Most speakers guess when they’re setting fees. The amount of bad information about how to determine your fee is staggering. I’ve attended sessions at NSA where the presenter tells the audience that there is no formula for setting fees. This is ridiculous, and it shows why so few people make money in this business. Meanwhile, the speakers who understand the ‘business of the business’ continue to earn millions. Watch this post and you’ll know understand how ‘Tier One Speakers’ set their fees. Steve Siebold ( 7:38 )
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Steve,
Thank you for this valuable video post. I really need to learn how to properly set fees. It is the hardest part of being a speaker.
I’ve yet to charge for a speech I’m giving. What do you think would be an appropriate fee to begin ?
Steve,
Your video pitch on public speaking fees was needlessly repetitious. You reiterated the same basic claims for 7 minutes and 25 seconds. Pare it down or add something more substantive, please.
I agree with Wil. I needed to hear that it’s OK to charge for speaking, but now I need to find more info on how to actually calculate what that number will be. I’ve been invited to speak at a few chambers of commerce and they’ve asked for my fee schedule. Do I charge $100 or $500 or $1000? I have no idea where to begin figuring this out. It’s the market that sets the price. Great. Now what?
Thanks for the video Steve. I watched this as I was adding speaker fees to my website. I quickly removed the set fees and replace it with “In the public speaking profession; the marketplace dictates the price. I am happy to work with-in your budget and will customize my presentation based on it.”
This is a great topic, but you gave me nothing that’s not common knowledge already.
In my opinion, you should have a good idea of what your time is worth – what you would be charging for your time if you were doing your trade- and the cost of travel to the site. Then you should charge a fee equivalent to a half a day or a day’s work (depending on the nature, time spent preparing and complexity of the content) at your rate plus a 10% fee plus expenses. This allows you to cover your costs and make a profit.
I would use that as my baseline. Anything less is a contribution or gift you might wish to give when speaking at a charity event or for a special interest group advancing a cause which you would like to support. If you choose to charge less or nothing, state up front that your regular fee is X but you are going to charge Y and that the difference is an in-kind contribution because you wish to support their efforts in this meaningful way. That is how I would do it.
Carmen,
In a normal business your logic would make sense, but the speaking business is highly unusual.
It’s one of the reasons so few succeed at it financially.
Okay, I am listening. What are the barriers to running it like that? Is it because you have to cover a lot more dead time if you have no other occupation?