Speaker Fees: How much should you charge?

This was a post on LinkedIn shared by Adam Levitt of Covered Speakers Bureau and it answers the question of fees beautifully.   In case you missed it, here it is.

How much do keynote speakers cost?

Speakers can be free to over a million dollars for someone world-famous. (not a typo I meant to write a million)

The speakers in the collection at Covered Speakers range from 5K to 100K. On top of the fee you will need to budget for travel, accommodation and feeding your speaker. Bear in mind that speakers travel business or first class and accommodation should be 4 or 5 star.

Let’s look at fees a bit more closely and what you can get for your budget:

10K and under
With a budget of 5 to 10K you can book a good speaker with specialist expertise and stage experience. You are less likely to find any household names, former CEOs or celebrities in this bracket, but there will be one or two.

10 to 25K
This will take you into a different bracket. There will be some name recognition here. You'll find some former and current business people, top academics, TV presenters and known sports names. This is a good budget range with much more choice.

25K to 50K
These are popular in demand speakers, speakers of the moment. They may be thought-leaders in the industry, might be talking on highly in-demand topics or may be seen as the go to expert in that area. There will be more celebrities and more name recognition here.

50K plus
Now these are the speakers that put bums on seats. The speakers your audience would pay to come and see. The one you get up early for on the first conference day, or the one you stay until the very end to hear them in person. These are the rock-stars of the speaker world. The headliners.