Done-for-you, done-with-you or doing it yourself: the speaker agency models compared

With done-for-you, a speaker agency does the work up to the stage, with done-with-you a provider coaches you, and when you do it yourself you handle everything alone. Done-for-you (DFY) means the agency writes your talk and abstracts and submits them to suitable conferences while you supply expertise and approval. Done-with-you (DWY) means coaching or consulting in which you still submit yourself, and do-it-yourself (DIY) means doing it all without support. This article compares the three routes with a fourth model, the bought speaking slot, gives the costs and shows which route fits your calendar.

What is the difference between done-for-you, done-with-you and doing it yourself?

The difference lies in who handles the individual steps up to the stage. A speaker agency for experts gets specialists onto professional conferences, meaning industry events where practitioners speak to a specialist audience and future B2B clients sit in the room. The usual way in is the call for papers, the public announcement with which a conference collects talk proposals. Each proposal is called an abstract and briefly describes the planned talk and its value for the audience, and the programme committee, the group that assembles the programme, chooses from the abstracts.

The work falls into steps: the talk topic is shaped, abstracts are written, conferences are researched, every submission goes through its own form, follow-up comes next, and after an acceptance someone agrees technology and slot with the organiser. If you do it yourself, all steps sit with you, and with done-with-you they sit with you as well, while a provider supports you with method and feedback. With done-for-you the provider takes them over, and you contribute the expertise and approve the results. The guide to becoming a speaker describes the whole route from topic to first stage.

Doing it yourself: the work that lands in your calendar

Submitting yourself saves the fee and costs time instead, time that spreads over months and is the dearer item for experts with a high order value. Our own submissions for clients show how much work is involved.

Per conference the rate is higher, because we submit several abstracts and one acceptance is enough: in our submissions for clients we reach up to 19 per cent acceptances per conference, while 5 per cent at most is typical in the market at this volume. For four to six talks a year, a rate of 7 per cent per abstract calls for about 60 to 90 submissions, and an operation that reaches this quantity reliably makes at least a hundred submissions to around twenty conferences in the first month and at least fifty a month after that. With a finished profile, fifteen to twenty submissions a day are possible, while anyone who tailors each submission to one conference manages four to six.

Sending is the smaller part of the job. Before it come the topic and the abstracts with a bio, after it the follow-up, and decisions often arrive only weeks or months after the call closes. This is the most labour-intensive of the three routes and suits experts who set a great deal of time aside regularly and like to write. A detailed comparison of the working days is in the article Submit yourself or hire a speaker agency.

What does done-with-you cost for speakers?

Done-with-you for speakers, as coaching or training, usually costs a four-figure to low five-figure sum per package, and your own working time comes on top. A provider explains how an abstract is built and how to choose conferences, gives feedback on your texts and often supplies templates. Writing and submitting stay with you, and so does the follow-up, while you build knowledge that helps with every later submission.

This model suits experts who want to master the craft themselves, for instance because a team of their own is meant to take it over later. Anyone who mainly wants to win clients gets instructions and still does the work, so the hours come on top of the fee. With any offer like this it is worth asking who submits, how many hours a week the provider expects from you and what the fee includes, because the answers show whether an offer with the word agency in its name takes the work on or only explains it to you.

Done-for-you: what the agency does for you

With done-for-you, the agency handles every step from research to follow-up. This is the work Stage Starter takes on for you: we find the right calls, write the submission and submit it, then we follow up and accompany you all the way to the stage. From you we need your expertise and one approval, because you approve talk and abstracts once before the start for all later submissions together. You hold the conversations after the talk yourself, because the clients who approach you there are yours.

Working together starts from €990 net per month, and if you want a written plan first, you begin with the Speaker Audit from €2,000 net, which is credited when you then hire the agency. We steer the volume of submissions, the quality of the abstracts and the choice of conferences. How such a submission runs in detail is described in the article Having a call for papers submitted for you.

Pay to speak: the bought slot as a fourth model

A fourth model turns up when you search for a speaker agency: the bought speaking slot. With pay to speak, an organiser sells speaking slots, usually as a sponsorship package or for a fee charged to speakers. That is not an agency service, yet it appears under the same search term, and you can easily pay €10,000 or more for a single speaking slot. Sponsored sessions are often not labelled in the programme, and a specialist audience still frequently recognises them by their promotional slant, so such a talk carries little weight with it.

For comparison, ten months of working with Stage Starter cost from €9,900 net, and during that time the whole operation runs from research to accompanying you onto the stage. The article Sponsored talk and pay to speak sets out paid slots in detail.

Who the model pays off for most

The model is decided above all by the hours you can keep free over several months, and only then by the budget. Submissions work with a delay, and anyone who stops after six weeks because the weeks were full has hardly used the groundwork. Anyone who submits independently or is coached chooses the more labour-intensive route and weighs the time cost against the order value. Done-for-you pays off most for experts with little time, a high order value and the ambition to speak to a specialist audience, because for them client projects take priority and someone else takes over the steps.

The models can be used one after the other. If you start by submitting yourself and find that time is short, you can hire an agency later and hand it the abstracts written so far as material. How agencies set their prices and what a flat fee should contain is covered in What does a speaker agency cost?.