talkmagic.co.uk

How about a stripper magician with a fiddle?

It's nice to see some actual figures being bandied about, obviously it's true that you should price yourself according to your ability etc etc, but it can be very difficult to actually pin down a sensible price. This is true whether you're online or talking to other magi in person as it can seem intrusive.

Now, the reason why I personally like to hear numbers is that you then have a good benchmark for yourself. I've only done the one paid gig so far and to be honest I had no idea how much to quote for it so I said 100 quid for an hour and got the job no problem. This seems to be lowish for a single function but I imagine in a typical restaurant setting you'd be lucky to get that sort of rate out of the management if you were working regularly. If I was pitching to a restaurant (something I'd love to do but I'm not ready for yet) I'd probably throw out a figure of 50 an hour and see where that got me.

Too many people are far too sensitive about what they charge, for whatever reason, and more transparency would help new performers to get an accurate idea of how much they should be looking at.

I don't know too much about pricing for restaurants, particularly if you're doing a regular slot.

It's NEVER a good idea to start talking about your fees at the start of a conversation with a potential customer and I leave that as far towards the end of the conversation as I can. Although you may get asked for a cost rather quickly, you can always hop around the answer by replying "it depends on what type of performance interests you".

What you MUST do is to sell yourself and your talent carefully and if someone says that it's more then they had planned for then you have the choice to either say sorry, no can do or barter downwards. What you must be caustious of when taking the second approach is that they then bargain you off against someone else, or take the booking and tell others how much they paid and they could then expect the same.

Usual price for an hour (not per hour as Mandrake has said) is around £170 anbd for weddings or corporate bokings I don't have any probelm securing the booking at that price. If they want 2 hours then personally I would be asking for around £280 and for three hours they may as well have an evening which will cost around £350.

If you start to blag then it can andusually does show. Be as confident in your selling as you are when performing.