What is the real reason that you are not making big money as a professional speaker? Well, the real reason is that you may want to be a professional speaker. Confusing, isn’t it?
The people in the industry who make good returns through professional speaking are the ones who do not view themselves as such. They have developed extreme expertise and following in a certain niche. You cannot simply just wake up one day and decide that you want to be a professional speaker. That may have worked 40 years ago, but most of the famous, high earning professional speakers of today belong to other fields which they are experts in.
Generally, there is the top percentile who are already incredibly wealthy and still get the best, highest paying speaking gigs such as Bill Clinton. Then there are those celebrities and famous writers who are used to attract audiences. And the last spot is left for other speakers to fight over scraps. These slots are either unpaid or demand the speaker to pay for speaking at the conference! This is what is happening in the professional speaking industry.
But there is one niche that is still left for you and that is for those who truly have world class expertise in some field. They may have written books on this subject, may have a huge following over it, or have spent a great deal speaking for it. If you do not belong to any of these categories, then you may not end up continuing professional speaking for very long.
So, my advice is to build your expertise and create a following. Doing so can help you become an earning professional speaker.