Here’s a sample disclaimer that Mike Roby uses in his teleseminars. It might be useful for your teleseminars as well. Of course, this is not legal advice and should be taken as such. Please consult your lawyer for a disclaimer that fits your needs.

This teleseminar is being recording and is in compliance with all local, state, national and international laws. This teleseminar is hosted by Michael Roby.  Michael Roby is not a Registered Investment Advisor or Registered representative with any broker dealer firm.  This teleseminar is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to be used for trading decisions.  Michael Roby does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of the content.  Accordingly, Michael Roby shall not be liable, in any way, to you or any other person for any inaccuracies or use of the content.  No guarantee or warranty is made or implied for business profitability.  Under no circumstances shall Michael Roby be liable to you or any firm for direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special, punitive or exemplary damages.

Mike is the author of The Ultimate Small Cap Business: Building a Financial Advisory Practice. 

If you write books, you probably wonder about advances.

Your own advance.

And what other people get.

If you’re wondering if you got “a good deal,” there’s a great resource for you called Publishers Lunch. It is an institution in the publishing industry — everyone reads it.

They have lots of news and gossip about the industry.

Plus they list a few deals each week. Here’s their key to understanding the deals:

“nice deal” $1 – $49,000
“very nice deal” $50,000 – $99,000
“good deal” $100,000 – $250,000
“significant deal” $251,000 – $499,000
“major deal” $500,000 and up

PR LEADS alum Michael Port got a “very nice deal” for his new book to be published by John Wiley, according to Publishers Lunch. The book’s called ” ‘The Think Big Manifesto’ in the tradition of Napoleon Hill, offering a paradigm of centered collaboration as a new path for business and personal growth that produces dramatic results over the small-thinking ways that plague our everyday experiences in work, relationships and society, again to Matt Holt at Wiley, in a very nice deal.”

If you write books, this newsletter is delightful eye candy.

Get yours here

Call reports can be a great asset to teleseminar producers.

A good call report shows the time a person came on the call, the time they left and the number of minutes on the call. It might even show the caller’s phone number.

You’ll see that not everyone stays on the line for the entire call, which prompted one client to wonder if he was doing something wrong.

Maybe. Maybe not.

A client emailed me that he was disappointed that people dropped off his call.

Here’s what I wrote:

Definitely review call reports to see if you can spot trends. If lots of people are bailing out at a particular time, you might be doing something wrong.

So review the reports and see what you can learn from them.

Dan Janal
www.GreatTeleseminars.com

Question: As a broadcast personality/journalist/interviewer with a strong
marketing sense, I wonder if there is an opportunity to serve as co-
host on teleseminars in order to make them more effective. I have
spent countless hours listening to dull and ineffective presentations
and this includes some of the major names in the Internet marketing
industry, and I really believe that I could help to make their
products sound (and sell) better.

I’d like your opinion on whether this idea has any merit, if a ton of
people like me are already doing it (and I’m just not hearing them),
or if marketers wouldn’t think twice of paying somebody a percentage
for this kind of service.

Dan Janal replies:

I agree that many people who do teleseminars lack the essential hosting and interviewing skills that can make a teleseminar sound professional, Many sound amateurish.

Unfortunately, many people either don’t seem to know the difference, or care. I find the same attitude with recording quality as well. I’ve heard many teleseminars from top names that offered disturbing sound effects that made me question their professionalism or their concern for their audiences. That’s the reason Great Teleseminars Audio Production Company exists–to help people who realize they need to sound good!

So, I agree with your premise: the need for quality interviewing and recording is paramount, but I wonder if you will find a market. People want to do teleseminars on the cheap and they use free conference services that offer quality that is just good enough to get by (although I was a guest on a teleseminar and the free service dropped everyone off the line — including me, the moderator and 100 paying clients!) .

The short answer is that you have a great idea for a service. But you’ll have to market your services superbly to find an audience that will pay for it.

Good luck!

Dan Janal
Founder
Great Teleseminars Audio Production Company
http://www.greatteleseminars.com

Presentation coach Karen Friedman offers several great tips that can be used to start your teleseminar with a bang.

View her short video here:

I plan on using these tips in my next teleseminar!

I’ve had it with free conference lines! They suck!

I used to recommend free services for people who didn’t want to rent my lines and get full customer service. If they didn’t need my help, that’s okay, because free lines were okay.

But now, I’m getting emails from people saying their clients can’t onto the call, or their clients get kicked off the call, or there’s an echo.

Why?

The quality of these lines stink. They used to be good, but now there’s a big court case going on with the telephone companies and the free services (too complicated to go into here), but it appears the quality of the service is dropping fast.

If you want guaranteed, high quality lines, Great Teleseminars rents phone lines for $25 for the first 25 people and $1 per person thereafter. If you are looking for a nearly free solution that includes automatic recording, try this service instead. I’ve tried it and it works fine. PLUS, they don’t use the “free lines” that can bomb out on you.

If your call is valuable, don’t trust it to a free service. Remember, you get what you pay for.

If you’re looking for nearly-free recording and no hassles, you’ll want to check out Instant Teleminars. You’ll also be able to host 200 people on the call. Plus they will be able to send you questions by a web user interface.

You can test this service out for $1 and if you like it, you’ll get unlimited service for less than $50. It really is automatic. I tried it and it worked.

There are other features for notifying your guests, etc. Read more about it here.

This is the brainchild of Rick Raddatz, former Microsoft whiz kid who has launched many other marketing and audio programs on the web.

If your “free” teleconference service provider sends you to a 712-area code phone number in Iowa, your clients might not get through.

Read the story and commentary in an excellent post by Alec Saunder’s blog
http://saunderslog.com/2006/10/11/whats-with-the-712-area-code/

The free conference service we recommend is not based in Iowa and would not be affected. If you think your callers could be blocked — and we don’t even want to think of the customer service hassles that will cost you — then you will want to check out this great free service:

http://www.myfreeteleconference.com/promo/

Do you think people who listen to you on a teleseminar can write as fast as you speak?

Think again.

If you give out your phone number, website address, or affiliate links, chances are you are missing out on sales opportunities because people are not listening with a pencil in their hands!

Or they can’t write quickly.

Or they couldn’t figure out if you said 15 or 50.

So how can you prevent these lost sales opportunities?

1. Provide a handout with all your contact information and links.
2. Create a web page with all the links and say this page name SLOWLY and REPEAT it several timees. Make the name easy to remember and easy to spell. In fact, why not make two pages: one with the word in singular and the second page as the work with a plural, for example: handout.htm and handouts.htm
3. If your webmaster can design a page without the .htm extension, so much the better. It just introduces another chance for a typo!
4. Put your web address, email and phone number the CD label of your teleseminar.
5. Handouts with the outline of your presentation are great keepsakes for attendees. Plus it gives you a chance to put in a sales message and a call-to-action order form!

If you follow these simple tips, you’ll find more traffic going to your site and more sales as well.

Dan Janal
Executive Producer
Great Teleseminars Audio Production Service
www.GreatTeleseminars.com
952-380-1554

At Great Teleseminars, we offer track markers on CDs at
every five minutes, or at each major point you make,
(i.e. “There are five major points we’ll cover today.
Here’s the first important point…) That way, people
can find information quickly.

Here’s a real-life story from one of my friends, who
records her own CDs. It is fascinating reading!

Hi Dan,

I want to tell you a short story about what
happened on the way to Grandma’s house….

On Monday, Christmas Day, my husband, daughter
and I were driving to Grandma’s house.

The drive was not a long one, about one hour,
and we thought it would be a good time to catch
up on some marketing audio CD’s that my husband
had bought.

Well, while we were listening to one of the CDs,
we had to stop the audio for a moment to talk
about something.

When we resumed it, we wanted to back it up a few
minutes so we could hear what we missed.

My husband hit the track button to go back, but
there were no tracks!

This 78 min CD had no tracks on it!

What a pain!

We had to go back to the beginning and then hold
down the search button till we found the place
where we were. 26 minutes takes a long time to
hold down your finger on the fast forward button.

Then my husband slipped up, and hit the wrong
button again, and it sent us back to the beginning
of the audio CD! Again, I had to hold down the
fast forward button through 26 minutes of audio.

Ugh! This made me think:
‘I’m reluctant to listen to this guy’s products
because he makes it too hard to use!’

Are you making this mistake?

Are your products hard for your customers to use?

Remember, the easier it is for your customers to
consume your products, the more likely it will
be that they actually use them, and then want
to purchase more from you.

For example, in my product ‘Shopping Cart Secrets’
you get 6 audio CDs in the mail.

Each CD is split up into about 10-15 tracks, so
each track is about 5-10 min long. It comes in
a handy box that you can carry with you in your
car, or wherever you want to go.

You also get the MP3 audio files to listen on
your iPod if you prefer that method.

And you get the online audio buttons so that
you can listen on your computer if you prefer.

Plus you get an extensive handout with pictures
and screen shots, so if you are the type who
prefers to read you can just scan through the
handout and find the answers to your questions.

So take a look at your product, is it easy for
your customers to use?

Cheers,

Christina Hills
‘The Shopping Cart Queen’

p.s. Set up your shopping cart system set up
the *right* way.
Go to http://www.ShoppingCartSecrets.com

=======
For information on how you can get track markers put
on your CDs, go to www.greatteleseminars.com.

If you have existing CDs and would like us to re-master
them with track markers, please send me an email with the
number of CDs you’d like done and we’ll create a special
price for you. Mail to: info@greatteleseminars.com