There are 3 ways we typically suggest you to consider when it comes to speaker compensation.
1. Speakers might talk for free if you have something to offer
When speakers can leverage your event towards their own objectives, whether it's promoting their business, getting more clients, expanding their influence, or recruiting, you might be able to get them to talk for free. NOT all speakers are motivated by the speaker fee. In fact, from our past experiences, nearly half of the speakers are not paid directly.
Ask your speakers what they want to get out of the event (more potential clients, promote their personal brand, recruit etc.) and let them know if there is something you can offer:
a shout out about speaker's initiative for attendees
send attendees links about the speaker's business or initiatives
help schedule a Q&A or dedicated session for speakers to interact with attendees or promote their initiatives
offer to introduce speakers to other speakers who are also speaking.
2. Pay speaker a flat fee for their time.
Training, online bootcamp, or knowledge sharing events tend to pay speakers more often. We typically see the speaker fee somewhere between a couple hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars, depending on the speaker's profiles, and audience size.
You should consider this approach if:
speakers demand this
you are more confident that you will make enough sales so you can secure more upsides monetization wise yourselves.
3. Revenue share with speaker
Another typical way is to share revenue with speakers. Depending on how many speakers you have in total, our organizers give away somewhere between 1 - 20% of total profits from events (revenue - cost) per speaker.
For a workshop where there are less than 3 speakers, 5 - 10% per speaker is typical.
For a conference where there are more than 10 speakers, it's hard to know the impact of each speaker, so we typically advise you leave around 5-20% of total profits to be shared among all speakers.
This approach works better if:
You want to motivate speakers and align incentives. If speakers themselves have a bigger audience that they can help promote tickets, this can be more helpful.
You are unsure how much you can make from this event and don't want to promise flat speaker fee.