How much have you be paid for a performance?

[Niclas]

On freeday I and one of my friends haved a 15 min juggling and diabolo perfrmance.
And we got 50 € each.

Some questions.

1. Did you think it was much or little?
2. What is that most you got from a performance?
3. How often did you have performance?
4. How much did you get in average?
5. How long is your performace?

[VincentPlumbers]

I've never performanced, so I can't compare, but earning 50 euros in 15 minutes doesn't sound like little money .

[Crackers]

I'm in a juggling club and they are professionals which are often proposed some small performance, but they only accept for a certain amount of money and give the youngers (me ^^) the less paid ones.
The money I earn for thoses kind of shows is about the same as you, sometimes more. So for me it's "normal" but I guess the professionals on the forum would find it little 

[Kobe]

It depends on the quality of your performance.
Do you've used costumes, special light/music,... Is it a act with years of training?
Or is it just a freestyle with drops,... Benefit or commercial company?
Those are al factors what makes the amount changing.
I think 50€ is a good average to start from.

[Jester]

I charge 300 AU$ for my old trad routine

and i'm going to charge 500 AU$ for my new samurai routine

i left the New Zealand circus School Last year and am now living in melbourne as a professional juggler
circus creator/teacher/performer

so far this year i've had my old trad routine booked once
and in the couple of weeks since my new routine i've had strong interest

there's more reguler money in teaching circus

u get what u ask for

but people always want to pay you less

[Asa (Formerly Legault)]

Hmm..when i sucked(Worse then i do now)
I did some performing at a downtown mall...I made about 30$ for like...2 hours...
But thats probaly cause like noone else knows diaboloing there.
Now once i get fan smooth and go down there with a boombox, maybe i can get a good bit more =P

[barnesy]

As I've said before on here, the number of tricks you can do is nowhere near as important as your ability to actually interest the audience.  If your show will only mean something to people who know about diabolo, it'll never make you good money.  A good show can make a lot of money even though it may not contain a lot of the tricks a diabolo geek might be looking for.  That's not an injustice - it's just a performer who has learned which skill matters more.

[Diabolo88]

50 euro sounds like major money to me. Maybe going pro would be a good move ?

[Matt D]

I think that 50 euro sounds good if you are just doing it as something extra, but if juggling was your only income you would have to raise the price. It seems to me that the same amount of people will hire you for 50 as they would for 150-200, the people who really want you will pay, so if you start getting alot of intrest raise the price a little.

BTW I do my performances for 75 USD, or if I have me Steve-O and Ray 300 USD.

[Marko]

50euros sound pretty good sum for a gig. It's more than true what people say about
performing here. Usually the good performing skills is the thing that counts. I've seen
many technical guys performing but the actual performance has been really boring.

The thing you that you should first worry is how to get the gigs. Not necessarily how much
money to ask from a gig. When i started performing 8 years ago i did several gigs for free
to get the practice and more fame. I went to every gig i got and i tried to find places to perform.
Not waiting for gigs to find me. It's the other way around you find the gigs. Actually i think i
got an ice cream from my first performance in local kindergarten.

I've noticed that the money, how much you ask from the gig, defines what kind of performances and
how many you get. If i want to perform in better places and not so often i ask more. But i think that
the important thing is to know how good is your show. If you ask too much and do really crappy show
you'll get bad reputation and of course that's no good. So for advice i'd say, keep the pay relatively low
so it's easier for people to have you in their events. Then after a while you can start asking little bit more
from a performance. By doing that i have now 14 performances before xmas  and i still get good pay from those.

But don't forget, i'm also magician so i get probably more gigs than average juggler here but i still get to perform
diabolo when ever i want. Which is pretty funny thing, they first want magician but actually it's all the same for them if
half of my performance is juggling. Yea, and i've done performing for many years now to get my money. So actually
i'm a professional. Point of all this, don't think that you're not good if you have only 2-5 performances a year.
I've been there too. You just need to be seen out there performing.

Sorry, my writings are becoming too long. Maybe this is it for this time.

[Nahxela]

I've only been paid for performing once .
But I got $35 USD for a five minute performance with other people

[Ben]

i dont usually like to get paid to preform but i have done a few of those gigs where you just walk around and entertain people at tables and things like that
i get paid about $175-$250US per hour
its basically just practicing so its very easy hah

for a 15 minuet performance i would charge more i think, but it depends on if you are supposed to talk and bring in an audience or if your just supposed to be there and people can stop and watch if they want, also it depends on if people have to pay to watch your show or not, and finally the quality of performance.

[Niclas]

When i started performing 8 years ago i did several gigs for free

I dont request mony but i got still mony

Maybe going pro would be a good move ?

Yes I think so but it is not so easy 

Thank you for all the answers.

[pyromancer]

Though I've never performed tricks in public, I should consider that if the income is this big
In places like where diabolo isn't known very well, you may get great earnings for just a chinese suicide

[Diabolo Bro]

As I've said before on here, the number of tricks you can do is nowhere near as important as your ability to actually interest the audience.

Very True. I didn't acctually see it, but a juggler performed on the street up somewhere about 20 miles not of where I live. He stated off his at by dumping what the container said was highly flammable lighter fluid in a giant cicle around the one formed by the audience. Then he juggled torches over the circle. He often pretended to drop, and made miraculous saves. Then at the end he told every one that they were crazy, the town would never let him perform a stunt like that, and that the lighter fluid was only water. Not sure how much he made, but I bet it was no small number.

[Jakob]

I think the most I have been payed is a trip to Norway 1 weekend. Johan and I performed at a twin-convention, and they payed for the flight and hotel that weekend. We got no cash, but it was totally worth it

We performed 1 hour total, and did approximately 3 hours of workshop. (We are both danish, so it was pretty funny to teach without words, as they didn't understood danish at all)

[William]

Well I'm getting $150 for a couple of hours at new years and probably extra for doing fire.

[Diabolo88]

Sorry to dig this up but just have to ask:

Is 2000 SEK (around 350$ don´t know the exact currencyrate?) + food and gasexpences (3hr carride there+return) paid really a "fair" sum for approx 10 min performance? This is what I got paid for a performance I did this Saturday at a market. Estimate around 500+ people in the crowd.

The guy who asked me to come wanted to know how much I normally charged, however this was only my second performance on stage ever and I have never taken pay for diabolo before so I told him to pay whatever he thought was fair and I would probably accept the sum anyway. I did not have a costume (shorts and T-shirt) or special music and built the entire act from scratch in about two days (used two unedited songs). Some easy acrobatics included if that should affect a normal wage.

He told me it was entirely up to me how I wanted to build the act so I did a high technical performance with 1-3 + Excalibur (don´t dare to do 4D for a long while yet ). Some of the technical stuff still had visual appeal though (for instance did William Lings unwrapped suicide combo + extended it to the one where you throw it up into the string again). It was just such great fun to do, the crowd actually understood that the tricks were technical and were so appreciative afterwards. I staid at the market the entire day, ate and drank for free and just had a generally great time.

Asking this because it felt a bit like thievery when they paid me today, 2000 + other expenses paid for just 9-10 mins doing something fun just seems like so much (even told them that but they still paid). Only 2 days preparation beforehand and I couldn´t stick to the original routine (it was so windy so I had to cut out a double duicide whip with pirou, a crossed whip-duicide combo, the entire 2D high part and extended the 3D low and excaliburparts instead + added 2 extra 1D whipcombos to make up for the 2D part, left in the 3D high though somewhat foolishly). Entire act was dropless but the parts that were improvised definitely had some quite unnessesary accelration ("stalling") in them because I didn´t know the songs well enough to trick around. I also had to stand at the very edge of the stage because it had a roof that was too low for 3 high, the frontrow probably even saw the fear in my eyes from possibly falling off.
 
Is it really a fair sum though? Does someone know what a good pay would be? For lets say 8 mins, how much would be fair to charge (fair = so that they would want to hire you again every year)? How much would you ask? Do you have a set wage or does it depend on the location/length of drive? Would you charge more for some places? Is there a sum that most people would pay for say private shows (like parties, company-fundays etc)? Sorry for the length of the post but just thought the details might be important here.

[zwiggelbig]

I charge 300 AU$ for my old trad routine

and i'm going to charge 500 AU$ for my new samurai routine

i left the New Zealand circus School Last year and am now living in melbourne as a professional juggler
circus creator/teacher/performer

so far this year i've had my old trad routine booked once
and in the couple of weeks since my new routine i've had strong interest

there's more reguler money in teaching circus

u get what u ask for

but people always want to pay you less

Uhm.. By what you say could you earn as a professional juggler way more then average people? Like a teacher?

Because they get paid between 1000 and 2000 and if you have 4 of those samurai routines in a month + some workshops you earn way more?

[Marko]

Diabolo88, as your friendly neighbor country man. I say that's ok.
Seems like a normal salary for me. Though, i think you should have outfit
(even a simple one, not anything too fancy) for your next show. It sounds pretty
much at first but then again you drove there for 3 hours and made a completely
new show for that gig.

Some people will pay you that or more, easily. But about half of the people will be
ready to pay like third of that sum. Sounds like you got i nice fish for your first paid
performance. But it isn't really that much compared to some sums i've heard of or
got a few times. Those would be robbery.  I would probably ask for little less to get more
gigs at first. But it's your choice in the end. You're not a thief.

If you meet me in person, as for a few selling tips. I have one or two really good ones.