There is a lot of software to choose from when it comes to conducting webinars. Before you look at the products, write down the features you want the software you use to have, as well as how much money you can afford to spend on the technology that you choose.

* InstantTeleseminar – Using this software for your webinars is a great choice because it’s not expensive. And it has a lot of features that make marketing easier, such as automatic recordings and playbacks so you can record a webinar once and resell it over and over again. They offer a $1.00 trial for a week.

Link – http://www.instantteleseminar.com/

* GoToMeeting – This webinar software is a little more expensive but it has the ability to set up webinars easily as well as charge for attending the webinars. It offers top-notch professional features that enable you to run truly professional conferences. However, the space can be more limited without paying a lot more money.

Link – http://www.gotomeeting.com/

* Adobe Connect – With different plans up to 500 attendees, whiteboards, screen sharing, easy recording capabilities, and a relatively low price compared to other similar services, this is a winning choice for pretty much anyone who wants to do webinars.

Link – http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html

* Anymeeting – This free service offers the ability to conduct webinars without having to spend a future. You can upgrade to get more features. Their screen sharing lacks some bells and whistles and the host has to download to use it, but it is sufficient.

Link – http://www.anymeeting.com/

* ClickWebinar – This very modifiable service allows you to set up webinars that don’t look too cookie cutter. But, it’s harder to monetize this software than some of the others; however, there are always ways to work around it.

Link – http://www.clickwebinar.com/

* MegaMeeting.com – This choice is only good if you and your viewers use PCs, so it can be limiting. But it is a choice that you may want to consider when choosing software for webinars. This is a fully featured system that offers monetization tools, marketing tools and more.

Link – http://www.megameeting.com/

* WebinarsOnAir.com – This is software that will turn your Google Hangouts On Air into money-making webinars. They enable you to build your list, charge attendees, sell things, and even offer automatic playback so that you can run a recording as a live event. This is a really good choice if you’re looking for something simple with full-featured marketing tools.

Link – http://www.webinarsonair.com/

These various software choices come with many differing benefits and price points. Most of them have a free trial version that you can test out. The best software in the world isn’t good enough if you cannot figure out how to use it comfortably.

Webinars should be an important part of your online marketing mix. Webinars have the ability to bring in new potential leads from all over the world, as well as help you engage with your audience in new, more personal way. If you’ve not tried having a webinar yet, maybe these ten reasons to add webinars will convince you.

1. Connect with More Customers – Just like video is shared more than text content, webinars are enjoyed on a higher level than other types of educational materials. Webinars feel more personal, even though they can actually be recorded and replayed.

2. Build Your Email List with Qualified Leads – People who will pay to attend a webinar of a certain topic are your ideal audience and will consist of highly qualified leads that want what you’re offering.

3. Establish Your Expertise – If you need a way to prove what you know, webinars are a great way to choose. Giving talks about what you know has long been a way to show authority on a subject, but doing it online is even easier than flying all over the country to do it. Both are fun and useful, but webinars offer some benefits over in-person events because you can do them from anywhere for anyone anywhere.

4. Develop New Information Products – Due to the ability to record webinars, you can use them as future information products. Not only can you sell the recording as is, you can also transcribe the recordings and turn them into eBooks.

5. The Cost to Entry Is Low – The software involved can be very expensive, but there are some great choices to use that aren’t as expensive, such as InstantTeleseminar, Adobe Connect and GoToMeeting. These vary in price and features, so check them out. There are other systems, too.

Links:

InstantTeleseminar – http://instantteleseminar.com/
Adobe Connect – http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html
GoToMeeting – http://www.gotomeeting.com/

6. Engage Audiences Easily – There are many different types of features that you can use to engage audiences, such as the ability for the audience to ask questions live during the event, and the ability to hand over the speaker controls to a guest. Not to mention the ability to screen share and watch videos together and more.

7. Add a New Stream of Revenue – Not only can you charge for webinar attendance if you want to, but you can also turn the webinar into information products as mentioned before and sell them that way. There are so many things that open up to you. For example, you can turn each good question into its own new product.

8. Easy to Repurpose – The recording ability makes webinars simple to repurpose. Turn questions into blog posts, break up videos into eCourses, put the transcript of a webinar into book form, and more. The sky is the limit; you can even make cuts into short YouTube videos.

9. Great Way to Network with Others – The webinar itself, if you add in an intermission with an open chat window, is a great way to network with others. Plus the preparation for the event, finding guests and JV partners (joint venture) is going to help you with reaching out to others.

10. It’s Not Hard to Do – Believe it or not, if you can use your online banking system, or Skype, you have the technical knowledge to use any of the webinar software mentioned. You may need some help with planning, organizing and implementation, but the technology should be straightforward to use.

Planning and hosting webinars isn’t costly, and they’re not hard to do either. You’ll gain so much more out of hosting webinars and adding webinars to your marketing mix that you’ll wonder why you did not start doing them sooner.

There is a lot to do to host a successful webinar. But, if you arrange to do each thing in advance and have a cheat sheet or a to-do list to help you not forget anything, then you’ll run through it with no problem. Let this be the start of your cheat sheet.

* Choose Software – Write down the functions you want the software to have so that you can run a smooth webinar. Try out some different types of software, and then choose the software you want to use.

* Define Your Audience – Who do you want to deliver your message to? It might seem weird to choose your audience first, but doing so will make it simpler to choose the topic. If you know who you’re talking to then you can customize any topic to fit them.

* Write Out Descriptions – When you know who your audience is, it will help to write down exactly who they are down to descriptions of them as individuals. Choosing two or three specific personas is very helpful moving forward.

* Develop a Narrow Topic – Your topic should be something that solves one major problem for your audience. For example, perhaps your audience consists of home-based service providers like virtual assistants. What is one big problem that they have that you can solve? Summarize the topic and the event so that you can market it to not only attendees but also to potential JVs.

* Set a Date – Setting a date early in the planning process is essential to getting it done. If you wait too long to perfect everything, you won’t do it. Set a date, and then work your way backwards in your calendar setting everything up. The least amount of time you need to put on a successful webinar is six weeks.

* Choose a Title – Using this information, develop a working title. You can also use the working titles to tease your audience a bit. You might develop a poll to let them choose one of the titles.

* Set Your Goals for the Event – Set specific goals for your webinar, such as adding 100 targeted subscribers to your email list, or selling five new memberships to your exclusive inner circle club. Write it down so that you can look at it each time you start to develop copy.

* Create an Email Autoresponder Series – When people sign up early for the event, it’s great to have them on a list with an autoresponder series plugged in to keep them informed and excited about the coming event.

* Build a Landing Page – Using your title and the summary of your event, add on to that and create a landing page that makes people want to sign up for your event. Make it as simple as possible; don’t ask too many questions of attendees or they’ll run away and you will miss out.

* Develop Any Forms You’ll Need – Both your JVs and your attendees are going to need forms. You’ll need to use forms to collect information on everyone from both sides of the fence. You can use something like Gravity Forms or even Google Forms.

* Invite Joint Venture Partners – Once you know the focus of the event, you can invite JVs to do the event with you. Decide on the rules and the speaker responsibilities ahead of time, and then invite about four times as many as you think you need to apply to be speakers.

* Craft the Web Copy – Get to work on writing the copy for the event, or have someone do it. Even before the rest of the work is done you need to start marketing your event as soon as possible.

* Get Art Created – Find someone to create graphics for the event. Consider graphics for the sales page, for the speaker information, for attendee gifts and more. For example, wouldn’t it be useful to have a graphic to say an attendee is attending, which can easily be tweeted after they purchase their ticket?

* Prepare an Event Page – Using that information, make your event page with all the information on the speakers, the topic, and benefits of attending.

* Collect Speaker Information – As speakers turn in their information, which needs to have a strict deadline, add it to the event page.

* Send Out Press Releases – As soon as the date is set, the title chosen, and the event is scheduled, you need to send out a press release regarding your event.

* Invite Everyone – It might seem like something you’d think of, but invite everyone you know on your lists, and have the speakers invite people on their lists. Create a deadline by which to start doing that.

* Create a Bonus for Attendees – Everyone loves unannounced bonuses and opportunities. You can use these bonuses as they come in to tease your audience that has not signed up, but keep them secret from people who have signed up.

* Collect Speaker Slide Shows – You never know what can happen, so it’s a good idea to collect the speaker slides. They are also great bonus material for webinar attendees who may want to download them to follow along with a speaker.

* Practice – Have a practice run with the speakers about a week before the live event. Make it private, and just have each speaker show up, share their screens, check their volume and just take five minutes to make sure everything works.

Successful webinars are possible with the right advanced planning and with specific goals in mind. You can host webinars and add another income stream to your business fast.