Blog

FestivalNet

If you’re a part-time artist or crafter that wants to expand your side hustle into a full-scale business venture, look no further! Though there’s nothing wrong with leaving your craft as a passion and not monetizing it, there are certainly ways to get your work out in the world on a larger scale. Here are some of our best tips for getting exposure and scaling your business.

Find the Right Digital Space to Sell

Depending on your art medium or creative venture, the platform online that you sell your products on may be different. You should explore the use of a digital marketplace when putting your art out in the world! Whether you use FestivalNet's online platform or a larger-scale marketplace like Etsy or Redbubble to sell, you’ll want to compare what portion each site will take out of your sales.

Sell more of your work by talking about what matters most to your customer.

When I first started the art festival guide I had a somewhat clear organization and, once I decided on the main points to cover, I kept to my outline more or less faithfully. During the course of art festivals, I would think of bits and pieces and almost all of them fit neatly into my chapters...almost. Another phenomenon that occurs in art festivals is that some of us get a lot of visits from artists that want to entertain the idea of embarking upon the art festival adventure.

As you plan your digital promotion strategy, one thing to think about is whether contextual content can help connect audiences closer to your music. You can use your own social channels to create a content universe — articles, videos, social posts, and other interactive elements — to drive an emotional connection between your songwriting and your listeners.

Here are a few tips for crafting compelling stories to accompany and provide context for your music, online or otherwise.

As a food truck owner, you embrace the challenge of driving from town to town and setting up shop for the day. Your unique type of business gives you the opportunity to increase your market and gain new customers along the way.

Because you have the ability to interact and serve a diverse group of people, it's best you make sure your marketing plan is on point. In case it needs some work, or if you want more ideas, we put together four food truck marketing tips that are easy to implement.

Attracting one new, deeply committed fan is worth far, far more than attracting 100 mildly interested visitors to your website.

The problem is, if you do what most articles tell you to do, you're mostly doing the wrong things or, at best, you're simply doing what everyone else is doing: you're optimizing for hundreds of mildly interested people instead of a few deeply committed people.

Is your art business about to pass away? Here are some reasons why your sales may be dying.

Marketing, or rather lack of it, is why many musicians don’t get where they could have otherwise been, and why they struggle to make sales, get gigs, and generally move their music career forward in any meaningful way. The good news, however, is if you’re willing to put in the work, it’s possible to learn how to market your music. But, before learning specific tactics, it’s important you get a good idea of what music marketing is and isn’t.

Inspiration is all around us. It is easy to believe that when everything we see and everyone we meet seems to trigger some new and exciting creative idea, so that, as dedicated crafters, we can scarcely wait to hurry back to our homes, studios or workshops to make a start on our latest project. However, sometimes the ideas just don't seem to flow quite so easily. Or perhaps they just feel a little too much like the ideas that everyone else seems to have and you wish you could come up with something new and different.

Upgrading kitchen equipment can be a tough task for food vendors who haven't planned ahead. But, without good equipment your business suffers! So, start planning now and use these tips so that the upgrade won't be so costly.

First, set a budget: Create a budget and a separate bank account which you use only for upgrading kitchen equipment. The budget will tell you how much to set aside every week. While you may not have 100 percent of the money you need when it is time to upgrade, you'll have a big chunk of it.

Calling all Artists & Food Vendors!  There is still a chance to get in on the opening event for the tourist season in the Keys. A Keys tradition always on the first Saturday after Thanksgiving (Small Market Saturday), The Island Art Festival is the premier event for the Christmas shopping season!

Many people from south Florida take advantage of what is a 4-day weekend to come to the Keys & explore! As a very artisan community, folks are always looking for special items to take home. Even though the crowds are big this year, they will be limiting the amount of booths to 100, with less than 10% of them being for food. This will give a huge advantage to all Artists and vendors. This art fair is always a favorite. 

It’s a beautiful day for a special event. The sun is out, and the high is predicted to be 85ºF. Organizers have taken everything into account for a fun and safe experience. Upon entry, ticketing staff encourages people to wear sunscreen and a hat and to visit the hydration stations regularly. The medical tent is centrally located, well-marked, and well-staffed. Security and volunteers are trained in recognizing signs of heat distress in attendees. Everything is going great…until the music starts and people rush the stage.

With the density of the crowd, eventually, people start showing signs of hyperthermia. The symptoms are sudden; once people start succumbing to them, they are hard to identify and extract from the crowd. And unless treated quickly, symptoms can potentially be fatal.

Sickness and fatalities at an event can also result in fines, lawsuits, and/or permanent shutdown of future fairs and festivals. Any experienced organizer will tell you it is nearly impossible to prep for the individual medical needs of thousands of people. However, using a strategically placed Outdoor Cooling Mist System that lowers the temperature of the crowd can help mitigate some of the liabilities and potentially enhance the production and stage environment.

Becoming a city-certified festival food vendor is enough to turn anyone off the idea of eating giant turkey legs.

"Has anyone ever eaten something and shortly after you feel a gurgling in your stomach?" Daria Kulczycky asks her Summer Festival Food Vendor Sanitation Seminar one afternoon last week at Harold Washington College. The stern, middle-aged woman in a blue turtleneck is attempting to stir some gastrointestinal empathy in her students-myself included.

We will soon join the ranks of 2,200 vendors certified annually by the city to serve fried dough and meats on a stick to the masses at music festivals, neighborhood street fetes, farmers' markets and church fund-raisers. The workshop quickly feels like an episode of MTV's Scared Straight for summer food vendors.

The summer of 2022 may be the first in a long time that you and your friends will be embracing festival life to the full once again, following a string of cancellations over the past two years. Just a few of the many exciting upcoming festivals include Summerfest in Milwaukee, Rolling Loud in Miami, and Lollapalooza in Chicago. In many ways, however, there will be a different air to these popular events; one characterized by the zeitgeist of the post-COVID era: togetherness.

The Spring/Summer 2022 festival lineup is heating up, with so many major music fests, arts and crafts shows, and food festivals taking place across the globe and in the US. In Summer 2022, for instance, you can take your pick from Lollapalooza (taking place in July in Chicago), the Pitchfork Music Festival (in Chicago), and the Governors Ball Music Festival in New York City for your next event. Many would say that the only downside to festivals is their carbon footprint.

According to research conducted in 2020, festivals can harm the environment by bringing hundreds of thousands of people to one place at the same time. In the average music festival, 7% of carbon emissions are caused by waste, 13% by energy, and a whopping 80% by attendee travel. This can not be left unchanged. If you are traveling to a festival this Spring/Summer, how can you do your share to support the environment in a more sustainable manner?

Supplies Are What Make a Craft

Unless you are making something where you can use regular household items, or that doesn't need anything but the buyer to complete the sale, then supplies are going to be a major part of your crafts.

Finding a Supplier

Finding a supplier that isn't going to cost you an arm and a leg, and still has good quality might be a challenge at first. But it is better to pay more for good quality than it is to buy bargain materials and have your customers be disappointed when the overall quality of your craft is poor.

There are a lot of festivals. There are also a lot of different types of festivals. Your music may not be the right kind for every festival. So before you spend time and money applying to every festival in the world, make sure you narrow down your selections to ones that you stand a chance of being at.

Metal Is Not Edible

We're going to go ahead and get your first restriction out of the way. If you play heavy, dark, and/or depressing music, you've already been axed from a large majority of events. Remember, a lot of festivals are street fairs, city fairs, corporate events, etc. They are generally trying to cater to a crowd full of families, kids, and people shopping at all the vendor booths. They want live music that is "appropriate" for the vibe of the festival.

"If you think breaking even is alright, you are doomed for failure."

The themes for events cover a wide range, but most of these special events have an underlying purpose: to raise money. While this commercial aspect may bother some purists, there's no getting around the fact that events are excellent fundraisers that also raise awareness. All kinds of good causes can be helped including nonprofit organizations, local businesses, community members, and more. There are so many ways to help your community whether it is an in-person event or a virtual fundraising event! In addition, some of the money generated can be set aside for your next fundraising event. For many groups, the question is simply: What's the best way to raise money? There is no quick answer. What might help is to look at some of the fundraising techniques used by other event promoters.

Make sure you have three bios: a long one, a short one (1 or 2 paragraphs, definitely under 500 words) and an elevator pitch. Make sure every bio includes pronunciation of the name. Your bio should be written in the third person.

Your long and short bios can be on your website. The elevator pitch is not mean to be written anywhere, but just for you to think about.


Your long bio can be structured like this:

A recent survey done by Gallup found that 54% of households have someone that plays a musical instrument or sings. If you're one of those people, you might know that this fun hobby can turn into a real passion and a way of expressing yourself with live music. If you want to start your career in the music industry, then a small music festival could be the ideal informal place to do this. It gives you the opportunity to network with other artists in the music scene. There are a plethora of great venues to choose from. You can book a slot on stage or sign up for an open mic session and start playing to an audience that really appreciates your music. 

Practice and submissions

If you want to get a place on one of the smaller stages at a local festival, you will probably have to make a submission to them online. Choose festivals that are a good fit with your music and you are more likely to get in. Practice your stage routine regularly in its entirety and make a decent video of it.