My new favorite way to teach clients mad skilz is the online meetup, otherwise know as webinar hosting. As much as I love MeetUp.com for good vegan food, karaoke, family, friends, trying something new or meeting new favorite people, it doesn’t exactly cater to my passion for showing people how to grow their business. But web conferencing (or a webinar) allows anyone with a webcam to lead or attend a meeting from any location with an internet connection.

Here are a few FREE options for your Webinar Hosting convenience. And when your boss or clients hear your proposal to NOT meet in the boring banquet hall of Hotel Superchain Express, well…they should be impressed. (If I’m not mistaken, some one might save some money, too) Webinars are the latest and greatest social-networking device to hit the business world since the Facebook ”Like this!” button on webpages.

These are super-easy to use. Most require no installation (woohoo!) and work with all Internet Browser and Windows/Mac. All you need is a webcam, like the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000. If fact, you can just share your screen and talk on the phone – no need to even show your wonderful face! This is a common way I do trainings with many people.

Any Meeting

Any Meeting - Free Webinars

Any Meeting is a 100% free webinar service – which gives you phone – and webinar access for up to 200 participants. This is definitely the best service I’ve seen to date and your sure can’t beat the price – $0!

Koowy (formerly MeBeam) – Free

Oh, yeah, that’s right Koowy takes the coolness of the one-to-one Skype call and lets you have multi-person conferencing.

Quick tutorial on using Koowy w/Skype. Wanna record that webinar, try Pamela out.

ooVoo

ooVoo is a free video conferencing software that imports your instant messaging folk, allows up to 3 way video conference calls for free (upgrades up to 6 simultaneous video conferencing and desktop sharing for $29.95/month). Easy to use – Mobile compatible.

Yugma

Yugma is quite similar in nature to GoToMeeting. It starts off with Free Edition (up to 20 users) where you can share your screen with up to 20 users. To get fancier with it and add more features, you have to start paying $$, starting at $9.95/month as of this writing. Unlike the other 3 mentioned here, each participant and the host will have to download a program. There is also a “Skype” plug in. Most unusual, this program also supports Linux in the stand alone version.

GotoMeeting – Paid

GotoMeeting is fantastic for techies like myself to be able to use your computer from a remote location. It costs $50/month.  So instead of me asking you to open the control panel and read everything you see, I can just do it myself. You can be on the phone answering questions for me, or catching up on your filing and handwritten thank you notes  while your computer’s cursor runs around the screen and the magical keyboard re-enters an isp address for the tech on the line.

Web-Ex – Paid

Web-Ex works on your iPad and smartphone. They know become super price-competitive offering a basic level of service for $50/month. You can use up to 6 videocams and have up to 25 people in a meeting. They do offer a two-week trial, so if you take them up on that, please let me know!

To you, the reader

Which of these tools have you used? Which one do you recommend? We’d love to hear your experiences with webinars, web conferencing and video conferencing.

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