The results are in. (Read here for the background.) Now, before we dive right into the stats, here’s what you need to know:
- This analysis comes from the 528 responses I received for the Speaker’s Payment Survey, before the deadline.
- In terms of representation, 55% of responses came from men, 42% from women, and 3% from non-binary folks.
- This analysis takes race into account as well, although I couldn’t focus much on that, seeing as 3 in 4 responses came from white people (78%), while minorities were…well, in the minority: 5% of responses from black people, 4% from South Asian people, 4% from Latin(x)/Hispanic people, 4% from mixed race people, 2% from East Asian people, 1% from Middle Eastern people, and 2% from people who didn’t identify under any of the listed options.
- As it turns out, speakers charging for their time isn’t such an alien thought after all: 84% of respondents charge for their accommodation, 83% charge for their travel expenses, while only a third (35%) of respondents charge a speaker’s fee. More on this later.
Now, after reviewing each and every one of the 528 responses, here’s what I found:
- Male speakers get paid 22% more than speakers of other genders (female and non-binary). Sadly, a lot of male respondents either didn’t seem to care much about this issue or just weren’t aware of the situation.
- Most speakers are comfortable charging event organisers for accommodation and travel expenses (this applies to 85% of respondents, with very little variation between genders (±1pp)). There’s still a remaining 15% of speakers who take on those charges (accommodation and/or travel) because (1) their company takes care of the charges, or (2) they don’t feel they should have the organiser pay for these charges due to imposter’s syndrome. This phrase — imposter’s syndrome — was a recurring theme for so many of the responses, making it a very worrying theme which calls for a bigger conversation.
- Half of all respondents said they were satisfied with how much money they’re making out of speaking gigs — that’s the case for 53% of male speakers, and 49% of female speakers.
- 57% of women never ask to be paid, compared to 72% of men. The main difference, however, is that most of these men don’t have to ask to get paid — it’s a conversation they don’t have to initiate, almost an unspoken rule, having to pay men “for their time” (although not explicitly a speaker’s fee). Instead of payment, 65% of female speakers who ask for payment are told that they can get exposure instead. That percentage goes all the way down to 48% for men. Here are a few comments from some of the male speakers:
“My company covers speaking related expenses. I would not speak publicly otherwise.”
“Companies I work for have always paid for my travel and conference fees. And my time. I used to travel all the time but now don’t”
“I have been paid to speak once. I didn’t ask for it.”
“I’ve never asked to be paid, but have occasionally taken gigs where it’s been offered”
“You asked if we ask to get paid, but that is different from actually getting paid. I do get paid to speak, but I never ask. I’m always down for honing my presentation skills and most of what I speak about I love to speak about, so it’s a benefit for me. And usually, the event that I think is most about just giving back, and giving to the people there, I get the most out of.”
- I couldn’t find major race-led discrepancies in the amount that speakers get paid. That’s not to say that speakers who are people of colour get paid more/less than their white counterparts, but there just wasn’t enough racial representation in the responses for me to be able to run a conclusive analysis.
- On average, speakers’ fees range between $550 and $2,800 per session. Which leads me nicely to another question that the survey was supposed to answer…
How do speakers calculate their speakers’ fees?
The perfect environment for wage discrepancies is one where discussions about pay is almost taboo.
“I have no idea how much I should be charging and how the prices should differ, e.g. 15 mins talk + 15 mins discussion vs 20 mins talk vs 45 mins talk :O”
“The best way to ask for money, is to ask if they have a budget for speakers. Then adjust your pricing accordingly.”
“I don’t know how to ask for the fee”
“Without coaches telling me to get my worth I never would have set prices and demand things like travel or a certain rate. Mentorship as a speaker is so important!”
Thanks to the invaluable feedback from over 500 speakers from all over the world, I’ve compiled some of the recurring techniques that these speakers use.
First of all, let’s have a look at the variables involved — what do speakers charge by?
i. “Airfare, time travelling, hotel fair, type & length of talk (keynote? Talk? Workshop? How long?), sponsors, ticket prices, if diversity tickets exist (higher fee if they don’t have em), speaker diversity (the more diverse the lower my fee)”
ii. “Depends on how much time, travel, prep, and whether the organizers/company/conference are making $$.”
iii. “Depends on venue: if it’s not for profit, I don’t charge. If it’s beneficial for me and small group, I might do it for free. But not a keynote. Maybe an interview or moderator”
iv. “I charge more for speaking gigs that include a teaching or workshop element. I also charge more for speaking if attendees are being charged. I go real easy on student groups at colleges.”
v. “Depending on budget of organization, whether attendees are paying, and amount of vacation time I need to use”
vi. “Based on how many hours, I’m going to need for both preparation and delivery, travel costs, as well as how enthusiastic I feel about the topic.”
vii. “Cost of travel is a big factor, and whether travel/lodgings/food is included. Length of the event is also a factor. In addition, if I think the event is paying others, I factor that into what I ask for if they don’t have a flat fee.”
viii. “Mission of the organization, if they charge others to attend, amount of prep time, length of the presentation”
ix. “I consider the suitability for the topic (am I the #1 expert), size of the audience, budget of the organization, and how much of my time it will take.”
x. “I take into account how interested I am in the event, how interested I am in visiting the location, whether they want me to present new material, etc”
xi. “Cost of travel is a big factor, and whether travel/lodgings/food is included. Length of the event is also a factor. In addition, if I think the event is paying others, I factor that into what I ask for if they don’t have a flat fee.”
xii. “Factors: requested to speak, own interest, target group, good cause, community support or for profit Organizer, return in Marketing value”
xiii. “Old material vs bespoke, how much I want to go to the location, how much money the conference makes”
Now that we have these speakers’ variables, how do they calculate their speakers’ fees?
i. “$200 would be for a local, 1 hour presentation that I don’t have to prep for as a new program. $2000 would be for a full day program that I may need to develop new material for.”
ii. “I look at the days it will consume, and multiply from that. There’s the speaking day, two days of travel, and one to five days of preparation, depending on the talk. For a talk on a subject I know well and I expect to give again, I figure one day (or even zero days) of preparation, because I know I can amortize the prep time out over multiple events. For a unique one-off, more in the 3–5 day range. So if I total up five days, at $800/day (i.e., $100/hour), that’s $4,000.”
iii. “I assume a day rate of £250 and so preparation + practice should take about 2 full working days, spread over couple of weeks”
iv. “Speaker fees (and these have only applied to private/client or occasional paid-for events) have been worked out at day rate x amount of days to write bespoke presentation x amount of time given for speech rounded up to nearest half day. Speeches are mostly given for free for sharing ideas, profile raising, and/or lead generation.”
v. “I suck at this. Ideally I would get paid enough to cover my lost wages for attending a conference, which would be about $2k.”
vi. “if I need to create a new talk, I would expect $1,000+. Otherwise $500”
vii. “I pitch myself at $1000 and negotiate within the organizations budget.”
viii. “Type of commitment (Moderator, Panelist, Speaker) x Length of talk(10mins, 15mins, 30mins, 60mins x Preparation (content development, coach, rehearsal) x Ticket Prices. I never charge students, non-profits or free events. I consider those opportunities as volunteering.”
ix. “I rely on Weinberg’s “Principle of Least Regret”. I typically book training alongside the event in order to avoid a speaker fee.”
x. “I suggest asking for 2 times the cost of a ticket to the conference.”
xi. “a) Most events I speak at will range from £100 to £500 and the fee is to cover my time but also to ‘value’ me b) If I am effectively ‘teaching’ an audience, rather than just talking around a subject then I charge up to £1,500. c) I also asses whether it is a free-to-audience event, or whether the event holder is charging for the event/making money from it. I don’t believe in giving my time for free if they are making money from it.”
xii. “I ask for a block fee depending on the amount of hours. Typically, I ask for $4,000 for a three hour session and then negotiate from there.”
Different techniques work for different people. Here’s what works for me: I charge a flat fee. If it’s a small event, I’ll charge 50% off. If, however, it’s not for profit, or if it involves charities, schools, or mentoring, then I won’t charge at all.
Here’s how I personally calculate how much I charge:
• I take my full-time job’s salary, rounded up to the nearest thousand.
• I calculate how many working days there are in a year, minus the holidays I get from work (I don’t remove bank holidays, as I do sometimes work throughout them; counting these in, however, is my own personal choice).
• I divide my salary by these working days, and I add a flat travel cost of £50 (an average between a train ticket from London to most of my UK speaking locations, and cheap European flights, which is where I’ve had a lot of my speaking gigs in the last 3–5 years — with an average of £50).
• I also add tax to it (as a freelancer the last thing I want to worry about is having to pay taxes out of my own pocket, so I make sure to add that amount to the fee I charge).
• That takes me to a fee of £292.76, which rounded up takes me to £300. That is how much it costs me to miss one day of work and travel to a speaking gig.
• Now, that’s a fee that I will review at some point this year or next year — wanting to be a freelancing speaker, it’s my responsibility to make sure I’m not short-changed, getting to a position where I’m profiting from these gigs and not ending flat.
This is my personal approach, which has worked for me so far. I’ve taken this through many iterations, but I’m happy with my current approach. That’s just one I came up with the only variables I knew — how much my salary was, and how much I pay in taxes.
Years ago, I had no idea how much other speakers were getting paid, and while I could roughly guess ballparks for some of my peers, I had no idea how they calculated their fees, how often they reviewed their fees, what their process was… That’s why I feel it’s important for speakers, new or experienced, to have this conversation — how much is your speaker’s fee, and how do you calculate it? Does it work for you?
Final notes
Looking back, I’d have loved to have had more representation in the responses — more racial representation (78% of respondents were white) and more gender representation (55% were men), especially when it comes to gender representation outside of the male-female binary (only 3% identify as non-binary). Especially for the latter, I sadly feel that this analysis doesn’t fully represent them, due to not having enough data from that specific community.
Because I know someone would ask, these discrepancies are the same regardless of how much of an expert you are. Which is to say, the gender pay gap doesn’t care about how long you’ve been a subject matter expert for, it doesn’t care about how long you’ve been speaking for, it doesn’t even care about whether you’re a full-time, part-time or freelancing speaker. It discriminates on gender regardless of expertise. Using the word “it” almost makes it feel impersonal, as if this situation were a product of an environment that nobody has control over, an environment that somehow created itself, so I’ll spell it out:
The gender pay gap among speakers exists for various reasons (read: excuses), and it’s fuelled by event organisers who discriminate against gender, whether intentionally or unintentionally, often for their own personal gain and always at the expense of underprivileged speakers.
So, what’s next?
We have the data. We have the analysis. Now we need action.
I’m currently building a toolkit to help women, up-and-coming speakers, and minorities — underprivileged and underrepresented — with the needed info and equipment. It’ll have guidance on things like finding the ideal price range for your services, or guidance on how to approach the “money-talk” with event organisers. More importantly, it’ll also serve as a directory for other resources that these communities may find useful — from forums and blogs, to groups and Slack channels. Especially for speakers I’ll be highlighting a lot of the feedback that I’ve had from these 500+ speakers who took part in the survey — a lot of them submitted their own tips, their own experiences, and what helped them along the way.
Now, I’m not the first one to do this, and while there hasn’t be a lot of research around this topic (hence why I ran it), there have definitely been a lot of initiatives in this area: from More Women’s Voices to Women Speaker Initiative and beyond. My role here isn’t to replace those voices, but rather highlight them and share them even further. Citalopram-willing, I should have it ready soon.
If you participated in the survey, thank you very much for your help. If you’re reading this right now, thank you for reading — get involved. Thanks also for your patience in waiting for this.
As always, if anyone wants to chip in and help, it’d be very much appreciated. My DMs are open, as always.
