Telling prospects who could hire you to speak that you are able to talk “about anything” lets them know that you are not a professional, you just want the limelight. It is like an actor who admits that his real interest is in becoming famous, not perfecting his craft.

The best speakers are passionate about their subjects and want to get audiences excited about them, too. They are on a mission.

Trying to get paid public engagements comes with risk — of a speech not going over well, of attracting a small audience, of no one even being willing to pay you. You will also be investing time (to write, practice, market, travel) and energy to be successful, so you had better be totally committed to the importance of what you want to talk about. That will enable you to be persistent in the face of rejection, something that comes with the territory for any start-up project.

You probably already have some favorite subjects — but they need to be topics that people will invest their own money and time to listen to (or their company will pay for and give them time off to attend). Of course, you also have to sell prospects on you as an expert and someone who can change the lives of listeners. The first choice to make is whether you want to target the general public or business.

The Personal Market

Love, health, and money are always hot topics — in theory. There is going to be a lot of competition for the attention and dollars of the public for lectures with general titles like “Finding Your Soul Mate,” “Lowering Your Risk of Heart Disease,” and “Investing in Stocks.” Other speakers may have years of professional speaking experience, they may be recognized as authorities because they have written books on their subject, and may be investing money in marketing to those who hire speakers.

To start getting paid engagements, you need to find a distinctive angle, a niche that has not been overworked, preferably something you can claim expertise in (even if there is a little “smoke and mirrors” involved in the sales pitch). Perhaps, taking the above examples, you could talk about “Using Astrology to Find Your Soul Mate,” “Three Little-Known Strategies for Preventing Heart Disease,” or “The Next Hot Technology for Investors.”

You can get ideas by researching and brainstorming. Browse the Amazon and BN.com book lists for your general topic, read reviewer comments, and jot down aspects that you might be able to explore in depth. Then google each phrase that defines a niche and add “speaker” and see what comes up.

Also, check your specific topic against the mastering listing service seminarinformation.com (which is a good outlet for publicity, once your settle on your topic). And look for articles about the subject you are considering in mass circulation magazines, at the newsstand, and in online and offline archives.

If you do not see your proposed specialty discussed much in recent books or articles, that could mean one of two things. It may just be something there is not enough interest in — at least not to pay for a presentation. Or you could just be ahead of your time (imagine even five years ago the number of people who would have attended a seminar on Wi-Fi or eating organically); you may have uncovered a subject that has not yet been exploited — the next big thing. If it is the latter, you still have some serious selling to do, to convince people to attend (and if you are successful, you can expect a lot of competition soon).

In any event, you do not simply want one topic. You should have a constellation of related subjects you can talk about in different formats.

Your income and marketing plan may call for giving a free introductory 90-minute lecture with enough substance that it whets the appetite of attendees to pay for a weekend course. Real estate investing seminars often utilize this two-part approach. Or, if you are traveling to another city to speak to a convention of coin collectors, you could offer to teach breakout sessions about detecting counterfeits and ancient Roman coins.

Business

Marketing to companies and business convention organizers is an easier task because there are budgets to be spent on speakers for slots that must be filled. Sometimes consumer-oriented topics are of interest here, too — how to find a balance between work and personal life or staying healthy when traveling a lot for business.

But mostly, firms are going to pay for classes because they recognize the need for constant improvement to compete. It is always a challenge to translate customer service from a slogan on the wall and make it real in the training of employees. By definition, the average sales person could learn from the masters of the game. And everyone can benefit from learning about how technology is going to change work in the next few years.

You can break down your general topic to provide more in-depth treatment in longer workshops after your main speech. If you spoke about technology trends, you could show how these will impact the way suppliers and customers will interact with the attendees' firms, you could review specific products in emerging categories, or provide hands-on training for emerging products.

Alan Weiss, in Money Talks: How to Make a Million a Year as a Speaker, advises translating the typical speaker's title for a topic into language aimed at the buyer objectives. So “conduct sales training” becomes “improve sales closing rates”; talking about employee stress reduction is turned into “improve productivity”; “instill customer service attitude” is really about improving customer retention rates.

He says that speakers should address “process” issues, rather than “content,” so that their specialties can be applied to many industries. “Improving teamwork” and “better decision making” have many potential customers in different types of businesses.

Testing Topics

There are a number of other considerations in choosing a subject, beyond the fact that you have something to teach to others that could be of benefit and the extent of competition. Among these are the health of the general economy (nationally or in the regions where you want to speak), whether the industries you are targeting are growing and competitive (motivating them to invest in learning how to stay ahead), and how much you are able to invest in marketing a particular topic to a target audience (given whether it is likely to attract sustained interest).

The easiest way to test the viability of your proposal, assuming you have sufficient credentials, is to get yourself invited to a regional trade or general business conference as an unpaid speaker. There is no stigma to being unpaid; company representatives and industry consultants often speak or serve on panels just for the exposure, and organizers will be happy to consider you if you seem to be offering value.

Or you can put on a test workshop and invite employees of medium-size local companies (they have education budgets and are less bureaucratic than big corporations). Ask for the person who makes decisions about hiring trainers for your field of expertise and see if she will either pay an irresistibly low figure for workers to attend or at least give your seminar internal publicity and leave it up to individuals whether to participate. Supplement this with mailers to business owners or the appropriate person at small firms. Ads in a local business journal may be helpful. If response is weak, it means you need to rethink the total offering.