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LifeTips Radio ShowListen to 300+ podcasts hosted by LifeTips founder Byron White.Tune In Magic Tips HomeCard Magic TricksClose-Up MagicGetting GigsHumor for MagiciansIllusionsLearning MagicMagic HistoryMagic ResourcesMagic TriviaMentalismPerformancePhilosophies of MagicPropsMagic FAQsMagic JobsRead these 27 Getting Gigs Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Magic tips and hundreds of other topics.Getting Started as a Restaurant MagicianHow many magic tricks do you need to perform walk around magic in a restaurant? Try six good effects you have confidence in performing. This number will change the more you perform, but it's a good start.Restaurant magicians are always looking for effects to add to their repertoire, but you HAVE to start somewhere. Consider card packet tricks, a good bill effect or two, a rubber band trick like the Crazy Man's Handcuffs, and a magnetic Scotch and Soda. This will get you started...CommentsSponsored From Around the Web

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?An Act or a Show - Whats the Difference?What's the difference between an 'Act' and a 'Show'? Well, and act is simply part of a show, maybe ten or fifteen minutes in length, depending on the venue. A show is a nights worth of entertainment.If you are not ready to entertain an audience for an hour or longer, then consider developing an act instead. Look for acts similar to yours, or acts that will complement yours and attract the same general audience and develop a multiple act show. Many magicians find this a much less daunting task than shouldering the responsibility of putting together a full show themselves.Traveling variety shows are not a thing of the past. They are making a big comeback at colleges and universities across the country. Don't take my word for it... do a little research.CommentsHow to Get Your Magic Website Seen by Real CustomersMany magicians can't wait to get their first web site on the internet . They strive to get everything 'just right', and have high hopes that their bookings will jump overnight. Not so.

Getting a web site indexed in Google, for instance, can take months. Until then, potential clients will not find your site. Without getting into a treatise on internet marketing, here are a few good tips to help you get your magic web site indexed...

- Make sure your site utilizes 'meta tags'. If you aren't sure what this is, google it. Be sure you include a number of key words like 'South Carolina magician', ' Spartanburg magician', 'magician for hire in south carolina ', and other appropriate key words in your meta tags that clients would use to find a magician in your area. Aside from including these key words in your meta tags, you need to discreetly include them in your web site text as well.

- Write to other web site owners and exchange links with them and their sites. This is one of the determining factors Google uses to properly place you in their search engine. The more sites that link to you, the more important your site appears to Google. Be sure to link to sites that have magic or magic related content. Simply linking to any site, and vice versa , will hurt more that it will help your ranking. Avoid any site that sells links.

- Avoid sites that submit your url to 'hundreds' of search engines. The only sites that matter are Google, Yahoo, and Ask. You can submit your url to these sites yourself, in five minutes, and it's free. Ninety Five percent of all web traffic will come from one of these three search engines. In fact, many of the other search engines get their results from these three.

If possible, addingGoogleAdsenseAdsto your site will get it indexed very quickly by Google, as they have to send their 'bots to your site to determine if the ads are placed per their standard. This usually happens within the first 48 hours. It does not assure you of a high ranking, but if someone searches for your url , they'll find it...

Good luck.CommentsTrading PerformancesDevelop a working relationship with other magicians; they'll be able to hand you performances they're too busy to do and vice-versa.CommentsJoining a Magic OrganizationIf you want to be a magician, join a magic organization; they frequently know of the best sources of sustained gigs. Join as many as you can. You'll find it's well worth the dues.CommentsVolunteering for non-for-profit venuesVolunteer to do your magic show for non-for-profit organizations as often as you can; it's the best way to gain experience and to make yourself known. Hospitals, care homes, charity fundraisers and schools can give you a lot of "free" promotion.CommentsPerformance Tape 2When setting up your magic promotion tape, script everything but be sure to include shots taken at your previous shows; it illustrates that you can work well for an audience.CommentsBusiness CardsThe best thing you can do for your career as a magician is to invest in 1000 business cards. Be generous with them when you think they will be of some use; at every show, pull a few out of someone's ear.CommentsPerformance Tape IIISend a copy of your performance tape to your local public access station; alert your friends and colleagues when the air time will be.Consider filming other magicians to produce your own show. This way your own performance tape can be shown more frequently.CommentsBusiness Cards 2Take time to design your card. Try to avoid the staid regular business cards used by other professionals. You want something smart, sharp and interesting; something that will draw attention to your act. Scatter them to the flock of children for whom you are performing and make sure you "accidently" leave some behind you as you leave.CommentsWeb Resource for Entertainment ProfessionalsWhen Cabaret Entertainer Jim Coston began his show business career twenty years ago, he took the advice of a veteran entertainer and started keeping a "little black book" of entertainment industry contacts. Through the years it grew to be thousands of names and addresses, and he routinely gave copies away to his fellow entertainers.The ESSENTIAL ENTERTAINER'S LINKS WORKSHOP is your one-stop web address for resources for professional musicians, actors, writers, stage techs and comedians and variety acts.* Over 3500 Entertainment Industry Related Weblinks* An Industry Database of over 3500 names and addresses* Current entertainment industry news* Casting Calls & Music Gig Listings from around the world* Message Board, Interactive Polls, Live Chat Room* Informative articles written by Entertainment Pros* An online store featuring theatre, film & music books, software, etc.* A Game Room that allows users to relax, have fun and win cash & prizes* Find what you need FAST!! Our site is fully indexed for easy keyword searches!!The Essential Entertainer's Links Workshop is a FREE clearinghouse of informative articles, weblinks & resources for the working and aspiring entertainment professional.Visit them at: Essential Entertainer's LinksCommentsPerformance Tape IIYour magic performance tape should contain varied magic effects; include both close-up and platform work. The tape should be shot in front of a live audience to record their reactions to your performance.CommentsCreating and Using an Audition TapeRule #1: Get a tripod. Documentary-style shaky camera shots are comical at best and you will wind up looking like your Aunt Betsy filmed you as you performed for the twins' birthday party. You won't impress a prospective employer that way.If possible, get your audition tapes done professionally. The expense will be repaid when you get twice as many gigs with a good tape as you could have with a bad one.CommentsPhotos: HeadshotsHave professional grade 8 x 10 photos taken of yourself. Create a portfolio of these headshots and any other performance-style photos that you have. Don't be shy; booking agents never hire a pig-in-a-poke.CommentsYour websiteDevelop a website and make sure you list it on every known search engine; make it interesting and splashythis is not a time for modesty!CommentsFree Web ListingGet your listing online at a new and free listing site entitled SleightlyMagic. It really is free and is marketed well. Check it out at: Sleightly MagicCommentsPerformance Tape 3- No special effects, pleasejust straight cinematography.CommentsPerformance Tape 1- Get someone who is good at filming, lighting and editing to film you. Don't rely on a non-professional.CommentsRepresentation for MagiciansRepresentation for magicians around the worldURL: http://www.magicprograms.comPhilip Murad offer representation to professional and semi-professional magicians around the world. This could be a great way to get regular gigs. If you are interested, check out his website at Philip and Henry Productions.CommentsMagicCoach NewsletterMagicCoach.com is the Web's first free weekly email newsletter and resource site dedicated to helping Magicians grow their entertainment business. Get tips, tactics and classic strategies on Marketing, Promotion and more. For details click here - MagicCoachCommentsFree Professional ListingAre you interested in a free magic performance website? PartyDirectory.com will offer one free for your magic act. If you would like to create one, try this link: PartyDirectory.ComYou will be allowed to use your new URL on business cards and all print advertising.CommentsFree Domain NameFree Domain Name at yourmagician.comIf you would like your own domain name, a company has been created to serve the needs of magicians with their own homepages. The service is free of charge.Examples:http://dondrake.yourmagician.comhttp://magimike.yourmagician.comhttp://teddy.yourmagician.comhttp://damian.yourmagician.comGet yours today at YourMagician.ComCommentsTable-hoppingApproach restaurateurs and bar owners. Be aggressive without being rude or ridiculous; no one likes a pushy magician. Table-hopping can be your number one source of income as a professional or semi-professional magician.CommentsPerformance Video TapePut together a performance tape and send it out to booking agents; they can help you get kid and adult party bookings. Pick them carefully as there are many sharks out there!CommentsRestaurant Magicians - Tips or Salaries ??There is an ongoing debate as to whether a restaurant magician should work for tips or for a salary. Working for a salary is great, -if- you can get it. Restaurants are less apt to pay a salary, but if you're good enough they'll see your value. Getting a salary definitely talkes some of the stress off performing and lets you be yourself.Gigs that allow you to work for tips are more frequent. Some magicians are so personable that they can make more money working for tips, but they are in the minority. If you fit in this category, you are blessed with a special talent and you need to take advantage of it.Remember, when you take tips you are competing with the wait staff for money. This can cause resentment. Make friends with the wait staff and try your best to work WITH them, even sharing in tips if they can get 'special requests' for you to work a table out of your normal rounds.Don't be afraid to give working for tips a try. You will discover whether or not this is for you.CommentsGetting Gigs as a Restaurant MagicianMagicians seeking restaurant jobs are a very worrysome bunch... "How do I get started?" and "How much do I charge?". The best tip I can offer you is... don't worry 'quite' so much. Your goal at this point should be to gain experience. Find a nice local restaurant that will let you perform for a couple of hours for free. It helps to tell the proprietor that you will not ask the restaurant for money nor will you accept tips. After you've performed for a table, ask them to tell the manager they enjoyed your performance, assuming they did. Tell them that's all the payment you want...The money and the gigs will come as you gain experience and show your worthCommentsDouble Your Income As A PerformerMagicians are constantly looking for additional sources of income. Generally, the income received from a performance is never enough. The performer is left in a constant state of need.. needing more money and more performances to pay the bills.Here's a great tip used by all type of performers worldwide; one that the magic community has been slow to adapt.It's called BOR, and means 'Back of the Room Sales'. Music acts have done it for 50 years. They set up a table in the back of the room near the exit and sell records, CD's, DVDs, song books, pictures, tee shirts, and whatever else they can make a stream of income from..Ideally, magicians can sell magic kits, expecially those aimed toward young to teenage kids. If you can personalize the magic kits, so much so the better. They can also sell autographed pictures, individual packet tricks, and magic related books.Be sure to mentioned your BOR products during your performance, but don't take too much time away from your performance to do so. Be cordial, be friendly, be helpful, and be available after your performance to sign autographs and take pictures.You may find you make more from a well-thought-out BOR campaign than from the performance itself...Comments

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One of the things magicians find hardest is getting gigs. This is normally due to multiple things, not knowing where to start, a nagging feeling that you are not ready and a fear of the unknown. The most important thing is to build a brand around your name, this is the best way to get a steady stream of gigs.So how do i create a brand?You need to tell people you exist, this means telling everybody you are a magician. Every new person you meet should know you are a magician within 5 minutes. You never who you might meet so always have some props to hand that you can perform magic with, even if all you do is carry a deck of cards. A key tool in this area is business cards and a web presence. This will help other to remember and discover you, it will also make you look a lot more professional and not like somebody who is trying to blag a gig.I have told everybody Im a magician but the gigs are not coming in!So all your friends and family know your a magician and you have showed them you tricks. You have also met lots of new people but the gigs just are not coming in. This will typically be the case, this is where you need to get your salesman hat on you need to be approaching venues directly looking to get booked. We will be doing a follow up on selling yourself as a magician, however the 2 most important things are that they like you and they believe you can entertain their guests. People buy from people and you are selling yourself as a product.Where should I be going to get gigs?The answer is anywhere, this can be your typical black tie events that a lot of magicians target doing table magic. These venues willmost likely have a few people on their books. If you live near a reasonably sized city there will be alot of new places opening each year, clubs, bars and shops all of these will have some sort of opening event. As soon as you find out about these places opening contact the relevant people and talk to them about performing magic at their opening event.Other alternative gig ideas areContracts with local councils performing at council run eventscharity functions (often have to work for free but great for networking)Small festivals with local bands often looking for filler entertainmentShows put on by local organisers such as car showsDont be afraid to work for free but dont get taken for a ride!If you are struggling to get gigs or it is the right event dont let your pride get in the way of taking gigs. An hour of performing magic in public is worth about 1000 hours practice at home, so in your early days doing some gigs for free will really help your confidence and help build your brand.So it could be that you have spoken to a bar and they have said hey we love the stuff we have seen come down and perform some magic but we cant pay you at the moment. This is the point where you want to negotiate a unpaid trial period and what you will be paid once that is over (regular gigs should always be paid even if they are not at first). This shouldnt be done in a bullish way, it should be done with the view of both parties knowing where they stand.This prevents a fallout after one month when you ask to be paid and they say ok 30 ($25) for four hours. However you are not happy with this and fallout with the venue. This is the last thing you want as you have invested time their for free and have now lost a contact. If the negotiation was done upfront you are in a stronger position to negotiate. It would also leave the option of you doing a free gig to prove yourself to the venue then saying hey i want 100 for 4 hours I know you dont want to go to that but if you ever have private parties that would like some closeup magic let me know. This way no face has been lost by either party and you have an extra contact in your address book.- See more at: http://emagicforum.com/general/getting-magic-gigs/#sthash.CExCdCDr.dpuf

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The Magic Cafe Forum Index A tangled web we weave... Advice on how to get more gigs as a Magician/Illusionist/Mentalist - wherever you live in the world(2Likes)

Martin John

New user66 Posts

Posted: Nov 28, 2013 06:06 pm2Hi everyone,

Having performed over two thousand shows as a professional close-up and comedy cabaret magician over the last 12 years, I have always enjoyed using this forum. I therefore thought it was about time I shared some knowledge that I have gained on how we can all get more gigs, anywhere in the world.

In this modern era, we can all find exactly what we need by simply making a Google search. Many of us have our own websites however the main problem which is often misunderstood is how our websites are listed in Google. If you do not have a website, this information will also greatly assist you, so please read on.

After your website is complete and online, if you type your act name into Google (in my case 'Martin John Magician') it will almost definitely come up on page 1 of the Google search results. This is because your website is likely to contain those particular three keywords more often than any other website out there. Google therefore sees your website as the most 'relevant' search result and so lists it highly on page 1, and as over 90% of all internet users find what they want on page one, if you're on page 2 or lower...you will not often if ever be found.

However unless you are well known, of course no one will type your actual name into Google, they will more likely type your type of entertainment and the location or event type that they are looking for e.g. 'Magician for wedding in California'. Now try typing those actual words 'Magician for Wedding in California' or e.g. 'Magician for party in London' (type wherever you are based) and have a look at the websites that now show up on page 1 of Google's search results. Is your website showing on page 1? If it does, you probably do not need the following advice! For the rest of us that are on page 2/3/4 or page 6 billion!!...this advice will greatly help.

The obvious question is 'How do I get to page 1?'. Well we already know that Google works on relevance i.e. it shows the sites that it feels are most relevant to the keywords entered into the search. Therefore if you want to be highly ranked when someone types 'Magician for a wedding in Las Vegas', you must have those keywords 'Magician, wedding and Las Vegas' somewhere in your website. So write a page all about how you perform magic for weddings in Las Vegas. If you perform for Children's birthday parties in New York, make a new page on your website all about that including those keywords.

Now here comes the second and most important factor that Google uses. Google wants to see how popular your website is and to do this it looks to see how many other 'relevant' websites are linking to your website. As Magicians, if we place an advert or write an article or a blog post with a link to our websites on another website that is about e.g. motorbikes, Google sees this as totally irrelevant. However if we place a link to our websites on another website that is also about magic or entertainment, Google sees this as a 'relevant link' to our websites. It is basically a positive 'vote' and the more positive votes you have to your site, the higher Google will rank you in the Google search. Of course this also applies with other search engines like Yahoo or Bing, however Google is by far the market leader.

So how do you get all of these 'relevant links'? It is as simple as finding other websites that are also about magic or entertainment and advertise, or write yourself a post on relevant sites and most will allow you to add a link back to your website. A prime example is our posts here on magic Caf. As magic Caf allow us to add our website addresses to the footer of our posts, each post we write acts as a relevant link to our websites. Sounds easy, however 20 links from DIFFERENT websites is far better than 100 from the same site. Therefore use your imagination and add links from other websites about magic and entertainment.

For example, I currently have my own personal websitehttp://www.MartinJohnMagic.comand have ads placed on relevant sites linking back to mine. For example I created two Entertainers Worldwide profiles -http://www.EntertainersWorldwide.com

I have one for my close-up act:http://www.entertainersworldwide.com/martinjohnmagic

and another for my comedy cabaret act:http://www.entertainersworldwide.com/martinjohn

Both profiles have a link back to myhttp://www.MartinJohnMagic.comwebsite, therefore they both act as 'relevant links' which improves my websites position in the Google search. So go searching on Google for magic directories like Entertainers Worldwide where you can create a profile and add a link back to your website. If you start there, you will soon find other relevant websites to add a link to your site and soon see your website rise the Google rankings. If you have thousands more potential clients viewing your website, you are very likely to get more bookings. It's all about being in the spotlight.

Lastly, I mentioned that this advice was also beneficial for people that do not have a website. If you cannot afford or just have not got around to making a website, the same advice can apply for boosting an Entertainers Worldwide profile in the Google rankings. I say Entertainers Worldwide profiles as they appear to be the only entertainment directory out there that allow you to create a profile of your act and have your own 'www.' address, allow potential clients to contact and book you directly (no commission charge like an agent) and have designed the profiles so they also show up in the Google search, basically just like having your own website. Because of this, you can add links from relevant magic or entertainment websites exactly the same as explained back to your profile. Your profile will then be found higher in the Google rankings. (To create a profile just click this link:http://www.entertainersworldwide.com/user/register.php)

Well I hope that makes sense and helps a lot of magic Caf users out there to get more work! If there is anything about it all that you don't understand feel free to reply to the post and I will do my best to explain anything further.

Thanks everyone and happy holidays!

Martin JohnClose-up Magicianhttp://www.entertainersworldwide.com/martinjohnmagicComedy Stage Magicianhttp://www.entertainersworldwide.com/martinjohnhttp://www.MartinJohnMagic.com

Peter Goldfield

Regular user130 Posts

Posted: Jan 6, 2014 03:31 pm0Hello Martin

I'm in the process of creating a website and found your post extremely useful. Thank you for sharing

It's worth mentioning that building a site using the Wordpress architecture is much more user friendly (read easy for anyone)

PeterWhen I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down happy. They told me I didnt understand the assignment, and I told them they didnt understand life. John Lennon

insight

Inner circle2980 Posts

Posted: Jan 11, 2014 05:58 pm0A great discussion, indeed! I recommend wix.com. Very simple to use!

Regards,Mike

Dynamic

New user34 Posts

Posted: Feb 26, 2014 08:25 am0Quote:On , insight wrote:A great discussion, indeed! I recommend wix.com. Very simple to use!

Regards,Mike

Wix is useless

http://moz.com/community/q/wix-is-it-any-good-for-seo

Also, the OP just sounds like an ad for that directory. It costs 35 a year to be listed. You'd be much better off just getting organic backlinks and concentrating on social - ie twitter, youtube, linked in, etc to get more backlinks.

The Magic Cafe Forum Index A tangled web we weave... Advice on how to get more gigs as a Magician/Illusionist/Mentalist - wherever you live in the world(2Likes)

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