How much can you make?

[Zack!]

Greetings.

I'm a beginning street performer. (magician) I've been doing it casually while keeping my day job. I haven't made a whole lot of money. I'm aware that earning will increase with experience. I need to learn the skills of getting the crowd, keeping the crowd, and bottling the crowd.

Recently I got word that I'm going to be laid off from my day job with a generous severence package. I'm thinking of taking this modest stake and using it to finance myself to devote myself fulltime to masteering the art of busking.

I'm drawing up a business plan for this project. I'm having trouble with the revenue projections: I'm wondering how much one can reasonably expect to make in this business, and how long it will take to get there.

As you can tell, I'm taking this seriously. I'm not asking for pie-in-the sky promises, nor to be told "it depends", I just want some kind of reasonable expectation, so I can plan my budget and see if this plan is feasable based on my current bankroll.

[Prof Willie B]

Zack, no-one is going to tell you or anyone else anything about what they earn!

If you can create an act that is good enough, you will make enough money.

If your budget is your major concern, I can recommend "BT Managed Funds" or shares in "Yahoo" (now that they've enter the porn industry) and a return to your day job.

I really don't mean to offend but what sort of question is this? Do you really want to perform? If so, do it, now that you have the chance (God, I'm beginning to hate that word). Few of us have ever had the opportunity to enter this profession from a position of strength.
Forget your budget and get your Arts into gear and go for it.
PS., that is a very personal question.

[This message has been edited by Prof Willie B (edited 04-12-2001).]

[Butterfly Man]

You are so right Professor ... no way I'll tell anyone what I make on the street, but Brian Hulse just told me he worked for 36 straight days last summer. He said he did a minimum of 4 shows every day and his average hat was around $420 American (after the conversion) ... you do the math, Zack.

P.S Please keep this to yourself.

[AJJames]

woooah there Robert,I think you need to put that into perspective... Brian works in Japan and besides , he's a bread head (no offence Brian) I mean he's a work horse , not all of us are into fleecing our audience for every last penny,most of us make enough to live well and pay our rent ,I could earn a lot of money in theory but in reality I feel greedy if I do more shows than I need to so I have always been fairly close to the bread line.... In my experience the only performers who can still make me laugh are the ones doing it for the laugb and the ones who make me sick are the ones doing it for the money ...so I agree with the Prof. if you want to make business projections and targets etc then be a business man and leave art to the artists.

[martin ewen]

In a good year you can earn enough to buy 4 oxen and a wife.

[Steven Ragatz]

AJJames wrote about making too much money... At first I thought this silly, but upon reconsideration, I must confess that I can relate. I made "good" money during the period of time that I earned my living exclusively on hat passing at Union Station, a festival marketplace trying to be another Pier 39 in Indianapolis. Coincidentally, I was sharing the "pitch" with Brian Hulse, also an Indiana boy. But, after about six months, I started feeling guilty about it. Not just for the money, but for the feeling that I should be doing shows rather than training or working on new material. After all, what's better than the tried and true for fat hats? The new stuff always suffers so the old stuff gets used as a crutch. I didn't like that constant nag in the back of my head telling me to go down to the station and do more shows.

The mentality led me to such conclusions as: Hey, if I just cut my show time in half, I could pass the hat twice as many times! Consequently, I would do three ten to fifteen minute mini-shows an hour, netting what would be considered “small” hats, but, since I could do ten to fifteen of these a day, I made more money that anyone else there. I didn’t even have to move my stuff, I would just wait for the crowd to turn over. After awhile, I realized that it surely was a dead end.

In retrospect, it was lucky that I was fired from that marketplace. They didn’t like me because I was too loud and cause too many traffic problems. (Though, the real reason I think is that I made more money than the manager.) One of the memories of that gig that still makes me smile is of me schlepping my stuff out of the site for the last time and running into my replacement as he came in to start doing shows. He apparently had worked many ren festivals as his props looked like they had gathered all the Middle Ages’ soot that hadn’t already stuck to his shirt. Oh yes, he also forgot to wear any shoes that day. Pity, when one is walking downtown in a major city. Good to know that this was the management’s idea of an upgrade. Sigh.

Steven Ragatz

.sig Who is still standing though Union Station has long since gone bankrupted, been abandoned, and subsequently burnt by arson.

[Pokie-Poke]

I only got 3 oxen but thay didnt make me take the wife

no one can ansser that, you have the best show ever, in the best pitch ever, the economy is booming, you go to your spot and it poors rain! I've seen that befor

[Rich Potter]

For the purpose of projecting some ballpark figures:

Say you have a 5-minute show, and it makes $5. There are 60 minutes in an hour, so you can do 20 of those. That's $100 per hour. There are 24 hours in a day. You can make $2400 per day. There are 7 days a week. That's $16,800 per week. Then, 52 weeks a year would bring your total to $873,600.

Not quite a 7-figure income. I'd stick to your day job of doing stock analysis and asking nosy questions.

Love,
Rich

[scot]

I made less than most other performers. I don't try for the big hats. I want to experiment with the ability to fail at the drop of a hat. Maybe it's that I'm afraid to try my best for if I do, I could acually fail.

You can do what my dad did. He made one of the 4 oxen his wife and with the money he saved, bought a speedboat.

[Byron Bertram]

If I don't break a grand a show, I get really cranky, and I'm no fun to be around.

Love Byron

[Hilby]

I can tell you, but after that I have to kill you...

[nick nickolas]

I'd Have to Kill First then Answer Questions !!

[gerry nelson]

So butterflyman, there's no way you'll tell anyone what YOU make, but you don,t mind shooting off your mouth about about how much Brian Hulse makes. Something he probably told you (foolishly, I admit) in confidence

[Dan The One Man Band]

I never count it.

[jonnyflash]

Location and timing are very important,
the bigger hats come from tourist crowds
with high turnover.