by Jing » Dec 6th, '12, 20:11
The Merchant of Magic blog post wasn't great as it suggests working out your price based on how much you want to earn and how much you want to work.
Eg. If you want to earn £30,000 but only want to do one two hour gig a week then you should charge nearly £300 per hour. Sounds easy right!?
The main thing that annoys me about magician's prices, is the whole notion of getting into magic and within five minutes, you've got a website, a set of business cards and you're telling everyone that you charge £300 an hour, etc...
The problem is you can't offer that value - you don't have the experience to.
It's not just limited to magic though, everyone thinks they can do everyone else's job - oh you're a magician? Cool! I bet I could do that.
This isn't an attack on you personally JT, but you've had one gig and now you want to charge people?
I did a lot of gigs for free before I charged anyone, then I worked for family friends, people my mum knew, people my sister knew, and I charged them £20 an hour - they knew I was a beginner, I didn't fleece anyone.
Then I did about ten gigs in a restaurant for £40 an hour, and much later than that a did a series of gigs in a different restaurant for free.
My advice (and I heard this from someone else) is...
It's much better for people to say, 'you should be paid for this', rather than, 'you get paid for this?'
p.s I'm not secretive about my prices, I charge between £125 and £170 per hour.
As a beginner you should be no-where near this.