How to pick events

Maybe this belongs in the business section, but oh well!
I would love to hear if it is helpful!
http://www.jacanafacepaint.com/2015/08/green-lights-and-red-flags-15-secrets.html

I have one thing to add...

When I do public ppf events, I look at it as advertisement for my business. I try to choose events that I know will draw an interest for private parties. The small towns on the outskirts of the big towns are rich with these types of clients.

Good advice, Fairyfox

this was a great article thanks for publishing it.  I did just do an event, a local street fair.  There were apparently 4 face painters there, everything you mentioned happened to me!  They had us there at 8am and I sat around until about 10am.  I did have a steady line of about 3-5 kids which is fine but they had advertised 2 free face painters!  When I asked the coordinator about this afterwards, she stated that they have always paid for face painters to do the kids.  I wasn't sure what to say at that point.  I wondered should I ask if I could be one of those face painters?  I did make about $300 which is average there for a fair from 9am-4pm.  Nothing like party money for sure but as she said above it does get your card out.  I'm not sure whether to do it again next year, I guess we'll see.  Thanks again!

LazeeDancer- Glad you still made $300. It is always nice doing an event again, because you know going in what to expect. I think it is bad form of an event to rent a face paint booth, without letting you know there would already be free face painting. Sorry that happened to you! I had one event that unexpectedly had free face painting at a different booth, and instead of making them quit they guarenteed me as much as I made the year before. I was so amazed. Hooray for cool people.

My first PPF event also had free face painting offered... I went into it with a stack of Photo Release Forms thinking, "at least I can say I can paint for free if I get photos to use" but I ended up doing really well regardless because the free face painting couldn't compete (and I didn't even have time to do photos).

I've done events where therec were vendors offering free painting as a draw, i.e. churches.  I went to the organizer when I saw they were using acrylic paints and they shut them down.  They were not even competition but I didn't want the kids getting that on their faces. If it's not listed on the contract as an offered service, they shouldn't be doing it.

Everyone who is face painting is competition... Good or not.

Amen Kal!

I do an well known national event that is rich with rouge painters. Those friends of a such and such vendor has a face paint kit so they work out of a booth unauthorized to do face painting. There can be 2 or up to 6! This year we even had one set up a "booth" in the camping area! Yeah thanks our booth alone was $750 without travel, supplies and such.

I'm going to an event soon and I'm the only painter I'm trying to figure out how much I should change but this was really helpful for me

The original is gone, but this is saved in Internet Archive's Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20160420214943/http://www.jacanafacepaint.com:80/2015/08/green-lights-and-red-flags-15-secrets.html