The Key To Getting More Magic Shows Booked Online
By J.L. Siefers, Fri Dec 9th

This article is the result of a conversation I had with amagician about his website. He wanted to know if I could buildhim a nice looking site that had his name and contactinformation on it. I explained to him the purpose of having awebsite and what you want visitors to do when they land on yoursite.

Why Do You Have a Website?

The number one reason magicians have websites is ego. They wantto be able to say to people, "You can visit my website atwww.bite-me-hard.com." When the person visits the website theyusually see one of two scenarios:

• Brochure Site
• Typical Magician's Site - See Part 2 of this series for anexample.

The brochure site is nicely designed with contact informationand a few pictures. These sites usually look nice and clean. Theissue is visitor conversion. Many people view the site and moveon to another site. They may never return. You have missed outon the opportunity to build a relationship with them. The keyelement often missing with this kind of site is the ability tocapturing the visitor's name and email address so that follow updirect marketing can be done. The direct marketing closes thesale. It is rare for people to hire magicians as an impulse buy.

The typical magician's site is wonder to behold. How can oneperson find so many different ways to use free animated graphicson the home page? It is clear that the magician designing hissite learned how to color text, change fonts, and increase fontsize. All done in the same paragraph! Check out my prior articlelisted above for a detailed discussion of this topic.

Your website exists to get people to give you their permission.That's right, their permission. The goal of the website is toget visitors to give you their name and email. Believe it or notthis is valuable information that is not given away freely. Thewebsite must be structured to induce people to trust you enoughto give this information to you.

This is why brochure sites and typical magician's sites don'tusually work well. If you haven't built a relationship with thepotential client, then it is unlikely they will book your magicshow. It is like it was in high school. You can walk up to theprettiest girl in school and say "Do me!" Chances are it won'tbe effective. Your website must establish a relationship withpotential client and gain her permission. After that you canapproach her and say, "Book me!"

Purpose of Permission Marketing

This approach to marketing is called Permission Marketing. Ithas always been practiced but Seth Godin coined the term withhis book by the same name. Buy a copy and Amazon or your localbookstore. The purpose of Permission Marketing is to turnstrangers into friends, and friends into clients.

I am not recommending spamming people to get more magic shows.The key elements of Permission Marketing are communications fromyou are expected, individualized, and interesting to the person.Let,s look at the elements in the context of emails:

1. Expected - People are expecting emails from youbecause they asked you to send them emails through yoursubscription form on your website. Always use a double opt insubscription system.
2. Individualized - Every email sent byyou should be personalized to the person getting it. I don'tcare if you are sending out ten or one thousand emails. Everyperson should get an email that looks like it was written justfor them.
3. Interesting - The subject of every email must berelated and relevant to the reason the person gave you're hispermission in the first place. If you entice a person to givehis name and email to learn how to use a magic show to createthe perfect birthday party, then don't send emails about a greatbusiness opportunity called Amway.

Another important feature of Permission Marketing is that thereare different levels

David Blaine Rips His Heart Out!
What a thrill!
PAPER NAPKIN ROSE ADDED ON 1/8/05
Learn how to fold a paper bar napkin into a rose!
BartenderMagic.com has a NEW BLOG AND FORUM!
Check em out leave comments!
MISS CHARMING INTERVIEW ADDED ON 01/05/05!
Read are interview with the Beautiful Miss Charming, author of sevaral bartending related books!
A little puzzle to entertain your customers
Challenge your customers to get an olive into a brandy snifter without ever touching the olive.
Another little puzzle to entertain your customers
Take any bar glass and place two quarters on the rim of the glass opposite each other. Ask your guest to remove both quarters from the glass without moving the glass and only using one hand.
Make a ciggarette disapear
Make a cigarette disapear and re-apear. Just like in Mondo Magic.
Make a fool of your friend.
It's O.K. to make a fool of your friend as long as everyone else is entertained. Learn how.
Another way to make a fool of your friend.
Make your friend look like an idiot.
Win a FREE drink
Trick your friends into buying you a free drink.

of permission. Permission levels range fromspam (no permission) to intravenous (sending products out tocustomers without him ordering them). As people give you theirnames and emails you start at the permission scale (just abovespam). Your main task is to use your communications and servicesto move people up the permission scale. While you will neverlikely get permission to just show and do magic shows uninvited(intravenous), you can build a base of trusting and loyalcustomers.

Gaining Permission With Your Website

Your website will impact your ability to gain permission fromvisitors. Two general considerations are content and design. Ifyou have not taken the free Master Course on Selling Services, Istrongly encourage you to do so. The course covers the topics ofcontents and design in more detail. You will find material thatyou can use on your website right now.

People searching the web are looking for good information. Theywill trust and reward those who give them the information theyseek. Many will give you permission to contact them again. Thisopens the door to build trust and gain a loyal customer. Whatkinds of content should the site provide? The simple answer iswhatever the person is looking for.

Let's assume a mother finds your website considering thepossibility of hiring a magician for her daughter's nextbirthday party. She doesn't care that you do gospel illusionshows or trade shows. In fact she might be put off by it. Ifthis magician does all of these other things, how important ismy daughter's birthday party going to be? You must view yourcontent from the visitor's perspective.

Provide content that she can use. For example, you can provide ageneral guide to hosting a magical birthday party. Let her knowif she signs up with her name and email you will send her adetailed step by step guide to hosting the perfect magicalbirthday party. You could also put magic birthday partyinvitations on your site personalized to your magic show, butwith space for it to be individualized to the child and herbirthday party.

With relevant and useful content you will begin to build trust.You will get her to give you her name and email. You provideeven better content and increase her trust. You can contact herabout how your magic show will make her daughter's birthdayparty one to be remembered always. The key to providing contentis to over-deliver on the person's expectations. Remember this:

The design of your site is also important. Your site must beeasily navigated. You want visitors to find the information theyare seeking quickly and easily. Graphics add to the site but canbecome clutter if you are not careful. It should have a cleanlook. Don't be afraid to use a plain white background. It looksgood and text can be easily read. I would avoid reverse colorsfor text. Light text on dark background can strain the eyes ifthere is much material there.

An example of this approach is Learn-Great-MagicTricks.com. Thisnew site is still growing. It is clean looking. Information iseasily found. The content is useful for people learning to domagic. Within one month, the site was listed in most searchengines, had decent rankings, was getting newslettersubscriptions, and most importantly the site was earning money.The point is that this advice works and I use it myself.

Copyright © 2005 J.L. Siefers, All rights reserved.

About the author:J.L. Siefers has been performing great magic for years. He haswritten extensively on many topics in magic. He has shownhundreds of people how to successfully learn to do great magictricks.

Want to learn to do magic? Click now to get your FREE magictricks! http://www.Learn-Great-Magic-Tricks.com

Sign up for The Magic Way newsletter! It's FREE:http://www.learn-great-magic-tricks.com/magic-newsletter.html