9 Gihan Perera: Webinar Smarts

Our second post in a series counting down the 10 most influential books I’ve read this year – 2011.

Gihan Perera; Webinar Smarts: Power Secrets of Engaging, Profitable Webinars

I made more money because I read this book

Every year I aim to read 50 books. That’s one a week. I just love books… And, over the past 10 years I’ve read over 400 books. You can tell I don’t always reach my annual target!

Anywho, some books stand out for various reasons. And, this book, Webinar Smarts, is in one of those elite groups. It’s in the group called: “I read this book and made more money as a result”. That’s impressive because of the 400 books I’ve read there is probably only a handful that I can say that about.

Finding Webinars

Let me explain… I had been running a bunch of seminars, including the Ideas Lunch. They take quite a few hours to put together… book venues, manage invites, organise food, prepare content… And, they often weren’t profitable in terms of the time I put into them. Sometimes people people turned up without booking throwing out the catering. And, sometimes they promised they would come and didn’t show up. And that’s not counting the cost of trips to Sydney and Auckland to complement the Melbourne events.

Then I stumbled across webinars! In particular webinars by the author of this book, Gihan Perera. Gihan is an internet coach and runs the eGurus community to assist consultants, speakers and authors with their online strategy. He’s now one of my online mentors. And I downloaded this ebook as part of my membership of eGurus. (A hardback issue is also available.)

Advantages of Webinars

For me webinars had these advantages:
• Access to a worldwide audience, not just a local one
• I could run one whenever I want to and at short notice
• I didn’t have to pay for venues – so it didn’t matter if no one turned up
• Even better… if no turned up I could record the event anyway
• Recording them is easier than face-to-face events and a great way to create products, blog posts, etc
• Further benefits of webinars are covered in this book.

What’s in Webinar Smarts

Essentially, this book walked me through how to run a webinar. This includes:
• Types of webinar presentations
• When to offer free webinars and when to charge fees
• Tips, tricks and traps in the webinar technology
• Marketing and promoting your webinar
• Planning your webinar
• The before, during and after process of running your webinar
• Plus a section on how to get started

And my results…

At the time of writing I’ve run 14 webinars. All free ones. I’m plotting to run some paid ones in 2012. And, I’ve been able to use my webinars to promote my face to face seminars and workshops. Best of all, I can count the sales my webinars have generated.

And, this is why this book makes my top ten of the most influential books I’ve read this year. If you’re wanting to tap into online presentations to promote, sell and educate your products/services then grab a copy of Gihan Perera’s Webinar Smarts from WebinarSmarts.com

Number 10 in our Top Ten Most Influential Books 2011: Peter Fitzsimons: Kokoda
Number 8 in our Top Ten Most Influential Books 2011: Nancy Duarte: Resonate