How to Become a Paid Speaker
Working as a paid speaker is something you can do part-time for a little extra cash, or you can turn it into a full-time career in which you travel the country and make big bucks. It's not an easy market to break into, but there are some things you can do to increase your chances of being successful.
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Instructions
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Choose your target audience. For example, if you have lost weight or overcome alcoholism, you may want to speak to people who are struggling with these same challenges. Or you may want to do speeches for corporations or trade associations, which are large public speaking markets. You can also broaden your scope to include any audience that would like to hear a "general" speech, like a motivational speech of some kind.
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Choose your speech topics. Again, for example, if you have lost weight, you may talk about how you found the strength and discipline to change your life? Or you may talk about the specific mechanics of losing weight? If you have chosen a particular audience, find out what that audience pays speakers to talk about; don't guess. For example, if you want to speak at corporate events, do a Google search to find paid speakers who already do that successfully. Browse their list of speech offerings. You can be sure the speech topics were chosen because of their success in getting the speaker bookings. For corporate speakers, you'll see that leadership and success are the most popular topics. You can also find "topics that pay" by going to trade association websites for the audience you want to target. Look up information on their convention and browse the topics covered in the convention's seminars (sometimes called workshops or breakouts, too). A trade association knows its members, so this is a great place to find out what members are interested in.
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Build credibility. If you have experienced and overcome the challenges your audience is going through (i.e., losing weight), then you already have some credibility. Or if you have experienced unusual success in the corporate world, there's your credibility. If you're not already an expert in your chosen topic, you need to manufacture credibility. Write a book -- an e-book is fine. Start a blog. Write articles and post them online. Any of these actions will give you something to point to as evidence that you're an expert in your field.
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Market yourself. There are many ways you can do this for free, most of which are online. Writing blogs and submitting articles to online directories count as marketing. You can also join forums that revolve around your public speaking topic and create a signature with a link to your website or blog. Don't just spam the forums or use them as your own personal ad boards, or else you'll be ignored. Build a relationship with the forum members by offering insightful comments and helpful advice. Set up a page on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and/or LinkedIn, if any of these social media sites are used by your target audience. Offer updates at least twice a week that are not ads for you but rather helpful information for your audience. For example, if you aim to speak for a corporate audience, you could post quick tips on leadership, success and achieving peak performance.
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Tips & Warnings
If you have trouble getting paid speaking engagements at first, try offering to speak pro bono to build experience and exposure.
