Speaker agency or virtual assistant for conference submissions?

A virtual assistant handles the administration of your submissions to your instructions, while a speaker agency also takes on the groundwork on content and the follow-up. A submission goes through a call for papers, the public announcement with which a conference collects talk proposals, and it consists of a title and a bio together with a short description of the talk, the abstract. The two routes differ in who makes the decisions about content: a virtual assistant carries out what you specify, whereas an agency develops the talk and abstracts itself and needs a single approval from you. This article compares tasks and costs and shows when each route fits.

Can a virtual assistant submit calls for papers for me?

Yes, a virtual assistant can submit to calls for papers for you, provided your materials are ready. A virtual assistant is a person who handles organisational tasks remotely, usually self-employed and for several clients, such as calendar management or filling in forms. For a call for papers, they note deadlines in the calendar and transfer your texts into the submission forms. They also record what was submitted when.

This can be booked flexibly: you order hours when work comes up and commit to no fixed scope. If you already know which conferences you want and have finished abstracts, you win back time, and the quality of the submissions matches the quality of your instructions. An assistant can also take on conference research, within the booked hours and without the expert judgement of which conference suits your topic and your clients.

What a submission involves before and after the form

The form is the smallest part of a submission, because it is preceded by decisions that need expertise. The first is a talk topic that a programme committee, the group that decides on submissions at a conference, reads as a gain for its audience. Then come abstracts with a fitting title and the choice of conferences where your topic finds an audience of future clients. Afterwards comes the follow-up, because conferences often reply only weeks after the call closes, and some questions about technology or the slot need an answer on the expert's behalf.

An assistant does not take on these decisions, because they are not at home in your field and cannot judge without asking whether an abstract captures the core of your work. The decisions therefore land with you, along with the effort of preparing them so an assistant can work through them: a conference list with selection criteria and finished abstracts in several versions, along with rules for handling rejections. This groundwork takes up most of the time, spread over months.

How much time does a virtual assistant save on submissions?

A virtual assistant saves you the time for sending and deadline tracking, which in a running submission operation means several working days a month. How many submissions this operation needs is shown by our own submissions for clients: of 2,189 submitted abstracts, 1,374 are decided and 94 of them accepted, roughly 7 per cent per abstract. Per conference we reach up to 19 per cent, whereas the market typically sees 5 per cent at most at this volume, because several abstracts often go to one conference and one acceptance is enough.

A submission operation that works on volume reaches at least a hundred submissions to around twenty conferences in the first month and at least fifty a month after that. Across many conferences this volume pays off: at 19 per cent per conference, the chance of at least one acceptance across twenty conferences is 1 − 0.81^20, around 98 per cent, and at the typical 5 per cent it is 1 − 0.95^20, around 64 per cent.

Sending is the part an assistant can take off your hands best. At fifteen to twenty a day, a hundred submissions take five to seven working days, and the fifty in the following month around three more. Tailoring each submission to one conference brings the pace down to four to six a day with a higher rate per submission, and that tailoring needs expertise again. Your own hours for onboarding and questions come on top.

What does a virtual assistant cost per hour?

A virtual assistant in Germany costs around €25 to €50 an hour depending on experience, and agencies placing assistants abroad sometimes charge less. For a submission operation this gives a clear calculation. Five to seven working days of eight hours are 40 to 56 hours, so at €25 to €50 an hour, sending alone costs around €1,000 to €2,800 in the first month. In the following months with fifty submissions it is around €500 to €1,400, in each case without the work on content before and the follow-up after.

At Stage Starter the collaboration starts from €990 net per month, and the fee covers the whole operation from topic and abstracts to accompanying you to the stage. A monthly fee also spares you the timesheet on which every onboarding session and every question appears. Which services such a fee should include is set out in what does a speaker agency cost?.

For context: pay to speak, buying a speaking slot from the organiser, easily costs €10,000 or more for a single speaking slot. An agency's monthly fee covers the whole operation across many conferences.

What a speaker agency takes on before and after the form

Stage Starter takes on this work for you: we find the right calls, write the submission and submit it, then follow up and accompany you to the stage, as described on the Stage Starter page. Stage Starter works as a done-for-you service, which means the provider carries out the work itself. We need your expertise, and you approve the talk and the abstracts once before the start, so not every single submission comes back to you. You hold the conversations after the talk yourself, and the programme committee decides on every submission, which is why no agency can guarantee an acceptance.

The decisions that rest with you when you use an assistant therefore lie with the agency. For conference research we use our own database of around 22,700 conferences, around 1,500 of which had an open call for papers on the reference date, and pick the conferences where your clients sit. How this research works is described in outsourcing conference research, and having your call for papers submitted shows how an agency handles a submission. The speaker agency guide gives an overview of services, costs and models.

Who gains most from the agency

The agency pays off most for experts with a high order value and a full calendar whose clients attend industry conferences. A consultant with a full project plan, whose new business has come through referrals so far, rarely finds time for this groundwork. The further an expert is from finished materials, the more work lies before the form, and an assistant only starts at the form.

A virtual assistant pays off when all your materials are ready and you answer organisers' questions promptly yourself. The two routes can also be combined: the agency runs the submission operation, and your assistant manages the calendar and organises travel after an acceptance. If you want a written roadmap before deciding, you begin with the Speaker Audit from €2,000 net, which is credited when you book the agency.