If you’re a subject matter expert who hosts live webinars, like I do, you know all the problems with webinar technology.

• You accidentally click the wrong button on the console and discover that for the last 10 minutes, your audience has been unable to hear you.
     
• Or you struggle to present in-depth content while keeping one eye on the box where questions from the audience appear.
     
• Or you hear bad feedback in your headset and don’t know how to make it go away.
     
• Or—and this is the worst one—a thunderstorm storm rolls through your area and knocks out electricity halfway through the call.
     
• The ongoing problem I face is taking the time to promote all the recorded webinars I sell as products. I’m usually so busy creating and promoting the next one, that the ones I recorded even a few months ago don’t sell as well as I’d hoped.
   

I’ve Found the Solution 

Tom Antion’s free webinar on “Hybrid Webinars: How to Make a Fortune with Live Broadcasts” is the answer to my prayers. I’ve seen Tom hosting these for months, and I’ve pestered him endlessly until he finally offered a webinar explaining how he does it. Watch the free replay here. (Affiliate link) 

He coined the phrase “Hybrid Webinars” because they’re a combination of a recording, with a live Q&A. Here’s how it works.

You choose a topic your audience will love and offer a free or paid call. Tom offers almost all of his for free and often gets several hundred people to register.

He presents content, takes questions and records the call. At the end, he makes an offer for a product or service.

Several weeks later, he offers a rebroadcast, often on a Saturday morning when his schedule is more open and when people have more time to watch and listen.  But he’s available during the rebroadcast to answer questions live.

During last week’s call, which was entirely live, he explained how profitable these webinars have been. I captured this screenshot::
 

Note that the $58,866.85 figure is only part of the money he made during this first webinar. The video includes other slides that show additional revenue earned by doing other smart things during the webinar. It helps that Tom markets these webinars to an email list of more than 60,000 people. But even if your list is far smaller, you can see that you, too, can easily start bringing in more revenue from these calls than if you were to simply record the webinar and sell the replay with no live Q&A.  

Jeff Herring, one of Tom’s students, hosts these Hybrid Webinars, too, and actually answered questions during one replay while he was away from home at a speaking engagement! In fact, you can even answer questions while you’re on the beach, using your mobile phone.    

Tom explained ethical considerations, shortcuts, marketing tips, and techie tips. He showed us how he uses a dirt-cheap program (I use it too) that lets you create macro keys with answers to frequently asked questions. So with just a few keystrokes, you can give a lengthy answer to a question without having to retype the answer every time.  

I’m On Board, How About You?

I hope to start recording free or paid webinars soon using Tom’s system. I’ll check back with you to let you know how it’s working for me. 

After you watch his webinar replay, weigh in here with your comments on whether you think this would work for your business model.

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

10 Most Common Things being Pinned on Pinterest. http://ow.ly/a9Ivc

When the cops subpoena your Facebook information, here’s what Facebook sends the cops. http://ow.ly/a9HV2

50 Facebook facts that will fascinate small business. http://ow.ly/a9Yv8

Want more readers for your blog? Import it into your Goodreads profile. http://t.co/SoqcLFcv

Got a Google Places page? Beware of this new rule, or your listing might be removed. http://ow.ly/abgHp 

10 waterproof smartphone cases to prevent disaster. http://t.co/NRbO9shZ

Author U Extravaganza May 3-5 in Denver has all-star lineup. http://ow.ly/ad2Y5

12 Most Downright Useful Digital Tools for PR. http://ow.ly/ad3k6 

Likeable Runway: Social Savvy Fashion Designers.

Writing Killer Web Copy – 4 Questions You Should Answer. http://goo.gl/3CeMo 

I’m clearing my inventory of older CD titles, and this is your chance to grab as many as you wish at 80 percent off the original price.

In most cases, a small percentage of the information is out of date. But all products are chock full of tips, resources, tricks and tools that do-it-yourself Publicity Hounds can still use today.

The list includes some of my most popular titles like:

• Briefs, Fillers & Quizzes: How to Use Them and Why Editors Love Them
     
• How to Write How-to Articles
     
• How to Pitch the Best Bloggers & Create a Publicity Explosion
     
• Secrets of Perfect Pitching to Reporters

Titles for Authors

Authors, you’ll find plenty of titles on the list to help you promote and sell your books:

• How to Build a Publicity Platform That Leads to a Six-figure Book Advance
    
• How to Revive a Dying Book Marketing Campaign
   
• How to be a TV Talk Show Host’s Dream Date

   
   
Titles for Niche Audiences

Check out these titles for Publicity Hounds in specific industries:

• 24 Ways to Attract Clients to Your PR Practice
     
• How Residential Real Estate Agents Can Profit from Free Publicity
     
• How to Work with the Travel Media
     
• Kick Up a Media Storm (for Professional Speakers)
     
• Publicity Tips for Restaurants, Chefs & Foodies

   
   
Social Media Tips, Too

You’ll even find titles that will teach you social media strategies:

• Can Your Social Networking Profile Pass the 10-Second Test? 
     
• How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Anything—Ethically and Powerfully
     
• How to Use Twitter to Amass an Army of Followers
     

Get into the Inflight Magazines

I’ve also drastically reduced the price on “Special Report #29: Fly High with Publicity in the Inflight Magazines,” regularly $97, which includes contact information for more than 50 inflight magazines.

Grab the PDF file for only $27  $19.40 and receive the bonus audio that features an interview with an editor explaining how to get into one of the biggest inflight magazines. The entire database was last updated two years ago and it will not be updated.  

This list of DIY publicity tips doesn’t even scratch the surface.  See the entire list of publicity products and use the coupon code closeout80 when you check out.

When they’re gone, they’re gone!

This guest post was written by author Marcia Yudkin, whose books include, Publicity Tactics and 6 Steps to Free Publicity as well as the new Kindle ebook, The Sound Bite Workbook. She lives in Goshen, MA. Visit http://www.yudkin.com for more information on her work.

*  *  *

Snagging an interview makes it possible for you to get quoted by the media. To boost your chances of actually getting air time or column inches from what you say during the interview, however, spend time beforehand creating a set of sound bites. These delicious word morsels are fun to hear or read and irresistible for the media to pass along.

Here are six sources of ideas for sound bites.
    

1. Triples.

You may have noticed that a lot of jokes start off with a priest, a minister and a rabbi. That’s because our minds like triples. That’s why although Winston Churchill said in a famous speech, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” many people remembered his point afterwards as just “blood, sweat and tears.” Make a list of keywords for your subject matter and look for catchy combinations of threes. For example, if you’re a personal trainer, you could tell a reporter that you “help out-of-shape people get fit without pain, tedium or humiliation.”
     
    
2. Tweaked clichés.

Everyone loves an unexpected version of a familiar saying. Look up your keywords at www.westegg.com/cliche or www.clichesite.com and then start twisting what you find. For instance, if you’re a credit union commenting on recent developments in the world of banking, you could play on a common motto with “Money doesn’t grow on trees, but it does grow faster in credit unions without those greedy big-bank fees.”
     
    

3. Contrast, conflict or paradox.

A statement combining opposites commands attention. An ad for my local hospital used this principle effectively in its headline: “Nationally Ranked. Locally Loved.”

Likewise, my local paper ran a story about two guys who once made a feature film that flopped and created a documentary about their failure. The promotional line for their documentary contained interesting tension: “They don’t teach failure in film school.”
     
    
4. Clever mnemonic.

If you studied music as a kid, you may recall the formula naming the lines of the treble clef: “Every Good Boy Does Fine” (E-G-B-D-F). Create a sound bite for yourself by making the initials of a key phrase used in your business stand for something interesting. Someone who trains virtual assistants – VAs – to make a healthy income could say, “My graduates know that ‘VA’ actually stands for ‘very affluent.”
     
    
5. Details.

Review your case studies, client advice, bio and blog for details that can take on iconic significance. Have you noticed how often the number “99%” has been repeated in the U.S. political arena in the last few months? For you, the key detail might be your percentage of repeat customers, your documented accuracy rate, your carbon-neutral score – or something other than a number, like “The only thing left after the tornado destroyed our office was a teddy bear we used to keep in the waiting room to comfort our young patients.”
     
    
6. Bare-bones story.

If you can boil down a dramatic transformation into just one or two sentences, that can become a powerful sound bite. “She used to wait forever for elevators rather than take the stairs. Now she uses the stairs to train out of season for her mountain climbs all over the world.” “When it came to women, he used to be the king of the locker-room brag. Now he helps couples in marital trouble restore fidelity and mutual respect.”

After you’ve settled on the rough idea for a sound bite, fiddle with the wording so you make it as tight and pointed as you can. Often you can heighten the impact of an already good idea with a pleasing rhythm, rhyme or alliteration (as with the repeated f’s in “They don’t teach failure in film school”. And did you notice the emotion in my sound bite examples? That’s one more element that contributes to their quotability.

*  *  *

The Publicity Hound says: Marcia Yudkin writes fabulous guest blog posts. But she doesn’t blog. And she says you don’t have to, either. Read why here.

Poor authors place their hopes, dreams, sweat, blood and money only into their books.

If the book fails, the author fails.

Rich authors use the book as a calling card to upsell readers to a wide variety of other products and services like: coaching programs, board games, wall calendars, membership programs, and more. That’s one of the key differences between rich authors and poor authors.

Learn the other six at a free 75-minute telephone seminar hosted by Steve Harrison of Radio-TV Interview Report, at 2 and 7 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, Oct. 13. Even though the call is free, I promote it as a compensated affiliate because I’ve seen hundreds of authors miss this important distinction and tie up their life’s savings in cardboard boxes of books they can’t sell.

Register for the call, “How to Achieve A Lot More Success As An Author By Discovering The Seven Things Rich Authors Know That Poor Authors Don’t.”

Daniel Hall, webinar presenter

If you have valuable information that helps your target audience solve a problem, host a free webinar.

Then after you’ve wowed your audience with content-rich information, make them an offer they can’t refuse.

That’s what Daniel Hall has done for my customers  three times in the last year. He explained how to speak on cruise ships all over the world for free, how to format ebooks for the Kindle, and how to format ebooks for Barnes & Noble’s Nook eReader.

You may have been on one of the calls and emailed me about how much you loved his step-by-step instructions.

Daniel’s webinars have been so popular that he’s been inundated with requests from people who want to know how they can host their own webinars. 
     
    
Join Us on Wednesday, July 27

I’m hosting another free webinar with Daniel this Wednesday, July 27. It’s called “Step-by-Step Insider Secrets To Producing Highly-Profitable Webinars” and it will be from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time. ( 2 Central, 1 Mountain, 12 Noon Pacific).

Grab your spot here.

You’ll get the exact template that Daniel uses for consistently producing webinars that make mountains of cash. This training will be literally step-by-step.
     
    
Our Big Fat Promise

In fact, here’s our Big Fat Promise. 

You’ll get the exact template you need to create profitable webinars. Period. Don’t be fooled by the fact that this webinar is FREE.

Daniel Hall is known for delivering lots of immediately usable content on every webinar.

And yes, there will be an offer for Daniel’s new training on how to produce, promote and deliver profitable webinars.  But you will only hear that offer AFTER Daniel has delivered on our promise.
     
    
****Bonus for Live Attendees Only****

If you are on the webinar live (as opposed to catching the replay) Daniel will also reveal one of his most powerful, money-making closes—a close you can effectively use to sell just about anything on a webinar, including your product or service. It would be well-worth coming just for this close.

Register here.  See you on Wednesday!

Here’s one more reason to make sure your ebooks are available for the Nook (the Barnes & Noble e-reader) and Amazon’s Kindle.

In a review in today’s Wall Street Journal, columnist Katherine Boehret cautions against relying on the iPad if you’re planning to read ebooks at the beach.  The iPad’s screen has a glare that’s accentuated in bright sun, even if you’re under an umbrella and wearing a hat and sunglasses.

She likes the Nook and the Kindle and says that “at least for now, the Nook is in the lead.”

The Nook, she points out, has something that the Kindle doesn’t:  a touch screen.

“While Amazon’s Kindle has a physical keyboard for inputting text, and directional buttons for painfully sluggish navigation, users of the Nook can make their way around it using screen taps or swipes; its onscreen keyboard appears when needed.”

The popularity of both the Nook and the Kindle should be the nudge we need to make sure we offer our content as ebooks for customers of both brands. But formatting your content can be tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing.

I hosted two free webinars recently with Daniel Hall, who explains how to format your content for those two readers:

Publish an Ebook Today Using Barnes and Noble’s Nook

Publish Your Ebook Today with Amazon’s Kindle

But of these webinars are very long, but Daniel explains within the first 90 minutes how to format your ebooks. Each webinar is offered as a series of smaller videos,  so you can return and watch a certain segment if you need to review his instructions.

Recruitment & Retention Tips Booklets

Information products can become out of date so quickly, particularly those dealing with social media sites or any type of technology.

For that reason, I’m cleaning out my massive inventory and practically giving away more than 20 titles.

CD and transcripts, regularly $39.95, are only $5 each, plus shipping.  Tips booklets on employee recruitment and retention, regularly $5 each, are $1.35, and include shipping.

Even though many of the products are out of date, all of them include valuable tips that are still as good today as they were when I created the them. Topics include Facebook, how to get PR clients, press releases, nonprofit publicity, how to get your own TV show, special event planning and promotion, employee recruitment and retention, and more.  Here’s the complete list of titles.

Some of the CD titles are gone already, and we aren’t reordering, but you can still order the transcripts. Grab them while you have the chance. 

Questions? Contact my assistant, Christine Buffaloe, at 619-955-5772 or Chris (at) SerenityVA.com.

Author coach Ann McIndoo

Many of my friends have written books, so I’ve heard one sob story after another on how long it takes.

One author I know spent four years writing her book, and another frustrating year rewriting, proofreading and doing all the other little things associated with finally getting it onto the shelves in bookstores.

If this sounds like you, or if you want to write a book and avoid these hassles, help is on the way.

You’re invited to a free webinar or telephone seminar on Thursday, June 16, with host Steve Harrison who will interview Ann McIndoo. Ann has developed a unique system for writing a quality non-fiction book in 90 days.

I’m promoting this call as a compensated affiliate because far too many authors spend far too much time producing books that, in many cases, don’t even sell. Ann’s system  works best for authors who have written non-fiction books, particularly how-to, leadership, business, self-help, autobiography, etc.  It doesn’t work very well for children’s books, novels or poetry.

Discover the speed writing system she’s used to help 268 authors get their books done quickly. Register here.

Tom Antion, My Internet Marketing Mentor

Publicists, how many more clients do you think you can attract if your name comes up on the first page of Google every time someone searches for a PR person with your expertise?

Tom Antion, my Internet marketing mentor, can help.

Tom is looking for four select people who have expert skills in certain areas of PR and who are willing to work 10 to 15 hours a week in exchange for a scholarship to his new, licensed Internet Marketing certificate school.

Tom is the real deal, and you’d be crazy to pass up this offer. When he called me this week and asked me if I’d extend it to you, I said I would, but only if he promised to give my Publicity Hounds first crack at applying and being considered.

Hundreds of publicists and PR people follow me, so he could find exactly who he needs within a few days. Snooze, and you’ll lose. 
   
  
What Tom Has Taught Me

The training I’ve received from Tom has allowed me to enjoy a great income for many years from my home office. Much of it comes from my more than 150 products which I sell online, even on days when I don’t feel like working, or when I have a doctor’s appointment or other family obligations.  

Tom taught me the secret of how to capture the Number 1 and Number 2 spots on Google for the phrase “publicity expert”:

He also taught me how to earn affiliate commission promoting other people’s top-quality products and services that I can stand behind. I’ve done it so well, that I couldn’t stop the commission checks from arriving in my mailbox even if I tried.

Tom showed me, step by step, how to publish a profitable electronic newsletter. As  a result, The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week has been going strong, for more than 10 years. You can learn what I learned and lots more. And if you’re chosen, you can spend a day with him at the Great Internet Marketing Retreat Center at his home in Virginia Beach. I’ve been there four or five times.
     
    
How to Apply for a Scholarship

Tom is looking for the following publicity experts:

• A print specialist
    
• A radio specialist
    
• A TV specialist
    
• An online specialist

As you can imagine, there will be fierce competition for these spots because people pay Tom $58,000.00 to work with him personally for a year and $9,100.00 for tuition to his school.  He’s a cut-to-the-chase guy who doesn’t have time for busywork. And he knows you don’t either.

You don’t need a portfolio or even a resume. Just email him with a quick synopsis of your experience and publicity successes and explain what you want to accomplish on the Internet. He’ll follow up with you by phone.

Check out all the details.
   
  
But Is He a Good Media Interview?

Tom is an excellent media guest and has done more than 1,000 radio interviews and many for TV, newspapers and magazines. So if you know what you’re doing, generating publicity for him will be a piece of cake.

He’s also got the credentials. The Internet Marketing Training Center is currently the only licensed Internet marketing school in the United States. 

If you aren’t interested, but you know a crackerjack publicist who is, let them know about this. And spread the word on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.