What Topics Do Speakers Get Paid For?

When it comes to discovering what you want to speak about and what speakers get paid for, there’s a huge principle to keep in mind…

There’s a balance between what you want to speak about and what clients will pay for.

Just because you’re knowledgeable, passionate, and have massive expertise on knitting scarves for kittens doesn’t mean anyone else cares. Or at least not enough to pay you to talk about it.

This means knowing why you’re speaking is so critically important. If you just love speaking about the scarves you’ve knitted for Whiskers, Banana Muffin, and Kitty Kitty and couldn’t care less about getting paid, then by all means, speak away.

But if you want to get paid, you have to find the balance between what you want to talk about and what clients will pay for.

6 Principles For Speech Topics & Getting Paid…

1. Some topics are easier to get booked for than others.

If you want to speak about sales, customer service or leadership, there are plenty of opportunities for those topics. Keep in mind though that you’ll be competing with a lot of other speakers on those topics.

2. The more unique your presentation on a common topic, the easier it is to get booked.

If you want to speak about teamwork, what makes you different than the 98238908 other speakers who talk about that? A good example is the speaker duo known as the Passing Zone. These guys have a unique presentation using juggling and comedy that makes a common topic more distinguishable.

3. The more niche your topic, the tougher it is to get booked.

If you want to speak about “Investment Portfolio Diversification Strategies for 7 Year Olds,” you’re going to have a tough time. Also, I’ve heard “Scarve Knitting for Kittens 101” is also a tough topic.

4. Some topics are easier to get paid for than others.

In general, the more your topic contributes to the bottom line, the more you can charge. The more you can measure the results of your talk, the more you can charge. For example, if a company pays you $10,000 to teach their sales team how to improve what they do and as a result, they make an extra $100,000, your fee looks like a no brainer.

5. The more well known you are in a niche, the more you can be paid.

You don’t have to be well known in the entire world, just within your niche. You can be a pseudo celebrity in your industry and do really well as a speaker.

6. Keynotes are generally paid while workshops are generally not.

Certain topics work better as a keynote rather than a workshop. A keynote generally appeals to a broader audience, while a workshop may just be for a smaller group of people. The wider the range of appeal for your topic, the easier it is to get booked as a keynote. But keep in mind that the wider the range of appeal of your topic, the more competition you’ll have as a speaker.

For example, a motivational presentation is generally going to be applicable to most any audience. But let’s say you want to talk about how the layout of an office has an effect on company morale. That might be interesting, but it’s probably only interesting to a niche audience, so it would work better as a workshop.

Here’s a variation though…you could do a presentation on how to increase company morale that would work well as a keynote and within that keynote talk about how the layout of an office effects morale. That way you can ‘trojan horse’ your topic.

Again, a large part of this process comes back to why you want to speak. That may help define how important it is to you to get paid and what you want speaking to help you accomplish.