Only One Person Showed Up for My Webinar

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.