**Speaking Fees: Everyone Thinks Other Speakers Get Paid More. The Data Disagrees. | Alex Merry**
Most speakers have a number in their head — a fee they think is reasonable, benchmarked against what they imagine others charge. Alex Merry decided to stop guessing and start counting.
Alex is the founder of Mic Drop, a membership community for thought leaders who speak. He collected anonymous data on more than 500k£ in speaking engagements to build one of the most comprehensive speaking fee datasets out there — and what he found challenges a lot of what speakers assume about where they sit in the market.
In this conversation, we get into:
- What the data actually reveals about speaking fees (the headline will surprise you)
- How Alex's own pricing evolved over 11 years — from a £200 program he invented on the spot to £5k per person
- Why he went from 17 products down to 2, and what it did for the business
- The gender gap in speaking fees — and what's really underneath the numbers
- When free speaking engagements make more commercial sense than paid ones
- Payment terms: why Alex has a clear position that challenges most service providers' defaults
Whether speaking is a core part of your business model or one channel among many, the data and the pricing thinking in this episode are worth your time.
**Resources mentioned:**
- Alex's speaking fee toolkit (includes the Mic Drop Open Speaker Fee Project report): https://alexmerry.com/public-speaking-toolkit/
- Mic Drop community: https://alexmerry.com/micdrop
- Alex on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/mralexmerry
🎧 Listen to the full episode: https://thepricinglady.com/speaking-fees/
