Here is a question. How long would you say it would take for someone starting out to get enough birthday parties to live on. Not necessarily a great deal of money but just enough to survive. Say $25,000 a year or thereabouts.
3 months? 6 months? 5 years?
Let us assume the performer has a good saleable show which is good enough to get rebookings and word of mouth referrals. Let us assume that he also has some idea about marketing but he is starting from scratch.

My estimate is about two years. Am I on the optimistic or pessimistic sided here?

What is the size of your market? What is the competition like?

May factor into the advice you receive.

- Donald

I live in a large city. The market is massive but the competition is too. Many, many magicians of whom (in my opinion only) most are not much good.There are a trememdous amount of clowns to compete against too.

Assuming you are charging an average fee of $125 per show (could be more, could be less depending upon where you live) then you will need about 200 shows in a year to gross $25000 - that's about 4 per week.

I suspect that it will take about two years starting from scratch to get to that level. You should try to do half that amount in the first year, then aim to double your gross for the second year. That's exactly the advice I spell out in the Success in Magic course.

Yes, it is possible to get to that level faster, but that will require a lot more marketing. And don't forget, that's $25,000 gross income. Your business expenses could take 30%-50% of the gross, depending upon how much you invest back into the business.

Good luck.

It also depends how hard do you work, how many shows per day you are able to perform etc. And do not stick only with birthday partys. Create your own small shows also, find some companies to do commercial shows for theyr company (also TV commercials), at nights there are casinos etc. Be creative You are able to make this kind of money even with less than month But then again I live in small Country and here is absolutely no competition

Good Luck

I made 60,000 my first year. This was after getting laid off from a full time job and starting from ground zero. You need to get some good marketing books like Dave Dee's and Eric Pauls. These will help jump the learning curve.

Flourish Dude made $60,000 but we are all not Flourish Dude. I know him in real life and he's a real go getter, a real hard worker, and a consomate professional. I agree with Jim Snack and say 2 years is a good estimate.
Edd