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Larry - It's a common problem, and one that the economy seems to have more and more people talking about. Some of the questions I consider when planning for the successful launch of a Webinar series or any other form of e-learning are:

- What are the Web habits of the current audience? Will Web-based education fly, and are Webinars actually the best fit?
- What segment of the audience cares the most about education and is willing to pay for it? These are the people to go to first. What topics best serve the needs of this segment?
- Can credit (CE, CEU, CME, etc) be offered for the Webinar? Generally speaking, education that offers credit attracts more enrollments.
- How truly compelling are the topics? Are they tied to a compliance or regulatory issue? Do they cover perennial areas of need - e.g., something every new hire in the industry needs to know about?

I don't know your circumstances at all, other than from what you have described in your post, but I find more often than not that organizations haven't really addressed the above questions when they embark on an online education initiative - and the results are much as you described.

- Jeff Cobb

You answered part of your own question when you said:

"Web-based seminars (webinars) have become a ubiquitous presence on the educational front."

Larry -- I agree with the comments posted, and would add -- to expound a bit on Jeff Cobb's assertion that we need to be sure that Webinars are actually the best fit -- that this is where most e-learning and social networking initiatives go wrong.

Examples of content delivered poorly -- or outright incorrectly -- via Webinars abound, unfortunately.

So I'll add that you should opt for a Webinar if:

-- your content can be illustrated (you want images, not bullet points!)
-- your speaker is knowledgeable and can talk to a wall (forget a recognized name if they can't speak off the cuff from deep experience with the topic)
-- your purpose is to convey information (news, background on a topic, or basic information) or to help change opinion
-- attendees will have questions about the topic (otherwise you should just write an article for your newsletter or magazine)

Even with interactive chat, Q&A, polls, breakout rooms, and telephone conference options, a Webinar is by and large a passive instructional modality. Because of this, Webinars are NOT appropriate for training -- for example, if you want someone to learn a new process, make decisions or judgment calls, or take some sort of action that is new to them (skills training).

Sad to say, many poorly done Webinars have made people cautious and skeptical about the value of attending them, especially if there's a registration fee.

I've covered this via different posts at the aLearning Blog, and spend a bit of time with how to develop a quality Webinar (including whether to produce it yourself or hire a company to do it for you, how to estimate costs and revenue for both) in my book "aLearning: A Trail Guide to Association eLearning."

Just because it's a Webinar doesn't mean it doesn't take similar preparation and time commitment to the other live events we develop!

Not knowing anything about this situation other than what you write here makes it difficult to comment on meaningfully -- but I will try anyway and say this: Everything you describe points to an effort to create "a" webinar (as in one) as a singular event, in space and time, developed to meet a perceived need, at one time in one (so to speak) place.

I would suggest that maybe you take a different, bigger picture -- and longer-term -- approach. What are your overall educational goals for your audience? How do webinars fit in to those goals (as webinars -- not just as events or training with a different delivery mechanism)? Webinars are different animals; they are as different from a standard seminar as an email newsletter is (or should be, even if it often isn't) from a print newsletter.

Then, if you believe there is (or could be) a market, commit yourself to developing an online learning program -- not just a webinar. And then, especially if your audience is not used to online learning, stick with it. If you just offer one webinar, and then fret that nobody signed up for it, you may be too quick to infer a lesson that hasn't really been taught yet. You have to demonstrate your commitment to this model so your audience doesn't write it off as a whim.

When we first launched webinars, it took us a while to find the right model. But within a few months we were running two or three a month, averaging a healthy and profitable attendance. Finally last fall we moved to a subscription model, adding 4-6 new seminars each month to a library whose primary selling point is based a lot more on access to on-demand learning than it is on participation in a live event.

But the program and model will differ from audience to audience. The important thing is to find the one (if any) that will work for your audience, and I believe that requires a long-term approach. It also requires accepting the risk that maybe it will never work for your audience. I don't think that's something you can know for sure after one webinar, though.

An association I'm working with offered a free, member-only webinar. It filled quickly.

It then offered very reasonably priced webinars to anyone. Those filled very, very quickly.

Members tend to be older, many of whom are new to the world of computers. They asked lots and lots of technical questions beforehand (lots and lots and lots) but they loved the opportunity to learn without having to travel.

Webinars are expected to become a major source of education for members and revenue for the association.

Your comments are all very insightful. My association was one of the earlier adopters of webinar technology and we've been hosting for more than 4 years now. Some have been very successful, and have drawn 20+ attendees and generated a healthy profit for us. Others, more recently in particular, have not and we've had to cancel. Part of the issue may in fact be caused by "webinar fatigue" as well as a statement of the challenging economic times. We have resorted to lowering our hook-up fees and continue to promote "pay one fee, fill your conference room" format.

Larry...your comments ring especially true for me right now! We have a webinar scheduled in 2 days, and have 9 people registered for it...swing and a miss!

I think much of this has to do with the topic; it was hot until about a month ago, now its cold...perhaps we should have cancelled a few weeks out, but now I think we are pushing forward with it.

One thing I've noticed is that even though webinars offer a strategic objective of reaching more people across a wide area (especially for a small but national association like ours), it is hard to get volunteers and staff motivated to treat them as a strategic element. I find myself even weighting them less in my mental prioritizing compared to other events...we don't seem to mobilize our marketing initiatives as well as we do for other, more tangible events like our annual symposium, certification program etc. I think some of this is just the nature of webinars, maybe it is webinar fatigue, there are so many out there now, for free mostly, that deliver very little value!

I find this interesting. I have been doing webinars now for about 10 years. They've not been consistent over the years. One year - huge revenue - next year down 20%. We have found that the 'hot topic' drives attendance. We recentyl had the largest webcast to date with 571 registered sites and 2293 people listening in.

But now we're back to20-50 attendee webinars. We have a hard time determine when to cancel. We don't want to get the reputatio that we cancel at the last minute. It's a hard call to make We are profitable at 10 registered sites.

How do you make that last minute decision to cancel? Doyou hold th webinar anyway? We look toward aftermarket sales of CDs and on-demands hoping that the topic will sell - like a not-so-successful movie quickly going to video.

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