The most important decision regarding your virtual summit is to determine its overall goal. What do you hope to achieve?
Some businesses hope to earn money directly through their virtual summit itself by monetizing. Here are some ways you can do that.
Download Now: 5 Steps to Growing Your Audience with Virtual Summits
Charge for Your Virtual Summit
Many businesses offer a free virtual summit in order to attract many participants, but if you do enough marketing and promotion beforehand, you can charge for attendance and earn money this way.
One way to increase participation in a premium virtual summit is to offer different levels of attendance.
For a smaller fee, people can join one session or one day of sessions. If they pay more, they can attend the entire event.
You can also boost sales by offering extras and bonus material that come with the price for attendance.
These can be inexpensive items for you such as information products or resource guides related to the virtual summit’s topic.
Offer a Paid Upgrade
It can be challenging to charge for a virtual summit when your competitors are offering free ones. Another way to earn money on attendance is to offer a free portion and a paid upgrade.
Your participants can attend the whole event ‘live’ for free and then purchase a lifetime access pass if they want to listen to the recordings again.
While they’re enjoying the free summit, you can continue promoting the access pass and get them to join.
Promote Products and Services
During your virtual summit, you can promote products and services related to its theme.
This works great because you’re discussing an issue your audience faces and teaching them how to handle it, while also offering solutions they can buy.
Here are some of the best ways to do this:
- Offer a free course with an upsell offer at the end of it ($97)
- Promote affiliate products ($47 per sale) or digital downloads ($27 per sale) that relate to the event topic. You’ll make money on what people buy after they’ve taken your course or webinar!
- Ask for donations instead of charging for entry (you could even have a “pay what you can” entry fee) If people find value in your summit, they’re likely to donate. Or if you’re an expert with products to sell, offer a paid course that builds on the free content and offers more tips and strategies for entrepreneurs or small business owners (again, this would be relevant to your virtual event theme).
Offer Upsells and Cross-Sells
Rather than promoting products directly through your virtual summit, another idea is to offer upsells and cross-sells that are related to the content.
Usually, these events work best when they’re primarily non-promotional and focused on providing information to the audience.
But you can offer things like transcripts of the event or downloadable versions of the event for a small fee.
Another idea is to offer one-on-one coaching or consulting to participants at a special rate to further help them with issues they’re facing.
Become an Affiliate for Your Speakers
You can earn money through your virtual summit without pitching anything at all by becoming an affiliate for your speakers.
For each speaker who shares expert information with your audience, you’ll offer a link where your audience can find more information.
You’re sending traffic to your speakers. If your virtual summit participants buy anything from your speakers, you can get a commission.
Get Sponsors
Like any event, you can get sponsors for your virtual summit. They pay to add their logo or get a plug. This is hard to do if your event isn’t popular, but it can be very profitable for both if you do your targeting well.
Put together a proposal emphasizing the unique value of advertising your event and send it out to businesses that would be a good fit.
The first step is to clarify your goals and decide whether you want to make money directly from your virtual summit or primarily use it as part of your long-term lead generation strategy.
Are you struggling to earn enough from your virtual summits? Check out our course where we teach you the A-Z of planning and running your virtual summit so you hit your sales targets and help more people.
