web conference – webinars

Tom Cruz asked:




Many people who may be looking into webinars are also going to be looking into what it costs to make a webinar part of the offerings of the company or part of the resources for the company. Many companies have considered webinars as a way of presenting materials for training purposes. It also works well for individuals who are working through telecommuting methods and who may not be able to reach a training location. They can still have the information presented to them in an interactive and engaging manner.

It goes without saying that interactive methods such as webinars are going to be more expensive than simply putting a video on a video sharing site or posting it to a locked site to only allow people to view it with a password. There are a number of considerations that are taken into consideration with webinars, which are not necessary with standard video presentations.

The first consideration is live feed or on demand. Depending on the hosting site and the features you want you may find that live feed or on demand have considerable price differences. You may find in some instances that on demand is actually cheaper than live feed. Features may be presented as packages or may be presented as individual additions, which need to be added to the base fee for hosting. Live feed videos also require the staff to produce those live videos each time the video is viewed.

On demand videos can simply be recorded once and stored. In many cases on demand videos are going to be more cost effective since they only require a single recording session. The cost of a webinar is also going to include interactive features.

Normally a video on a video sharing site for example, will only have a comment section. They are not designed to be interactive but merely to be viewed. Even on demand videos are going to have some form of interactive aspect. They will have a chat room, a phone conference, voice over IP capabilities and in the cases of webinars there is usually someone available to answer questions during the presentation even if there is not a live presenter.

Pricing plans are also different from webinars from traditional hosting. In many cases webinars are priced based on seating and bandwidth. This means there is either a monthly flat rate for so much bandwidth and so many seats or the cost is split between the number of seats, which is usually limited to a certain number per viewing. Viewings may also be limited to a certain number a month.

There is also a pricing plan that deals with per person per minute. This means it charges a certain rate per minute per person of viewing. In these instances the number of available slots can be high per viewing and features may or may not be included. The price per minute varies.

When looking at the overall price it may seem like an expensive prospect from development to implementation. However, if you consider the benefits over the long term you may be surprised how quickly you cannot only make back your investment but how it can actually save you a considerable amount of money over the long run.

Alicia