Parties or festivals?

As a face painter do you make more money from doing parties or festivals? I've only done festivals a couple times and the weather was horrible and I barely covered my costs. Seemed like a waste of time. But now I'm looking to increase my income and wondering if I should reconsider. Any tips?

I am fortunate to do several Festivals/year w/fellow face painters where they pay our hourly rate AND we put out  a tip jar. There are two annual Irish Festivals in neighboring towns. One is 3 of us getting our hourly rate for one 4 HR evening. The other is me, paying for space for 2 days & working hard to cover that fee & make a profit. I love the music, many of my friends come & since it's my ancestry, I love to be there. In 2 days, I only make slightly more than that 4 HR gig the night before!!! One year, it was so hot (Florida) I was lucky to make any profit. We do one festival where we work all weekend, get our hourly rate & can pay the mortgage that month w/our earnings.I think any gig where you get your hourly rate is better than a PPF (Pay per Face).That includes birthday parties.

I would LOVE to do more parties! I get few calls, though, and I don't know why. Everyone is pleased when they leave me, everyone gets a card, and some evn ask if I do parties. It's frustrating.

Paisley Peacock, Do you have a website &/or Facebook page? Google both your business name & "face painter in (your town)". Does your name come up? Lots of my jobs are referrals, or someone who saw me painting & took a card but often, they found me on the internet! There's a few threads here on the forum about getting your name out there & how to word your website so it comes up. (notice I'm not THAT "Tech Savvy", but if I can do it, you can!) This forum has a wealth of knowledge already discussed & just waiting for you to look it up. Good Luck.

When I lived in CT for 18 years, my website was the first to come up, and it looked great. I'm getting about the same number of calls as ever. Almost no referrals, too. I don't get it. if they weren't clearly super happy when I left, I might understand more.

It takes time to built a business, is always better to get paid by the hour than charge people per face, face painting is so popular right now that kids get painted at birthday parties very often so parents don't want to pay for it anymore.