Making Money From Your Magic

[Albert]

Well, getting calls and requests from strangers asking you to perform after seeing your ads are easy. However, first and foremost, what's most important is you skill at entertaining the guests and either making them want to call you back and/or recommending you to other people to perform.

Now that that's out of the way, the 2 greatest methods that I have come across to get you the gig that you need are:

1) Networking - This is huge. If you are known to be a great performer amongst your school, family, friends, neighbourhood, etc., it's a great idea for you to use their assistance to get gigs. To get one's name out there in the local area, it's always great to volunteer your performance so that people can test you and see for themselves how good you really are without them feeling the pressure to have to pay you if they end up not wanting to because they disliked the performance. This is especially effective because recommendations through networking have somebody vouching for your skills and talent as a performer, giving one a greater probability of being asked to perform.

2) Advertising - Newspapers ads, Personally-made ads, Social Networking Sites, and other forms of media. This is not recommended unless one is actually skilled enough to pull off a performance without becoming nerve-wrecked in front of strangers. One must also know their own forte; for example, I personally am not good at children's magic compared to performing for the older ones since my style of magic are mind-blowers, not visual-explosions. Successful/unsuccessful performances from there on can spread or kill your reputation.

Street magic is not as easy as it is to pull off, such as Canada vs. Netherlands, as an example. In Canada, you NEED a permit to perform in the streets and get paid; otherwise you get fined. On the other hand, according to Mark, the Netherlands don't particularly require that, if I remember correctly. However, performing within one's neighbourhood for free is a great way to start a form of networking. Once a person can get a 'title' from others as a good magician, people will naturally come to the magician for performances.

For now, that's my little bow of advice I have. Maybe I can give more if more specifics come up.