Transform Your Teleseminar into a High-Ticket, High-Value Course

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Copyright © 2009 Marcia Yudkin


Over the summer, a marketing guru was grilling me about my audio courses when I could hear him suddenly sit up straight and pay attention in a different way.

"What? You had 12 people each paying $997 for your over-the-telephone course? Geez, that's like $12,000 - for how many hours? Eight hours?!"

Yes, that's right. And if you too think of teleseminars mainly in terms of free or low-cost single sessions, you are overlooking a relatively easy opportunity to turn them into serious money.

If you can teach a skill or have content to impart, you can almost always teach it over the telephone and have a great source of income that does not require you to fight traffic, find a parking space, dress up or master advanced technology. Unlike in-person classes, teleseminar courses can be run without much advance notice. Indeed, if you see a cash-flow hole coming up, just set up a course.

You can actually profit from a teleseminar course twice - once with the students who call in every week and interact with you for a learning experience by telephone, and afterwards when you turn the recordings of the live sessions into a home-study course you can continue to sell until the material goes out of date.

Based on my experience teaching five audio courses (so far), here are some tips to help you take advantage of this lucrative income stream.

People will pay much more for a teleseminar series that promises to deliver a result or outcome rather than merely offering education, insight or support. Call it a "course" with a set number of weeks (I recommend three to eight) and a very specific learning goal.

Ease people's fears that they might have to miss one or more class sessions by letting them know you'll be recording class sessions and making them conveniently available as downloadable audio files and/or on a telephone replay line.

Increase the perceived value of the course by providing boxed recordings of all the class sessions afterwards and a bound copy of the teleseminar handouts.

Boost its perceived value even more by bundling one-on-one consulting, coaching or mentoring with the course. Note that some participants will never use the coaching time they're entitled to, but even so, it still figures into a higher perceived value and a higher registration fee you can charge.

Personally, I can't maintain top teaching energy for longer than half an hour, and 80 minutes is as much as can fit on a single CD, so I plan class sessions to each last an hour or an hour and a half. For me, 12 participants is as many as I can handle so that there's a decent opportunity for discussion and answering questions during a call.

If you are going to edit the teleseminar sessions before loading them onto CDs, do that as the course goes along rather than leaving it all to the end of the course. I made that mistake my first time out and just couldn't face the prospect of editing ten and a half hours of material. My sister, who'd wanted to listen to the course anyway, came to my rescue by taking notes as she listened of particular passages I needed to clean up.

About the Author:
Veteran teleseminar presenter Marcia Yudkin specializes in high- ticket, high-value teleteaching courses. To find out more about your teleseminar options, download a complimentary copy of "66 Ways to Use Teleseminars to Promote Your Business or Your Cause," go to http://www.yudkin.com/teleteach.htm . Discover how to plan, promote and deliver profitable teleseminars, whether you're an entrepreneur, business or health professional, nonprofit organization or corporate marketer.