So, you want to know how to make money with webinars?

In November of 2017, I made $3,000 with my very first webinar. Like, no joke.

As a webinar newbie, I couldn’t have been more scared going into it. I didn’t know whether my presentation was good, whether I was entertaining enough to listen to, or if my shiny new online course would sell.

But sell it did.

Sell it did.

I realized later that it really only sold for one core reason: trust.

Not because I had a great presentation, or because I was some great presenter.. It sold well because the audience who showed up live (all 30 of them) trusted me in the end.

What I’m about to show you in this article is that you don’t need an email list of 1,000 people to sell your first online course. Heck, you don’t even really need 100 people on your list.

You don’t NEED X amount of views per month or X amount of followers. Just trust. Here’s 5 ways you can generate trust before, during, and after your webinar presentation so you can sell your online course, workshop, etc.

Here’s how to make money with webinars as a beginner.

Get ready, though, this first point will be a kick in the groin.

1. Blog For 6 Months Before You Put On A Webinar

Remember how I said you don’t need an email list of 100 people or X amount of views to put a webinar on?

That’s still true—but you DO need to blog for a little while before you put on a webinar.

You see, your audience needs to get used to you first. You need to develop a relationship with them. You can’t just bust through the doors of the saloon with guns blazing asking people to sign up for your webinar. You need to let people know who you are first.

Buy them a drink. Work the room. Put the colt 45 down and have some friendly banter with the bartender. This analogy sucks, but you get what I mean, right?

You can do this by posting as many blog posts as possible for 6 months BEFORE you put on a webinar.

By all means start an email list and do all that other stuff, but don’t think about selling yet. Here’s a few more key points that are crucial to learning how to make money with webinars.

KEY POINT 1: An important thing you MUST do is respond to absolutely every comment you receive. Every single one. These are the people that felt moved enough to write something BACK TO YOU. Treat them like gold—these people are likely to turn into fans + webinar registrants.

KEY POINT 2: Post on Medium instead of Wordpress. You need to do a lot of legwork to get traffic to Wordpress posts but on Medium it’s relatively easy to get a couple thousand views per month if you’re simply consistent.

2. Be On As Many Platforms As Possible

If you can blog, blog. If you can be on Twitter, be on Twitter. If you can be on LinkedIn, be on LinkedIn.

CONTEXT: Before my first webinar, I had been creating content on LinkedIn for 2 months.

I had about 170 people sign up for my very first webinar. It was amazing, and I honestly believe only 4-5 people signed up via LinkedIn.

BUT, I had a few people who knew me from LinkedIn sign up for my course!

Isn’t that crazy?

The moral of the story here is that it doesn’t matter where you create content/tell your story. As long as you respond to every comment/engage with people there, you never know what could happen.

My advice is to be on as many platforms as possible and try to be as outgoing as possible on these platforms. You never know who you’ll bump into and whether they will then sign up for your course.

3. Personally Thank Registrants For Signing Up

On the backend of Webinar Ninja, you can see who has signed up for you webinar. Oh sh*t, that reminds me..

You’re going to need a few tools if you’re going to create a webinar “funnel.” I go over this in another post, but here’s the main three you need..

Leadpages for your landing page (this is where people will sign up).

Webinar Ninja to put the webinar on.

Teachable to send registrants to when you pitch them your course.

I go over this process in this post.

Anyway, on the backend of Webinar Ninja you can see who signed up for your webinar. There should be an email address and first name attached to everybody. What if you sent them an email thanking them for signing up?

I’m serious.

When’s the last time you got an email from a big blogger/someone trying to sell you something that wasn’t automated?

The answer is never.

You can go above and beyond as a beginning blogger/influencer and use your “smallness” to your advantage by taking the time to thank people that sign up.

This small gesture goes a long way and people will be so taken back by this that it will actually drive a higher “show-up” rate.

Trust me, this works. I don’t know why bloggers don’t do this more. This helps cover your bases while you learn how to make money with webinars.

4. Say Hello To People As They Come In To Your Webinar

This is super simple. As you put your webinar on and people come flooding in (because you’re awesome), make sure to say hello and tell them to introduce themselves.

This way you can personally shout them out and even have a sort of banter session with them.

If you reached out to certain people BEFORE the webinar like I suggested you do in point #3, then you may or may not know a few things about them based on how they respond to you/interact with you over email.

Make sure to use what they told you to ask appropriate questions about their life. For instance, one person may have told you about their kids college graduation or that they were going to go on vacation soon.

Ask them how those situations are going. This not only means a lot to that person, but it also shows the other people in the room that you’re actually a thoughtful guy. It’s a win-win for trust building!

5. Be Super Generous With Your Q/A

If this is your first webinar, you should honestly have no higher priority than to be super generous with your time/expertise. Do not put a limit on the length of the webinar. Stay on there for as long as your attendees have questions.

Stay in Q/A for an hour if they want.

This is SO CRUCIAL because you’re live and for the first time you get to interact with your audience LIVE as well.

This is so much different from getting a response via email or on a blog. Webinars provide a visual experience that lends itself super well to trust building. That is, in essence, how to make money with webinars. Build trust!

We love SEEING people, and this makes us trust them so much more when we can almost talk to them and HEAR them respond to us.

I had 15 people sign up for my $200 course because of my first webinar. 

But most of the people who signed up for my course were people I knew for a while. People I responded to a ton already and built a relationship with over time.

Selling is and always will be about trust and relationships, and good relationships—the ones that are conducive to selling—take time to build.

I hope you understand this really key aspect of selling. I promise you if you do everything I told you in this blog post, you WILL sell something. You will make one sale at least, and this does a number for your confidence as a blogger.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Let me know in the comments if there are any other topics/things you want me to go over in the future. That’s how to make money with webinars.

This post contained a few affiliate links. If you decide to click through and purchase any of the products I recommended, I’ll receive a small commission AT NO EXTRA COST TO YOU.