Be a Clown
I thought I’d start out by telling you a little about myself and the way that I make money. I’m in the entertainment business.
I’ve been doing entertainment now for about 10 years and that is one thing that I know works, and it’s not too hard to set it up. Most of the time I’ve done it as an employee for another company, but a few times I’ve done it for myself and now I’ve finally started my own company, so far its going quite well. Our first paying promotion was for a big company in South Africa and they paid us about $400 for a couple of days work, here in SA that’s a lot of money, my brother-in-law does the same thing in the states and he charges a few hundred dollars an hour.
What I do is dress up as a clown and I make balloon sculptures and I do face painting. I started out just making the balloons, I would suggest that anyone interested in doing something like this start like that also. Just pick up a book that teaches some simple shapes, buy some balloons and a pump, and start practicing. Don’t worry if you pop all of them for the first week or so, that’s normal, the secret is not to give up. Some simple shapes to start with are the dog, sword, and the flower. In the beginning you don’t need more then these 3.
The next step is to go out and buy a clown costume (or get a friend to make one). The better the costume, the more professional you look, but start out with something simple.
So now you’re all set up, but still no business. I guess the best place to start is with your family and friends, tell them that you’re offering a service as a clown for their child’s birthday. You should be able to get a few bookings from this alone, and if you’ve printed your business cards (which you should) you will be able to get quite a few referrals from these first few engagements. That should get you going. When I started I asked a few malls if I could walk around the mall offering the balloons to the kids, and they would either pay me, or I’d ask for a tip from the parents, that was a great way to hand out lots of business cards. Sometimes the malls don’t agree to this, but you can also ask the individual shops, the shop will like it because you’re bringing in new costumers, and the mall can’t do anything about it. Restaurants is also a good place to start, a lot of restaurants have kids play areas and you could offer your services to them at a price, or if it’s a very busy restaurant you could just ask the parents for tips. I also got quite good results by printing fliers, and putting them in places where kids are likely to be at, such as schools, restaurants, and kids stores. Agents are a great way to get you started, find out from your local toy store if they know of any entertainment agents, or of any entertainment companies that hire some of their entertainers from outside, then go and offer your services to them.
I’m not happy doing just birthday parties though, and eventually you will want to get hired by company’s to do corporate events, that’s where the money is. There are two ways of doing this, the first way is to just wait till you are a bit well known in your area, and the company’s will start approaching you, the other way is to go and approach them yourself, you can offer your services for company parties, opening’s, special fun days they might have, product promotions, and as a permanent feature during the holidays. You can’t afford to slip up with these guys, if you impress, they will hire you again and again and that will be quite profitable for you.
The best way to start something like this is to start it as a hobby. This job is something you do on the weekends (few people will hire you during the week) so it’s a great job if you’re studying or working during the week and you only have the weekend off. The kind of money you can make varies from place to place, here in SA I charge a little less than 100 dollars an hour, but in the states you could easily charge 100-200 dollars an hour. Lets say you charge 150 dollars an hour, and you do 4 hours a day, two days a week, that would be 1200 dollars a week, or 4800 dollars a month. How’s that for a little pocket money.
Here’s a few simple shapes to wet your appetite:
Just kidding. Maybe I’ll make a simple tutorial for a future post.
Simon
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