For ages and ages and ages speakers have tried to make some kind of joke at the beginning of a presentation. Then they typically bored you to tears for the balance of the talk. How about trying something different?

In many cases, what I do is to jump into the material hard and fast. This makes the crowd think that I'm a no nonsense kind of guy (which couldn't be further from the truth). What I'm trying to do is lead them down one path and then surprise the heck out of them when I start being funny. After I start being funny, I intersperse humor with the regular material and time intervals determined by the nature of the material and the reason I'm there.

If I'm there to be funny, then there might be funny lines several times per minute. If I'm there for my Internet marketing seminar, then we might go 10 or 15 minutes between funny lines. NOTE: That doesn't mean that I'll go that long without doing something different to keep attention. Remember that humor is a very useful tool for making a point, so the timing of the delivery is critical to it's success...with the laughs and the point made. Strategically placed humor keeps the crowd awake and paying attention. They enjoy the roller coaster ride of high content/joking, it will make them remember you later.

So, try taking the pressure to be funny off at the beginning and sneak up on them with your humor.

How do you become a great speaker and make big bucks doing it? Get 30 days of public speaking training foronly $5.00and learn the secrets to genius platform skills and marketing yourself successfully as a presenter. Tom Antion is a veteran of over 2700 paid presentations worldwide and is the author of "Wake 'Em Up Business Presentations"