3 Virtual Magic Show Add-Ons to Make You More Money if You're a Virtual Magician (for Magicians)

Happy March! This month, in order to mark the three year anniversary of virtual magic shows, I thought we could celebrate by sharing a handful of ideas and add-ons that you could use to double your income in the realm of virtual entertainment. These wonderful options have been time-tested and used for the last two years with awesome results. Clients love them and usually choose at least one add-on for every show. You will have great success if you implement them when quoting clients.

1. Extend Your Virtual Magic Show Length

You can use a time add-on for your virtual magic show to generate more income. You can do this by having a shorter 30-45 minute show as your base offering and then while on the phone tell them you can do an add-on of an additional 15-30 minutes for an added cost. That way the client can basically pick the show length to match their occasion for their specific audience. More often than not clients want a 30-45 minute virtual show; if it’s any longer than that, people have a hard time focusing and they get “zoom fatigue”. It’s recommended that your initial show be 30 minutes and the add-on time offered is 15 minutes. After trying it a few different ways, I’ve had the most success with that timing structure.

2. Magic Workshop Using Household Items as an add on to your Virtual Magic Show

Another wonderful way to extend your time entertaining a virtual group, make more money, and offer something different is to recommend a virtual magic workshop. This is an excellent add-on to a virtual show and works for many occasions and groups. If the virtual magic show is a virtual corporate event then it’s perfect. You can offer this as a great “team building magic workshop” and a way to break the ice amongst employees who work remotely and don’t get to interact face to face often. Magic is a great way to improve confidence, speaking skills and a fun way to connect virtually with clients (all are useful skills in a corporate setting). If the occasion is for a school assembly, then I sell it as a “sneaky way” to teach the kids something fun and interactive after the virtual magic show. Children feel empowered when they learn magic and it helps them to utilize problem solving skills and puzzle-solving skills.

You can offer this as a 15-25 minute experience for teaching one easy magic trick. Don’t put a set time limit on it because you don’t know exactly how long it will take. You want to make sure you’ve given everyone a chance to ask questions, giving personal attention, and make sure the majority (at least 80%) have learned the trick. It’s better to over explain and take a little more time than to end early and have an unhappy customer. Pick a trick that’s visual and easy to do. Make sure it’s with common household items that can be found anywhere. There are some super fun and easy money tricks that don’t require that many props to perform. However, be careful when teaching these. If you’re doing a virtual magic show or virtual event where not everyone in the audience is watching it in America, I’d recommend doing something else that involves different household items for the props list. In many other countries the money is made of plastic and makes some of the magic where you fold the bills hard to do. There are plenty of easy to teach tricks that use household items. If you don’t have any in your repertoire, then Google can be very resourceful.

3. Mailed Magic Supplies and Props for Guests who attend the Virtual Magic Show

Offering physical mailed magic products that your audience either interacts with throughout the show or can use to learn magic tricks (or both) is also a fantastic add-on. Again, this is a bit more difficult to do if many people in the audience are overseas or in different countries but it can triple your income if you do it the right way and make it easy on yourself to mail the items out. Being organized and making simple to use systems is important especially when you have larger orders of 100 or more and 100 different addresses to mail them to.

If you’re mailing within your country or even a nearby country this is a great offering. I’ve had zero trouble mailing items around the United States and even to Canada from California.

You can offer to do the hard work yourself and address, post mark, and mail them to the individual guests. I’d recommend this as it makes this option easy on the client and doesn’t give them extra work. Take the item’s average shipping cost and item worth then multiply that a few times to get the cost of the magic add-on you offer to the client. For example, if a kit is $3 to buy in bulk and $3-$4 to ship then you can sell them for $20 to each person. That way you incorporate your work and time into the sale and you can feel good about the exchange. You wouldn’t want to spend hours packaging up kits only to resent your client before the show even starts. So learn from my mistakes, make sure that your mailed offerings factor in your time cost as well. Then everybody wins.

These kits could be as simple as a branded deck of cards or as complex as an entire official “Custom Named” magic kit. For custom made magic kits I highly recommend the website www.custommagickits.com or if you prefer a cheaper more do-it-yourself approach then you can buy items in bulk from www.alibaba.com and put them together yourself. The possibilities are endless!

Virtual Magic Show Tips:

In conclusion, add -ons are amazing. They will help you triple your income if you can take the time to incorporate them smoothly in your sales pitch. Try not to have more than 2-3 so you don’t overwhelm your client with the multitude of choices. You can also offer add-ons to your in-person live magic shows. For example, if you have a solid 45 minute birthday show, but also have that special illusion trick that takes forever to set up (where the birthday child feels extra special), maybe the trick is really heavy, or just annoying to do in every show. THAT’S PERFECT. -that’s a perfect offering to have as an add-on. Your 45 minute virtual magic show may start as just a case and table with a 10 minute prep but in addition to your base show you can offer add-ons for providing a backdrop or doing more illusions that take time to build, carry and set up. There are many more options you can upsell with and I encourage you to begin thinking of others that are appropriate to your situation and skill-set. Now go make that money and celebrate! Happy three year anniversary to virtual magic shows!