Angela Wills is an affiliate marketing specialist and host of a virtual event called Marketer’s Mojo Virtual Conference held in February 2009. I spoke at her virtual event and because she was charging for access to the virtual event, I put together a unique topic that I had never presented before.

Imagine my surprise when just 4-months later, Angela was offering the recording of my session, plus those of the other 21 speakers, for free. I was not happy about this.

Sadly, when I found out about what Angela was doing, I had tweeted the following in response to something another virtual event host had done to my recording:

Angela saw it, tweeted me and I suggested we talk by phone. Thankfully, Angela was very receptive to my feedback. I suggested that she follow a very popular podcasting strategy where she could offer a 10-minute teaser from each of the sessions for free, then upsell to the full recordings of all the sessions for a fee.

After our phone conversation, Angela blogged about her virtual event host secrets that she learned from this whole experience. You can read it all on her blog, but I’m highlighting the gems below:

• Thank your speakers. Make sure you let the speakers know you appreciate their participation.
• Don’t change up the game. Of course this is in reference to today’s post. Don’t change up what your speaker agreed to be part of without asking them if it is ok to do something different with their material.
• Know how to pronounce your guest’s name. Yep this might be basic but when you have a guest just check, because sometimes a name just doesn’t get pronounced the way it’s spelt.
• Be prepared with your guest’s bio. Make sure you read your guests bio before you get on the call and know it well enough that you don’t stumble over your words.
• Watch your Twitter stream and if you think someone might be upset at YOU, ask them why! I’m so glad I noticed that tweet [that Leesa posted] and responded to it.

Again, you can read Angela’s entire post on her blog. It’s a great read and a wonderful lesson in how to host your virtual events.