rarely the case, unless your market is very price-sensitive. What's more likely is you will get some increase in numbers at the lower price, but probably not enough to justify it.

What's more, you'll probably put about the same marketing effort into both options, so you might as well charge a higher price. In fact, sometimes it takes more time and effort for the lower-priced option, simply because you are getting more registrations (which means more payment processing, more credit card errors, more questions about the technology, more undeliverable e-mail, and so on).

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