3 Ways to Expand Your Income in Public Speaking
Public speaking is great for many reasons, the nicest of which is being rewarded by making money in a variety of ways. Start by charging a fee that compensates you not only for your time but also including the materials you bring with you to be sold at the back of the room. Pre-selling materials to be delivered at speaking engagements is another valuable step. To have a successful motivational speaking career you have to learn how to become a master marketer. The best thing you can do for yourself is to stop thinking like a speaker and start thinking like a marketer!
Being a motivational speaking marketer means you need to start looking at your speaking engagements differently. You need to see these speaking engagements as occasions for you to open your store. You can sell other things besides yourself and your time. You can write a book or get the book written for you about a subject matter that will sell in your area of expertise. How easy would it be if you just recorded audio or video files during speaking engagements you had and then packaged them up for sale? Before you can focus on the three simple ways to expand your public speaking income you have to get all your products prepared.
Your speaking fee is the first area to be looked at when expanding your public speaking income. One of the first guidelines I give you for your public speaking career is to not be nervous about asking for the money you deserve. When people aren’t making any money doing public speaking they often ask me how they can get booked instead of the more direct question of how to make the money. There is a simple answer behind why most people don’t make any money doing motivational speaking, and that is they are working for a low fee or no fee at all. The mental hurdle that must be beaten down is that you shouldn’t ask for $10,000 as opposed to $5,000. Only this stops you from reaching your full professional speaking potential!
The second area of income expansion is through pre-selling materials. Sell your knowledge through books, CDs, DVDs and training systems. Here’s how I pre-sold my book at a conference I spoke at. I asked the conference planner if she was interested in giving a copy of one of my books to every person attending her event without it costing her a dime. She said she was interested so what we did was include the cost of the book in the registration fee for the conference. I then had her send the difference after the conference ended. So basically, I made money with my speaking fee and I pre-sold my book to every person attending the conference for $10.
Back of the room sales is the third step to expanding your income. It is necessary that you think like a motivational marketer not a motivational speaker. Boost your sales by making your audience crave more information than what you’re sharing with them. You can do this by giving them nuggets from your book and or CD/DVD sets. Your sales will be super charged by making irresistible offers like: promoting your training system as “power packs” or discount pricing for today only.
Work these extra fields of income and you will see your motivational speaking career take off!
Filed under: Business