Hi
What do you think about selling magic books , tricks and other secrets in social media ? I try to understand why so many , even really famous magician do it now . Secret is a heart of our art and I think is exist so many places like magic shops , hidden magic groups or even this forum to contact each others . Nowadays everyone could open You Tube and watch a tutorial or open a Facebook and buy a magic book . I dream about Annemann years when magic art was really know for that people who really do magic not for every child who has a web connect . I know I will not change the world but in my opinion this is a really big problem for future of magic . Or am I wrong ?

Its simple really. These supposed "big names" arent good enough to make living by performing magic so they try to get some income by other means... 😓 Famous in magic world doesn't mean you have a lot of work in real world. Most best working magicians are people most other magicians have never heard of... They are too busy perform for real people.

Are you talking about marketing to the masses (targeting non-magicians who want to learn the secrets)? Or marketing to magicians, using social media?

I can think of a few magicians off the top of my head who will make viral Youtube, FB, and IG videos, and include a link for all these laymen to "learn the trick here". Emails are collected and sent into a sales funnel. Now the magician has direct access to a ton of laymen who all want to learn the secret. << This isn't good for magic. And yes, it's probably a sign that said magician doesn't do much real world performing.

But as a counter-point to korttihai_82, there's nothing wrong with getting some income by other means. It's called: "multiple streams of income". For instance, I can easily make a functional income by doing performances and taking tips, but I don't want to do this more than a couple times a week. So how do I get more income while still staying within magic? Well, the stuff I perform is usually stuff I create, so I can sell the creations to other performers. If I spent 5 or 6 hours every month making videos and building a product, then I can get at least a few hundred dollars from it over the next few weeks. Social media is where one of my target audiences (magicians/mentalists) hang out during the day, so I can sell something to them to use in their own performances.

It's not always a case of a "big name" not being good enough to make a living performing. For many, it's a matter of having a lot of time between performances (or not wanting to perform constantly), which can be utilized to bring in money through other streams.

That said, yes, there are more than a few magicians out there who are cranking out 2 "new, groundbreaking mentalism principles!" every week... Can't help but question whether they've tried, tested, and refined any of those ideas before blasting them all over the place.

With regards to the Youtube "Magic revealed" kids: most of the tutorials that I've seen only show the mechanics, as they're taught by people who are shooting for likes and subs. I used to do a lot of performances for college students, and quite often, there would be someone who would say: "Oh I've seen this on Youtube, I know how it's done" or "I can find that trick on Youtube." But the key to blowing them out of the water regardless, is to cover the mechanics with a great presentation, so IF they try to find it on Youtube, they'll end up typing in the wrong terms and come back with nothing.

There was a time when a girl described to me a trick her grandfather showed her: someone picks a card, you put it on the top of the deck, cut the deck, spread it face-up, look for the top card, and then you know what their card was. Well, no one had bothered to show her how to apply a k*****d. I did a 'personality reading', using a card she selected. "Based on your speech patterns, as well as the answer you gave to that hypothetical question, you seem like the kind of person who is an inherently loving, even to people you don't know, etc..... so if I had to take a guess as to which card you would pick to suit you, then I would say... the 7 of Hearts."

She thought I was genuinely reading her personality traits based on a hypothetical question. In reality, I had used exactly the same method she had just described to me.

Fortunately, most of these "exposure" videos are taught by people who don't have a clue how to PERFORM (caps for emphasis) an effect, and only know how to execute a method.