How to do Magic Tricks

Advice and Support for Magicians

Magicians Marketing Problems

by Dominic Reyes 1 Comment

magicians marketing problems

By Dominic Reyes

Dear Dominic,
I am struggling with my marketing. I fail to put into action what I know are good strategies with regard to marketing myself as a magician. Apart from not being the most organised person in the world, I guess that deep down I don't really like marketing & admin. One thing I cannot or will not do is outsource or hire someone to do it for me – I think this would be uneconomic for me.
Regards,
John


Hi John,

Why not just practice and perform magic for fun just as a hobby? Do you really have the desire to perform as a working magician? It’s a lot of hard work, and will take up time you could spend having fun learning new tricks…  

Most people just stick to that, and are very happy with their choice. However, if you definitely want to perform commercially, you HAVE to get involved in the business side of things and that involves magicians marketing.

 You are going into business as a magician.

I’ve no quick and easy fix for you. You just have to DO IT or get someone to do it for you. If you are not happy to pass on control of your marketing to someone else, then you simply have no choice but to make a PLAN and put that into action.

It sounds like you already know plenty of actionable steps you can take to move your career as a magician forward. So what’s really stopping you?

Is it fear of failure?

Doing nothing guarantees failure. ANYTHING you do, other than sitting and wishing for something, takes you a step closer to your goals.

Is it because it’s no fun?  

Playing with magic is fun. Paperwork and magicians marketing can’t compete. But it’s vital groundwork for creating opportunities to:

Perform and get paid for it! 

There really isn’t a better way to make your living, than by doing something you would happily do for free anyway. Creating a business out of your magic is worth all the time it will take to build up your reputation, contacts, and client base.

Fear of Decisions

Designing a website, producing marketing material, creating a showreel, finding venues and clients all require decisions. Choice is hard work and scary. It’s always easier to find something else to do, that allows you to avoid committing to a decision. Learning new magic tricks, feels like progress, but if you spend all your time practicing, without doing the work required to market your services, you are practicing for something that isn’t going to happen. That’s a waste of time..

Worried about the cost of magicians marketing?

You don't need to pay an expensive agency to market for you, or shell out for an online service. Do you know someone locally who will help you market for a share of the fee's the work they bring in generates? If not, contact your local university and reach out to the business, marketing, and media departments. Put up a sign on the department notice boards.  Would someone like to take you on as a really interesting project? It's good for their CV and you can offer them a percentage of the fee's the extra work brings in.

What to do:

Dreaming, hoping, and praying for something is useful, but it's main benifit is 'hope'. In the face of something that looks impossible, we need to dream or hope that it may be achievable or happen one day. The problem is that hoping doesn't make things happen all by itself. You need to define goals that you can work towards in small manageable steps to make big things happen.

Break up the tasks involved in your marketing into small actionable parts.
The goal can be seen as a ‘project', and the small steps involved in reaching that goal can be seen as ‘actions'.  

Here’s an example:

Project:

Creating a magicians website.

Actions:

Look at other magicians websites and make a note of the best points of each.
Create a list of features you want on your website.
Look at design companies to create a website for you.
Create an email that describes the sort of website you would like, with images of design ideas.
Get quotes
Commission a designer to build your website.


The big scary project of designing a website is enough to put anyone off, but if it’s broken up into individual tasks, each one isn’t that scary.. You can do one action each day, working to complete the product over a set period of time.

Now just take the first action and DO IT. Then on to the next and so on until the project is completed.

Here’s another example:

Project:

Get a local residency as a magician.

Actions:

Make a list of local restaurants and venues using google
Call each venue to ask who is responsible for event planning
Create a short letter of introduction
Send out introduction letters to each of the venues
Call each venue to ask if they have received your introduction letter, and ask if you can meet the event planner.

The big ‘project’ is broken up into small, quick, and defined short actions that don’t require too much choice or thinking. You then take the first single action needed to move the project forward and that is you NEXT ACTION, do it and then move onto the next.

If all this sounds like too much hard work, then you need to find someone that will do it for you. It's an essential part of being a professional magician.

What advice would you give John? Leave a comment below:

 

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Filed Under: how to do magic tricks, magic advice, Marketing for Magicians Tagged With: marketing, Marketing for Magicians

Magicians Prefer Apple iOS to Android

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

magicians Love Apple

By Dominic Reyes

Do Magicians Prefer Apple iOS to Android?

The team at the magic shop had a small argument the other day about which types of phones and devices magicians tend to prefer. It was caused by a discusion about the range of magic apps and tricks with iphones that have been released for magicians over the last few years.

To settle the argument we looked at the data from the magic shop.

We picked a recent email we sent out to subscribers of the Merchant of Magic Newsletter. It was a segmented group of people who had all opted in to our list and had described themselves as average ability magicians who practiced sleight of hand and were interested in close up magic.

We then ranked the members of that list by the number of purchases they had made over the last 5 years, selecting the top 14,000 magicians that had ordered on many occasions.

That gave us a large sample of 14,000 magicians.

Once we had our sample, we looked at the devices that the sample used to access the email. Here's the results:

magicians prefer apple ios

The majority of the magicians used Apple iOS rather than Android. On mobile devices, most people used an Apple iOS device. On decktop, most people uses Apple Mail to read the email.

That settled the argument in the magic shop, and we could all get back to work.. If you are developing apps for magicians, you may find this useful.

Why magicians performing websites should be mobile friendly

One point that we found that could be useful for magicians is the amount of people that access our site via mobile rather than decktop. Here's the data:

mobile access magic shop

Google have changed the way they rank websites, so they now give preference in the mobile search listings to mobile optimised sites. Is your magicians website mobile friendly? It's time to check..

 

  • 6 Free Magic Tricks From Jay Sankey
  • Anniversary Waltz Free Magic Download
  • Approaching Magic Practice Ebook
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  • Choose Magic Set Kids
  • Cloud of Smoke Free Ebook
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  • Electric Touch Free Ebook
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  • How to Learn Magic Tricks
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  • Safe - Free Magic Ebook
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  • Split Free Magic Video Download
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  • The Indian Shuffle

Filed Under: how to do magic tricks, Marketing for Magicians Tagged With: marketing, Marketing for Magicians

How to Start out as a Magician and Get Experience

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

 How to Start Out as a Magician

Samuel didn't know how to start out as a magician

By Dominic Reyes

I received this email from a young magician:

'I emailed you about how to go about getting a first gig, and you told me that as I was 14, I should consider doing some charity events. I spoke to members of our towns committee about it, and they seemed more than happy to take me on. I am now getting lots of gigs, so I thought I should say thank you, as you gave me the original advice that started it all off. So thank you very much for your great advice.' – Samuel Prior

This got me thinking about the advice I game Samuel when he was 14. It applies to young magicians that are just starting out and are having trouble being taken seriously when they approach venues or companies to pitch their magic. However, I think the advice is solid for magicians of any age, when they have the catch 22 situation of needing experience, but struggling to get gigs because of that reason:

If you want to do magic as a paid performer, you HAVE to get out and start performing for the public. Nobody will come to you and beg to hire you, so you need to put yourself in public situations where you can perform professionally. The easiest way to do this is to HELP YOUR COMMUNITY by offering your services at local charity and community events. That first step will give you the confidence to market yourself, get your name out, and push forward to get future paid work as a magician. If you have been thinking about doing this for a while, now is the time to act. Contact your local community centre TODAY, and ask them about events coming up that could use some free entertainment. It's just a phone call, but it's that first step that you have to make sooner or later..

Do you know a keen magician that has been thinking about doing paid work, but has yet to take that first step? If so, email or text them a link to this page. A little push from someone that cares about them is all it might take..

 

Are you already a working magician and have some advice for magicians just starting out? How did you get your feet off the ground performing? Maybe you are in the same position Samuel was in, and have a question? Leave a comment in the section at the bottom of this page.

  • 6 Free Magic Tricks From Jay Sankey
  • Anniversary Waltz Free Magic Download
  • Approaching Magic Practice Ebook
  • Approaching Tables Ebook
  • Recommended For Magic Beginners
  • Cagey Tutorial
  • Choose Magic Set Kids
  • Cloud of Smoke Free Ebook
  • Double Lift Project Free Download
  • Duplex Free Magic Download
  • Epoch Free Magic Tutorials
  • Electric Touch Free Ebook
  • False Shuffles and Cuts Magic Download
  • Faster Than Light - Magic Download
  • Finger-Exercises
  • How to Break In Playing Cards
  • How to Learn Magic Tricks
  • Tips for Leaving a Magic Gigi
  • LSQ Ebook - Free
  • Magicians Fees Ebook
  • Mistakes in Magic Ebook
  • More Icandy
  • The One Minute Magic Business Ebook
  • Pitfalls Magic Family and Friends
  • Safe - Free Magic Ebook
  • School of Cool Free Download
  • Sleight of Hand Beginners Course
  • Split Free Magic Video Download
  • Self Working Card Tricks Vol 2 Download
  • Sweet 360 Free Magic Download
  • The 80's Called Download
  • Self Working Card Tricks Vol 3
  • Think Tank Free Magic Download
  • Turnover Pass Free Download
  • Self Working Card Tricks Download
  • Understanding Misdirection Free Ebook
  • Watch It Free Ebook
  • Wedding Exhibition Guide for Magicians
  • Confidence For Magicians
  • The Indian Shuffle

Filed Under: beginners, how to do magic tricks, Marketing for Magicians, performing for the public, promotion, Questions and Answers, Video Podcast Tagged With: beginners, Marketing for Magicians, Video Podcast

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