There's More Than One Way to Make Money From Webinars by Gihan Perera

Even presenters who recognize the opportunity in paid webinars sometimes think the only way to make money from webinars is by selling individual tickets to attendees. In other words, it's like running a public seminar: You plan the event, promote it as widely as possible, offer incentives for early registration, take bookings by credit card, and then run the event.

That is certainly one way, but it's by no means the only way. The problem with this approach, as anybody who's run a public seminar will tell you, is it's difficult to get attendees ("bums on seats"). You need to do a lot of advertising, have access to a big mailing list, invest a lot of time following up people who register interest... or some combination of these three!

The good news is, there are many, many other ways to make money from webinars. Here are five methods I've used myself (or seen clients use).

1. Private webinars for corporate clients or associations

Instead of running this as a public webinar, where you have to extract money from each participant's wallet, run it as a private webinar instead, where one clients pays a single fee. This is just like running an in-house workshop, keynote or training program.

I know one client in particular who made a lot of money this way during the worst of the GFC, when his clients were cancelling or delaying other training. He offered a webinar-based program instead (for a lower fee, but higher than the $0 fee he would have otherwise got!), and clients were happy to take up that offer. It also meant he kept the relationship with those clients, so he benefited again when the economy picked up.

2. Webinars as an optional extra for other products

When a friend and I published a book, we offered a bonus webinar for anybody who bought it by a certain date. We didn't bump up the price to include the webinar fee, but it did help us make more sales than if we hadn't made that offer.

This worked so well that I now do it regularly whenever I release new products.

3. Webinars as part of a product offering

People who register for my workshops get two webinars as part of the package:

1. A preliminary webinar 2-3 weeks before the workshop, to help them prepare; and

2. A follow-up webinar 6-8 weeks afterward, to answer any lingering questions.

Both of these add huge value to the core offering (the workshop); and for not a lot of effort on my part.

4. Regular webinars for people in your paid membership community

Webinars are a low-cost high-value way to deliver value to key people in your network, whether they are members of your membership site, your "A" category clients, or your most valuable prospective clients.

When I started offering webinars to members of my membership site, I was offering one a month. Now it's increased to almost one a week - and I'm loving them!

5. Free webinars with a sales pitch at the end

When I promoted a workshop recently, I ran a series of three high-content webinars leading up to the workshop. They were high in content, because I didn't just want to do a sales pitch; but they did also give me the chance to promote the workshop to those who attended the webinars.

I've left this idea to last because it's one of the things many people think of first with webinars, though it's not easy to do well (although it can be very profitable if you know how to sell well during a presentation).

There are very good reasons for running no-cost webinars. But don't automatically assume this will make you a bazillion dollars instantly. I do recommend you start with small, no-cost webinars - but mainly for you and your market to get used to the technology first.

If you're looking to make money from webinars, try one of the other four ideas first.


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