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   January 2003

Product Development Technique
TeleSeminars Part I (Mechanics)

This has been one of the most profitable and easiest to produce products for me. And best of all I deliver them right from my basement with no dressing up in a power suit, no travel, and no airport food. I even delivered my last one from the kitchen table of my mother's house just before Thanksgiving.

TeleSeminars are just like a giant conference call except the technology used is much less expensive than a typical conference call that normally charges you so much per person per minute.

The TeleSeminar technology is called a "telephone bridge line." You don't have to know anything about this or install anything. You simply sign up with a bridge line provider, pay your fee, they give you some number that I'll explain below and away you go. I currently use http://www.voicetext.com and have the capability of having 600 people on the line at one time. I started out much smaller with a 30 person bridge line that I subleased from Judy Sabah Judy@judysabah.com

DRAWBACKS
Even though telephone bridge lines are really great, there are some things you must watch for. In some cases you may want to opt for the higher quality conference call technology if you need absolute high quality.

Bridge line noise can be a problem as the number of people on the line increases. If you want an open discussion your noise level may be so high that no one can hear anything. You must keep your group size small if you want everyone to be able to contribute.

On the large seminars that I do I use the bridge line mute feature to turn off everyone else so that I can be heard clearly. Not every bridge line has this feature so check before you rent the line.

Cell phones and speaker phones can cause trouble on the line so you should discourage your participants from using them, although most of the time it's not a big problem.

Many of the smaller bridge line rental companies don't have anyone standing by in case something goes wrong. On occasion they'll give you a backup emergency number to call if the bridge isn't working.

If the seminar before you runs overtime, your seminar participants won't be able to get on the line or will pop into the wrong seminar and get confused. I rent mine exclusively 24/7 so I don't have this problem.

With all the above said, TelePhone bridge lines have really made doing seminars by phone affordable for everyone.

EQUIPMENT
All you really need is a phone and all the participants really need is a phone. I'm going to tell you what else you need to make more money doing TeleSeminars.

I really recommend using a headset telephone. You will be making notes, shuffling papers and possibly watching and responding to emails as they come in. You will also need your hands free if you're taping, which I highly recommend.

The big money from TeleSeminars comes from taping them and selling the tapes. To do this yourself you must have a cassette tape recorder and an adapter to allow you to plug your phone line into the tape machine. This can all be gotten from RadioShack. You will also need a "Y" adapter, also from RadioShack.

Here's the hookup
Your phone line comes out of the wall to the "Y" adapter. One side of the "Y" adapter has a phone line that goes to your headset phone. The other side of the "Y" adapter goes to the phone line adapter. The phone line adapter then plugs into your tape recorder.

I still do many recording of TeleSeminars this way because I can take the tape and duplicate it immediately as described in the December 2001 issue.

Since so much rides on my tape I also have the bridge line company record the event on CD and Fed Ex it to me as a backup.

That's it. Next issue I'll teach you the strategies I use to really make lots of money with TeleSeminars.


Other upcoming topics

  • Product packaging

  • Ebooks

  • Consulting

  • Webcasts

  • Resale Products

  • Radio Shows

  • Videoconferencing from home

  • Streaming audio courses

  • Streaming video courses

Back to January 2003 Index page

 

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