Speaker Hub uses necessary cookies for secure accounts. With your permission, first party analytics help us improve signup and onboarding. We do not use advertising or cross site tracking cookies. Read the Cookie Policy.
How much do speakers charge, and how to answer when asked · Speaker Hub
How much do speakers charge, and how to answer when asked
Published fee ranges are mostly marketing. What matters more is the four questions that move a number, and what to say the first time somebody asks yours.
•6 min read
Somebody has asked what you charge and you have no idea what to say. That is the actual problem, and a benchmark number does not solve it.
Why published ranges are unreliable
Search for speaker fees and you will find tidy tiers. New speakers here, experienced speakers there, celebrities at the top.
Treat those with suspicion. Most come from bureaus, whose interest is in anchoring buyers high, or from surveys with small self selecting samples of people who chose to report their own fees. Neither is a market rate.
The genuine variation is also much wider than any table suggests. The same speaker, giving the same talk, can charge a corporate client several times what they charge a nonprofit, and both are correct prices.
So rather than a number, learn the structure that produces one.
The four things that move a fee
Who is paying. This is the largest factor by a distance. A company internal event has a budget line for this. A professional association conference has a smaller one. A charity may have none. Same talk, three different prices, and no dishonesty involved.
What format. A 45 minute keynote you have delivered twenty times is one price. A half day workshop that needs designing, materials and follow up is a different job, and it is usually undercharged because speakers price by stage time rather than by preparation.
How much of your day it takes. A local lunchtime slot costs you two hours. A talk requiring two flights and an overnight costs you two days. Travel is not a surcharge on the fee, it is most of the cost, and it is where speakers routinely lose money.
How replaceable you are. If four people could deliver this session, you are competing on price. If you are the person who ran the study everyone cites, you are not. This is what speaker positioning is really about.
The first time you charge
The hardest step in speaking economics is not raising a fee. It is going from zero to any number at all.
Two things make it easier.
Pick the number in advance, before anyone asks. Deciding under pressure produces either a panicked discount or a silence you fill by offering to do it free.
Say it as a fact, then stop talking. "My fee for a 45 minute keynote is £900 plus travel." Full stop. The urge to add a justification is strong and it is what undermines the number. Silence after a price is normal, and filling it is how a fee becomes a negotiation you started against yourself.
If they say the budget will not stretch, you have options that are not discounting: a shorter format, a remote delivery, or a lower fee in exchange for something you want, such as the recording rights or an introduction.
When free is a reasonable choice
Free is a legitimate decision when you are being paid in something else, and only when you can name what.
Footage from a well run event. References from a recognisable organisation. An audience that contains buyers of the thing you actually sell. A cause you care about.
What is not payment: exposure, in the abstract. If somebody offers exposure, ask what specifically. Sometimes there is a real answer. Often the question ends the conversation, which is also useful.
The trap is doing it out of habit after the reasons have expired. Local speaking opportunities covers when that switch should flip.
What goes on the site
Do not publish an exact number. It removes your ability to price by context and can rule you out before anyone talks to you.
Do publish that fees exist. One line:
Fees depend on format, location and audience. Tell me about the event and I will send a range the same day.
That sentence does three things. It signals you are a professional rather than a favour. It stops the enquiry that assumes free. And it saves the two email round trip that a silent site produces.
Get the whole picture before quoting
Quoting a number before you know the job is how speakers end up underpaid on the bookings that cost them most.
Five questions, in the first reply:
What is the date and where?
How long, and what format?
Who is in the audience and roughly how many?
Is it being recorded, and what happens to the recording afterwards?
Who is the audience for this internally, and what budget is it coming from?
Question four matters more than people expect. A talk that becomes a permanent training asset for a company is worth more than one that happens once, and it is a fair thing to price for. That, and everything else in the agreement, belongs in a speaker contract.
Raising it
You raise a fee by quoting a higher one to the next new enquiry. There is no announcement and no process.
Existing repeat clients can stay at the old rate for a cycle if you want the relationship, and that is a choice rather than an obligation.
The signal that you are underpriced is not confidence, it is data: everybody says yes immediately, and nobody ever hesitates. A fee that is never questioned is a fee that is too low.
The range is enormous and the published figures you find are usually bureau marketing rather than survey data. What is more reliable is the structure behind a fee: audience type, format length, travel, and how specialised the expertise is. A corporate internal event and a nonprofit conference will pay very differently for the same talk.
Should I put my fee on my website?
Publishing an exact number is rarely useful because it removes your ability to price by context, and it can price you out before a conversation happens. Publishing that fees exist, with an offer to send a range, avoids the round of email that a silent site generates.
What do I charge for my first paid talk?
Less than you eventually will, and more than nothing. The number matters less than establishing that a number exists, because the hardest transition in speaking is from unpaid to paid rather than from one fee to a higher one. Whatever you pick, say it without apologising for it.
Most speakers spend their editing time on the headline and headshot and never look at the form underneath. Here is what that form actually does, and the four choices on the page that decide whether it works.
The one-sheet score splits 100 points across five categories, and design is not the biggest one. Here is what a planner is actually deciding when they read your page, and which category to fix first.
