Looking at this heading, you might be thinking, "How can hosting a virtual summit help my business?!" You'd be surprised! Gone are the days of the virtual summit being synonymous with webinars promising to make you an expert in something after just 10 sessions; or a second fiddle to the traditional offline conferences.

First things first: what is a virtual summit? Well, there is no one-size-fits-all definition of a virtual summit. At its core, as an event organizer, you'd arrange for speakers, usually prominent names or experts in your field, to give talks for your audience to watch live, as they'd do at a physical conference. You can customize offers and ticket prices to, for example, allow people to watch replays (therefore selling more tickets) and organize sessions like speaker panels or Q&As to encourage audience participation. Ultimately, with a virtual summit, there's tons of flexibility to create anything you want, to help you achieve any goal you have in mind.

Now, more than ever is the time to start looking into what exactly a virtual summit can do for your business. Due to the impact of COVID-19 on movement and large gatherings, many businesses looking to save their summits turned to virtual summits for the first time - with spectacular results. Many have not looked back since. The new normal is shaping up to be a hybrid type of event, with a good mixture of both offline and online content.

The main appeal of a virtual summit is that it can be done by anyone, from anywhere, about anything! You don't need to have a huge budget or events team. We've seen many HeySummiteers run summits by themselves - because ultimately, you set your own parameters and goals. From the number of talks to the type of tickets to the webinar providers - everything is customizable. For example, if you're low on time or lack editing experience, you can choose any of our live webinar integrations and have speakers deliver their talks live. If you have existing content such as e-books or mp3 files that you want to sell, you can do so by linking them to talks and creating different tiers of tickets.

Here are six ways you can start making money now with HeySummit. Have we missed any? Let us know in the comments below!

1. Organize a Talk Series

Summits are a fantastic way to establish yourself as a leader in your industry. We've seen many HeySummiteers use summits as a way to bring together the top minds in their field, providing high and far-reaching visibility to their brand. Hosting a summit is a great way to leverage your network and create a platform for people in your industry to come together. It's a win-win, with speakers connecting with a global audience they would've never been able to reach via a physical conference. Your audience will gain access to a whole host of content, expertise, strategies, and practical tips to add value to their businesses, education, and lives.

2. Run Encore Summits

If you've hosted a summit before - whether offline or online, HeySummit is the perfect place for you to duplicate it with minimal effort. How? HeySummit automates a large part of the summit set-up. For example, instead of having to build a whole new website, upload the talks and edit the landing pages, this will be copied over from your first summit (provided the summit was also hosted on our platform). This leaves you more time to focus on creating new content as well as drive up your marketing efforts, so as many people as possible see your summit!

HeySummit is unique in that it offers an Evergreen Summit function. An evergreen summit is intended to stay open for registrations over the long-term. It also allows talks and content to be published periodically. It's the perfect solution if you want to run a long-term webinar or speaker series to drive your inbound marketing efforts. By leaving registrations open for an extended period of time between one summit and the next, you'll be able to reach a far wider audience.

Read about one HeySummiteer's experience with evergreen summits here.

3. Content Marketing

Event organizers often struggle with having a whole load of content, but no clue on how to funnel it out. It can be tricky to know which channels are working best for you; and how not to be overwhelmed trying to be everywhere; on all possible social media channels. HeySummit is the perfect wraparound tool to host content you've already made. From videos to podcasts, e-books to tracking analytics, you can host all that on just one site - HeySummit.

Your summit's talks are great marketing collateral. There will be no need for you to create new websites or video-hosting accounts to host your talks. If you opt for an evergreen summit, there'll be no end date and you'll have the flexibility to add new content to it periodically.

Plus, you can grow your email or subscriber list by hosting an online summit. You show you're a thought leader in your space and when attendees line up to attend your talks, you get their attention - and also their email addresses which you can use to promote yourself, your brand, and your content.

One HeySummiteer uses summits exclusively for lead generation. Read his story here.

4. Onboard People for a Community

Everyone's been either a participant or organizer of onboarding sessions or community-wide training at least once, so you'd know how tricky and time consuming it can be to hold these sessions each time there's a new arrival. A summit takes away the stress of having to create a customized schedule - you can just direct trainees to your summit and have them watch the talks in whatever order you'd like. A summit enables you to pre-record training sessions and update them as necessary - plus, with nifty features like the ability to add files to each talk, automatic email reminders before sessions, and custom feedback questions, summits take the stress out of onboarding.

5. Create a Video Library

This use case is pretty common with its applicability in most fields. Are you a teacher hosting online lessons? An email marketing expert giving masterclasses? We like to think of summits as the Netflix for content - host what you like, to share with whom you like, for the amount of time you like. An online video library is a great tool to have if you're an avid content creator and a great way to share your skills online if you run a side business such as cooking demos or teaching Coding 101.

"Why not just host my videos on a video-hosting site?" We hear ya. And you totally could, but HeySummit enables you to manage all aspects of your video library, from putting content behind a paywall, collecting payments, sending out schedules and giving you flexibility with incentives such as offers and giveaways to boost your audience numbers.

6. Join our Affiliate Program

Do you have a network of contacts you think would LOVE to host their next event on HeySummit? Introduce them to us and earn money every month they're on a HeySummit plan!

We reward you with a whopping 30% commission on any recurring payment that is generated from your referral link. This applies to all of our plans (yes, even the $333/month Business Plan: the commission isn't time-limited). This means you'll get paid for as long as that customer stays with us.

Need an example? 55 active Business Plan sales mean $5494.50 paid to you every month, so long as those 55 customers stay on. Unsure what to tell them? We've got you covered.

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