How YOU can Adopt Multiple Streams of Income as a Magician.
Within this blog, I’ll not only share my multiple streams of income. I’ll run through why you should adopt multiple streams, and how you can add them.
Once you have income, it is crucial to know what to do with your money and what to invest in. I’m not going to focus on that in this blog, but please let me know if you would like me to write on that … Also, Rory already wrote that blog.
My streams of income:
I’ll bullet point them (in order of highest to lowest paying) because, the point of this blog isn’t to tell you how cool I am.
Magic Consultancy: my primary source of income is consulting for other magicians, either remote or in person.
OseyFans Membership: On January 1st, I launched my magic membership. To date, there are 39 magic tutorials available to stream instantly.
Self Produced Products: Every now and then, I create a product to sell to the magic community. The product is then distributed by myself and Murphy’s Magic. This results in a nice paycheque from Murphy’s, and a source of almost passive income from my end.
Investments: I have the majority of my savings in the S&P500, which has historically averaged at 10% per annum… I also have a bit in Solana and Ethereum for shits and giggles.
Royalties: Believe it or not, I still receive royalties from Ellusionist and Lost Art for my published products. Since I wrapped the projects, they have been delivering a nice bit of passive pocket money for me each month.
Those are my main 5 streams of income, there are some other little ones like TikTok creator fund and affiliate sales.
Streams of Income you can adopt INSTANTLY:
It became very apparent during the pandemic that a lot of magicians didn’t have multiple streams of income. This lead to lots of magicians working in retail and office jobs (which there is nothing wrong with).
Weekly Residency:
A residency is a (lower paid) gig for a restaurant, bar or venue. In the same way that a bar may have a house band, you could be their house magician.
Having a few weekly residencies is great, it will allow you to have a safety net of finance in case the gigs aren’t coming in. It will allow you to practice new material, and meet new clients which could lead to future gigs.
I know a few people that have weekly residencies to pay for rent and general spending, so anything they make from gigs and other sources is a bonus.
You can inquire for a residency by arranging meetings with local restaurants and bars, and giving an elevator pitch to the manager (make sure to show them a trick or two). You should always start with what you can offer them, not what they can offer you. Sell them a dream, make them feel like you can double (if not triple) their business.
You can also make some naughty tips from residencies.
Zoom Shows:
This is a bit of an obvious one. HHaving seen one of my close friends make 6 figures last year from Airbnb zoom shows, I felt like an idiot for not getting on board.
The truth is, it might be too late to start this. I’m so happy for all my friends that adopted zoom shows, it shows business acumen and adaptivity.
Zoom is perfect for keynote performances at events and conferences, so it is still highly adaptable.
You can create a Zoom show today.
Upselling:
Upselling magic is no different to selling merch, you can buy 100 small magic sets from Alibaba (which depending on how many you order, you can have the packaging customised to have your face on them) for around a dollar each. Then sell them after your public shows for $10 each.
Another form of this is offering pre made party bags to your kids party client. You can offer 30 party bags for the kids, pre assembled at $5 per bag (cost price <$1) and save the parents a valuable amount of stress and time.
I didn’t believe this worked until I saw a magician at Edinburgh Fringe sell out of magic kits he’d bought for 20% of the retail price from china,
If you are doing zoom shows, you can upsell digitally by dropshipping magic sets or products to clients… To be honest, I’m amazed more zoom magicians aren’t doing this.
I could talk more about the sources of income you can gain with a social media following, if you would be interested in that please leave a comment letting me know!