Making Money with Workshops and Seminars

One of the best ways to build your business is to hold workshops and seminars.  There are two primary benefits.  First, you position yourself as an expert in your field.  You’re the one in front of the room and people attending these events automatically give a certain amount of credibility to the person putting on the class.  Second, you can make money in the process.  This article will look at three ways you can cash in on workshops and seminars.

The first and most obvious way to make money doing workshops and seminars is to charge a registration fee.  In many cases, if you’re doing the seminar through an Adult Education program, you’ll only get a certain percentage of the registration dues.  The average is 50% but there are other programs that pay their instructors an hourly wage and in those cases, you won’t benefit at all from a good turnout.

You can also hold workshops at tradeshows and conferences.  In those cases, there usually aren’t any dues to speak of.  Attendees pay a lump sum to attend the tradeshow or conference and then have access to all the educational sessions being provided.  Speakers normally do not get paid for such engagements but established industry gurus are often paid to headline these events.

Lastly, you can book speaking engagements at community organizations like the Rotary or Kiwanis Clubs.  You won’t get paid for these events either but it’s a great way to get in front of people.  Besides, you can always position yourself for the other two ways of making money.

The second money-making strategy is to use the speaking opportunity to position yourself for consulting contracts or jobs.  Let’s look at a couple examples.  If you’re a Real Estate Agent offering a program about buying your first home, you could easily get new clients in the process.  Likewise, if you’re a Marketing Consultant, you could end up with consulting jobs from people who heard you speak.  In either case, you make money as a direct result of the speaking engagement.

The third way to make money is to sell products.  In fact, information products have become the mainstay of the public speaking circuits.  We’re talking about books, CDs, DVDs and manuals, all designed to train you to achieve one thing or another.  The beauty of these products is that they cost almost nothing to produce but they can be sold for hundreds of dollars.  Speakers all over the world are speaking for free as long as they have an opportunity to sell their products at the back of the room.

There’s an added dimension to this last strategy.  A lot of event organizers are aware of the money being made on information products and request a percentage of the revenue in exchange for the speaking opportunity.  These arrangements vary widely but can run as high as 60% for organizations with proven track records for attracting attendees.  In fact, some organizations won’t even invite you to speak unless you have products to sell and revenue to share.

As you can see, there are different ways to make money speaking in front of people.  The three primary categories are registration dues, consulting jobs and product sales.  All three should be considered when evaluating a speaking opportunity.  Done properly, the combination of all three can make workshops and seminars a lucrative marketing exercise.