Please don’t make the same mistakes I did

Okay — 18 people have registered.

I waited in the green room and flicked through my notes. One minute to go. I perched on a stool. Sweat shined from my forehead.

Derek showed up early and introduced himself in the comments.

3,2,1. Showtime.

“Hello, hello, and welcome to this live webinar!”

I asked a few questions. Derek responded. Maybe the others are running late. Let’s give it a few minutes.

I spoke about my background and what the session would entail. Unlike most webinars, I wasn’t pitching anything.

This session was all about value.

I looked down at the screen. Still only one person. We’re five minutes into this, so I might as well start.

You know the rest.

What Went Wrong

Let’s look at the numbers.

My email list has 406 subscribers. (I clean the list every few months.) I emailed twice about the webinar: a week before and the night before.

The second email was on the short side:

And the stats look pretty healthy:

56.8% open rate
3.3% click rate (10 subscribers clicked the sign-up link to the webinar)
Zero unsubscribes

299 subscribers received my first email, and 303 received my second. The other 100+ are going through automated funnels. They didn’t receive the emails.

With the two emails averaging an open rate of 51.15%, around 150 people read the emails. 14 of these people clicked through to the webinar — around 10%.

Two Medium articles and one post on LinkedIn drove the other registers.

In short, I didn’t get enough people to register. I was aiming for 50. I fell way short of this target. Even then, there are no guarantees they’ll actually show up.

I needed more people at the top of the funnel. I could have pushed it:

On Reddit threads
In Facebook groups
Through cross-promotions with other newsletters

And therein lies the problem.

I didn’t commit.

Were There Any Positives?

You bet!

First of all, I used the webinar as an experiment. Could I drive people to attend a live event I was hosting? And would I enjoy it?

If no one showed up, it would be crushing, but at least I could:

Practice
Make mistakes. I didn’t share the correct screen for the first 10 minutes. Oops!
Write about the experience. I shared this post on LinkedIn, which seems to have resonated.

Through this lens, there was very little risk.

I might as well try.

This quote from Olga rings true:

Sure, I’d spent a lot of time putting the webinar slides together. I wouldn’t get this back.

Then there was the money I’d spent on tech. £40 went on the webinar platform. £50 went on a circle light and webcam.

However, the lessons the webinar taught me are invaluable. The circle light and webcam will also come in useful for future ventures, such as when I relaunch my podcast.

There’s always a bright side.

Takeaways

Only one person showing up was painful.

I won’t lie.

However, it’s possible to take positives from difficult situations like this.

Here are the lessons I’ve taken. You may find them helpful if you go through something similar:

Don’t take it personally. There could be a million reasons they didn’t show up. Maybe the time was bad. Maybe there was an emergency. Maybe they forgot. Who knows.
Just because you’ve put in the work, it doesn’t mean your followers owe you anything. That’s entitlement.
It’s easy to kid yourself into thinking the numbers will be wrong this time. They're usually not.
One person showed up. This is one person who believed in you and cheered you on. Be grateful.

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Only One Person Showed Up for My Webinar