(an Evil Rant)
Magicians make money by doing one of two things:
- Performing their craft
- Selling things to other Magicians
Since I’ve talked a lot about the first and very little about the second method, I thought I’d spend some time on it now.
If you intend to sell things to Magicians, there are a couple ways of doing so. The first is to build a stock of quality utility goods such as rope, silks, thumb tips and the like, and make them available to your potential market at a reasonable price, provide quality service, and build a relationship with your customers.
Then there’s the other way… and here are the observations I have made based on many years of study…
To sell things the other way, remember: Magicians Are Greedy, Lazy, Envious and Gullible!
Magicians are Greedy
One of the easiest ways to make a product, act, book or DVD attractive to a magician is to mention how many skadillions of dollars the producer of said product has made doing the act, performing the tricks, or following the processes documented in the product you’re selling. It’s darn near foolproof. We all want to make an unrealistic amount of money as quickly as possible by performing a “can’t fail” routine or selling a “can’t fail” show to as many venues as possible regardless of whether or not this bit suits us as a performer, as a person, or as a venue we actually want to perform in! And people make thousands of dollars doing these shows! Clearly if they can do it, so can I! For the low price of some three figure sum which usually ends in a seven or a nine!
Magicians are Lazy
“No skill necessary”! Oh those lovely, lovely words. “You’ll be performing this trick ten minutes after you open the box!” Ambrosia! Magicians want to be amazing right now, and with as little effort as humany possible. This is why those acts which sell for a three digit sum ending in a seven or nine sell so well! All the hard work has been done by the vendor! Open the box, follow the instructions (or watch the DVD) and go! How hard can it be? After all the guy who’s selling it has done all the legwork… aside from scouting out your venues, determining if the routine suits you as a performer and as a character, finding the right people to market the act to, determining if you even like the stuff that’s being sold, and so on and so forth…
Magicians are Envious
We wanna be like him! We wanna be Lance Burton, swave and debonair and slick. We wanna be Criss Angel! Cool and hip and edgy. We wanna be on a big stage with a huge budget and making ungodly sums of money! We wanna be Dai Vernon – the epitome of Mastery, entertaining rich patrons in swanky supper clubs… wait… are there still swanky supper clubs out there? Anyone? Um…
In any case, buying this trick, this book, this routine, this prop, or downloading this easy-to-follow video will certainly turn us into them!
Magicians are Gullible
We want to believe. We really, really do. We want to believe that we can replicate the trick exactly the way it’s show in the highly controlled studio environment. We want to believe people will react exactly the way they do in the videos when they know there’s a camera pointing at them. We look at the list of things the trick does not involve and rarely think about what, bu process of elimination, the trick does involve. We don’t go back to the books and videos and magazines we already own to see if this effect is already there somewhere so we can save our pennies. We watch ourselves in the mirror or on YouTube doing the trick after 10 minutes and think we look just like the guy in the video that prompted us to buy the darn thing in the first place!
We will purchase Marketing Course for Magicians after Marketing Course for Magicians, skimming past the pages and pages of rehashed content, looking for that one gem, that one little bit of wisdom which will suddenly take us over the top and let us book ourselves solid with an easy, turn-key system which requires little to no effort on our part! For the low price of $XX9 or $XX7 as advertised on a page with lots of BOLD type and UNDERLINING and HIGHLIGHTING (as described in every single online marketing course ever sold)…
Reality Checking
Yes, magicians do in fact make a lot of money performing the effects they market. This is due to a combination of factors, not the least of which is that these guys create these tricks to suit themselves.
Yes, the big tall spooky guy with the deep booming voice makes thousands of dollars holding intimate seances as documented in the book he sells for $25 (marked down from $300!) but that’s because he is the guy that this routine suits best!
Yes this person makes a comfortable living doing school shows with a reading theme – and that’s because he’s found every possible school, library and other market which would suit this show in his area and booked himself nice and solid!
Yes the trick looks amazing – in a controlled studio environment with clever editing and an “audience” of people who have likely been told this trick is being sold so they should be receptive and positive…
Just about every “Magician Marketing” course out there stems from a common source, not targeted to magicians. One which you can buy, as a book, from a regular bookstore, for a two digit price which ends in a sane number like a 5 or a 0. That’s another way magicians can make money – by not spending their cash foolishly!
So when you’re out there shopping for magic, as Harry Anderson likes to say, keep an open mind, just not so open that your brains fall out.
