One thing that successful freelancers and entrepreneurs often do is create multiple income streams. For example, a freelance web designer might teach a design course as an adjunct instructor at a local community college. A marketing consultant might write a set of e-books on marketing for small business owners and sell those on Amazon.
For many, the perfect source of extra income is becoming a professional speaker. If you think about it, this makes sense. Many freelancers are extroverts, or at the very least have had to overcome their shyness. Even better, entrepreneurs and freelancers have two points of entry into this field. They can speak as experts in their niche and as successful business people.
If professional speaking seems like a logical next step for your career, get started by taking the following seven steps.
1. Work on the way you talk
It might seem as if you could spend months and months just on this step. Well, in truth, you could. However, there are some tricks that you can apply to boost your speaking skills quickly and deliver engaging talks. These include:
- Writing out and memorizing a couple of great introductions
- Focusing on committing concepts to memory to make your speaking seem more natural
- Anticipating tough or challenging questions
- Developing audience participation exercises
- Learn to create compelling slides and other visuals
- Record yourself speaking to identify and correct issues that could irritate your audience or make you difficult to understand
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2. Research to set your prices
Of course, once you start offering your services as a speaker, people will want to know how much you are charging. To set prices that aren’t completely outside of going rates, you’ll need to research your potential competitors. You certainly don’t want to turn anyone off by overcharging.
On the other hand, you won’t help yourself by significantly underbidding either. People probably won’t associate cheap with great value. They may simply assume you don’t have much of value to offer.
3. Add speaking to your list of services
You’ll need to update your website and social media presence to add speaking as one of your services. Treat this with the same attention and respect that you would give your existing services. Create dedicated web pages. Ask clients for testimonials. Get new customers on board with great deals. Finally, use your social media presence to promote your speaking engagements and to offer your services.
4. Include video content to your offerings
In order to get people to pay for your speaking services, you need to let them see you in action. The best way to do this is to create video content. Film yourself providing instruction, answering questions in interview format, and speaking to various audiences.
Invest in a good camera like the GoPro Hero 4 Session and pay close attention to production values. The better quality your audio and video, the more attractive your content will be to your audience. Also consider creating a YouTube channel.
Remember that having a decent collection of free content will make it more likely that people will be willing to pay for you to speak live or on the record.
5. Offer training sessions to clients
The easiest customers to acquire may be your existing clients. How can you parlay the services you provide into instructional sessions or presentations?
For example, if a business is willing to pay you to create an app for them, they may be just as happy to pay you to conduct live training seminars to teach their employees the ins and outs of that app.
Not only can this mean more income, it can also be a great way to develop a track record as a professional speaker and instructor.