JASON DROHNrelying on Youtube servers, Youtube permissions and your
attendees have to jump through hoops to get into your
presentation. It’s cheaper than GoToWebinar though.For automated or recorded webinars, there are many options. Every
Internet marketer has a solution for recorded or automated webinars. We
have used EverWebinar.com and StealthSeminar.com.
There are drawbacks to each of them. They don't necessarily send out the
reminder emails that they should, but you can bridge that gap a little bit
by having the correct email marketing platform, and tying it all together.
We’re going to be going through some of the intricacies of these in a
later chapter when we get into some of the more automated pieces of
software.
For presentation software itself: PowerPoint and Keynote. Presentations
do not need to be elaborate. Some are more image-oriented; some are
more text-oriented. We are more text-oriented. Keynote is for Mac users.
It is a fine piece of software for putting together presentations, but most
of what we do is in PowerPoint.
If you're using Windows and don't want to pay for PowerPoint, the free
OpenOffice suite from openoffice.org includes a PowerPoint clone.
Google Drive also works very well.
For audio requirements, the onboard mic is probably fine. Most webinars
that you hear, or that you attend, are using the onboard mic. They don’t
necessarily have a offboard mic—something that you plug in. However,
if they do, it is usually like a Blue Yeti or an Audiotechnica AT2020. I
actually have the Audiotechnica, and it works just fine. Right now, I'm
just on a headset mic with a boom mic. The Blue Yeti or the
Audiotechnica are about $100 to $120 each. For webinars, the onboard
mic is easier.
For video requirements, if you’re going to use video in your webinar, the
onboard webcam is fine. If you don’t have one, the Logitech C920 works
really well, or the Logitech Pro 9000, which is actually the version
before the C920.
You probably don't need a webcam. It’s really not even recommended,
but some people like to display themselves. That's just a personal
preference. I would not recommend that webinars have a video, because
it takes more bandwidth. It may hang up or freeze, but you can always
test adding video and see how it goes.