How do you become a TED Talk Speaker?
Becoming a speaker at TED is no easy feat, and requires you to at least have a ton of knowledge on a certain subject, or having a special talent.
Most TED speakers are company owners, inventors of world changing devices, analysts, artists, scientists, thinkers and so on.
Combined, some of the previous speakers on TED have won every single major prize for excellence, such as Grammys, Emmys, Oscars, Pulitzers, or Nobel prizes.
Among some of the more popular talkers ever you can find names such as Bill Gates, JJ Abrams or the founders of Google – Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
That being said, you don’t have to be famous to become a speaker at TED.
The audience of TED has a certain expectation, so to become a speaker you need to be able to present something that is unique and deemed relevant for the TED audiences.
For example, if you are a scientist who found some new data, or a groundbreaking discovery that could better the lives in one way or another of a large amount of people, chances are that TED will be very interested in taking you in and giving you a platform to showcase these findings.
You can also suggest a speaker through the TED website, if you truly feel a person you know would be suited as a TED speaker.
What do You get for Being a TED Talk Speaker?
So, let’s say you’re interested and feel like you could carry out a pretty great TED talk, you may be thinking “Do they pay me?”.
Well in short, No, TED doesn’t pay its speakers a monetary value for speaking.
They do however, cover all traveling and living expenses the speaker might have, as well as give them other perks.
Being a TED speaker comes with a great boost to your reputation, which of course in the long run could mean that you become more valuable in your field of work, and thereby boosting your salary.
Here are some of the perks you get as a TED speaker:
- Full coverage of traveling and hotel costs.
- Full five day pass to TED and all the talks
- Possibility to network with other TED speakers through special events
- Pre-conference coaching and training for public speaking
- A TED gift bag
- Yearlong TED Book club
- Web archive of the full conference you attend
- Possibility of becoming featured on TED Talk YouTube channel for huge exposure
So while you get no actual salary for presenting at TED, you arguably get something even more valuable, which is publicity and networking.
Most, if not all TED speakers have seen a spike in their popularity in their field of work after presenting at TED, and if they on the off chance become featured on the TED YouTube channel, they can get extremely popular due to the huge audience on YouTube.
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