The Guide To A Lucrative Party

“The Guide to a Lucrative Party & Club Promoting Business”

By Tarrance Bellamy www.btopnotch.com |

© 2008-2009 All Rights Reserved Top Notch Entertainment Inc.

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LEGAL NOTICE *NOTICE* - Anyone who distributes illegal copies of our book, or uses our trademarked/copyrighted text and/or images without permission will be charged with a federal copyright infringement lawsuit in accordance with The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The following information is for entertainment purposes only.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS: A. Introduction B. My Promotion Background C. Getting Started D. Targeting Customers E. General Tools of the Trade 1: Glossy Flyers 2: eFlyers 3: Social Networking Sites 4: eMail Blasts 5: Phone Calls 6: Text Messaging 7: Media List/Press Releases F. Running The Show 1: Make it Legit 2: Picking a Venue 3: Let’s Make a Deal 4: Hiring a DJ/Band 5: Party Themes 6: Big Birthday Bucks G. How I Turned $300 into $1000 Profit

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H. Advanced Promotion Techniques 1: Photography/Videography 2: Professional Website 3: Advanced Phone Calls 4: Advanced Social Networking 5: Market Research 6: Release a Mix CD 7: Radio Ads I. Tips for Hiring Sub-Promoters J. Importance of Customer Loyalty K. Teaming up with Other Promoters L. In Conclusion

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A. Introduction Hello and welcome to the Nightclub Promoter Handbook! I’m guessing you are interested in a possible career or part time job as a club & party promoter. That’s great! In my opinion, being a promoter is one of the most fun, rewarding, and lucrative jobs out there. Probably the best there is. You know you’ve found a great career when working doesn’t feel like work. You know you’ve found an AMAZING career when working feels like a party!

What is a nightclub promoter? It is someone who informs others about events, and convinces people to go to those events. The more people you can get to come to your parties, the more money you make. A promoter helps advertise an event to as many people as possible, getting as many people through the doors as possible. Sometimes a promoter is responsible for hiring the entertainment for the night (DJ or band). As a club promoter, you get to drink, dance, and hang out with your friends while making money at the same time.

It is a great way to meet people, and it can make you a kind of mini celebrity. Everyone wants to know the club promoter! A club promoter always knows where all the hottest parties are at, and can usually hook you up with reduced entry and free drinks!

Now some people think a nightclub promoter is the person in charge of thinking up themes for a club night. While that can be the case in some situations, most of the time it is not. A club will hire a full time in-house promotions/marketing person to think up themes or for booking special entertainment.

As an outside promoter, you are responsible for filling the club with people, that’s it. It doesn’t matter what kind of party it is. More people at the club means more money in alcohol sales for the club owners.

Depending on the venue, the average nightclub patron can be expected to drop $20-$100+ at the bar.

Multiply that by 600+ people, and you can see the huge profit potential for these nightclubs! That is why the club owners can afford to pay promoters the amount they do. Clubs are more than willing to pay you to lure in this massive revenue.

There are a few different types of promoters. You can be a freelance promoter working on your own, work as a sub-promoter for a promotions company, or run your own promotions company and hire others to help you promote. We will go into how clubs pay promoters later on, but generally a promoter or promotion company gets paid per person they bring to the party.

There are many benefits to being a promoter, aside from the fact that you’re getting paid to party. You’ll eventually get invited to most of the hottest parties around and will never have to spend a dime to get in. This is because you’ll be “in the business.” You meet a ton of great people from all walks of life, creating long term friends and business connections. You get free drinks when you go out and even free dinners in some cases. But the best part of the whole job is that it is your own business, you work for yourself rather than someone else. You can proudly tell people you’re a business owner. Once you start promoting, you’ll soon see that working hard at a day job you hate to make someone else loads of money, is a joke. Promoting is the best job there is!

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I’ve spent many, many years in this business. I know what works, and what doesn’t. I’ve made the mistakes. I’ve had the great successes. Hopefully by reading my handbook, you’ll learn how to take promoting to a higher level of fun and income, without having to make the same mistakes I did. This is a crash course in making money with club promotions!

It’s easier than you think to get started as a promoter. There are not too many barriers to entry.

But because of this, greedy promoters oftentimes hold the secrets to making it big in this business, well, a secret. They don’t want competitors reducing their profits. Screw that. I’ll give you the tools and knowledge you need to get started. I want to share this information with anyone who has strong ambition and wants to work for themselves as a nightclub promoter, because I believe there is nothing else like it in the world. It’s the best job there is, and I am pretty damn confident in my ability. I am certainly not afraid of teaching some new people the ropes, especially if they live in a different market than me! Promotions is a worldwide business after all.

Promoting is truly one of the best jobs you can have. It’s your own small business. You don’t have to answer to anyone but yourself. I get to sleep in late every day if I feel like it. I get to party all night long, every day of the week if I feel like it. I get to go on vacation whenever the hell I want to, without having to ask some boss if it’s “ok”. I can work when I want to. I get to do all this, while at the same time making over $90k a year. I have to say, it’s not a bad living. Not bad at all. Are you ready to learn how I do it?

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B. My Promotion Background I started off promoting in college. This is probably the best possible place to start. You have a great combination of people away from home for the first time with money from their parents, a huge target market, and they’re all ready to let loose and party! It is pretty easy to meet people who want to party in college. You’re job is to show them where the best party is at!

I started my promoting career by helping a DJ friend of mine throw fraternity parties in college.

He’d plan the event with the frat, and then give me a bunch of fliers to hand out to all my friends. I had a different circle of friends than he did, so this added to the amount of people that would show up to our events. I’d usually get paid about $60 to help him promote for the weekend. All I would do is go to my normal classes and hand out flyers, call my friends and tell them that THIS was the party to be at that weekend, and that’s pretty much it. It was a pretty easy way to make a little extra money every weekend.

After a while, I heard that the promoters for some nightclubs in town had guestlists. They got paid per person they brought to the party, not a flat fee. I thought that I was probably bringing in at least a good 30 to 40 people each night, and if I was paid per person like these other guys, I would make more money. Eventually, I told my buddy that I wanted to re-work our arrangement, and get my own list. So all my friends that came to the party would use my name at the door to get in, and I’d get credit for getting them there. This way, I’d get paid $3 per person that used my list to get in.

This had advantages for both of us. He is still making money on the party, because he charges each person on my list $10 rather than $15 at the door. So minus the $3 that goes to me, he’s still making $7 per person that I bring to the event. So even though I’m doing all the work to get my friends to go, he’s making $7 on each of them. But because I’m making $3 per person, it increases my drive to get more people to the party, because the more people I bring, the more money I make. So it made me work harder. In turn, this made him more money as well. It turned into a very lucrative win/win situation for both of us. Once word got around that I could get everyone into the party cheaper, it didn’t take much work to get everyone asking to be on my “list”.

I started branching out from just telling friends, and started approaching people I didn’t know about my events. Telling strangers about great parties they should check out is really pretty easy. I also quickly learned it’s also a great way to meet girls! All I do is carry some party flyers with me, talk to people about the event and give them a flyer. I’d tell them “Just say you’re on my list at the door for reduced entry and VIP treatment. Come find me when you get in!”

At the end of the night, I would get paid cash based on how many people said my name at the door to get in. I was soon easily making $200-$300 a weekend this way. This is probably the best way for people to get started in promoting. Working under someone else in the beginning can be beneficial for many reasons. You can still make good money as you learn the ropes, and you can try out different techniques without having to worry about loosing any of your own money if they don’t work out.

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C. Getting Started Now, you could just read this whole guide and start your own promotions company right off the bat. I wouldn’t recommend doing this if you don’t have ANY previous experience as a promoter, but in theory you could try. If you’re new to the promotions game, the best way to learn is to work for a promotions company as a sub-promoter under someone else. You will still be able to earn money while you learn, and after reading my guide you’ll probably be one of the top promoters for the company anyway.

The reason for this recommendation is that most nightclubs or bars will want to see some kind of “resume” of promotions experience before they sign any kind of contract with you. They will need proof that you’ve done promotions before, unfortunately just reading my book and starting a company from scratch will probably not convince them. But this really depends on the area you live in. If there are already a lot of promotion companies working in the area, it’s best to work for one of them to start off.

Land some real-world experience that you can put on a resume. But if there aren’t currently any promotion companies in your area, than it is a bit more feasible to start one up yourself right away.

Getting started working under a promotions company isn’t that hard at all. Promotions companies are always looking to hire more promoters. They only have to pay people based on their success, so it never hurts to hire as many people as possible. If one of their promoters isn’t getting heads through the door, they don’t get paid. It’s that simple. That’s the beauty of the commission structure that is used in promotions.

To find a company to work for, start collecting flyers from events you might want to promote for. A venue will either have its own promotions people in house, or hire an outside promotions company. You can work for either. The party flyers should tell you who the promotions company is (if there is one). Look for a phone number or website. You can also call the venue and ask them who promotes their parties. Or just go into the party and ask around. Another great place to look is CraigsList.org. Promotion companies love to use this bulletin board site to advertise promotion jobs.

You want to try and get a job with a company that throws good parties. Make sure to attend a few of their events and find out if you are going to enjoy them. It’s always better to enjoy the events you are promoting for! It’s MUCH easier to convince people how much fun the party is if you actually like it yourself.

Positive Traits of a Nightclub Promoter: When you are getting interviewed for a promotions job, there are a couple things you should keep in mind. Promoters are looking for a certain kind of person. While anybody can promote, there are certain traits that stand out in this business. . Outgoing & Friendly . Ambitious www.btopnotch.com |

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. Wants to Make a LOT of Money . Has Many Friends . A Leader . Creative Thinker When interviewing or inquiring about a position, make sure to highlight these traits and you’re much more likely to get hired on. Even if you don’t think you have all these traits, don’t worry. Just pretend. Once you start, you’ll get better at all these things. When I first started, I wasn’t very outgoing to people I didn’t know. But working in promotions changed that pretty quick. When you realize you can double your money by talking with total strangers, you learn to be more outgoing. The same goes for all these traits. These are the traits a promotion company wants to see in it’s promoters, so make sure to say what they want to hear!

HOT TIP: Make sure you are not working for a start-up promotions company. Work with a company that has experience. The best way to check this is to check out the company’s website or MySpace page. If they don’t have a lot of MySpace friends, or the site(s) look sub-par, skip them and find someone else who looks more professional. Make sure to ask about events they’ve done in the past. Ask to see flyers.

You’ll be able to tell who’s experienced and who isn’t.

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D. Targeting Customers Now that you are working for a promotions company, it’s time to start getting people to your events. In general, you want to get as many people to come to your events as you can. But there are certain types of people you want to spend more energy getting to attend than others.

Girls, Girls, Girls: Everyone loves girls. If people know a party will be filled with hot girls, it will always draw more guys AND girls to the party. If your parties get a reputation for having a lot of ladies attending, you will have a much easier time getting people to show up. It’s easy to get guys to go to a party, but a bit harder to consistently get hot girls. But if the girls are there, the guys will follow.

Hot As Hell: Attractive people is another group you should target your events to. It is human nature to gravitate to good looking people. Just look at what advertising companies feed to us on TV. Is it fair, no. But it’s how our brain works. We are subconsciously trying to find an attractive mate to breed more attractive children who will have more success in life. It’s a primal instinct. Feed the primal instinct. If your party is filled with beautiful guys and girls, more people will want to go.

Popular People: Popular people have many friends. Lots of friends means more potential customers and word of mouth advertising. There is usually a person in every circle of friends who plans outings for the group, tells everyone where the hot spots are. You want to befriend these people and do everything in your power to convince them to bring their friends to your parties. If they bring ten people, and each of those ten people tell 2 people, and each of those people tell 2 people, you’re party is going to grow exponentially fast. And so will your income!

Know Your Crowd: There are some people who like laid-back lounges, some like sports bars, some like wine bars, and some like higher end nightclubs. You have to know what kind of crowd you are going to cater to. If all your friends like high end nightclubs, don’t try to force them to go to your party at a sports bar. People can change their tastes though, so be willing to change with what your target crowd wants. For example, in college most of my friends went to bars for the most part, so that’s where I promoted. But as they got older, I started seeing more and more of them wanting to party at more mature nightclubs or lounges. So I changed my ways and started promoting at these types of places. You have to adapt & change to what your crowd is into, or you won’t last long in this business.

I know some of these ideas may seem like clichés, but take it from me, targeting these types of people this way will always increase your income. I’ve been in the business for a long time and consistently see results using these tactics.

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E. General Tools of the Trade Successful party promoters use many different tools to keep organized, and to send updated information about parties to their customers. You need to utilize all these tools creatively to become successful.

Glossy Flyers: If you are working for a promotion company or directly for the club, you should be provided with physical flyers for the event. These should be colorful, double sided, glossy, professionally designed flyers. This is the old staple of nightclub promoters. Passing out flyers has been going on forever. Some people may tell you it’s outdated, but in my experience it can still bring people through the doors if it’s done right. Some companies/clubs will even place your name on the flyer too, to help you in your promotions. Often it will say something like “Hosted By:” and then list off the promoters by name. This helps because you can tell people to come to your event. It’s much more personable, and makes people feel like you are an important guy (or girl) when they see your name on a nice flyer.

This also helps people remember to use your name at the door, so you get credit for bringing them. If the company you work for doesn’t currently do that, get them to start! (or wait until you start your own company…) If you happen to be throwing the party yourself, I highly recommend getting your flyers printed at PS Print. It is my favorite online print company, because it’s always the cheapest (they’ll match any quote) and you get high quality glossy flyers and fast shipping times.

Make sure to set aside a few hours a day (depending on how much time you have to work) to hand these out to potential customers. Go to high traffic areas like malls, college campuses, downtown areas, tourist spots, etc. If you’re in school, leave class a few minutes early and hand them out in the halls. Throw them under dorm room doors. Be careful, I’ve been chased out of a dorm by security this way If you’re flyering on the street make sure to take the time to greet people with a smile, introduce yourself, tell them about your party, and highlight any benefit they may get for using your name at the door. Depending on the arrangement that could mean reduced admission, VIP treatment, a free drink, no waiting in line, etc. If they seem somewhat interested, ask them their names (you want to learn to get better at remembering names) and tell them to let the doorman know they are on your “list”. A “guestlist” makes people feel special, and more inclined to go to your event. Out of all the people you could ask, you “picked” them. It’s subconsciously strokes their ego. Plus, if they go without saying your name, you won’t get credit.

When you go on these street promotion trips, make sure to dress nice. Look like a professional.

Look and act like you are throwing the party yourself. Make people feel special. Smile. Don’t be annoying, and don’t be too pushy. Sometimes having a friend or girl/boyfriend help you will make the time go by quicker. It helps to have someone of the opposite sex help, so you can each target customers of the opposite sex. Flyering is still a great cheap way to let people know about your event. Be creative! e-Flyers: www.btopnotch.com |

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These are just digital versions of the physical flyers. The promotion .jpg format, and big enough to read clearly. You are going to use these for your email blasts, posts on nightlife forums, MySpace, etc.

Keep all your different eFlyers well organized on your computer. You can also use Photoshop or some other graphic editing software to make a prominent spot for your own name on the eFlyer, so people will remember use your name at the door. This can be done easily by creating a white box over part of the flyer, and inserting your name. See example below:

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Social Networking: One of your best tools is MySpace and Facebook. They are a great way to meet people who may be interested in attending your parties. You can target certain age groups, genders, and geographical areas. If you already have a page, here are some tips to improve it.

First, make sure you have an easy to remember MySpace address. You have to be able to tell people the address and have them remember it, even if they’ve been drinking. The best is if it is the same name as your list, as well as your own name. For example, MySpace.com/bobsmith. You want people to remember what name to say at the door so you get credit for them. Keeping things like your email address, MySpace address, and door list name all the same will make things easier to remember and increase your income. If this isn’t currently the case, you may want to create a new MySpace account specifically for promoting. If you are going to do that, maybe think ahead a little for when you decide to break out and start your own promotion company, so you don’t have to do all of this work over again in the future.

Make sure your page is designed well. A sloppy or busy page will turn people off and they won’t stay long. Use a MySpace editor if you don’t know HTML very well. Just search for one on Google, there are a ton of them. Use a simple background, with a lot of solid color. If the background is too busy, people can’t read the content on your page, and will leave. Use only 3 or 4 colors for your theme throughout the page. Keep things organized and neat. Use a lot of photos of the parties you are promoting, but not so many that the page is extremely slow to load. That will mean taking a lot of photos yourself or getting photos from someone else. I’ll go into the importance of photography later on. Make sure you’re posting the e-Flyers for your parties on the page too.

Once you have your MySpace & Facebook pages set up, you have to start dedicating an hour or more a day to adding “friends” to your page, in your party demographic. You want as many friends as possible. Like everything else, the key to making money in this business is numbers. Use the browse feature to target an age group and area that your parties are going to cater too, and start adding! There used to be MySpace adder programs that helped me add massive amounts of friends in short order, but at the time of this update MySpace has made it almost impossible for these programs to work well anymore. You’ll have to do it one at a time. But you can easily add a person every 30 seconds once you get the hang of it. Spend an hour a day doing that, and you’ll start to see your numbers grow.

E-Mail Newsletter Blast: You should start collecting email addresses from your customers (party people) and potential customers. You want to start sending out a weekly email “blast” that lists all the events you’re promoting, as well as reviews and photos from recent events. For email blasts, I recommend using a mailing list service to make sure your updates aren’t getting sent into junk mail boxes. I’ve tried many different companies, and the one I’ve had the most success with is Get Response. These list services can usually cost $50-$100 a month, but Get Response is under $20, and does just as good if not better than the others. A good email list company is a necessity in the promoting business. Managing your email list and newsletters with a service like this will help keep your messages organized, and it also significantly www.btopnotch.com |

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increases the % of delivered emails (so your email doesn’t go into a Spam folder). You can also track how many people open your messages, and if they click on anything. It’s easy to put a signup box on your MySpace page or website for people to subscribe to your newsletter, the company has easy to read instructions on how to set it up once you get an account.

Now, email blasts aren’t going to do much for you if you don’t have a large mailing list to blast them to. The best single way to start collecting email addresses is to ask for them at parties. Take a notepad and go around asking drunk party people for their name and email address. You can say it’s for your party newsletter, but I actually have better luck getting people to give up their contact information if I tell them it’s for a contest to win 2 VIP tickets to the next event. It doesn’t really matter if you are planning on giving away tickets or not, most people won’t remember the next day anyway. If you actually have the ability to get them free VIP tickets, even better.

You have to make sure you look professional though. Get a nice leather bound folio for writing the information in. Dress nice. If you can, hire a hot female friend to do this work for you. People are more willing to give up personal email information to hot girls! At the end of the night, put all your email addresses and names into an Excel spreadsheet to keep them all organized. You can upload this information to the mailing list website of your choice ( I use Get Response.)

Don’t over-use your email blasts. Try to limit it to only 1 blast a week. The best time to send them is a day or two before the actual event, longer than that and they may forget, too soon and they may already have plans. If you over blast your emails, you’ll look like a spammer and people will take themselves off your email list, and you’ll lose them as a customer. In your emails, list the upcoming events, flyers, and a couple photos of hot people from the parties last week so they can see what they missed. If you’re graphically inclined, a fancy newsletter header will help catch people’s eye.

Email lists are a huge asset to you as a promoter. You can brag about them to potential employers, or when negotiating a promotion deal on your own (which we will get into later). If you have a list with 10,000 names on it, all you need is 1% of those people to show to your event up to make some good money. It takes a ton of work in the beginning to build up your list, but once it’s large enough, it’s worth thousands of dollars in income!

Phone Calls: Make sure you get a great cell phone or PDA. This is going to be one of your most important tools, as important as your computer. Don’t be afraid to buy a nice one, because when you’re making $2500 a week just using your phone, a $400 iPhone is a worthwhile investment.

The best way to get people to show up to your events is by regularly calling and reminding them about it. As a promoter, you need to be calling people up all the time. Phone calls are much more personal, and make people feel more important then if they just get an email. You’ll also be able to gauge how successful a party might be from talking with people, rather than just wondering if they even opened that email you sent. Keep the numbers, names, and photos of every person you meet on your phone. Photos will help you remember who people are. You’re going to make a TON of friends as a www.btopnotch.com |

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promoter, and only those promoters that can remember the names and faces of their customers are going to get steady, repeat business from those people. So take a quick snap shot of every person you meet, to help you remember who they are. That way, when you see them at your party after you called them earlier that day, you can go chat with them by name and increase your personal relationship with them. Its little things like this that give you a great reputation, and increased word of mouth business.

All throughout the week I’ll be making phone calls to the hundreds of numbers on my phone, asking people what they are doing Friday night.

The conversation goes something like this: “Hey Jill, just wanted to call and see what you and your girlfriends were up to tomorrow night. I’m throwing the XYZ party at club ABC again, I’d love for you girls to join me. If you feel like stopping by and partying with us, just drop my name at the door before midnight to avoid the line and for reduced entry.

It’s shaping up to be an amazing party this weekend! I hope you can make it. Find me inside and I’ll buy you a drink!”

Now Jill and her friends have a possible party idea should they decide to go out, and Jill feels special because she has the party “hook up” for her friends, plus I’ll buy her a drink if she shows up with them. If I’m making $5 per head at the door, and Jill shows up with 5 people, I just made $20 ($25 minus the $5 drink I’ll buy her if I’m out of free drink tickets) and all it took was a 1 minute phone call. When you do this a hundred times, you can see how the money starts to add up in your bank account! But the key to getting Jill and her friends down to the party every week is the little personal touches. You knowing what she looks like, calling every week, not being too pushy, buying her a drink if she comes with a bunch of people, etc. Because your phone and it’s information is so important to you in this business, you must back it up should you get drunk and forget it in a cab or something (I’ve lost a few phones that way). The info on your phone is worth untold thousands of dollars. Make sure to sync it with your computer every couple days. I’d also recommend spending some money with your cell provider to back up the contact list as well. It’s usually only like $5 a month extra (if that), and the insurance it provides is well worth it.

Text Messages: When you’re getting information from people, ask if it’s ok for you to send them last minute VIP party info text messages. Generally, if someone has offered up their cell phone number to you, they are usually ok with you sending them a text message once in a while. Make sure to let them know you won’t spam them with text messages; it would just be for special events you want them to know about. When you send text messages, don’t make it look like they are on some generic list. That will turn people off, and you’ll look like a spammer. Make the message look like it was made specifically for them, personalize it as much as you can. Give it the feel of an actual conversation, not like a robot that sent it to 300 people.

Another great way to set up a huge text message list for promoting your events and sending out mass text messages is a service called Club Texting. What I do to make the most of this great service is www.btopnotch.com |

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hold a drawing for a pair of VIP tickets, a free bottle, or some other incentive for an upcoming event. I’ll send out an email blast advertising the drawing. It will say something like: “Use your cellphone to text the word PARTY to #12345 for a chance to win 2 FREE VIP tickets to Club XYZ by Thursday at midnight!”

Everyone wants to win VIP tickets, so they all text the info, and they get an automated response that says something like “Thank you for your entry! We will call the winners later this week.” But now all those people that sent in a text message have been added to your Club Texting account’s text message list. You can text them about all your future parties from now on! It’s a sneaky way to get people on your text message list who may have not given out their phone number to you otherwise.

It’s not good to send out text messages many days before an event, I find that they work much better the same day. Send them out that night, something like “The party is already slammed tonight!

Why aren’t you here? Stop by XYZ if you get a chance!”. This way, if the bar they are at happens to suck, they are more than likely to head over to your party. You should send this out before your guestlist cut off time if you can (if there is one), so they don’t have to pay full price if they do come by your party.

Send this text out to everyone in your phone. Even if it’s a few hundred. You’ll be surprised how often this gets people through the doors, and money in your pockets.

HOT TIP: If someone texts you to take them off your text message list, DO IT. I can’t stand promoters that spam me messages about events after I’ve told them to stop. SPAM is illegal. But even more important, your reputation will go down the tubes. You’ll be “that shady promoter”. Don’t be known as that guy, or you’ll never be successful. Take them off your list if they ask.

Media List: What is a media list? It’s a list of important media contacts of course! Newspapers, Blogs, Magazines, Internet Forums, etc. When you are having a party, you want EVERYONE to know about it.

That means calling up the nightlife/entertainment writer for your local newspaper, and asking if they might be interested in writing a story about the event (or even better, YOU!). At least make sure the event is listed in the newspaper or magazine’s “Calendar of Events”. Same with internet blogs. Keep a list of popular nightlife or entertainment specific internet blogs, and regularly send them press releases of your events. Make sure to include the discount people will get for using your name at the door….

Internet forums are another good spot for free advertising/publicity. Make sure to post info on your upcoming party on every relevant internet forum you can find, and include information on contacting you to get on your “list”. The best way is by email, so you can snag the email address of everyone who contacts you about the party to use for future email blasts.

Your own personal Media List should continue to grow over the years, and you’ll get to know the people on that list pretty well. This is a huge incentive to getting free publicity for you and your parties. You should treat these blog owners & entertainment writers well. Take them out to eat or invite them out for drinks every once in a while, remember their birthday, etc. Having these people on your www.btopnotch.com |

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good side is a huge money maker when they start writing about your events all the time because they like you. You can use all the previously mentioned promotion tools if you’re promoting for yourself, or under someone else (like a club or promotion company). A bit later on in the handbook, I’ll go into some more advanced tools you can use once you’re running your own promotion business, making deals with clubs, when you actually have some money to spend.

www.btopnotch.com |

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F. Running The Show If you’re reading this guide, you’re either someone who is brand new to promoting, or an experienced promoter working under someone else who wants to break off and start their own business. In this section I’ll go over the proper way to run your own profitable promotion business on your own. Because no one likes working for someone else.

Make it Legit: There are plenty of good books out there on starting your own company, so I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty details here. But if you plan on making a career out of promoting, no one will take you seriously unless you are a legitimate company. It really doesn’t cost as much as you think to start your own company. There are plenty of “Register Your Business for Only $499!” scams on the internet, but don’t use them. It’s really not that hard to do it yourself, and much cheaper. Go to the Secretary of State’s website for the state you live in. Find the section on registering an LLC (limited liability company) with the state. It usually costs between $80 and $150 to get the license (depending on your state). Next, go to the IRS website and request a business tax ID (like a social security number for your business). This is free.

Finally, walk into a bank with the paperwork the state sent you for your business registration and your new tax ID number, and open a bank account for your business. BAM! You now have your own company.

As I am not a lawyer, I will not go any further than that. But you should also secure business liability insurance as soon as you can, in the unlikely case that someone gets hurt at one of your events.

The club usually has this insurance, but people can always (and sometimes do) sue the promoters if they feel like it. You also may have to register your business with the city you are doing business in. Check your local laws.

Pick a Venue: Picking a venue can be one of the most important things you have to do as a promoter. It’s good to know which venues are “promoter friendly”, because not all of them are. Some will have their own in house promotion team, and don’t want to hire outsiders. But many clubs would rather not deal with inhouse promotions, and are happy to hire outside promotion companies to do the work for them.

When looking for a venue, you want to keep an eye out for a couple things. Do you personally like the venue? Don’t promote some club you yourself don’t like. If you really don’t like the place, others probably won’t like it either.

Make sure the venue is in an accessible location. If the club is in the middle of nowhere, nowhere is where your profits will go. As the saying goes: Location, Location, Location! Pick somewhere that is easy to get to, has a lot of foot traffic both at night and during the day. If the place has a bad reputation, stay clear. Only when you’ve been doing this successfully for many, many years will you be www.btopnotch.com |

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able to go to a spot and turn it’s reputation around with some great events. But this is hard even for veteran promoters to do. Reputations die hard. So stay clear of these places for now, even if they offer you great incentives to work with them. In this business, incredible deals are almost ALWAYS too good to be true.

Lets Make a Deal: There are many, many different ways you can get paid as a promoter. The one I come across most is the promotion company taking the full door revenue, while the club keeps bar sales. But this really depends on they type of club, type of city, and how greedy or desperate the club owner is. I’ll give a little breakdown on the other combinations. #1: Promotion company takes door revenue, plus a % of bar sales (10% is normal). #2: Promotion company gets a flat fee, plus a percentage of door & bar revenue. #3: There is no cover charge at the door, so promotion company gets a flat fee or % of bar revenue, or both. #4: Commissions from “PreSale Tickets”, “Table” or “Bottle” sales.

You’ll want to negotiate with the club owner/manager about how you get paid. If you’re getting paid based on bar sales, most of the time there is a “minimum” that the club will need to see in sales before you get any cut. For example, the minimum may be $1000. If the bar doesn’t do $1000 in sales, you won’t get paid any % of the bar revenue. So if the party flops, you lose out. Nothing’s a free lunch.

Sometimes, the bar will require that you pay the difference if the bar minimum is not met. They don’t want to lose money risking a gamble on you and your party. So for instance, say the bar only does $800.

You will be responsible for paying the club the extra $200! This is often part of the agreement, and written in a contract prior to the event. So while it is possible to make a ton of money in this business, make sure you don’t promise more than you can live up to, as it can bite you in the ass!

Usually the higher the cover charge you want to charge people, the higher the bar minimum will be. Your chances of filling the venue go down the more you charge people at the door, so the club wants to compensate for that risk. Often times the best way to start off is to not charge a cover charge at all, but to just take a % of the bar sales. This way, should your party happen to flop, you’re less likely to have to pay the club because you’ll get more people through the door with free entry, and chances are they’ll buy enough alcohol to meet the minimum. It’s better to break even than to have to pay the club for all your hard work!

“Table” and “Bottle” sales are essentially the same thing. Club patrons pay a ridiculous amount of money for a bottle of alcohol, and in return they get their own private table, pitchers full of mixers to mix the drinks themselves, and a feeling of exclusiveness. That $30 bottle of Grey Goose may cost $300 when you get it with “Bottle Service”. This is a huge profit margin for the club! They love selling bottles.

Many times you can get a commission for pre-selling tables or bottles for them. The commission can www.btopnotch.com |

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easily be up to $100 or more. But that is something that the club will work out with the promoters on a case by case basis.

Hire a DJ or Band: Sometimes part of the deal is that you provide the entertainment. It will depend on the particular club. It can be much easier for the nightclub/bar if you hire the band or DJ that will get the biggest crowds. Club owners can often be old guys that don’t know what’s cool or in style any more.

Some clubs could care less about spending time and money tracking down quality entertainment. So often they’ll have you provide it.

Many times the club will help with the costs of doing this, they just don’t want to deal with the details. But not all places will help you with this cost. Do you have a friend that has a popular band you may want to promote, or do you know a great DJ? As a promoter, you will want to find a balance between the cost of the entertainment, and how much profit you’ll be making. This again comes down to knowing your target customers. Some crowds could care less who the DJ or band is, but for some people it’s the only thing that will bring them out.

When hiring a DJ or band, you’re always better off with someone that has a following of some sort. Someone that can bring heads through the door without fail. So do a little research. Hit the clubs.

You don’t want to overpay for someone who can’t fill a venue. You also want to make sure you don’t hire someone who thinks it is their job to “educate” the crowd in strange music. While there is a market for those people, it is generally pretty small. If you are in this business to make money, you have to cater to the masses. Many times that means commercial Dance Music or HipHop that the crowd knows and loves. If your crowd is into House music, don’t hire a Trance DJ. Know the differences. Know your customers.

Party Themes: This is a quick list of party themes I’ve used in the past with great success. If you have a great idea for a theme, let us know about it! If we like it we’ll add it to the next version of this guide along with your website address. . New Year’s Eve (one of the most profitable events of the year) . Martin Luther King Day . Valentine’s Day . Spring Break (if you live in a Spring Break location, this one is pure gold!) . Summer Solstice . School’s Out . 4th of July www.btopnotch.com |

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. Euro Trash . Labor Day . Back To School . Halloween (my favorite one!) . Black Party (everyone wears black) . White Party (everyone wears white) . Superbowl Party . Sexy Secretary and Sleazy CEO Party . Full Moon Party . Lingerie Party . School Girl/Boy Party . 20’s/60’s/70’s/80’s Party (these are fun!) . Pimp & Hoe Party I generally recommend that you use these gimmicky “theme” parties very sparingly. Maybe once every 3 months. They can be a lot of fun, but they can also be overdone. If you have competing promoters that are doing these also, people can get bored going to the same types of events. It’s better to have a reputation for quality, not gimmicky events. But throwing one of these themed events once in a while can be a great cash generator, and is loads of fun. Just don’t overdo it.

Big Birthday Bucks: If you really want to rake in big money as a nightclub promoter, birthdays are the way to do it.

Not everyone is the type of person who goes out 4 nights a week to party. But almost everyone goes out and spends money on birthdays.

When you are building your mailing list, try and get as many birthdays for everyone on your list that you can. I actually keep a separate, backup mailing list on a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel. This is in addition to my Get Response mailing list. Everyone on that list is organized by birthday, because you want to concentrate on those people who’s birthdays are coming up. These people, and their friends, are definitely going out and spending money. You have to make sure they’re spending that money with you!

If you are working with a really nice club, they may sell tables or bottles. Many times, you can get a commission by selling these for the club. Birthdays are the best time to do this! When someone is having a birthday, they are much more likely to spend $300 for a private table and a bottle of overpriced www.btopnotch.com |

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alcohol to share with all their friends for that special night. That can easily turn into a $100 commission for you (depending on your arrangement with the club).

So every week check your list to see who’s birthdays are coming up within the next 3 weeks.

Make sure to send them separate, personalized emails once a week reminding them that they can have a great time at your party. A week before their birthday, give them a personal phone call about it. Let them know the bottle specials, and offer to get them and their friends into the club for free (if you get a big cut of the bar sales) or at a discount (if you are taking the cover charge). Be a salesman. Give them a good reason to come to your party with all their friends, and it’s pure profit in your wallet.

Birthdays have made me a ton of money in this business, and if you stay on top of your customers, be friendly and remember who they are, they’ll reward you with having their birthday at your event.

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How I Turned $300 into $1000 I’m sure you’ve all been waiting to know how I turned $300 into $1000 on my very first party as a promoter. I’m telling you anyone can do it if you put the time and effort into it. But this is no “get rich quick” scheme, you need to work hard. But the hard work pays off in the long run.

By the time I threw this event, I had moved on from working for others as a promoter, and was now working for myself. I made a lot of friends in the nightlife scene, and had a good strong mailing list already built up from all the other parties I had promoted for. So I had a great list of potential customers who had been to previous events. I also had a few DJ friends that wanted to headline their own event, and were willing to work on a “Guest List” only basis. This was also a big key to throwing a party at such a low cost. If you’ve been in the nightlife scene for a little bit, you probably know of DJs like this. They have talent, but don’t have a regular weekly gig yet, and may be willing to work with you on their compensation for an event.

My first party on my own was a themed event, mainly because my DJs didn’t have too much star power on their own. We had to do something fun and new, to help draw a crowd. The theme we decided to use was “Euro Trash”. I had been to a few house parties with Euro Trash themes, but nothing organized at an actual club or bar in the city I lived in at the time. One of the keys to you becoming successful in this business is to always be looking for new and fresh ideas. Try something that will make you stand out from the competition. Even though these days I try to stay away from gimmicky events, my first one made me a good amount of money! They can sometimes work well to help get you started in this business (just don’t overdo it).

HOT TIP: Quick success in this industry can sometimes depend on where you live. In general, if you live in a big city that has many promoters, the competition can be fierce. Promoters that have been doing it longer have more resources at their disposal to steer all your potential customers to their events. Some of my best successes were achieved when I lived in a smaller city, because my promotion tactics were new and I had little competition. But ultimately, large cities can bring in the most income because they generally have a greater population of people that go out to clubs.

More people = more money.

So I worked out a deal with a small club/bar in town. I would get to keep the cover charge and they could keep 100% of the bar sales. This is actually a good deal for the venue, because normally I’d get a cut of the bar sales as well. It was easier for the club owner to say yes to this type of deal, even though I had never thrown a party at their venue before. They are less likely to lose money should it flop.

The first thing I did was make up flyers and posters for the event. To do this on a budget, you have to be creative. In fact, creative ways to reduce costs or increase profit will make you very www.btopnotch.com |

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successful in this business. So, I had a good friend of mine who was majoring in graphic design create a flashy flyer design for free. She did this because it helped add to her design portfolio, helping for when she went looking for work with a design company. Next I spent only $150 on printing 5000 flyers. That’s VERY cheap for great double sided, full color flyer printing. My favorite print company, PS Print, does flyers, posters, CD covers, business cards, and any other printing you may want to do. They match any price, so it will always be the cheapest (but you still get top notch quality). 5000 flyers was plenty for my event. The general flyer rule you want to live by is that for every 15 flyers you hand out, approximately one person will come to the event. That of course assumes you are handing out the flyers in the right kinds of places… I’m pretty sure that if you handed out 5000 flyers to little old ladies, you wouldn’t get that great of a turnout.

Next, I spent $50 to hire a hot friend of mine to be the door girl for the night. Her job was to look hot, and collect the cover charge from everyone coming in. The clubs usually provide security, but you ALWAYS want to have your own door person collecting your cover charges. In a cash only business like party promoting, it’s easy for your cash disappear into a shady bouncer’s pocket. So hire a door person you trust, and preferably female. Some party people can have second thoughts when they hear that there is a cover charge (or how much it is), and a little flirting from your door girl can be the ticket that gets them to hand over the cash and walk through the door.

Like I mentioned before, the two DJs that were going to play the event were working based on their own guest lists. So friends of the DJ had an incentive to be on the DJ’s guest list, because they only had to pay $4 at the door rather than $5. Plus they wouldn’t have to wait in line. This means that for every person the DJ got to come down to the party, he’d get paid $2, and I’d keep the other $2. The DJs had to give the door girl their “list” at the beginning of the night, and she would check off who showed up and paid to get in (make sure she checks IDs). At the end of the night, I’d add up the number of people that came in on the DJ’s list, and pay the DJs their share. Paying people commission like this has huge incentives, because the DJs are going to work extra hard to get people in the doors. The more people they bring, the more money they make. That means less work for you, but at the same time you’re still making some money off of those people.

I spent the final $100 on a couple of girls to help me pass out flyers around town and the college campus. I paid them $10 an hour. We’d all go out for an hour every day leading up to the party, handing out flyers to strangers (within our party’s target market). That was the extent of where my $300 budget went. I’ll break it down for you again here: . 5000 flyers = $150 . Door Girl = $50 . Flyer Girl #1 = $50 . Flyer Girl #2 = $50 . 2 DJs = $0 (paid on commission) www.btopnotch.com |

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TOTAL = $300 After all the online, street, and phone promoting that the DJs, the girls and I did, the party was a huge success. Everyone knew about the Euro Trash party that night, and we had 350 people go through the doors. Each DJ had around 75 people that came from their lists. So each of them took home about $150. They were happy with that. I also made money on those people though. With 150 people showing up due to my DJs, I made $300 ($2 per person X 150 people). In addition to them, my own promoting work brought another 200 people in. At $5 a person, it came to about $1000. So I made $1300 in revenue from that event. Subtract the $300 I spent to throw the party, and I made a cool $1000 profit that night. Not bad for the first party on my own!

Nothing beats the feeling you get after making a bunch of money throwing a party! It’s extremely addictive. After a great, successful party, you’ll have people telling you how much fun it was.

You’ll get thanked a lot, sometimes from total strangers. And in your mind, you’ll be thinking, “You’re thanking me? I just partied all night, am about to go home with a hot chick and sleep in all day, plus I made $1000 off of all of you at the same time!”

It’s is the best job there is.

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H. Advanced Promotion Techniques In this section I will go into more advanced promotion techniques, for when you have more money to spend on your new promoting business. You should slowly try to incorporate all these techniques into your arsenal of promotion tools, to maximize the number of people that come to your events, and minimize your work load. These promotion tools are what separate the career minded promoters from the weekend warriors.

Professional Photography/Videography: An extremely important thing you can spend money on for your club promotion business is professional photography. Many promoters think they can just bring their own little digital camera and snap photos, and that’s ok. Let them think that. YOU are going to do something different. YOU are going to show people how much fun your parties are, with PROFESSIONAL photography. Let me give you a little example of how powerful good photography is. Which party looks like it would be more fun? (photos on next page)

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PARTY A:

PARTY B:

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Obviously, PARTY B looks much more inviting. The people in both photos look like they’re having fun, but I’d be willing to bet that you would have chosen to go to PARTY B with your friends. That’s the conclusion most people would have, even though there is an old lady in PARTY B’s photo, and famous superstar rap producer Scott Storch is in the crappy PARTY A photo. The party with the professional photography will always win out.

HOT TIP: Do NOT take photos of your event if there aren’t a ton of people there. Not every single event a promoter throws is a success, but you don’t want your customers to know that, for obvious reasons.

Only post photos of a packed dancefloor, smiling people, and hot girls. Most photographers will know this, but you may want to remind them just in case.

Humans are very visual creatures. Photos (or video) of your events are the ultimate advertisements. You need them to look good. It could cost you $50 to $150 for a decent photographer to shoot your event for the night (more for video), but it can be well worth it. After all, you have to spend money to make money. But don’t stop at just taking the photos, you need to post them in an easy to find, easy to access place. And do it soon. Don’t wait 5 days later to post the photos, do it the next day if you can.

Most people will want to check themselves out the next day, or certainly by Monday morning at work. If the photos aren’t posted by then, they probably won’t go back to your website to look again.

Don’t miss an opportunity to advertise your next party to them. As for where to post the photos, your promotion company’s MySpace page is ok, but the best place would be your own professional company website…

Professional Website: Once you’ve started making some money as a promoter, one of the first things you should spend some of it on is a professional website. Everyone and their grandmother has a MySpace & Facebook page nowadays. They are easy to make, and even a 10 year old could make himself look like a big shot promoter with these sites. To get contracts with the bigger and more professional clubs and venues, you need to act like a true professional. Big clubs will want to see more than just a MySpace page. Having a slick, professionally made promotion company website is a great way to impress clubs, other promoters, and your party customers. www.btopnotch.com |

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To do it as cheap as possible, try and find a friend who is into web design, because good websites don’t come cheap. Another way is to put up ads around a local college that say “Looking for a Student Webdesigner.” You can get away with paying design students half of what a regular designer would charge, and the work can really be very good. Many students will want to start or build on their professional web design portfolio, and will work for cheap.

You want your website to be simple, yet informative. There should be an email list signup form right on the main page, somewhere easy to see. You’ll want a section where you can show photos from your past events, flyers and information for upcoming events, contact information, and a section about how to contact you for employment. One of the keys to becoming a successful promoter is to always keep hiring others to do your work for you! You want to make it easy for people to contact your company about working under you as a sub-promoter.

Try and get your designer to design a company logo for you as well. A good logo can go on flyers, your website, etc, and help make a good marketing impression on others. If you throw great events, someone will be able to glance at a flyer, easily pick out your logo, and remember that your company throws amazing parties. It creates “Top of Mind” awareness of your brand. Branding is VERY important in this business. When people can easily remember you and your brand, you’ll get a ton of business.

Advanced Phone Calls: When you start to rake in the dollars, it’s a good idea to hire other people to make your phone calls for you every week. Calling hundreds of people week after week takes a big chunk out of your free time! When you have the money, hire a girl and a guy to make your party calls for you.

Get 2 of your sub-promoters to make these calls. Get a guy to call the girls on your list, and a girl to call the guys. You won’t even have to pay them extra to make it worth their while, let them add these people to their own guestlist they have with you. They will be happy to have more people to contact, adding to their own potential income. And this should free up a lot of time for you. Teach them the phone script you’ve been using, and have them call everyone on the list once a week.

You can also squeeze a little market research into the calls. If the customer says they already have plans, ask them what their plans are! Find out what kind of events your customers go to most, and you can learn a lot about what the current market trends are. This way, you can also catch big changes in the nightlife market before other promoters. Maybe a certain kind of music maybe, a DJ, or a new venue has people talking. Learn what your customers are gossiping about.

Don’t have your sub-promoters call good personal friends of yours, or VIPs. You’ll still want to make those calls yourself. Just let them handle the massive list of general acquaintances you have built up over time. These people will still be coming to your events, generating revenue, but you won’t have to do any work getting them there anymore.

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HOT TIP: Make sure you trust the sub-promoters you give this job to. It is easy for them to ditch you for another company or to start their own, and now they’ll have a big list of your regular customers. Only give this task to good friends who you don’t think will stab you in the back and take off. If you’re really worried about this, maybe give them a raise to help prevent it from happening.

Advanced Social Networking: Here I will go into making the most of your MySpace and Facebook promotion accounts. You should be spending at least an hour a day adding people to both accounts. Once you have a massive list of “friends”, you have to let them know about your events. You can create event “invites” on MySpace and Facebook, and send them to all your friends. The invite should include the flyer of the party, and some brief text about it as well. You can also use Bulletins on both sites to help advertise your events as well. But don’t SPAM! Spamming these bulletins over and over WILL backfire on you. I like to limit them to 2 bulletins a day. One in the morning, and one in the evening. If you post so much that people get annoyed, they’ll block you and you’ll never get them to your events. So don’t SPAM. If your party is on a Saturday, 2 bulletins a day all week should be enough for most of your friends to see at least one of them.

Use your Flickr account (get one if you don’t have one now) to post mini photo galleries as bulletins after your events. People love checking out photos of a party! Make the header say something like: PARTY PHOTOS! See what you missed at Club XYZ last night!

Those bulletins are usually hard to pass up, if people went to the party or not. Visual stimulation and marketing is the most effective way to get people to your events. Make sure to only post good photos of packed events, if your event was dead, don’t post any photos of it!

Add the friends of other nightclubs and promoters! Go visit the MySpace or Facebook page of a competitor, and start adding all their friends! Let them do all the work of finding potential customers who won’t mind adding a promoter, then you can just befriend them as well! Saves a lot of time. This way, the percentage of people that will accept your friend request will generally be higher.

You can also post fliers of parties in the comment section of profiles on MySpace. But if you have over 3000 friends, it can take a lot of work without the use of a special program. But I still like to do it occasionally, because it allows many more people to see it. People that may not be on your friends list. So I keep a special folder in my internet browser bookmarks, with the profiles of people who let me post flyers in their comments. To figure out who will let me and who won’t, I’ll post flyers to all my friends’ comment sections for a couple of days. It takes a while, because MySpace will only allow you to post so many comments per day.

Then, a couple days later, I’ll go back and check who allowed the flyer to stay up. I’ll bookmark those people, to save me time for future parties. It will take you a long time to do this, but I only recheck who allows my party comments like once a year. If you can get 100 people to keep your flyer up, it www.btopnotch.com |

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helps maybe another 300+ people see it. These are potential customers! When posting flyers to comment sections, make sure the flyer is small. 300 pixels wide at the most. No one will keep a flyer in their comment section if it is way too big. This is also a job you can hire other sub-promoters to do for you.

Market Research: Club promoting is a major business, and you’ll only achieve real success if you treat it like a major business. The people that fail are the ones that slack off, and don’t continue to build a customer base, and stop caring about what their market wants. It’s just like any business. You have to constantly give the people want they want, NOT what you think they want. The best way to do this is with regular market research. Find out what venues are going to be the next hot spot, what DJ is going to be the next superstar, or what party theme has never been tried before. Keep a detailed list on what your competitors are doing. What venues they have deals with, what kinds of parties they are having, what they charge, everything. Send some of your sub-promoters to “spy” on the competition’s events. Find out how they’re doing. What are they doing that works? What are they doing that doesn’t work? You need to tailor your events to be the best of the best, and stay clear of all the bad stuff.

Stay on all the nightlife chat boards or forums to find out what people are saying about your parties. If someone is bashing your event, don’t start a big argument. Don’t start an anonymous account pretending to be someone else just to defend it. People can see right through that stuff, and you’ll lose respect. The best thing to do is respond politely, and professionally. Maybe something like “I’m sorry you feel that way. What can we do to make you happier?” Be the bigger man (or woman). No one likes a big obnoxious ego. Create a reputation for yourself as a mature business professional, and people will gravitate to you and your events.

Release a Mix CD: This is something I’ve been doing for many years with great success. If you have a recurring event, like a weekly or monthly party, you can get some great exposure for the party by releasing a party branded mix CD. Give people a taste of what kind of party it’s going to be. Have your resident DJ mix a CD just for the party, with the type of music you normally play at your event. Your DJ should be happy to do this for free, as you’ll be giving him all kinds of free exposure. Have your graphic designer create a slick cover, and make sure to professionally print off 250-500 copies. I always use an online company called Mixonic to print my CDs. You can upload your design right to them, and the CDs always look perfect. DON’T do it yourself with stick on CD labels, or you’ll ruin people’s car CD players.

The reason this tip is in the advanced section is because it isn’t cheap. Only do this once you’ve been making some good money, and can afford the expense. But this promotion technique can really create a great buzz about your event. Give these CDs out to people as they leave your party (not when www.btopnotch.com |

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they enter, or they will lose it at the party) so they can listen on their way home. If the mix CD rocks, and is designed well, it can really create a great brand image of your party in the customer’s head. They will want to keep coming back to your events over and over, and will share the CD with their friends and you’ll get some great word of mouth advertising.

Radio Ads: I’ve done a little radio advertising in the past, and it can really be hit or miss. It is much more expensive than many of these other tips I’ve gone over. But if you do it correctly, it can pack your party more than with any other technique.

It really comes down to who your customers are. Certain groups of people listen to the radio all day, and others don’t. Some people wouldn’t go to a party based on a radio ad. Others would. You have to know who your target market is, and if it would be worth the cost. This can also come down to the specific area/city where you live. Radio is more important in come communities than it is in others.

Radio ads are definitely not for the novice promoter. This is something you do when you can afford to drop a few thousand dollars on a single form of advertising, and it won’t bankrupt you if it doesn’t work. If that’s not you, stay clear for now.

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I. Hiring Sub-Promoters When you are first starting your promotion business, you should get some people working for you. To start, ask a few friends if they would be willing to help promote your parties for a flat $50 a week. All they have to do is come to all your parties, and get all their friends to come too. So for example say you promote on Friday and Saturday night, and the cover charge is $5. If you hire someone who can get at least a total of only 10 people to your events that whole weekend, you would break even.

Let’s give your friend a name now. Say your friend Bob gets 10 people to your Friday party, and 10 people to your Saturday party. With a $5 cover charge, you make $100 in revenue that weekend.

You’d pay Bob his $50 and you’d make $50 profit for yourself. That’s a 50% profit margin! A typical business only has a profit margin around 10-20% (if that!). Do you see why promoting is so lucrative?

Now all you do is find 10 other friends that can do the same thing Bob did, and you’re going to start making some serious money while your friends do all the work. Sometimes people will call this group of sub-promoters a “street team”. This system of sub-promoters lets you concentrate on the technical aspects of your business, while your “street team” does all the foot work for you. These are the building blocks of a strong promotion company. Even if you don’t have your own promotion company yet, you can still use the same principle while working for someone else’s company. If you happen to be a sub-promoter at the moment, try and hire a few sub, sub-promoters under you. This works the best if you are making a high % of the cover charge. If you’re only making $2 a person, it’s really not worth it. You won’t be able to find anyone to work under you if you can’t pay them well.

My favorite place to find new sub-promoters is Craigslist. Put up a simple ad that says something like “Hiring Club Promoters” or “Party Promoters Wanted”. Another good place is a public college bulletin board, or other types of classified ads. You’ll get a ton of calls or emails, and you can interview people from there. Make sure to pick people that are outgoing, and hungry to make money. The reason this works so great is because these sub-promoters only make money if they can make you money. So if the people you hire suck at promoting, there’s no real cost to you. If they rock, you make a lot of money.

It’s a win/win.

I like paying my sub-promoters a good % of the cover charge for people they bring to the party.

If they are getting paid well, they will stay with you and work harder. If you pay them shit, they’ll treat you and the job like shit (if they even stay). Try and get away with paying your promoters as little as you can to save money, but don’t be afraid to increase their percentage if they are really good. Exactly what you pay them is going to be up to the specific deal you have with the venue, what you charge at the door, etc. You want to make sure you can cover your expenses and still make a good profit.

For example, at a party I used to do, I’d charge $10 at the door. I also made a deal with the bar to get 10% of the drink sales. For that event, I’d typically get an average of about 400 people. I’d pay my sub-promoters $4 per person that they brought to the party (using their list). So if a particular subpromoter got 50 people to the party, they would make a nice $200 ($4x50) that night. I, on the other www.btopnotch.com |

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hand, would make $2400 ($6x400) for the night. The percentage I got from bar sales would usually cover my expenses (10% of around $5000 in alcohol sales came to about $500 to cover my expenses).

But you can decide how best to pay your sub-promoters, because every city and nightlife market is different.

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J. Customer Loyalty The MOST important part of learning to be a great party promoter is learning to keep your customers happy & loyal to you. While many people may try their luck as club promoters, the only ones who can make a living promoting events are those who can keep their customers coming back week after week. With this job, the customer is ALWAYS #1. If you don’t care about your customers, you’ll never make it in this business. Focusing on customer loyalty has additional benefits like getting great, free, word-of-mouth advertising (the best kind). It is often more advantageous to spend time keeping your current customers happy, rather than spreading yourself too thin trying to find new customers. It can be less work and give you more profit if you promote to the same people rather than trying to find new customers. It can pay you back 10 times as much in the long run. One thing I’ve learned over the years is to treat all your customers like VIPs. If you treat them like nobodies, they’ll gravitate to a promoter who treats them better. What does it mean to be treated like a VIP? Always be happy to see them, introduce them to other people at the party. Offer them a free drink from time to time (always use “let me BUY you a drink” even if you are using a free drink ticket). Keep an eye on the line outside, and make sure your people get to the front. You can usually tip the doorman $50 at the club you’re working, so he’ll let you bring your customers inside without waiting. This really makes people feel special, and they’ll always keep coming back to your events.

Get really good at remembering names. We all have trouble remembering the names of people we just met. As a promoter, you have to teach yourself to get really good at remembering names. I don’t know about you, but I am always impressed when someone I just met remembers my name the next time I see them. It subconsciously says “You are a person I really like & want to know more, that’s why I remembered your name”. Everyone loves feeling special. Use it to your advantage. The trick I use is when I first meet some people, I start talking to them using their name right off the bat. “Nice to meet you Kristen. Kristen, how do you like my party so far? What do you like to drink Kristen?” This helps me quite a bit. The more you practice, the better you’ll get.

It’s always better to personalize your promotions. When sending out emails or text messages, don’t make it look like the recipient is just part of a generic list. Use words that make it sound like the message is just for them. One thing I like to do the day after a great party is send out an email or text (I’ll switch it up) to my list that says something like “Thanks for coming by last night, the party rocked!”

See how it sounds like I’m sending it to a specific person? You’ll get a lot of responses from something like this. It will also help pique interest in someone who may not have went out that night. If someone who didn’t go out responds to you, you can write back and say “Oh, I thought I saw you there.

You should come by next weekend!” Party promotion is a psychological game, with big rewards if you can play that game well.

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K. Teaming Up with Others After promoting on your own for a while, you can try and team up with another promoter. I don’t mean hiring sub-promoters to work for you, I mean an actual partner who you split profits with.

You may be saying “why would I want to do that?” Having a full promotions partner has many benefits.

You’ll soon realize that once your business starts getting big, you’ll have to be in many places at once.

Watching the door for your customers, making sure people in the party are having a good time, fixing a messed up table reservation, hanging out with a VIP, answering phone calls, etc. Having a second person to help you with all that work can be a huge benefit.

Another major benefit to a partner is having a 2nd group of people showing up at your events.

By teaming up with someone else who has a large mailing list, you’ll be able to make your events bigger, hold them at larger venues, and cut sweeter deals with clubs if you can promise more people at your events. When choosing a partner, it’s best to pick someone that has their own list of customers separate from your own. A whole new group of friends who will show up at your events, increasing your overall network of customers and income for the both of you.

The last benefit of teaming up with someone is basically a 2nd brain for party ideas, money making ideas, and other creative pursuits. Two brains are always better than one. It’s nice to have an equal to bounce ideas and plans off of, to get opinions and fix problems before they arise. One thing I’ve learned is that if you are a guy, try finding a girl promoter to team up with, or vice versa.

This will increase your network of party people with the opposite sex, which is always good because no one likes a sausage fest!

L. Conclusion As you can see, club promoting can be an extremely fun and lucrative business. But it does involve a good amount of work, especially in the beginning. But if meeting new people and partying with them every weekend sounds like your kind of work, than get started sooner rather than later! The longer you are in the business, the easier the money starts to roll in. Remember that your reputation goes a LONG way, so always take the high road. Be friendly, keep your customers loyal, spread the wealth, and you can make a good living as a club promoter. I’ve been doing it for over 10 years now, and won’t quit anytime soon. No other job has so many great benefits. The people that make it in this business are the ones that work hard, and stick with it. Good luck, and have fun partying!

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