Free Webinars vs. a $27 Workshop: I Ran Both. Here's the Data.

16%. That's how many people showed up to a free webinar that I hosted over 40 times. I ran one every single week for a year, and I got 11,000 registrants across all of those. Then last month, I changed something. I did a $27 paid workshop, and I had 58% who bought the ticket actually showed up. And the show-up rate isn't even the biggest number to come out of this test. The real story behind this test is the sales that I made, the energy that I had on these workshops, and what happened to my entire sales process after just one of these paid events. So let me give you the real numbers up on the screen. Now, let me be really clear. I've been sharing this entire webinar journey with my email list, giving them the numbers, the breakdown, and everything. And the reason why I kept doing these webinars is because on paper, it worked. I had a profitable ROAS, return on ad spend. I was making money every single week, basically. And if you looked at all the metrics across the board, you'd say, keep doing the webinar, Trena. You're crazy to turn it off. This isn't a webinars don't work video. This is that two things were wrong in my webinar that the metrics weren't showing. So the first issue I was having, because the webinar leads that were showing up were free leads and probably lower quality lead, I wasn't able to sell my coaching program at the price that I valued it at. So I was selling my coaching program at a discounted price on the webinar just to make it profitable, because these people that were getting it at a discounted rate just didn't fit the program or weren't able to jump in and get the results as quickly as other people were. And the other problem with the webinars was the room, the chat that was happening during the webinars, and it was pretty much soul sucking the people that were in there, people that came for a free webinar and the things that they would say, the things that people didn't say, because sometimes nobody would even speak to the webinar. And I don't know if you've ever had a webinar that was completely quiet. It is very tough to get through the content when nobody's even responding to your questions. And that was very energy sucking to do every single week for multiple weeks over 40 times. And then the people that were showing up, well, they were great. They were business owners. They just weren't ready or at that level that my coaching program serves because you've gotta have an offer. You've gotta have sold that offer a few times for us to really build a YouTube strategy that will then feed an offer that you know actually works. So in the chat room, we got the wrong kinds of questions, the wrong energy, people who are like bargain hunting or wanted something for a deal or expected something for a very lower price than what one-on-one coaching is, which is what my coaching program is. And we also struggled to close people with pay in full. There were a lot of payment plans happening. So what I was ultimately doing, while things looked good, I was building a list of people who just were not my audience. They were free leads and they weren't the value I was looking for. And I knew at some point we were going to max out. Like at some point you're gonna hit a breaking point where the free leads and what you're paying to get the free leads is gonna cost more than what you're actually making on those webinars. Now let's talk about that paid workshop that I just hosted. I sold 174 tickets at $27. And as I mentioned, I had 58% of those show up live and the room was hopping. The chat log was full of people who had offers, who was tying in their idea for YouTube videos to fill their offers. They were excited. The room was fun, energetic. It wasn't disappointing and soul sucking. Teaching in a room like that, a Zoom room like that, is so much fun and much more energizing. It makes me want to do it again instead of like the webinar audience where I was dreading getting to do this every single week. So let's break down the math because 58% of people showed up. We had 14 applicants to the YouTube Coaching Experience. Of those 14, 8 were approved because they were a good fit. And of those 8, 5 joined. And here's the best part. 3 of those people paid in full. The amount for the coaching program that I wanted to charge, not the discounted rate. And I increased the price by $3,000. Back in the free webinar era, those paid in fulls were hardly coming in, but in the paid workshop with people who actually paid to be there, 3 people paid in full at $3,000 more a person. Now I do wanna be completely transparent with all of the data. That's what I do. I had about 50% of the people that sign up for the paid workshop from organic traffic, like my YouTube videos. And also my email list, and another 50 from Meta ads. Now, my landing page, like the sales page for my organic traffic, was converting at 11% for a paid workshop. And my Facebook, or my Meta ads traffic on that page, was converting at about 5%. I already know the audience that I attract here on my YouTube channel is a much better audience, but these are really great conversion rates for a paid workshop. So I knew I was hitting the mark with the messaging, the topic, and getting the right people to that page. Because I had done the webinar so many times, it was really cheap to just rinse and repeat. I had already created the asset, so I was just doing it again and again for like 40 times. Whereas for the entire month of July, I had to build everything for the paid workshop, the workbook, the slide deck, practice it, uh, the email reminders and all of that. So it did take me a little bit longer to get up this paid workshop, but now I can rinse and repeat it just like I did the paid workshops and have more data points to see if the webinar versus the paid workshop is going to convert better. And when I look at the overall data, the webinar across all 40 webinars that I hosted converted at about a 2%. The paid workshop that I've hosted already converted at a 2% at a higher price point. And I also realized I was gonna rebuild the backend of my entire sales process because of the paid workshop. You might have heard me say, I now make this application-based. I personally can only take so many clients a week depending on how many active clients I have, who maybe has renewed, who didn't renew. And I really need to protect the people that are already in my YouTube coaching experience with the same level of clients coming in that we have there. So I turned off my YouTube coaching experience sales page completely. I wrote a Google Doc and when people applied and I approved them, I just sent them the Google Doc and that's what I was converting off of. Just a simple Google Doc with all the information about the YouTube coaching experience. No sales call. I mentioned in the Google Doc, if you've got questions, go ahead and DM me on Instagram and we can have that conversation. And the DMs, I converted 2 people from the DMs from Instagram that came from my paid workshop, read the offer doc, and then messaged me their questions. And I was able to answer those questions while in the car, going to dinner with my family. Super easy. And that's the entire sales process now. No sales page, no sales calls. Application only. Now here's something really important I need to call out because not everybody shares this information or is upfront. This is just one data point. This is one workshop. I'm not standing here telling you paid workshop is the end-all be-all and you should stop doing your webinar tomorrow. I'm running this paid workshop again. You heard me say I did the free webinar 40 times. I am doing this paid workshop again for more data points because testing it once doesn't mean it's going to work forever. Or again, until the data tells me consistently, this works consistently, but I am telling you to steal this idea, collect your data, test against it with the same data. You wanna compare apples to apples here. And what I've learned, I would rather teach 50 people who were right for my program than a room of 150 people who were boring AF. I'm really looking for a smaller room with stronger potential clients at a better price point. I'm going to report back after the next round of data, which is coming up at the end of this month. And that's exactly what I do here on my channel. I share the real numbers. I'm not candy coating it. I'm not sugar coating it. I'm giving you transparent numbers here. Now, if you want to see the actual sales system that I do teach in this workshop, how one YouTube video a week can build a sales engine for you, the full training is on your screen to watch right now.