How to monetize virtual events: 21 Proven strategies (2025)

Virtual events can make you serious money or leave you with nothing to show for months of work.

The difference comes down to monetization strategy.

My students and I have generated 10’s of millions from virtual events across every niche imaginable.

But most creators get monetization completely wrong.

They think event ticket sales are the only way to make money with virtual events. Or they focus only on premium passes and miss the bigger opportunities.

The reality? Profitable online events use multiple revenue streams that work together.

In this guide, I’ll show you exactly how to monetize virtual events using 21 proven strategies.

By the end, you’ll know how to maximize revenue from every summit event you host.

Let’s get started

How to monetize virtual events: 21 Proven ways

Virtual events can generate revenue in dozens of different ways.

But ticket sales are just the beginning.

The biggest profits come from combining multiple income streams. Some methods generate cash before your event even starts. Other strategies continue paying you months or years after your event ends.

Here are 21 proven ways to monetize your virtual events:

1. All-access pass / premium pass 🎟️

Let’s start with the most obvious way that you can make a profit from your virtual summit, selling All-Access Passes.

This is the product that forms naturally during the summit creation process. It’s simply a package of all the summit interview in one place, along with some bonuses you might like to include to sweeten the deal. 

This can bring in a lot of revenue, as my students and I have seen. Here’s an update from my List Building School summit and we had over 6-figures in sales before the online event even kicked off!

2. Bundle offer 📦

Description here

Examples of irresistible bundle offers:

• Example 1
• Example 1

3. Bump offers ➕

Description here

Examples of high-converting bump offers

• Description here

4. One-click upsells 🔄

Description here

Examples of upsells:

• Description here

5. Digital products 💻

If you have other products already that are well aligned with your audience, a few weeks after your summit wraps up is the perfect time to promote them. 

This is what I typically do after my summits. I strategically choose summit topics that are well aligned with my premium program that I’d like to upsell people to on the backend. my Virtual Summit Mastery Implementation program. 

After the summit finishes, I recommend spending a few weeks to educate and build up trust with your new audience before opening up the doors or doing a hard sales push. 

Another good example of this is Chandler Bolt, the host of the Self Publishing School virtual summit. His summit attracts thousands of highly targeted leads for his products, from a starter kit to high end coaching. 

Another option if you don’t have a signature product ready immediately after your first virtual summit is to pre-sell a pilot product. 

What this means is that you basically sell the idea that you have to your audience to validate that it is something that they actually want and would pay for. 

Once you have a few paying customers, you know that it’s worth spending time on and can work on creating the actual product for your initial customers. 

This is actually how Virtual Summit Mastery began. After my first summit, a lot of the attendees reached out to say they were impressed with the event and would love to learn how to do it themselves.

So I did a small launch of the pilot product and came up with the first version of VSM.

6. Event tickets 🎫

Another cool way to profit from your virtual summit is to sell tickets to a live event. 

7. Sponsorships 🤝

Another great way to bring in some revenue is to ask for sponsorship from established brands in your industry.

This can be very beneficial for them as they get exposure to 1,000’s of attendees who are engaged

VSM Graduate Blair Green set up an interactive Exhibition Hall for her Elevate Pharmacy Summit to highlight her sponsors, since they were a core part of her virtual summit business model. 

It turned out pretty well – here’s what it looked like: 

Another great example of sponsorships for a summit done very well is Eric Z Yang, who hosted to the Crypto Summit. 

He was able to secure a $50K sponsorship deal for the summit before it started, which meant that he started out in front (and also had some budget to play with to promote the summit with Facebook Ads and other avenues.) 

Check out this inspiring video interview with Eric Yang here:

8. Affiliate marketing 💰

Description here

9. Membership & subscriptions 🔒

Once again, you can use the content that you have already created from your summit in lots of different ways. Another clever strategy is to use it as a base for a membership site so that you can earn recurring income. 

This is perfect because you’ve already got 20+ videos (plus PDF action guides!) to offer new members from the beginning, and you can slowly add to it. 

It’s even possible to use virtual summits as your entire business model and include access to all summit under one members area. If you run summits often, this is a great way to keep retention rates high for your membership site. 

Several VSM graduates have created a membership site using their summit as a base. Brian Appleton, the host of the Insurance Agent Summit did this. Check out what he had to say below:

10. Live learning 🎓

Description

11. Coaching / consulting 🧠

Description

12. High-ticket program 💎

Description

13. Mastermind 👥

Description

14. Content repurposing ♻️

Descriptiong

15. Software (SaaS) ⚙️

An interesting (and very smart) trend that I’ve noticed lately is software companies creating summits to showcase users of their product and get a ton of exposure at the same time. 

For example, Teachable is an online course and membership platform that recently held a summit on how to launch your profitable online course and business. 

Rather than promoting the All-Access Pass the main aim of the summit was to introduce people to their product and the video recordings were added into the bonus package when people started a new Teachable plan during the summit. 

16. Speaking 🎤

As we know, a virtual summit can quickly position you as a leader in your industry.

Once you’ve hosted a successful virtual summit, you’ll be surprised at how people approach YOU with opportunities because they know who you are now. 

After VSM graduate Shade Adu hosted her Build It. Brand It. Bank It. virtual summit she was immediately seen an an authority in her industry and people approached her to speak at their live events.

In fact, she got two paid speaking gigs shortly after her first summit! Check out this video where she explains how it all happened: 

17. Physical products 📚

One of the best things about a summit is that you naturally end up with a ton of content from the experts in your field, which you can use in any way that you’d like. 

A neat way to make the most of this is to repurpose the content from the video interviews into a book format.

Just transcribe the interviews, do a bit of editing, present it nicely and it’s ready to go!

This is what VSM Graduate, Charlyn Keating did after The Appreneur Summit.

Essentially, she repurposed the content that her speakers shared during the summit into a book format so that her target audience could learn in an easily digestible format. 

The book is still available on Amazon today and Charlyn continues to generate profit from it, even YEARS after the summit is over! 

18. Services (agency / done-for-you) 🛠️

description

19. Royalties 💸

description

20. Certification programs 🏆

description

21. Tips & donations 💵

description

FAQs on making money from virtual events

Below you’ll find some questions and answers I see event hosts ask when it comes to making money from virtual events.

Final thoughts on monetizing online events

Virtual events can transform how you monetize your expertise and grow your online business in 2025.

But only if you think beyond all-access pass and ticket sales.

The 21 proven strategies in this guide have generated tens of millions for creators across every industry. These methods range from premium passes and sponsorships to digital products and coaching programs that create ongoing revenue.

Here’s how to get started with monetizing virtual events:

• Start with 3-5 strategies that align with your goals and audience.
• Begin with basics like the all-access pass, bump offers, and sponsorships.
• Consider adding advanced methods like a membership community, and certification programs as you grow.
• Test what works for your specific audience before expanding.
• Focus on combining multiple revenue streams for maximum profit.

The real money comes from consistent execution, not just knowing these strategies.

Your first online event doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to start generating revenue while you learn what resonates with your audience.

Now you have the complete summit blueprint for making money from virtual events… time to put it into action.