We will try to focus on the second one since becoming a good speaker is something that will come through giving speeches and marketing yourself gets you booked. The delivery of a strong and beneficial message is the commodity in professional public speaking. How to sell and make money from it is the challenge at hand.
1. Pick a topic that you know will sell
As a speaker, you need to determine what you have to share. Evaluate your expertise and see if it measures up to the desires of the market. Your topics must have market value. Make sure that people are willing to pay for the information you are going to provide.
If what you know does not appeal to the public, you will not get booked. Even with supreme speaking ability, if your topics are not interesting, no one will pay to hear you.
Learn to balance your knowledge and passion with the wants of the public. With thorough study and evaluation, you will eventually establish a subject which you know and love but which will also appeal to the market.
2. Package your knowledge, present your expertise
Present your expertise in different formats. Make use of today's wonderful technology to create useful but cheap informative materials. Package your knowledge through books, e-books, audio tapes, video tapes, and CDs. You can make them available online or on site after your speech.
You will be surprised how much money you can earn with these. Having these additional streams of income to supplement your speaking career will help you earn income even when you aren't speaking.
Moreover, you are substantiating your expertise in a particular field with your informative products. You will gain more esteem from the public and that will help make you more sought after as a speaker.
3. Go out and market your self
Network with the right people; get referrals; send out flyers and brochures. These are just some of the very basic marketing techniques you can use to boost your speaking career. If you stay home and do nothing... you will get nowhere.
As a marketing move, you may even speak for free for a time. Make the public aware of your skills and expertise. Of course, you should back-up your marketing claims with genuine speaking skills to get most of your effort. If you speak poorly, you won't get any referrals and you might even jeopardize your career in professional speaking.
Moreover, you must have all the marketing materials you can think of. Demo videos and audios, business cards, brochures, package details, et cetera. It's all open to you so use it.
