THE 3 MAIN WAYS TO MAKE MONEY FROM PUBLIC SPEAKING

A few years ago I was given my first $20 for a speech! I wasn’t expecting the money to be honest. I was trying to raise awareness about the situation in Syria (my home country) and was speaking for free. The event organiser however insisted that I take the money. When I refused he said how about I donate it to charity!

It was a big “aha” moment for me. I thought to myself: why not deliver a fundraising speech and donate the money to a charity that supports human rights.

The next day I started planning the event. I set a date, found a venue and started marketing the event. It was very hard work given that I had little experience at the time in marketing and planning events.

My biggest fear was no one would show up to the event, and in fact for more than a month no one had registered! But few days before the event people started registering and I ended up making $1,200 which I donated to Amnesty International Australia.

A couple of years later I started Public Speaking for Life with Sarah and since then I learned a lot more about how to make money in public speaking.

In the article I share with you the three main ways to make money from public speaking.

1. Keynote speaking

This is what most people think of when they hear about making money through public speaking.

They hear that some speakers get paid hundreds of thousands if not millions per speech. (Yep Donald Trump got paid $1.5 million per speech in 2007 in the Real Estate Wealth Expos). And they wonder how they can earn the same.

The truth is, although keynote speaking is the most lucrative and prestigious form of speaking, it is also the most difficult.

To be able to command anything above $5,000 per speech, you need to have some sort of fame. You might be a professional athlete, a well known politician, a CEO of a big company, a founder of a new medicine, etc.

The more famous and influential you are the more you can charge per speech.

How to become famous enough to be a keynote speaker?

If you are not already famous, don’t allow this to discourage you. There are some good news: building a name, although difficult, is not impossible.

The surest way to build a name for yourself is to write and speak. It doesn’t matter what field you are in, you can always establish yourself as an expert and gain some fame by writing articles (or books) and delivering speeches in your field of expertise.

You may be wondering, but how can I write or speak when I am not famous to begin with! No one would want to listen to me. The answer is: it works like a snowball.

You start writing articles or making videos in your field and posting them on your blog, someone else’s blog, social media, local newspaper, etc.

At first you may have very few readers, if any, but if you keep generating good quality, well researched content, you will start getting noticed.

Google will find your articles, someone will read your guest posts and ask you to write some for them too, a bigger newspaper will be interested in what you have to say, you will be invited to speak, etc..

The more you write and speak, the more you get noticed and the more famous you become and the more you can charge per speech and so on.

2. Public Seminars

The main difference between keynote speeches and a public seminars is that keynote speeches are usually part of a conference in a company while public seminars are marketed directly to the public.

The other difference is that in most cases you get paid way less for a public seminar than for a keynote speech and in many cases you don’t get paid at all. However you can still make a lot of money through a seminar!

How to make money from public seminars?

There are many ways to make money through a public seminar, both direct and indirect

Direct ways:

• Selling tickets: Now if a seminar company is organising the event then probably they will take the revenues from the ticket sales. However if you are the one organising the event then you can charge money and make profit. Mind you however, it is very difficult to get people to pay for a seminar if you are not already famous or known for something. This takes us back to our initial problem addressed in the point above: How to become famous

• Selling your books or products at the end of the seminar. This is known as “back of room sales”. If you are an expert in your field you probably have written some books or created some products which you can sell at the end of the seminar. A tip is to mention your products while on stage but make sure not to make the whole seminar a sales pitch.

• Selling your services: If you don’t have a book or a product you can sell your services.  This works particularly well for coaches and consultants.

Indirect ways:

• Marketing and branding: Nothing is more powerful for branding and marketing than a well delivered speech! You see, marketers spend a lot of money just to get the customers attention: Billboards, TV ads, social media ads, Google Adwords, etc. As customers, we may see the same ad over and over again before we finally notice it and even when we do we hardly form any interest in it. In a seminar however we have already made a decision to give the speaker our attention. If he or she delivers a great speech and answers our questions, we will form a lot more awareness and interest in them and their branding

3. Training

A third way of making money from public speaking is through creating courses.

You can create a course around something you like. Perhaps your profession or your hobby. Once you have created a course you can sell it online or you can sell it to training companies.

The most important elements of a course are great content and being in a field that has demand.

But how to do we do that?

How to create a course with great content?

To create a course with great content you need two main things: A lot of knowledge and an excellent structure.

Since we are assuming that you are doing a course in your field or hobby then we can assume you have at least some knowledge you can build upon.

It is important however to do a lot of research even if you already know a lot about the topic. Read as many books as possible, follow all the latest news, watch videos and familiarise yourself with the topic. The more knowledge you have the easier it become to create a course.

After you acquire enough knowledge, now it is time to structure your course. You want to structure your course in terms of length and content.

Think of how long your course will be. Is it one full day? Is it more? Is it a number of short session over a period of time?

Ideally you want to have different lengths to meet different customer needs. In Public Speaking for Life we have a number of courses that range from 90 minutes to a full day.

Next comes structuring the content of the course. The best way to structure the content is a term we like to call: “dynamic structuring”.

A dynamic structure is a one that is very flexible. If your clients want a 1 hour course then you can deliver that. If they want a 3 day course then you can deliver that too.

To create a dynamic structure break your course down into main modules, then break each module into sub modules and so on. The most important thing is to make the sub modules independent of each other. That way, you can add or remove a module without affecting the clarity of your course.

For example in Public Speaking for Life we have four main modules that we deliver in our courses: Mindset, Structure, Voice and Body Language.

Each module is broken down into smaller sub modules and each sub module is divided into smaller tips. Each tip is independent from the others.

If a client wants us to deliver the entire course we provide all tips under each sub module. If they want us to deliver a 1 hour course, we provide only one tip from each module and so on.

How to know if their is demand for your courses?

A great course with lots of knowledge and an excellent structure will be a difficult sell if there is not enough demand in the market.

The best way to find out if there demand for your course is to use Google Keyword Planner tool. Sign up if you don’t already have a Gmail account and then click on “Get search volume data and trends”. Type in the topic, title or keywords from your course, select the relevant city and then find out how many people search for that term in your city or town.

You may be wondering how many searches per month are considered good? Now there is no black and white answer for this. It depends on your location. Search a number of terms you know have good demand in your location and check the search volume for these terms and compare.

Conclusion

There is a lot of money to made from public speaking. The most difficult yet the most lucrative one is keynote speaking. Ideally you want to establish yourself as an authority in your field to be able to charge premium fees. The more famous you are the more you can charge. A sure way to establish your name is through writing and speaking.

Another way to make money from public speaking is public seminars. Public seminars pay little to no money directly but you can make huge sums by selling your products or services and by gaining brand recognition and awareness.

Finally you can make money through courses. Find a topic you are interested in, research it, create a well structured courses around it and then sell you courses to training companies or directly through your website.