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Me and two of my friends have been doing magic for quite a while now so we are good at magic. But where to go now? We are all redy to go further but we dont know where "further" is. How can we get recognised for our magical talent?

Firstly, how old are you?

Secondly, do you actually have "an act" or are you just doing trick after trick randomly?

Third, what market are you wanting to move into, there are many and you need to know which is best for you and the type of magic you do before you can do much else.

Fourth, what's available to you within your area? Is it practical to travel any distance to get to work?

While you are working on those questions here's what you might want to try.

If you are still in High School then try working close-up in a local family diner for tips only. This will help you learn how to hustle, improve your technique and it gets the word out about you and what you do.

You may want to put together some half-sheet flyers and get them into circulation for doing birthday parties for local kids. Don't expect big money, that's not what's important right now. You want the experience and you want more people talking about you... more parents to know about you.

Contact local churches, civic groups, senior's homes, and elementary schools about coming in for a very nominal price and doing a short show. Again, the money isn't what's important. This is your first year "out there" so you want to use it to learn from and build off of.

Do some FREE fundraising shows for local charities.

Talk to festival event directors about you and your chums doing some strolling magic during their event. Again, don't go with dollar signs in your eyes, if you can meet your expenses the experience will be the pay-off.

Most of these steps will work for most anyone at any age level, but they will prove particularly practical for someone that's young and just getting started.

Craig's 13 steps to money making

Excellent advice there from Craig - a real treasure of this forum whose input is always welcome.

However, we still await to hear whether his demographic assumption is true, which I would assume aswell (i.e. your are still in high school).

Magic-Ell wrote:

How can we get recognised for our magical talent?

The way you phrase it you sounds like you wanna get discovered to get your own TV show like David Blaine or something. In my opinion life doesn't work like that. Most magicians on here will know how alot of Blaine's tricks work and may even be able to do them competently but Blaine has the persona that he brings to his magic to take him before an international audience of television lay people (whether you appreciate him or not - alot of magicians don't like him).

If this is the route you wanna go (TV Show) then you really need to go and see a professional magician who does the same sort of stuff as you and ask yourself what you bring to that type of magic that he doesn't. Even if that person already has a TV show, they ain't gonna want a copy-cat, they want something original. If you can liken yourself to David Blaine, Derren Brown, Criss Angel or [insert famous TV magician here] then you ain't going nowhere in showbiz my friend.

Excellent advise Craig

Just like usuall

I actually have really taken a liking to your signature Craig. Very profound if you can wrap your head around it. I will save this in amongst my fourite quotes.

thanks for the advice. First of all, we are all 13. We all like close-up magic. Dont worry ev, we are not tryin to get a tv show, yet anyway. But I will take your advice. We were thinking of setting up a website as well and putting up a few routines. When we get that up and running we can go from there. As always, Cheers

If you are still in High School then try working close-up in a local family diner for tips only.

Do you mean like a small family resteraunt?

Well, being 13 school is a very good place to perform. I did my first bit of magic in school when i was 11, using just a stripper deck and some gimmicked coins an remember getting a small reputation then.
Me and my mate perform alot in school (not in lessons, of course) and we have quite a good reputation now. we are noticed even out of school some of the time and are asked to do stuff when just walking along the street.
A word of warning though!!!... Just make sure that you do not perform anything to someone who is interested too much... we have two other people now who are interested on just the secret side of things and like to spoil tricks for us.

For instance i performed a simple coin vanish the other day and whilst misdirecting dropped the coin in to my back pocket. The guy i was performing to was like..."where'd it go?! what - that amazing" and just on the offbest as i was about to thank the guy for watching one of the guys who likes spoiling the tricks said..."its in his back pocket". Those same two guys are now on limewire downloading videos from E and the like, just to find the method is too difficult for them and then spoil our tricks and have power over us. These guys are "extremem hecklers" so watch out for this. Be unique and come up with your own routines that people will not have seen before.

Hope this helps.

Ben

...not that i know much, but maybe volunteer a little show for your local hopsital/childrens ward...maybe make it a little regular thing if you can spare the time?

good luck!

Great advice Craig.

If you guys are 13 you've got the world ahead of you. Craig clearly knows what he's talking about and I'm gonna follow his advice.

I'm just turned 29 and when I grow up want to be a magcian so this sounds a good way to approach it. (When I grow up.... This is taken in the context of being stuck in the 'rat race'!!!)

If I were 13 again I'd practise practise practise and just get out and perform wherever and whenever. At 13 you dont need to worry about money, Mum and Dad can take care of that with your allowance!!

Good Luck

All top advice. How about ringing an old folks home and asking to do 20 mons. p.s. there's always room for the new Blaine,Derren or Angel.
Ev shame on you.

pps best not do needle thru arm or stuff like that. lol

Hell 20 minutes.

Its not long until the summer and they do this Gala thing so I'm going to go down there and hand out plenty of business cards and perform magic

Cheekyzombie wrote:

there's always room for the new Blaine,Derren or Angel.
Ev shame on you.

[sarc]Well of course, the TV is CRAWLING with new magicians, especially one's emulating the style of a magician who already has his own TV show, isn't it? You can't even change channels without seeing a magician these days?????[[/sarc]

Do you not see the self-defeating facet of your argument that all three of those magicians have very separate and distinct styles of magic. This is what has made them famous. Whilst I could imagine Blaine doing the coin is soda can bit that Criss Angel has done, Criss himself reveals on the Masterminds Vol. 1 DVD that although he tried to come up with all his own material but still couldn't fill the gaps he needed to in his series so he looked further to other magician's tricks to pad out his series. This only goes to illustrate how difficult it is to manage the creative side of a full-on TV series.

I'll always remember a documentary I saw about Oasis. Noel Gallagher was reminiscing about how he'd taken a demo to some record label bosses and told them he had 5 albums worth of songs written. He got the record deal and went back to his band mates and said "Right...we need to write some songs" because they had little more than what was on the demo. In this situation Noel Gallagher had the creative talent to "pull it off" (whether you like Oasis or not, they certainly made the "Big-Time").

Anyone hoping to go this route needs to be confident of their creative ability to "pull it off". Otherwise I'd stick to trying to get local gigs, in pubs, restaurants, and social events that suit.

I'm not a professional so don't take this advice as gospel. If anyone has contrary thoughts then please let them be heard...

Well done Evmeister.
Hit the nail on the head again!

I think a lot of people go into magic and try to make money out of it.
Whilst that would be cool, its not a good reason to do magic.

You're an entertainer.
So entertain.


Work hard. Think up new things. Do stuff differently.
Don't be your average magician. Be special and different.

And just stick to what you know best. Find a restaraunt and perform there. Or do a street magic thing and sell it on your website, for fun.

You can't just get recognised.
You have to work hard to get recognised...

Have a vision. And spend the rest of your life plugging away at it