In an earlier blog series, I explained that it could cost you tens of thousands of dollars to rent a virtual event platform. This makes hosting a virtual event out of reach for most businesses.

Now, you can cheap-out and use a password-protected webpage to deliver your information to attendees. However, this is not a secure way to manage your virtual event recordings. Plus, you risk adding more tasks to your already full plate because this process is not automated.

Aside from the money you save using a blog and few plug-ins to create your own virtual event platform, there are are three powerful reasons why you need to use something more robust than a password protected webpage to deliver information to attendee about your virtual event.

#1 – You Improve Customer Service

The first time I hosted a multi-speaker virtual event, I used a blog. The problem was that my team and I had to manually copy attendee registration information from our online shopping cart system to the blog and then send an e-mail to the attendee letting them know about their registration details.

This process took anywhere between 1 to 2 business days to complete depending on the workload of my virtual assistant. Of course, during this time, attendees would get a little frantic wondering why they haven’t received further information and curious to know what to do next. I’ve had some people freak out to the point where they’ve asked for their money back.

So, having a system that automates the entire registration process helps you to provide optimal customer service and lessen those refund requests. And if your attendees are happy, they’ll reward you with sales in the future.

#2 – You Build a Tribe Quicker

Virtual events can attract tens of thousands of eyeballs which translates into thousands of sign-ups to your list which ends up bringing you hundreds of paid registrants. That means you’ve already identified a market willing to pay you for your services.

But the bigger result is that these eyeballs, sign-ups and customers are united under one theme, one message and one leader. And these are the key ingredients in creating your very own tribe.

In his book, Tribes, Seth Godin says that a group needs only two things to become a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate. The benefits to creating a tribe around your personality, your business or your brand is that you now have a highly attentive audience to share your ideas, programs and services with. Of course, I’m simplifying this a bit, but you get the idea.

Your very own virtual event platform allows you to provide a central place for attendees to communicate with one another and your virtual event is the shared interest. When you, as the virtual event host, allows connections to take plact between those who have a shared interest, you create a long lasting bond to you, your virtual event and eventually, your brand.

#3 – You Create Passive Income Easier

There’s no better way to create tons of information products in a short period of time than to host a multi-speakervirtual event. If you’ve been sitting around trying to create your first or umpteenth information product, a multi-speaker virtual event will help you achieve this feat in no time.

Depending on what you used to deliver the recorded content to your attendees will depend on how quickly you’ll start earning passive income. Building your very own virtual event platform using a blog and some powerful plug-ins, such as Wishlist Member, can help you turn your virtual event platform into a membership website. For an extra fee, you can add content on a monthly or weekly basis so that attendees continue their learning with you after the virtual event is over.

Ready to Build Your Virtual Event Platform?

I’ll teach you how to turn a blog into a virtual event platform in this 5 module intensive virtual bootcamp. Training begins March 16, 2010, however, the early bird pricing disappears March 3rd. To get your seat and to save $200, click here to register your spot.

Do you sense there are BIGGER, more MEANINGFUL things you’re meant to do as an entrepreneur? Are you lying awake a night with “idea itches” you can’t scratch? Or maybe you’re wondering if there are any good ideas LEFT that are worth pursuing for profit?

I recently made a change in my business, going from being a social media expert (which was a miserable experience) to FINALLY pursuing the one thing that client’s have been telling me I’m an expert in which is using virtual events to make money and become an authority in my niche.

With this change in focus, I’ve become very crystal clear on my product offerings and my long term plans. On top of that, I’ve been much more selective about the type of events I attend as an attendee. That’s why when Andrea J. Lee announced her Wealthy Thought Leader workshop, taking place March 18-20, 2010 in Vancouver, BC, I registered right away, no questions asked.

What I love about Andrea is that she’s a thought leader herself. She worked as the right-hand to Thomas Leonard (the “Father of Coaching”) and went on to build her own multiple-income-stream coaching and training empire. Andrea has spent her entire career busting apart stale business paradigms and reinventing how entrepreneurs package their gifts for meaning and profit.

If you’ve ever had even an inkling that you could be the next 6- or even 7-figure THOUGHT LEADER in your industry, you MUST attend Andrea’s 3-day workshop taking place March 18-20, 2010 in beautiful Vancouver, BC. I’ll be there and I’d love to meet you.

Update: For those who can’t or aren’t able to travel to Vancouver right now, Andrea is now offering the workshop live over a video feed. Get the 3-day workshop from the comforts of home or office. Click here for more information.

Have you been thinking about producing your own virtual event, but you’re not sure which tools you should use? Or, maybe you already hosted a teleclass, virtual summit or telebootcamp, but the tools you used created so much extra work that it left you exhausted.

I’m going to share with you my top 5 must have tools to skyrocket your virtual event profits on February 25, 2010 at 10am PT / 1pm ET in a NO FEE call. I’ll reveal:

• How to use a popular social media tool to create a powerful and profitable attendee management system
• Ways to automate attendee registrations so you avoid the dreaded copying & pasting
• The biggest mistake most virtual event hosts make when sharing their virtual event recordings
• Why email is the worst thing you can use to manage all the moving pieces with your virtual event (Leesa will share with you what you should use instead)
• The hidden dangers of free conference bridge line service – and what you should look for in a paid one
• The 3 things a shopping cart system can help you manage – and how to integrate this nicely into your virtual event platform
• Details about Leesa’s brand new virtual bootcamp where she’ll teach you click-by-click how to setup your own virtual event platform

To get the call-in details, go to http://buildavirtualeventplatform.com and sign up to attend this no fee teleclass. On that page, you’ll also get access to Module 1 in the Build a Virtual Event Platform program, a **FREE** video tutorial that I created to get you started with your virtual event platform.

I don’t know about you, but the old way of building your list is now passe. You know, give a PDF ebook in exchange for an email address. Yup, that’s as old as newspapers.

And if you’re like me, you probably have quite a number of folks following you on Twitter or on your friends’ list on Facebook. Yet, very few of them are in your email database list.

Well, I’ve found a unique way to convert those fans, followers and friends into high quality prospects to my list. And I’ll be joining a fabulous faculty of women, led by Gina Bell, who’ll all share their unique list attraction strategies with you.

The List Attraction Week, taking place March 8-12, 2010, is a virtual summit where you’ll say buh bye to turtle-paced list growth and jump start your list so you can save time, attract clients and make more money.

Experts such as Andrea J. Lee, Michele PW, Kim de Young and yours truly are just a small handful of the many experts who will share their secrets to EVERY aspect of effective list building, including:

…autoresponders, double opt-ins, squeeze pages, ethical bribes/freebies/pink spoons, ezines/newsletters, virtual events, joint ventures, speaking, article marketing, blogging, social media, follow up strategies
and much, much more.

Click here to register your spot. You can listen to all the sessions for free and from the comforts of your home or office.

When I logged into Gmail this morning, I noticed a new option under Inbox called Buzz. I had heard all the buzz about Google Buzz and decided to check it out.

When the page refreshed, I noticed that I was already following 32 people. I was curious how this happened. As I checked my “buzz stream”, Mathew Ingram posted a link to a blog post citing the lack of privacy with Google Buzz.

According to this blog post, Google Buzz automatically follows the people you email or chat with the most. For some, this may not be an issue, but for me, it is, primarily because:

• One of the individuals in my Google Buzz follow list is the president of a company who I’ve been chatting with over the past 3-months as we get ready to launch a major announcement. I don’t want my competitors to know about this.
• Another individual is a guy I’m currently dating and I really don’t need the whole world to know right now.
• And there are a couple women in my follow list who I’ve contacted often to talk about possible projects to work on.

As you can see, I don’t need people going through my follow list and coming up with their own speculations as to why someone appears on my follow list, especially since the criteria is whomever I chat or email with the most.

So, I just turned Google Buzz off for now. I don’t have time to decipher whether to unfollow someone (actually there were 2 people who made this decision easy) and I don’t need yet another social networking tool cluttering up my space.

And that’s why some of these new social media tools stink. Instead of opting you out of their service or a feature within their service, they automatically add you and you have to manually opt out.

This was a mistake that a social networking tool called Quechup did back in 2007. When users signed up for its service, Quechup automatically sent out invitations to all the people in that user’s address book in a sly way. Dwight Silverman explains it best:

New members are asked to submit the login and password for their Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail accounts, which are then scanned. Quechup then sends an e-mail invitation to everyone in the address book, making it appear the member approved the action.

Let’s just say that after getting an email invitation from, like, 20 of my colleagues over the course of 1 weekend who signed up for Quechup, I was miffed at being bothered by this service. I never signed up and like Robert Scoble, I kept getting apologetic emails from my colleagues saying that they were duped.

Social media services like Google Buzz and Quechup need to err on the side that opting users out of a feature and letting them choose to opt-in is the best solution.

Have you been using Google Buzz and if so, what are your thoughts?

Update: Thank God for geeks. According to ReadWriteWeb, there is a way to use Google Buzz and not reveal who’s following you and who you’re following. Plus, there’s a whole bunch of Firefox and Chrome extensions to add Google Buzz to your browser. Okay, I’m turning it back on now.

Spending $10,000 or more on a platform to deliver live and recorded content for your virtual event is out of reach for many businesses. Despite this, you can still host your very own virtual event using a combination of tools without spending tens of thousands of dollars.

In this series, you’ll learn what you must have in your virtual event toolkit that will ensure that speakers, exhibitors, sponsors, attendees and your virtual event team have a pleasant experience participating in your virtual event. This is part 4 in a 5 part series.

Must Have Tool #4 – A Way to Manage Your Virtual Event Tasks

With all the moving pieces to produce a virtual event, trying to share status updates over email is the worst way to manage a virtual event project. That’s why it’s important to use a tool where you can share messages, files and milestones in a way that won’t drive you or your team bonkers.

That’s why my virtual event team and I use Basecamp for all our virtual events projects. It’s an online tool that allows you to manage project updates and email those updates to your team. Your team can either read the update in the email or login to Basecamp to read the message there.

Now, I know I said earlier that managing a virtual event project over email is bad and now, I’m saying that Basecamp emails statuses to you. However, the different is that Basecamp keeps a log of all the messages that go back and forth between team members. Plus, in order to reply, you have to login to Basecamp and respond there.

Other benefits include:

• To do lists that track who needs to do what and by when
• Milestones that can be added to a calendar that is visible to everyone
• A whiteboard where you can brainstorm project ideas
• And a place to upload files, such as project plans, Word documents, pictures and logos

Basecamp is a life saver to any virtual event project and I invite you to try it out for your own projects.

Ready to Build Your Very Own Virtual Event Platform?

In just a few days, I’ll post details on a virtual bootcamp where I’ll teach you step-by-step how to build your very own virtual event platform. You’ll get to peek over my shoulder as I show you via videos how to build a virtual event platform from scratch – even if you’re not technical.

Spending $10,000 or more on a platform to deliver live and recorded content for your virtual event is out of reach for many businesses. Despite this, you can still host your very own virtual event using a combination of tools without spending tens of thousands of dollars.

In this series, you’ll learn what you must have in your virtual event toolkit that will ensure that speakers, exhibitors, sponsors, attendees and your virtual event team have a pleasant experience participating in your virtual event. This is part 3 in a 5 part series.

Must Have Tool #3 – A Way to Deliver Recorded Content

Not every attendee can attend the live sessions. Many factors contribute to this – whether it’s timezone differences, an unexpected meeting, impatience with hiccups that happen in the live environment, learning style or difficulty following along in a language that’s not their mother tongue, offering the live sessions as downloadable content is an attractive feature to attendees.

This is what makes virtual events unique from non-virtual events. Most conferences I’ve ever attended never sell the recordings of the sessions after the conference is over. What a missed opportunity to monetize content. Of course, this is an advantage that most virtual events have due to how simple it is to record content over the phone or via the web.

I use Audio Acrobat to upload and then share recordings with attendees. Why?

1. I can quickly generate HTML code for the play buttons. All I need to do is click on a few radio buttons, click Submit and then I can copy and paste code that I can place on my password protected webpage. The play buttons appear instantly without me having to call a graphic designer or webmaster to help me out.
2. I can enable or disable the download link easily. So, if I only want attendees who paid a higher admission fee to be able to download the recordings, I can do this through Audio Acrobat.
3. Another wonderful feature is that I can encrypt the URL of the audio recording. This is critical because some clever people can do a view source in their browser and find the exact location of the MP3 file in the code. That means that although the download link isn’t visible on the page, viewing the source code through your browser will reveal where the MP3 file sits on my server. With Audio Acrobat, I can encrypt the URL so that even if the person does a view source in their browser, all they’ll see is a series of jumbled numbers and letters in the URL, thus making it impossible to know the exact location of the MP3 file on my server.

Three powerful reasons to use Audio Acrobat to deliver recorded audio and video content to attendees.

Ready to Build Your Very Own Virtual Event Platform?

In just a few days, I’ll post details on a virtual bootcamp where I’ll teach you step-by-step how to build your very own virtual event platform. You’ll get to peek over my shoulder as I show you via videos how to build a virtual event platform from scratch – even if you’re not technical.

Thanks to my buddy Stu McLaren, I found out that I was listed as a resource in an article written by Inc. Magazine called How to Use Multimedia for Business Marketing.

My expertise has taken me beyond podcasting into the wonderful world of virtual events (and one could argue that podcasting is a virtual event), however, I wanted to make sure you’re aware of a wonderful resource that’s available for free here on my new blog.

The very last interview I ever did on the topic of podcasting for profit is available for playback for free. There’s nothing to download. Just turn up your speakers and listen to Jan Marie Dole ask me about all the ways to use podcasting for business. Click here to access this wonderful resource.

And feel free to poke around here as you’ll find a wealth of tips and tricks on how to use podcasting, conference calls, videos and other multi-media tools to boost your business.

Spending $10,000 or more on a platform to deliver live and recorded content for your virtual event is out of reach for many businesses. Despite this, you can still host your very own virtual event using a combination of tools without spending tens of thousands of dollars.

In this series, you’ll learn what you must have in your virtual event toolkit that will ensure that speakers, exhibitors, sponsors, attendees and your virtual event team have a pleasant experience participating in your virtual event. This is part 2 in a 5 part series.

Must Have Tool #2 – A Way to Deliver Live Content

Attendees want to hear virtual sessions as they’re happening and that’s why you need a reliable tool to deliver that content to them. Webinar tools, such as GoToMeeting, DimDim, Glance and Yuuguu, allow presenters to share their content visually, but for most topics, using a webinar tool is ovrkill for many reasons:

• Slides are visible for 5-10 minutes while the speaker blathers on. If it’s a 60-minute presentation and the slides change once every 10-minutes, then it means that the presentation could’ve been done without the slides.
• Slides add to the speaker’s preparation time. Not only do they have to prepare the content of their speech, but they also have to put in some extra time to prepare slides to accompany their content. And if speaker’s have to put in alot of prep time into their content, you can bet they’ll spend less time promoting their participation in your virtual event. I’d prefer the speaker spend his or her time on marketing than on preparation.
• And with any webinar tool, there’s also 1 person who has problems connecting. Always. It could be a browser issue, an operating system issue or an operator issue (meaning the person is all thumbs when it comes to technology). As the host, this is not a fun problem to try and troubleshoot. It gets you all rattled up trying to support this 1 person while the other 87 attendees who didn’t have a problem wait with impatient patience for you to solve the problem.

So, unless you’re showing a blueprint to a rocket ship and need to share this with rocket ship scientists, you can easily use a conference bridge line to deliver live content to attendees. There is no barrier to entry with the telephone. Everyone knows how to pick it up and dial a number. And whether the person is on a Mac or Windows, there are no compatibility issues with a phone.

As I shared in an earlier post, stay away from free conference bridge line services. Instead, pay for one so you can get optimal support should any issues pop up. The one I use is called Maestro Conference and I like it for many reasons:

• Every attendee can be assigned their own unique access code. This is good primarily because I can track if attendees are sharing their access code with someone else. The unique access code is also good because you can call people by name when you unmute the lines. This adds a personal touch to your virtual event.
• A call log report is emailed to me after the call is over. That means I can use the report to see who’s calling in regularly so I can touch base with those who aren’t. The report also saved my bacon one time when an attendee wanted a refund on one of my programs because she didn’t call in live. Yet when I checked the report, she not only called in everyday, but also stayed on the phone for the duration of the each session. She was caught.
• The recording starts as soon as the first person connects. This is handy because often times, I’ve forgotten to start the recording. This can be a disadvantage as well as documented by one of my commenters recently, however, Maestro’s customer service is top notch.
• I can poll attendees and ask them questions throughout the presentation. So, for example, a question I ask attendees is how many of them are familiar with the expert I’m about to interview. I ask them to press 1 on their dial pad if they’ve heard of the expert before and press 2 if they have not. It’s a fun feature and keeps attendees actively engaged.
• And the fun part is that I can put attendees into smaller groups so they can mastermind with each other.

To sum up, a paid conference bridge line, such as Maestro Conference, is the best way to deliver your live content to attendees.

Ready to Build Your Very Own Virtual Event Platform?

In just a few days, I’ll post details on a virtual bootcamp where I’ll teach you step-by-step how to build your very own virtual event platform. You’ll get to peek over my shoulder as I show you via videos how to build a virtual event platform from scratch – even if you’re not technical.

Spending $10,000 or more on a platform to deliver live and recorded content for your virtual event is out of reach for many businesses. Despite this, you can still host your very own virtual event using a combination of tools without spending tens of thousands of dollars.

In this series, you’ll learn what you must have in your virtual event toolkit that will ensure that speakers, exhibitors, sponsors, attendees and your virtual event team have a pleasant experience participating in your virtual event. This is part 1 in a 5 part series.

Must Have Tool #1 – A Way to Automate Attendee Registrations and Affiliate Activities

When a person makes a decision to attend your virtual event, they want to pay and get confirmation of their registration right away. If they have to wait for someone on your team to manually enter the attendee info into a system, you can bet that your customer service inbox will become flooded with worried people wondering what’s going on.

You also need a system that will track referrals from affiliates in an easy way. Affiliates should be able to login to  your system, grab their affiliate URLs and run reports to see the number of clickthroughs and referred sales.

A system that can manage online payments, affiliate performance and attendee registrations in an automated way will be a lifesaver for your virtual event. That’s why I suggest that you use a system like Virtual Event Cart.

You can easily create products that would align with your registration packages, you can create coupons to give attendees discounts, plus you can create autoresponders so that as soon as the attendee signs up, he gets an email right away. I use this feature to send a checklist of items the attendee needs to do instantly.

The affiliate area is powerful because it tracks sales, clickthroughs and you can upload promotional materials all in one spot so my affiliates can start marketing your virtual event. If you don’t have a merchant account, not a problem as Virtual Event Cart works seamlessly with PayPal.

Ready to Build Your Very Own Virtual Event Platform?

In just a few days, I’ll post details on a virtual bootcamp where I’ll teach you step-by-step how to build your very own virtual event platform. You’ll get to peek over my shoulder as I show you via videos how to build a virtual event platform from scratch – even if you’re not technical.