Welcome to Elevate!
- All new Vendors kindly complete Elevate Essentials
- Then create your profile and listings: click here
- Overview of our business model click here
- Optimise your page to receive intentional traffic
- Free to list - 11% commission
- Elite members get Google Ads, Analytics, Intercom, Reporting
About Membership
- All Elite Membership is $195/month
- Click "Membership" in the menu to join
- We accept motivated, collaborative speakers!
- We currently have 1000 listings and 10,000 visits per month
- More users, more traffic, more SEO, more sales
- Generate exclusive speaking opportunities for all members
- Relentlessly promote your listings to business globally
- Manage the complex world of SEO for you
- Generate regular newsletters, marketing and communication to thousands
- Reach out to individuals to buy your services exclusively
- Channel inbound enquiries to you
- Create and maintain a trust and security friendly environment
- Manage a secure payment gateway through Stripe and Paypal
- Publish your listings as you would wish to be seen, with excellence and passion.
- Keep all your listings and pages active
- Promote yourself, link back to us, create ratings and reviews
- Approach your Elevate role with passion and enthusiasm
- Network and support fellow members
- Be passionate about your art and delivery
- Excel in speaking excellence!
We take pride in exceptional speakers. We love supporting you, and we want to make your life easier and more enjoyable - focus on being great at what you do, and let us do more of the geeky, repetitive stuff. Members take pride in their listings and profile, in the same way as anyone would who owns a physical store or market stall. We have two registration levels:
- Commission fee just 11%
- Monthly posts featuring your listing on LinkedIn for our group network of 100,000+ followers
- Unlimited listings
- Premium listings and recommendations to buyers
- Detailed lead lists and deep dive into client strategy
- Personal live support, live training workshops
- Best practice industry reports and PDFs
- SEM (paid ads for your listings),
- SEO deep dive, keyword research
- Marketing communication plan.
- Active newsletter strategy reaching tens of thousands
- Enterprise sales to business leaders globally
- Analytics report monthly
- Active and supportive community, that care for each other
- Make sure to add your full name in the "Display name" field, this way clients can find you easier!
- Select your "Username". Your username is Your first name, and second initial, used as part of the unique URL of your profile page.
- Add your "Location". Even if you're only offering virtual sessions, adding your current location or the location you want to be associated with is recommended. This way, when running Campaign Ads, for example in Colorado, Melbourne or Wellington, your name will be picked up!
- Add your best headshot in high resolution, with your face centered. The profile picture should be in a square format (1:1 ratio), for example, 800x800 pixels.
- Add a detailed bio about yourself.
- Include information about your career, who you've worked with, and your expertise.
- Add a life lesson or quote.
- Select your category of expertise.
- Select listing type.
- Create a keyword-rich title for your offering, make it clear and eye-catching
- Price as you wish, make it price competitive, but not cheap. This is not a race to the bottom!
- Add a detailed description for your listing:
- Who it’s directed to
- What they will learn (outcomes)
- Your background
- Your point of difference
- Topics, and more!
- Add a Youtube video to complete your listing! Paste the link in the description box and when saved, your video will pop on the page.
- Select the "Running time" of your session.
- Select ONE out of the six "Delivery types".
- Intro Session: First encounter
- Speaking: A 1-way speaking activity.
- Coaching: 1 to 1 session.
- Training: An activity or activities that include undertaking one or a series of courses to boost performance.
- Workshop: A group 2-way activity.
- Masterclass: Video on demand in chapters.
- Select the "Modality" of your listing.
- The location should automatically be listed if you updated this field in "Settings" (Step 2).
- To guarantee the best results, use JPG, GIF, or PNG images that are 660x440 pixels, to avoid "grey sides".
- Submit for review. Our team works hard to ensure you have the best listing set up for publishing!
- Invite your audience to rate your listings and leave a review in the "Public Discussion" section. The better your listing, we will be able to support you with Google Ads and Deep Analytics.
- When visiting our member's profiles, you're able to follow them to keep up with their updates, new listings, and more! We’re a growing community and every bit of support helps!
Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQ):
Fabulous speakers like you love to speak, and share their valuable knowledge. We leverage your "unused inventory" with virtual talks, workshops, events and 1:2:1's you can do from home. Every event is fee paying and acts as a marketing device for your higher priced gigs.
What's the plan in 2023?
- We will generate leads every month, for every member of Elevate to close.
- We now have proven business cases for CHRO/VP Human Resources who can't believe the cost/benefit of having a speaker join a regular Zoom/Meets event. It acts both as a revenue generator and a marketing exercise for the speaker. We're pushing meetings globally, which often involve multiple purchases in different disciplines.
- Our newsletter strategy is amazing - We partner with owners of huge databases of e.g. HR professionals, (tens of thousands per week), who have great read rates and click through data. We have a pilot ongoing right now with some of our members offering direct bookings for listings at varying price points.
- We have several deals complete and dozens more in the pipeline for paid events with Chambers of Commerce, business incubators, Universities ... who have massive databases of local business. Each one has a stated goal of educating those "bosses" with trending issues like leadership, retention, mental health, digital transformation, diversity. Best of all - the Chambers do all the event organising, and find the sponsorship, so our speakers just have to turn up online and dazzle! It's especially great for us because our events are exclusively ours (we created them!), and we can negotiate 10 to 20 at one time!
- Obviously we work hard at SEO - so you get found (see below)
- Lastly - we are starting to employ search engine marketing (SEM) - so we come top of results for your listings. Every new member will have a new campaign established within the first week, with the aim to drive sales within 6 weeks.
How does Elevate market to event planners?
What is peer review?
Do the ratings for the speaker go with a specific listing? Or is the rating reflected across the board? Similarly, are the comments that are generated by that satisfied customer tied to the specific listing?
Ratings and reviews are aggregated across the whole - so they are rating you, not an individual listing - its a great idea to do ticketed events to build up sales and peer reviews.
What is SEO and why is it important to you?
People actively search for your expertise every day, all over the world, in the hundreds or thousands. Why aren't they finding you?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, helps bring high-quality organic traffic to your listing through search engines like Google. (Most SEO professionals concentrate on Google because its search market share is over 90%.).
Search engines like Google exist to help searchers find what they’re looking for on the web.
Google sends bots to discover and read – ie. crawl – pages on the internet. Google collects the information the bots find and stores, analyzes, and organizes it – a process called indexing.
Google uses a variety of criteria to understand who has the best answers to which questions. Based on them, it ranks the content. The highest-ranked content is presented on the Search Results Pages (“SERPs” for short).
SEO helps you signal to Google that when someone types in a specific search query, your listing is the best match and should be shown higher than other results.
In other words, SEO helps you:
- ensure search engines can crawl and index your listing efficiently.
- identify the searches where your listing can be a great match for what someone is looking for.
- understand how you can create and optimize content that ranks high on search results pages.
What are the diversity, equity and inclusion credentials of Elevate?
Elevate was established with the purpose of changing the norms and values in speaking, which are old fashioned and no longer fit for purpose. We actively welcome anyone, from any background, geography, race, education, orientation to contribute to Elevate. The world benefits from your excellence, and knowledge transfer. To repeat. Elevate is not simply following DEI conventions, we were actually set up by our founder group to share applied knowledge to the world, building peace and prosperity.
If I have different genres or styles of listings, should I use two different profiles?
Just use one single profile - add multiple listings, and diversity of listings does not matter. It doesn't matter if you specialise in mental health, leadership and Italian cookery (yes we have this!) - it all comes from one central profile - its yours - treat it as it were yours. It shows your range of skills!!
How much business will
I get?
This is a function of the quality of your listings,
your price point, and/or the popularity of what you speak about. Ultimately
once you are approved, you manage these three variables yourself. How often you update and with what determines the pages popularity - then it's up to us to do the backend work to get you seen and bought. What we can promise in return is a relentless pursuit of success for you, and in so doing, for Elevate too. We are grateful for you, your work, and your professionalism.
How successful is
Elevate?
Elevate has generated over $150,000 of business in 2022. Our new marketplace - Elevate 3.0 is geared to exponential growth, and making sure you get visits and sustainable business.
How does Elevate
generate demand?
Direct messaging to enterprise decision-makers, Search
Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, LinkedIn Marketing,
and LinkedIn Organic. Literally, the more activity on your listing, visits and updates, the more 'useful' it is, and the better the search results. No updates, no activity, no visits, no sales. It's a bit like an independent LinkedIn, except you get paid, instead of them!
How can I be sure you'll
make me money?
You cannot be sure. Without listing, it's not possible. How much you make is a
function of your effort in the listing, how often you update it, the quality of your work, and how good we are in
creating demand. You'll need a minimum effort of 12 weeks to get a sustainable flow of income. If you want to get rich quick - Elevate isn't for you - we champion quality and integrity. Stick with it, and Elevate will develop a sustainable source of income.
How does commission
work?
We charge a 5% commission for the services &
support we provide. For our commission, we have considered market behavior and
fairness with our clients, but also with our company and our employees. The
average market commission is 30%, for which we consider our commission
equitable.
How does Elevate choose
who can list?
In reality, you choose us. The most confident,
experienced speakers tend to self-select, and ultimately, we have editorial
oversight. Active profiles, with reviews and ratings, always rise to the top -
all marketplace platforms like Airbnb and Lyft operate like this. We want elite professionals, and we will only publish listings of experienced people who are serious, team players who want to succeed.
How does Elevate create
trust and security?
Secure online payment using Stripe, Seller receives
payment on successful delivery, Reciprocal rating and reviews create mutual
respect, Terms and Conditions limit the liability of both parties. Buyers only pay after the event has been delivered successfully, and reviewed positively.
What do you do for
me?
We will work tirelessly 24/7 to promote you globally, we will guide you to
promote your best self, your very best profile, and your optimal listing.
What do you need from me?
- Our relationship is based on reciprocal excellence, we want you to thrive, and we also need your involvement, passion, and support.
- Throwing a profile together and expecting money to flow is not going to work, and we will purge listings that are dormant.
- Put as much passion, content, and enthusiasm into your profile as you would expect buyers to do when working with you.
- In reality one to two hours per week is going to create a great, dynamic and updated online environment for you
What to keep in mind
for a listing description?
We recommend adding an explicit, detailed description, with what the listing is about, who it’s directed to, what people will be able to learn/get out of the session, what’s included (topics), and additional and valuable information. Use keywords you know are searched regularly for your area of expertise
What images can I use
for the listing?
To guarantee the best results, use JPG, GIF, or PNG images that are 660x440
pixels. No grey bars each side!!
Why don't you accept
external links on your page?
For internal reasons, it is not possible to use personal links because this
affects the traffic of our page, causing the leads to go to an external place
and possibly affecting the sale through our channel, for this reason, we do not
accept listings with links to external pages (except for YouTube).
Why can’t I generate
demand for myself?
You can. However, the lone wolf approach is fine for some speakers, and many
are highly successful at it, but it’s significantly more inefficient to market
solo. It is unlikely that by creating a ‘go-to brand’ you will immediately rise
above the noise of others doing the same. To make money from speaking or
coaching, you have limited resources which you need to make as efficient as
possible. We passionately believe that your time is valuable and undersold. The
Elevate approach is to drive demand centrally, ensure a high-quality product offering,
and allow customers to find you within a controlled environment that has a
reputation for excellence.
Who exactly is your customer target audience at Elevate?
Search Engine Triggers
B2B: We target Directors, VP, CXOs in
Human Resources, Event Planning, and related roles, in outreach campaigns.
Your keyword audience: Once you have
sold your first program, you’ve demonstrated to Elevate you mean business.
We’ll back you by including your search keywords in our own paid ad campaigns.
What about
competition? Why should I be part of a community which might dilute my own
power to sell?
Every speaker on the internet is your competition. We
invite you to position yourself in an environment the customer feels is well-balanced, curated, design-led, live, and evolving. Your marketing potential is
greatly amplified on a platform that prioritizes the very best, and in a
positive-cyclical way, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is triggered positively
by constantly evolving content. Our site is being updated and improved every
day by administrators, and most of all by all our members. This means we will
race up the rankings relative to static websites.
Why is the
Elevate model smart for me?
Elevate is a community of the best experts, speakers,
and coaches. We co-create a space that has a reputation for excellence and
pulls demand. Elevate plans to dominate Google search for expertise, and become
the default live inventory, (managed by the providers themselves). What we can promise is a relentless pursuit of success
for you, and in so doing, for Elevate too. We are grateful for you, your work,
and your professionalism.
Providing account and routing info is a risky business and opens me up to cyber crime, how do you protect my payment information?
First of all, Elevate does not store or process any credit card information, since all credit card information is handled by Stripe or PayPal. In regards to Stripe, they are a certified PCI Service Provider Level 1, which is the most stringent level of certification available in the payments industry. PCI, (Payment Card Industry) is a security standard handled by major card providers, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. This means that Stripe uses the best-in-class security tools and practices to maintain a high level of security. If you're interested in the details, you can read more about how Stripe handles security here.
CONSULTATION FAQ:
Can we just go straight to the client and work out a deal?
- No - that would be disintermediation, and a breach of our terms and conditions.
- This leaves Elevate out of the negotiation, with no profit possibility.
- If you don't use Elevate, you won't receive ratings or reviews, which are critical to sales - so its a reinforcing cycle.
- We charge 25% for automatic deals between you and the client and this is what it costs to get you a deal!
- We pay upfront for leads using paid ads on Google and elsewhere, our fees come only after you have a deal.
I’m perfectly fine with offering discovery calls for free. I’m not clear on how charging a very small fee works as a strategy.
Free discovery calls mean we cannot pay for the search advertising which creates the call in the first place. If the calls are free, or if the buyer circumvents our platform and calls you directly, then the model breaks down. This is a proven concept. If members just offer free consulting, Elevate's lead gen will not work.
What is the objective of offering <$100 “loss leader” services like these? How does this avoid setting the expectation that I’m a $30 an-hour expert instead of a $300 per hour expert?
Sub $100 30-minute calls are "introductory consultations", the "speaking" events are a completely different asset class.
- We will be informed: If/when it happens.
- Send your Calendly link: allow them to book a slot with you.
- Have the consultation: Make sure you ask them to rate you and review you, through the process
- Suggest a next step if you want to (you are evaluating them as well as them you): Make sure you ask "What's your budget?" if it's an individual or company - and work to that. Don't guess - it's likely to be more than you think.
- Create a custom listing with the next step and price or
- Point to a listing you already have and provide a link.
- Please don't go outside Elevate for the next step.
For more
information:
- Start today: click the red button on the top of this page and submit your first listing!
- write to support@elevate.ac if you need anything more
- Follow us on LinkedIn.
Applied Knowledge. Elevated.
How will experts, speakers, and coaches make money in 2023?
Do you love what you do?
- So why on earth are you finding your own customers when the fun stuff is delivery, inspiration and sharing applied knowledge?
- Don't focus on geeky web solutions, business development, search engine optimisation, SEM, staying up to date with algorithms technical wizardry when you should be focused on your art
- Providers of transport solutions use Uber to find buyers, and they just drive. Providers of temporary accommodation use Airbnb to find buyers - they focus on creating great paces to stay.
- Why aren't you using a service to find you buyers, and focusing 100% on delivering great content?
- Doing it solo is not only lonely and dull, it just won't work - buyers always need to see alternatives, quality and range. They must also like, respect and trust you.
- We've spent two years creating a marketplace for speakers and experts, to now 300 listings
- It's been a tough 12 months - the speaking industry is only just catching up with digital
- We continue to make traditional enterprise sales on enterprise, by speaking to CEO/CHRO and going through a process
- While this traditional process is welcome, and will continue to benefit both of us; the process of sales is slow and cumbersome.
- We're going to provide buyers of your speaking and expertise by mapping buyer behaviour digitally using artificial intelligence
- Best practice SEO and SEM is incredibly complex, and not worth doing solo. Better focus on what you're good at, and trust us to do the same
- Google Ads, GA4 and GTM is a new era in artificial intelligence which is just coming into play post cookies, and means a unique opportunity
- Based on behaviour of buyers, Google's conversion AI collects user behaviour, data, order value and order ID, without storing personal information.
- We've started to work with Google in London and Barcelona, and we have a dedicated group of support professionals
- We will literally teach our AI to find buyers for your expertise.
- Join us and benefit from thousands of monthly visitors to our marketplace in 2023
- Don't go to the expense of building a payment system and website yourself that is constantly underwhelming. If you have a website - build out your image gallery, video, thoughts and visions - and let Elevate take the strain for transactions and trust
We eat problems for breakfast.
More about Elevate:
Elevate: World Class Elite Experts
We bring together buyers and sellers of expertise
Sellers: You are an experienced, professional speaker, expert, coach (often all three, probably author, podcaster too). Being fabulous is no longer enough, because you're invisible. Marketing yourself is tough in the post-pandemic, digital era. Negotiating, transacting and receiving payment digitally is a pain.
Buyers: You want world-class expertise to apply to your own business. Knowledge is no longer enough - you can find that anywhere. You need transformative speakers, coaches and experts to really push your business to the next level.
Your first steps:
- Elevate maintains a very high-quality standard of provider, and we manage that quality throughout delivery. We coach and guide providers in delivery, presence, and technical video.
- Use the search capability to narrow down choices, locations, and budgets, or just enter and browse for inspiration!
- Contact speakers or coaches directly! If you love the approach and have questions or suggestions for something extra, your expert provider can create a listing just for you.
- Simply contact us and explain what you're looking for and we'll create a buyer listing for you.
- Kindly transact through Elevate - we brought you together in good faith and positivity. We are a community dedicated to the spread of knowledge and inspiration - so we appreciate you helping us grow and stay fair! The provider is paid only once you have reported receiving a top class delivery.
- Follow us on LinkedIn for the latest news and community information. Click here.
We solve the problems of marketing, transacting, and getting paid
We work hard to find demand for your services, and then it's over to you. Business and enterprise is our prime target, marketed through LinkedIn, Google Ads, and organic social media. We bring thousands of inquiries per month to our new web environment. Our site is optimized for SEO, latency, and all the other tech is in place to enhance site performance, so you can focus on being great at what you do. Join us.