A primer on making money from speaking
I have been fortunate over the last fifteen years to make a very good income from speaking. Firstly in the educational space then more lucratively in the corporate and conference space. It has been an incredible journey of learning and I am still learning lots but I thought I would share some key things I have learned along the way
It Takes Serious Hard Graft
You know what pisses me off. Those guys and girls who run seminars promising people that they can make a fortune over night from speaking. The bit that upsets me the most is that they sell a dream to unwitting and rather gullible people who, in the main, are not that good at speaking, but are quite good at running to the back of the room to put money down on a credit card for the emperors new clothers.
I have been fortunate enough to make a good business out of this. I have travelled the world and spoken in front of many blue chip audiences and been rewarded handsomely for it, but I still know of others who charge increasingly more than I, and are forever encouraging me to up my fee and live in America, etc.
For me that is not my schtick. I love what I do and have diversified my offerings to not be so dependent on my speaking income over the years, but still maintaining good revenue as a result of doing it.
Speaking Income is Varied
One of the downsides of some of the professional speaking groups either offline or online is how limited they view the concept of making money from speaking. So let me share a few that people do and do very well.
- Keynotes (most popular form)
- Seminars (most lucrative form)
- Webinars
- Workshops
- Podcasts
- Vlogging
- Presenting
- Voice Over
I just listed eight there and I didn’t even include online courses, facilitation, conference moderation, panel hosting, emceeing and speaker coaching.
So don’t limit yourself to thinking there is one way, there are a few.
Owning Your Value
One of the biggest challenges for speaking for a living is owning your value in this space.
While a small elite of famous business people, celebrities, ex-athletes and politicians can a charge silly amount of money to turn up to conferences, award evenings and other high profile business events, the majority of us mortals have to think about negotiating fees with our clients.
It is important to know exactly your pricing and how and having processes in place to support the value behind this. But too often people don’t know or don’t put robust plans in place
Solutions.
I am on a bit of a mission to work with those who want to develop their speaking business. Applying proper processes and techniques that I and a number of others who speak professionally have done. Distilling this down to an art and a science rather than a finger in the wind exercise.
The first of these is a bootcamp, in London on Nov 24th.(Black Friday. Yes that was intentional) where I will be giving an overview of how it worked for me. Please share the link below for more details.