# Speaker Agency for Freelancers and Solo Professionals

Author: Marin Niehues, Stage Starter · Published: 2026-03-24
Topic: Speaker Agency (https://www.stage-starter.de/en/blog/topic/speaker-agency/)
Source: https://www.stage-starter.de/en/blog/speaker-agency-for-freelancers/

A speaker agency for freelancers is worth it when it gives you back more billable hours than it costs, and at Stage Starter the work starts from €990 net per month. At a day rate of €800, ten to fourteen days of doing it yourself tie up €8,000 to €11,200 of working time a year, while twelve monthly fees cost €11,880 net. As a freelancer or solo professional you sell time, so every hour you put into conference abstracts and forms is an hour missing from your invoices. A conference abstract is the short description of a planned talk that the programme committee of a conference reads, which is the group that decides on the programme. This article works through, with labelled example assumptions, how many days doing it yourself ties up, what a talk can bring in and which work stays with you.

**Anyone who sells time pays for every submission in billable hours. A speaker agency pays off for freelancers once the working days it takes off you each year, valued at your day rate, come close to its fee, and one client won brings in more than a year of monthly fees.**

## How do I win clients as a freelancer through a conference?

As a freelancer you win clients through a conference by speaking in front of a specialist audience in which your future clients sit, and by holding the conversations with them after the talk. A professional conference is an event where specialists from one industry listen to talks on their field, so the audience consists of people with a concrete business problem. Access is open to experts without a famous name: many conferences advertise their speaking slots in a call for papers, the public announcement with which a conference collects talk proposals, and the programme committee chooses among the submissions by topic and value for its audience.

The work behind this falls into six stations. The talk topic has to be cut so that a programme committee sees a gain for its audience in it, and abstract and bio follow from that. Next comes the search for conferences, which has to be kept up to date because deadlines move and new calls appear. After the submission through forms that differ from conference to conference come the follow-up and, once a talk is accepted, the agreement with the organiser on technology and slot.

For a freelancer these stations compete with project hours at a fixed price: conference work pays after months at the earliest, while a project hour pays this month. How an agency resolves that is described in the article on the [time commitment of working with a speaker agency](/en/blog/speaker-agency-time-commitment/).

## Is a speaker agency worth it for freelancers? The calculation with example assumptions

A speaker agency is worth it for freelancers once the working time tied up, valued at their own day rate, reaches the fee and one assignment covers the annual cost. The calculation rests on example assumptions that you can replace with your own values: a day rate of €800 for eight hours, which is €100 an hour, and four to six talks a year as the goal. That hourly rate is close to the average of €104 reported by an annual industry survey of freelancers in the German-speaking countries. In our own submissions for clients, roughly one abstract in fourteen is accepted, which is 94 acceptances out of 1,374 decided abstracts, or about 7 per cent. For four to six talks, that rate requires at least 60 to 90 submitted abstracts on paper, spread across several dozen conferences. In our submissions for clients we reach up to 19 per cent per conference, while 5 per cent at most is typical in the market at this volume of submissions.

Doing it yourself, the example comes to this effort: three days for the talk including abstracts and bio, two days for the conference list and its deadlines, three to six days for sending the submissions and two to three days for follow-up and arrangements with organisers. The figure for sending follows from the fact that with finished, standardised abstracts fifteen to twenty submissions a day are possible. The other values are example assumptions, and together they add up to ten to fourteen working days.

**Doing it yourself against a monthly fee, in the example**
- 10 to 14 days | working time per year when doing it yourself, example assumption
- €8,000 to €11,200 | time tied up at a day rate of €800, example assumption
- €11,880 net | twelve months from €990 net per month

At a day rate of €1,000 the figure is €10,000 to €14,000, and the upper value then lies above the annual fee. The pure time calculation therefore lands in the range of the fee and marks a lower limit, because anyone who tailors every submission to one conference manages only four to six in a day. In ongoing operation we submit far more than this minimum, at least a hundred submissions to around twenty conferences in the first month and at least fifty a month after that, because more submissions bring more acceptances.

[Stage Starter takes this work off your hands: we find the right calls, write the submission and submit it](/en/). Stage Starter thereby takes over every item in this calculation, from the talk and abstracts through follow-up to accompanying you onto the stage. From you we need your expertise and an approval of talk and abstracts, which you give once before the start. The collaboration starts from €990 net per month, which at a day rate of €800 is a little over one day rate a month.

**How to calculate with your own values**
Enter your day rate, multiply it by ten to fourteen days and hold the sum against €11,880 net for twelve months.

## Solo professionals: why doing it yourself depends on your weekly planning

Anyone who works alone decides anew every week whether the next hour belongs to a client or to business development, and the client hour wins because it is paid. There is no deputy who keeps the conference list going when a project enters its hot phase.

Calls have fixed deadlines. Our conference database covers roughly 22,700 conferences with about 1,500 open calls, and each call closes on a particular day, however full your calendar is. With 7 per cent acceptance per abstract, a talk comes out of many submissions that have to run evenly over months, and a project break cannot be made up because the deadlines will have passed. At Stage Starter, research and submission carry on even when you have no hour free for them during a project phase.

## What does pay to speak cost compared with a speaker agency?

Pay to speak quickly costs €10,000 or more for a single speaking slot, whereas the speaker agency costs from €990 net per month for the whole operation. With pay to speak an organiser sells speaking slots, usually as a sponsor package, and such sessions are often not labelled as paid in the programme. At a day rate of €800 a purchased slot equals a good twelve day rates for a single talk, and preparing the talk still remains with you. The twelve monthly fees of a year come to €11,880 net, in the same range, and cover the whole operation, from research to accompanying you onto the stage.

No agency can guarantee an acceptance, because the programme committee decides. When a paid slot makes sense is covered in the article on [sponsored talks and pay to speak](/en/blog/do-speakers-have-to-pay-for-the-stage/), and the price models as a whole are compared in [What does a speaker agency cost](/en/blog/speaker-agency-cost/). Services, models and the choice of agency overall are set out in the [speaker agency guide](/en/blog/speaker-agency-guide/).

**Three routes to the stage from a freelancer's point of view**
Criterion | Submit yourself | Pay to speak | Stage Starter
What you pay | Working days at your day rate | quickly €10,000 or more for a single speaking slot | from €990 net per month for the whole operation
Who does the work | you, alongside your projects | you, preparing the talk | we, from the abstracts to accompanying you onto the stage
Who decides on the stage | the programme committee | the organiser, against payment | the programme committee

## How many clients does a conference talk bring?

A conference talk in front of the right audience brings, as a value from experience, about two thirds of an assignment, counted through conversations and meetings. You hold the conversations after the talk yourself. In the example a talk brings roughly five serious conversations, from which two meetings arise, and every third meeting turns into paid work. At an assignment value of €12,000 as an example assumption, that comes to roughly €8,000 per talk. In the first year one to three talks are realistic, later four to six, and a single assignment won at €12,000 already exceeds the €11,880 net annual fee in the example.

**The agency takes over the work that no client pays for. What stays with you is your expertise and the approval before the start, plus the talk itself with the conversations afterwards.**

The talk itself also costs days that fall to you. A one-day talk in another city ties up two travel days, three with a long journey or an evening before, and preparation is counted separately. At a day rate of €800, two travel days come to about €1,600. Anyone who wants a written roadmap before deciding starts with the [Speaker Audit](/en/blog/what-is-a-speaker-audit/) from €2,000 net, which is credited when you book the agency.

## For which freelancers a speaker agency pays off most

The calculation works out most strongly for freelancers whose hours are sold at full utilisation: every hour spent on submissions then costs them revenue, and the agency gives it back. With a high order value, one client won covers a year of fees. The talk brings the most when your future clients sit as specialists in the audience of a professional conference. Anyone who submits themselves is choosing the more laborious alternative and pays for it in days at their own day rate.

**A speaker agency for freelancers costs from €990 net per month at Stage Starter, at an example day rate of €800 about one working day a month. It pays off when it gives you back more sellable hours than it costs and one client won brings in more than a year of monthly fees.**

**Sources**
- freelancermap: Freelancer-Kompass 2025, industry survey, 2025
- Federal Republic of Germany: Einkommensteuergesetz (EStG), section 4 (4) business expenses, statute, 1934
- Federal Republic of Germany: Umsatzsteuergesetz (UStG), section 15 input tax deduction and section 19 small businesses, statute, 1979

## Frequently asked questions

### Is a speaker agency worth it for freelancers?

A speaker agency is worth it for freelancers when the work it takes off them, valued at their day rate, is in the range of its fee and one client won brings in more than a year of monthly fees. In the example of this article, doing it yourself ties up ten to fourteen working days a year, which at a day rate of €800 is €8,000 to €11,200.

### How do I win clients as a freelancer through a conference?

You give a talk at a professional conference in front of an audience where future clients sit, and you hold the conversations after the talk yourself. Access usually runs through a call for papers, where a programme committee decides on the basis of the abstract.

### Can I speak at a conference as a freelancer without a well-known name?

Yes, with open calls the programme committee decides on the basis of the proposal. In our submissions for clients, about 7 per cent of abstracts are accepted, and per conference we reach up to 19 per cent.

### Will I be paid as a freelancer for a conference talk?

At professional conferences with a call for papers you usually receive no fee as a freelancer, though often a free ticket and, at larger conferences, travel costs. Fees are paid mainly by corporate events: newcomers receive €1,000 to €3,000, established experts €3,000 to €6,000, well-known keynote speakers €6,000 to €15,000 and celebrities €15,000 to €50,000 and more. For a freelancer a different calculation counts, because a single assignment from one talk is worth more than any fee, and that is why Stage Starter gets experts onto professional stages where their clients sit.

### What does a speaker agency cost for solo professionals?

At Stage Starter the collaboration starts from €990 net per month. The Speaker Audit as a written roadmap beforehand costs from €2,000 net and is credited when you book the agency.

### Can I deduct the cost of a speaker agency for tax purposes?

Yes, in Germany the fees of a speaker agency count as business expenses as long as they are incurred for business purposes, and winning new clients through professional stages is such a purpose. If you are registered for VAT you reclaim the input VAT on the agency's invoices, and if you use the small business scheme you book the gross amount as an expense. Travel costs to your talks also count as business expenses. This article provides an overview and does not constitute legal advice or tax advice.

### Can I cancel a speaker agency monthly?

Whether a contract can be cancelled monthly or has a minimum term is set out in the contract, and both models exist on the market. A term of at least three to six months with a review after three months makes sense, because conferences often decide weeks or months after the submission. So get the term and notice period in writing before you sign, with any agency.

Two quantities count for your decision, and you know both best: the value of your hour and the value of a client won. With both figures we work out in a [first conversation](/en/erstgespraech/) what this means for you.