How to Make Money as a Magician

It’s not difficult to make money with magic. The point is how much you want to make, and how you want to make it.

Some magicians are actual millionaires, earning tens of thousands an hour for a single gig. The truth is that most people who do magic get stuck along the way and struggle to get past a few hundred a month.

The best way to go further is to have a plan — and to know what works and what doesn't.

At One Ahead, we’ve been sharing for years the best insights and secrets from the magic industry. We do it for our readers and subscribers, and hold nothing back. Our writers are experts who work as performers, consultants, and creators for magic shows worldwide.

Almost all of the most famous magicians started out performing in restaurants and bars.

It’s a great training ground, since you'll have a different audience every time, and sometimes need to work in busy or chaotic environments.

You'll be paid per night, but many choose to offer a package that lets you come back weekly or monthly: take a look at our playbook for restaurant magic residencies.

The fundamental rule for working in these contexts is to make sure customers talk to the owner and staff, and tell everyone how much they loved what you did. Build material that gets people talking about you, that makes you visible in the room, and magic that carries on even after the performance is over.

Working restaurants won't earn you much, and you might only earn a few hundred a month, but it will serve as a springboard to think bigger and get to private events.

Most of the income for most magicians comes from private events — especially corporate contexts.

If in restaurants it's common to be paid hundreds, then in corporate the budget can easily run into the thousands. Sometimes in the tens of thousands.

At private events you may be asked to do different things: close-up, table-hopping, walkaround, or stage magic. We’ve put together five tips to make a living with magic: one of them is to offer a few well-designed packages that you can customise based on the client and the occasion.

The goal is to reach the point where you're not booked as a generic magician, but because they want you. Once you get there, you can raise your fee. At One Ahead, we also shared how you can earn $10,000 more magic bookings this year.

A strategy to earn more as a corporate magician is to become “the most famous X in Y” — where X is your speciality (card magician, comedy magician, etc.) and Y is the area or sector you're in.

If you get to that point, not only will you be able to charge higher prices, but it'll also be easier to get booked because whoever handles the entertainment will be able to understand and explain to the rest of the team who you are in a few words. We recommend reading our guide on how much magicians should charge.

You might be wondering how many clients magicians need. The right mindset isn't to get hundreds of them, but a few good ones. Ideally, fewer than ten, but ones that pay well, and that every year give you high-end recurring gigs.

If you want to be available for private events, remember that people need to be able to find you.

Make sure your site invites people to contact you and prominently features several images of you performing in spaces similar to those where you want to be booked. Whoever books you should be able to picture you in the spaces of their next event easily.

If you’re serious about earning more money with private events, you should invest in your showreel - which might mean travelling to Las Vegas to take part in Penn & Teller: Fool Us.

If you plan to do so, we recommend reading the best advice from previous Fool Us contestants before you go.

While it's true that it's hard to sell tickets for your own show (more on this later), it's also true that certain contexts exist where you can perform as if in a theatre, but without people having bought a ticket to see you.

That's the case with magic venues, cruises and gala shows.

Magic venues are on the rise in some areas of the world. The most famous is without a doubt The Magic Castle in Los Angeles. In Europe, you'll find several, especially in Germany and Spain.

How much you'll earn from magic venues varies a lot. Some, like the Chicago Magic Lounge, have resident magicians as well as rotating performers, while others, like 69 Atlantic in New York, feature different performers every few weeks.

Depending on the case, you might be paid a fair weekly rate for a residency, giving you predictable income, or you might be paid per show or with a ticket split.

What you could earn from these venues depends a lot on the part of the world and how well-known your name is in the magic industry. Still, these are generally excellent opportunities to perform in intimate, well-equipped theatres for a high-end audience, from which more work in private events can follow.

There's a large number of magicians in the world who perform regularly on cruise ships. They get to perform at an extremely high frequency, trying out new material and travelling the world. Cruises are also proving to be very profitable for magicians.

The companies that handle entertainment on board are always looking for new performers, and sometimes publish casting calls that we recommend you keep an eye on.

Working on a ship can involve different conditions; generally, you may be offered payment based on the number of shows or the time you spend on board (rarer). The amount is usually good, and you don't need to be a well-known name in the industry to get good figures.

Be careful, though, about the type of magic cruise ships are looking for: it's often family friendly, light and suited to everyone. If you’re willing to put together the right material for this, you should check out what we think is the best opener for a magic performance.

The circuit of magic gala shows is fairly robust and well-established in Europe, too. These shows take place in theatres or sometimes arenas, and for many stage magicians they're an excellent way to earn money by performing a single act.

Some performers live for years off just ten minutes of magic, and they do it thanks to a combination of gala shows and cruise shows.

Almost all magicians who get booked repeatedly at gala shows made a name for themselves at FISM — what we might call "the Olympics of magic" — which takes place every three years. Whether you should compete at FISM depends on your goals and style of magic: take a look at our analysis on why magicians compete at FISM.

Earnings from gala shows are usually good, and you're paid per show.

The difficulty of earning from gala shows is that there's a limited number of them, and once the "circuit" of these shows is done, you’ll likely have to move to a different sector or come up with a new act.

Most magicians never reach the point where someone pays to see them specifically.

When a magician does a public magic show, it's often for personal satisfaction, or to invite the right people who might give them work in the future.

However, a very small number of magicians earn enormous amounts from their own magic shows.

If you want to aspire to that, you need to work on your magic character, and you often need to go through legacy media like television. Got Talent can be great for magicians who seek more exposure: if you wish to do it, we highly recommend working with a magic consultant and learning how to improve your script for television.

It's possible, though, to create a ticketed show even without a big budget. The advice is to start local by creating a recurring show in your own area and expanding from there. This way, you'll learn how to promote your show to the best of your ability and to sell tickets.

At first, you won't earn much from public shows. In fact, you'll need to watch the budget, and at least try to break even.

But you should be able to get some local press, as well as good photos and videos for your social media, and when the show is refined, you might want to read Luke Oseland’s advice for taking a magic show to a Fringe festival.

Finally, if you have the means, we highly recommend putting together a team of people you trust to help you improve the show so it’s ready for bigger stages. This is what Derren Brown does: at One Ahead, we explained the formula Derren Brown uses to write sell-out theatre shows.

Even top magicians earn more from corporate shows than from television.

Having your own TV special is hard, and it's getting harder by the day — but if you manage to do it, you might be the next Dynamo, David Blaine or Derren Brown, doing great live shows and high-end corporate gigs.

The advice is to study how famous magicians landed their own TV specials, and learn from their stories. Many of them, for example, invested in publicity stunts to get more press and attention from legacy media.

Another possible path is gang shows — the ones with a group of magicians all together.

Overall, TV magicians have strong characters, possibly even more appealing than the single tricks they perform. You’ll need to work on it before choosing what to perform.

Expect to earn little from television anyway. TV is a flywheel that will give you exposure, credibility and interest. It's how you play those that will dictate your subsequent earnings.

Yes, it's possible to make money with magic online. Some magicians are excellent content creators earning in the tens of thousands every month. Julius Dein is a millionaire.

Algorithms have changed the type of magic that's popular online and what it takes to succeed on the internet. To get to good figures, you’ll need to be an expert in social media, and perhaps more skilled at that than at magic itself, in some respects. 

At One Ahead, we followed how Jack Rhodes became a successful YouTube magician - this allowed him to boost his performing career rapidly and to land a touring theatre show. It's a remarkable success story, one that proves the path is possible.

A smart way to be online without becoming a content creator is to leverage partnerships with brands and other creators. Magicians are increasingly common on podcasts, and in other cases some magicians have stood out by appearing in videos from well-known brands that went viral, like the Vanity Fair video featuring Ben Seidman.

Finally, some of you might choose to make money by revealing magic online. It’s a questionable approach, and one that will attract criticism within the community. But you might be in good company: David Copperfield reveals his magic online, too.

The last way to make money with magic is selling products or services to other magicians.

The magic industry has had moments of great dynamism in the 2000s and 2010s, although sales have declined because of economic uncertainty, market saturation and competition with independent creators.

The truth is that most magic published online, independently or through the big companies, earns very little money for its creators.

A very small number of creators, on the other hand, earns a lot - especially those who create exclusive, secret products for the top magicians in the world. At One Ahead, we published an investigation on secret magic products and their creators.

Releasing magic is a pyramid, and to climb it you need to know how to publish profitable magic tricks.

While it's true that few people live off the money earned from magic products, it's also true that enjoying a good reputation in the industry gives you easy access to performances at magic venues, and to lecturing at magic clubs and magic conventions around the world.

Even lectures won’t make you rich - on the contrary, you’ll need to watch your budget in most cases. But it will give you good exposure within the community.

Most magicians with an entrepreneurial mindset publish in the industry and do lectures, and try to maintain a presence there as their performing career grows, so their sales go up as well.

The best strategy for making money as a magician is not to do just one thing. Pick two items from this list, and start pursuing them over the coming months, keeping one as your priority.

The difference between a magician who lands a job and one who doesn't is that the first one was in the right place at the right time. The more things you can do, and the more places people talk about you, the easier it'll be for your name to come up at the right moment.