What are the going Christian speaker fees? What do Christian speakers charge? And how in the world do I ask for it?
That’s the most common question I get from people–how do I figure out what to charge for speaking? What do other people charge? And is it selfish to ask for money?
On this week’s Use Your Words program, I tackled this thorny issue. I’ve already written a longer blog post about deciding what to charge. That really is useful for getting into the nitty gritty! But let me sum up here.
Once people start asking you to speak, as opposed to you generating the engagements, then you should definitely charge.
Some organizations pay about $50 or $75, but let’s face it: that doesn’t even cover your mileage. So you need to figure out what to ask for.
When I started out, here was my thinking:
If I had to support myself, what would I need to make? Then what is that on an hourly basis? (basically divide it in half and then divide by $1000. So $50,000 a year is $25 an hour).
If I want to make $25 an hour, then what do I charge for an event where I speak for one hour? Well, you have to look at what goes into that hour:
- Time spent speaking
- Time spent at the engagement
- Average time of travel for the engagements you do
- Time spent in preparation
But then there are also other hours that you have to account for, like:
- Time spent building a website
- Time spent networking
- Time spent in training/study
Once I worked all that out, it looked like I was spending about 8 hours directly for each engagement, and then I averaged about another 3 hours that I had to add in to each engagement to cover my other time. And that gave me a figure.
- Then, take that fee and double it for an all day Saturday engagement.
- Take that fee and AT LEAST triple it for a weekend engagement
And remember, expenses are billed separately! So check out the blog post for more information, and listen in to the radio show for my explanation of fees.
And, if, after that, you still have questions, ask in the comments. This is such an important question, and I want to really help. So ask away, and I’ll write a follow up post trying to answer them all!
If you want to learn more about how to earn larger fees and start using business principles to grow your ministry, check out my audio downlaod, Treating Speaking as a Business. It’s only $12, and comes with a spreadsheet that helps you prioritize your marketing ideas and figure out where to grow. I know it will help!
Filed under: Marketing Your Speaking Ministry, Speaking as a Business, Speaking Fees, Use Your Words Tagged: | christian speaker, Christian speaking, public speaking
This is fabulous…just watch