Seven Figure Business

What Are Webinars?

As the name implies, webinars are seminars which are web-based. They are also referred to as online workshops or online seminars. Webinars have many uses such as building a brand, generating sales leads, training groups of people, press conferences, corporate announcements and focus groups.

Webinars are similar to conference based seminar; the only difference is that the participants listen to the audio through telephones and view the presentation by their web browser. The main feature of webinar is the interactive element which is the ability to discuss, give and receive information. It is different to “webcast” which doesn’t allow interaction between the audience and presenter.

Numerous companies have started offering webinar as an exchange to the traditional face-to-face seminars. Companies are acquiring the advantages that webinars give. These vary from flexibility to cost efficiency. Participants will not have to travel just to attend a seminar; they can learn on the comfort of their homes and their most convenient times. Other benefits are cost reduction, ability to reach much larger audience, lets future playback and can be recorded digitally.

Companies can save a lot from traveling budget and other expenses relative to trainings. A computer, an internet access and a phone line are just the items needed to attend a webinar. Materials like handouts can be printed and are downloadable and can be maintained as reference file.

Webinars also help marketers reach larger audience immediately. The geographically scattered colleagues may be able to work and collaborate as a team. Announcements can be posted to all the employees no matter where they are. Attendees and presenters can collaborate and interact through Q&A, document sharing and live polls; thus attendees can easily participate and learn from the activity.

The usual model for a webinar may be to offer a 5 week course and during which diverse lecture and module is uploaded on a specific day, for example, Monday. Registrants will have 1 week to take in the information.

If you are not into webinar hosting, you can just attend or let your employees participate on one. There are those with reasonable price and some are offered free. There are those which can be viewed and archived on demand. The archived webinars are made available for the viewing public; this can be accessed at Archived Webinars Page.

Looking for a webinar to attend will take a little research. If you’re always receiving invitations to online seminars, wait for the provider’s broadcast of an event. Also keep your eyes on upcoming webinars on trade magazines. Check websites for any webinars that have appealing topics since technology and universities are holding them.

Before registering on a webinar, do your homework first. Research the credentials of the presenter and the costs accompanying it. Even if the online seminar is free, try to analyze if it will be worthy of your and your subordinate’s time.

At first glance, webinars may seem less effective and meeting a person is better. But in various ways, the discussion group is a more effective method of communication. The discussion boards allow exchange of knowledge and information wherein the speaker also participate. The discussions are maintained online and anyone can review it anytime; this will let information propagate in many ways physical meeting cannot.

Webinars are fastly becoming the latest choice in web conferencing. Through its accessibility and low cost, companies can hold interactive meeting. Take advantage of the internet communication through attending or having your own web based seminars. You can also let your employees attend them for their development. Just do your research first and let your webinars help you with your success.

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Eons back, ambitious people of the world have attributed some “indescribable secret” to the success of those people with wealth. These people have spent, and will continue to spend, millions of dollars to cultivate these “secrets” within themselves.

Particularly since the early seventies, there has been a growing demand by the public to attend classes, workshops, and self improvement seminars that will enable them to align their thinking as well as their actions, with those of people who have already achieved success.

The popularity of such best-selling how-to books as WINNING IS BELIEVING…THINK AND GROW RICH…HOW TO DEVELOP A WINNING PERSONALITY…OVERCOMING SHYNESS… IMAGINEERING… NEW LIFE OPTIONS… WINNING BY NEGOTIATION… SUCCESSFUL VISUAL-VERBAL COMMUNICATIONS… CONVERSATIONALLY SPEAKING… and countless others lends reinforcement to the “need” for self-improvement seminars.

You can promote and stage these seminars either as a generalists or as a specialist in a specific area of expertise and attain wealth for yourself almost beyond your current imagination! The market potential has only barely been scratched, affording a real
ground-floor opportunity for those with the gumption to take action.

Dale Carnegie, the author of the book, How To Win Friends and Influence People was certainly one of the first, if not “the
first” self improvement seminar market/teacher. Back in the Great Depression of the thirties, he recognized this need in people to improve themselves, he worked out a deal with the local management of his hometown YMCA, got the word around that he was holding classes on self-improvement, and the rest is one of the truly classic unemployed-to-multi-million-dollar success stories of our time.

A self improvement seminar is conducted much the same as a Toastmaster’s Club meeting. It can be held just about anywhere, from the informal atmosphere of someone’s living room to the formalities of the Hilton Convention Center.

Basically, a self-improvement seminar is a gathering of people where one or more speakers talk on a specific subject. More often than not, only a certain aspect of self-improvement, such as How To develop A Positive Mental Attitude is the thrust of the seminar. In other words, the more successful seminars deal with “specialized areas” of self improvement.

These speakers usually wind up their talks with audience involvement questions and answer sessions. Most of them “wind
down” with the speaker circulating thru the audience, plus lots of opportunity for the purchase of self help books and tapes by the people wanting ongoing motivation and reinforcement to what they have just heard. Almost always even as the featured subject of the seminar, there is a great deal of motivation projected during these meetings. At the bottom line, motivation is more the purpose of these seminars than the attendees learning something they don’t already know. The favorite words of most seminar speakers is usually, “It’s the difference between having a dream and taking action, a matter of saying I can, believing it, and then doing it, because you can!

Successful seminars are generally based upon the concept of giving you the power to believe you can. The speakers usually
speaks from insights and expertise gained from their own life experiences. Self-improvements seminars give the attendees the tools, and the motivation, to succeed. Thus, a well organized and well presented seminar that helps people up the ladder of success can’t help but succeed because we are a success oriented society, it’s an easy sell with an income potential limited only by your ability to express yourself.

You won’t need an office to make it big with self improvement seminars. The public doesn’t visit you, you take your programs to them. Self improvement seminars appeal to almost everybody, from blue collar workers to top executives.

The average cost per person to attend a seminar is everywhere from $500 to $6 000 so your basic audience will be from the upper income brackets, but if you handle the promotional aspects properly, you’ll pull them in from lesser income brackets as well.

Many seminar promoters employ sales teams to call upon top company executives and either get the to partially pay the cost of several employees to attend as educational or business improvement investments, or to foot the bill for the sponsorship of a “group seminar” for all of that company’s middle management personnel. Many specialty speakers make in excess of $100,000 per year with regular motivational and/or self-improvement seminars in this fashion.

In the beginning though, you’ll get your start by staging seminars for the general public in restaurant banquet rooms, hotel ballrooms, and convention centers. These will entail advertising costs, plus the charges for the rented space, and an “on hand” inventory of the materials you want to sell to the people who attend your seminars.

Generally, you’ll do best with an intensive radio advertising campaign during the week preceding your seminar date. In a
metropolitan area of half a million population, you should spend a couple of thousand dollars on radio advertising, plus half as much for flamboyant newspaper advertising. Some seminar promoters invest a quarter of their budget in newspapers, then a half going into radio. Of course, the allocation of your advertising budget should be related to the previous proven pulling power of each media within that particular market. Not too much concern is given to television advertising, excepting for guest appearances of the community service talk shows.

Most promoters spend all of this effort and money to promote a series of free seminars. These free seminars usually draw huge crowds, during which special “front men” turn everybody on with super motivational stories designed to wet the appetite of those in attendance for more. These free seminars generally last only 45 minutes to an hour, and are strictly motivational in purpose.

Each person in attendance is handed a brochure describing the up-coming “main event” as they leave these free seminars. An attempt is made to get an commitment, at least a deposit for the cost of the “real thing” which is usually set for the week following. Those who do commit themselves to attending the big one are then contacted by professional telephone sales people and given the complete sales presentation between the time of the free seminar ad the date of the real thing. With good advertising, up-front motivational speakers, attractive program brochures and experienced telephone sales people, you can count on closing about 30 to 35% of those who attend your free seminars.

If you don’t have the confidence or inclination to participate, be the principal speaker, at your seminars you can hire local sales training people, professional people from the medical specialties, local “experts” known thru your area newspapers or broadcast media, and or/ nationally known speakers wiling to travel and operating thru speakers’ bureaeus.

Finally, a reiteration of the fact that there are literally millions of people in all parts of the country willing and able to pay you for helping them to improve themselves in either regards. The need for coaching, motivation, inspiration, support and guidance on different levels and from different aspects is a never ending process and will continue in many eons forward.