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I attend a lot of wedding exhibitions and fayres around the country, and I’m often asked by magicians about ways to get the most out of them. Wedding exhibitions can be a great way to start off marketing your close-up magic, once you have a polished performing act and feel you are ready to use your magic commercially.

Are magicians at wedding exhibitions wasting their time?

If you ask fellow magicians about wedding exhibitions, you can often get a very mixed bag of opinions about them. For some magicians they are a fantastic source of work, and a chance to introduce yourself to hundreds of people that are about to throw the biggest budget party of their lives. For other magicians, wedding exhibitions just don’t seem to lead to any bookings: why is that?

Hiding behind your table.

Have you ever been to a magic convention? If you have, you might have noticed that some magic dealers stands don’t get much attention. The dealers sit behind their stands watching people go past. Other dealers, such as the excellent magician and demonstrator: Mark Mason from JB Magic, seem to be swamped by customers. These successful dealers never seem to stop demonstrating their products all day long. One of the reasons why the popular stands are so busy, is because the dealer LOOKS busy, and is constantly performing. The stand looks fun and worth checking out. Those dealers will perform to anyone who will watch, regardless of their intention to buy, as it creates a crowd which then feeds itself and keeps growing. It’s just the same at a wedding exhibition. If you get rid of the chairs, and stop as many people as possible to show them a magic trick, you will increase your chances of finding a client, and increase the attention your stand receives. What you offer will look popular, and as a result, it becomes attractive.

Here’s a short video podcast, in which I talk about more tips for magicians at wedding exhibitions

I was filming in the break whist the main course of the clients meal was taking place, so it’s a short video. For a more detailed look at getting the most from a wedding Exhibition, you can download a free ebook here:

Image courtesy of Paul Maka-Kea

How to Overcome Magicians Price Objections

Essential Tips for Magicians at Wedding Exhibitions

How Magic Trick Secrets Can Be Transferable

by Merchant of Magic 11 Comments

By Dominic Reyes

Do you like to order single magic trick downloads or DVD’s rather than videos that teach you a collections of magic trick secrets?

Over the last few years, there has been a trend by manufacturers and inventors of magic tricks, to release each trick individually. There are good and bad points for both single trick products and collections.

I wanted to discuss one factor that I feel is important to consider when choosing a singe trick product: Transfer-ability.

Here’s a short video I filmed whilst at a gig at the weekend, about the subject of transferable magic trick secrets:

I’d love to know your thoughts on the subject. Has there been magic trick secrets that you have learned from a specific book or DVD that you have carried forward and used in your wider performances? Which source did you find the most valuable. Should magicians focus their time on specific narrow skills, or try to find as many transferable magic trick secrets as possible? Leave a comment in the comments section below:

NEXT: Magic Secrets Revealed and the 3 Rules of Thumb

The Magic Secrets Exposed to Magicians – It’s All a Point of View

by Merchant of Magic Leave a Comment

Take a look at this Rubiks Cube’s magic secrets exposed for all to see… One of the great things about being a magician is having the ability to fool another human being so badly that they actually question reality. Just think about it for a second, how powerful is that!

Broken down, this ‘fooling’ is accomplished by a combination of different skill sets and elements that when brought together paint a picture that isn’t entirely true. As the magician you obviously have access to all of these bits of information, you know the sleights, the psychology, the misdirection; a spectator of course doesn’t. A spectator has only the viewpoint that you allow them to see, a distorted image of the truth.

With the limited amount of information you allow the spectator to have, they have to paint their own picture of the reality before them. If you perform your magic correctly they should not have the vital information that will reveal the true situation. Just as in this video, it is only when the creator wants to show you the truth that your brain ceases to be fooled.

What we can learn from this:

There is a trap we can fall into though, if you begin to see everything from your angle it can then sometimes be hard to see the spectator’s angle any more. It may seem obvious that you never put that coin in your hand, from your angle you may even be able to actually see that the coin was never put in the other hand. Yet you must sell the image that the coin really IS in your other hand. It may not fool you but don’t forget that it will fool others who don’t know the secrets. Try to remember back when you first saw magic and how it fooled you, I bet it was a simple magic trick that you can’t believe you didn’t figure out!

Remember what your spectator sees is totally different from the truth, sell the whole picture to them. Don’t worry about what you can see, worry about what you are making them see.