A customer recently asked me if we were going to do any more Private Lesson instant downloads. To be honest we’ve been so busy here at Magic Geek that sometimes it takes someone mentioning something for us to kick it into gear and get it done. Anyway, the answer is: yes, we are doing more of those.

The most recent installment of the Private Lesson Series is on Card Forces. There are a lot of card forces out there and some are better than others. In this downloadable video file we teach four of the easiest, most deceptive forces available plus a little routine to use them with.

There are three different varieties of forces featured in the download so that you can choose which one will work best in your performing environment. The Straight Cut gives you the ability to have a spectator cut to any point in the deck and arrive at the card you want them to. The Slip and Riffle Force are both techniques for have a spectator call out stop as you riffle down the side of the deck, and the fan force is an easy version of the classic force with 100% accuracy.

The Routine taught in the video is a simple, yet effective effect that is a real crowd-pleaser. I still use this routine in my street performances to help build an audience and pitch for tips.

If you were to buy a DVD outlining these forces with this level detail, it would easily cost you $20, but since this is available as an instant download, the price is just six dollars.

Several customers have thanked us for the Elmsley Count Private Lesson as it easily taught them how to master several packet effects that they were having trouble with. We believe that the Card Forces Instant Download will offer you new possibilities and freedom with your card routines by breaking down four very useful forcing techniques.

In my blog entry 10 Ways to Promote Your Magic I mentioned the use of Posters to promote yourself as a magician. I received a few questions on how to design and produce a good poster. So I thought I’d roll up my sleeves and design a few options for you.

What follows are some basic posters that you can either print out or get ideas from to produce your own posters. To use the posters simply click on the image and a high resoultion pdf file will pop up for you to print out.

Window Poster
This poster is designed to advertise your appearance at a venue. It would probably work best hanging up in a window of a restaurant where you are going to perform in the evening, but it could also work as a poster for an evening event that is open to the public. It is recommended that you use a color printer on some nice white paper.

Business Card Poster
This is a poster that is best used with your business cards. You can use photo corners to attach business cards to the blank area or set the poster up on a counter with a business card holder set in front of it. This is a great poster to use if you don’t have a color printer, but we recommend that you use to bright colored paper to print it on.

Pull Tab Poster
This type of poster is very common and it’s a great way to get your name and number out there. Customize this poster by printing it out on bright paper, pasting your photo in the middle of it, writing your contact info out on the tabs and then cutting along the dotted lines. People can then pull off the tabs and have your info on hand when they need a magician.

Vaudeville Poster
This is another poster that you’ll need a color printer to produce, but it’s a very attractive and eye-catching poster that you can customize. Print it out and use a silver sharpie, White-Out or Paint pen to write in the location and time of your next public performance. Then hang it up all over town. The Vaudevillian style and chalkboard-like middle section help that hand-writing fit right in.

By printing up these posters and strategically placing them in the area you are performing, you should see a rise in interest in your community. Have fun and let us know how it goes.

Many of our customers ask how to make money as a performing magician. The “Three P’s” is a good place to start: Practice, Performance, Persistence. But beyond that, there’s not much info out there on what is going to take you to the next level.

Let’s say you’ve developed an act, practiced the dickens out of it and want to start getting known locally as a professional magician. Where do you start? Here are ten easy things you can do to get your name out there and start booking yourself as a performer.

#10: Free Shows
Free shows can be tricky. Often when you mention to someone that you are looking for gigs, they offer to let you perform for free at a party or business just to “Get your name out there.” The problem with this is that you can get a reputation as someone who performs for free or does charity work (you’ll look like a nice guy but this blog is about getting paid so let’s figure out how to get around that.)

I don’t do many free shows,
but when Miranda Sings asks you to get up in front
of a bunch of people and wow them, you do it.

If you just need for people to see you perform so that you get the word-of-mouth going, I suggest you talk to the organizer of the party or event and let them know your regular rates. Tell them that if someone asks how much they paid you for them to answer with your current rates. They don’t need to lie, the conversation just needs to go like this, “How much did you pay to get this awesome magician?” “He told me that he charges $50 for a party like this one.” Or however much you would want to get paid for that type of party.

#9: Posters
A nice poster can help promote yourself in the area. They don’t have to be super-fancy. Try to keep the design very simple, the more info you try to cram onto a poster, the worse it looks. A simple black and white poster printed on colored paper will do the same job that a glossy four-color poster will do.

A simple poster can be a great way to promote yourself.

Be strategic with where you place these posters. Ask to post them in places that sell party supplies or where families frequent.

#8: Event Coordinators/Party Planners
Contacting local event and party planners is another great idea. Whether you leave a stack of business cards with them or put your name on their list of performers, event planners can get you performing right away.

Finding a party planner and making them your
biggest fan can give you a huge advantage.

A word of caution with event planners, they do take a cut of your profits and I have worked with a few that try to overcharge the customer and under-pay the performer. Be on the lookout for this and if you see it, just politely stop accepting gigs from them.

#7: Youtube Commercial
Thanks to youtube, you can now cheaply put together a promotional video and post it somewhere that people can see it. There are two very nice aspects to posting a promotional video on youtube. The first is that potential clients can easily see bits of your show and performance style. And secondly, youtube videos are searchable. By inputting the correct tag-words into your video description (like the name of your town, the area-code, the zip-code and the type of show you do) your video will show up in basic goodle searches. How cool is that?

A youtube commercial can be a great resource.

#6: Facebook
Creating a fan page or “Like Page” on Facebook, you can post events that you will be performing at as well as have past customers write nice things about your show on your timeline. Like youtube, Facebook is searchable and area specific, so that when someone that lives in your area searches “Party Magician” your page might show up in the listing.

Facebook is a great way to let people know where you are performing next.

#5: Mommy Websites
If you are planning on performing at birthday parties or local fundraisers, it’s the moms that your really need to impress. I didn’t realize until I had kids how organized these awesome ladies are. In most towns there are multiple websites devoted to supporting a network of moms. Some quick searches online will show you a few. Often it costs money to advertise on these sites, but they are usually run by a local mom and trading a free magic show for some free advertising is not a bad way to go.

Moms often organize parties and school functions. Get on their good side.

#4 Local Events
Whether it’s a fundraiser or a local celebration of the 4th of July, the organizers of these events want to provide entertainment in the easiest and most-inexpensive way possible. As a rule of thumb, I always ask for my regular rate first and then barter down if I think that the exposure is going to be worth donating or discounting my time.

I’ve been performing at my local Elk’s Lodge
4th of July family fair since I was 12 years old.

A great way to help out an event planner and ensure that a lot of people come to your part of the event is to notify local news sources. Let the newspapers and websites in the area know that there is going to be a big event and there is going to be a great magician there.

#3 Restaurant Gig
These are hard to get. You have to find a restaurant that fits your personality and caters to your type of audience. A weekly restaurant gig typically does not pay that well, so don’t expect to get your full rate right away. It can also be hard to get a restaurant manager to give you a chance.

A weekly restaurant engagement can help you get paid, get gigs and get fed.

That being said, I think that I have gotten more gigs and opportunities by doing restaurant work than any other performance scenario. By performing at a place where people are out to have a good time, but not expecting something like a magician gives you a huge advantage and when they plan their next party, they’ll remember the fun they had while you showed them magic and want to offer the same experience to their guests.

#2: Street Performances
If you read this blog a lot, you already know that I am a huge proponent of street performances. I think that it builds the tough skin that a magician needs as well as offers a free performance space for a magician to work on new material.

Click the picture above to learn more about street magic.

In the right setting with the right foot-traffic, you can advertise yourself, get performance experience and make money in tips without a restaurant manager or party planner breathing down your neck the whole time.

#1: Business Cards
This is the number one place where I see problems with young performing magicians. By printing poorly designed business cards on bad-quality paper and cutting them out with hand scissors, you are severely degrading the physical manifestation of the magical memories you’ve created.

Get yourself a stack of professionally printed business cards.

It might cost a little bit more money to order nice business cards, but think of it as an investment in your magic career. If it looks like trash and feels like trash, chances are that it will end up in the trash. And you didn’t spend all that time printing and cutting out each one just for it to end up there.

If you perform good magic and hand them something sturdy that feels like it should go into a wallet or a purse, that’s where it’s going to end up.

There are a ton of websites out there with easy-to-use templates and inexpensive promotional offers that will print you a box of business cards for next to nothing.

I know it may sound like I’m fixating on something trivial that you could save some money on, but consider this. In every single scenario listed above (aside from Facebook and Youtube) a business card is needed to transfer your contact information. Without this little tool, there is no way that they are going to remember how to contact you. Even a poster benefits from a stack of business cards sitting next to it attached in some sort of dispenser.

I hope this list serves you well and if anybody has anything they’d like to add, please do so in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you.

We just uploaded our 1,000th video on youtube. To celebrate, we put together an 80’s style rap.

This rap features clips from our many, many video demos, interviews, competitions, the Geek Report and videos that we uploaded just for fun.

There has actually been some dispute on whether or not this is actually our 1,000th video and here’s the deal: Youtube is saying that we have (at this time) 1,000 videos in one view and 1,001 videos in another view. Since we uploaded “Sands of the Desert” at the same time this could either be our 1,000th video or our 999th video. I haven’t gone through and counted all of our videos to see which is correct. The point is we definitely have at least 1,000 videos uploaded to youtube at this time and I think that calls for a celebration, don’t you?

If you missed or are interested in any of the videos featured in the rap video here are a few links that might interest you:

While logging into youtube this morning, I noticed that Derren Brown’s new promo for the return of his hit live show “Svengali” to the West End.

Enjoy:

While the promo doesn’t really give many details, you’ve got to respect the fact that he keeps his entire show a secret.

Derren continues to generate mystery and intrigue in a very exciting way. His magic has ushered in a new generation of audiences that flock to see what some consider a dying art: live theater. In a time when the internet and television make everything so accessible, it is interesting to see something so secretive becomes so desired.