this is it, i've finally retired from the "industry" in which i've worked sporadically for the past two years or so. it was a wild ride and provided a lot of grist for the writing mill, though it remains to be seen if it will have been worth it in the long run because in terms of working towards typical big life objectives (career, romance, etc.) i might as well have been in a coma for two years. in fact, when i leave it off my resume and hiring managers at my potential future employers like google or chick-fil-a inquire about the gap, maybe i will tell them i was in a coma. anyways, i know what my most loyal readers must be thinking: “wait! didn’t you already quit almost exactly a year ago and make a big deal out of it in a blog post??”. true, but then i got lured back for One Last Big Score, and then that turned into the One Last Big Score For Real This Time (i call them “Big Scores” but financially both were so-so for me, though it’s never really been about the money...). however, i assure you that now it really is over, all bridges burned and then dynamited for good measure, no possibility of going back, this is it. in enough time, maybe i’ll even write a tell-all memoir about it allvolume IV of my collected memoirs, tentative title “my complete travel guide to north america”, but it is still too soon right now, statute of limitations and all, and preferably most of the characters and corporations involved would be dead or bankrupt, respectively.
when you retire, you suddenly have plenty of time to get all reflective, start thinking about things like your legacy. there is this silly urge to try and pass down your wisdom, warn the next generation, even though the Fundamental Struggle of History is that it is impossible to do so because they never listen. however, i already wrote down a lot of notes (probably for my own future reference when i inevitably return to the industry, cracking my knuckles) and i like the thought of adding by far the most niche piece of content to the already-impressive lineup on my site, so here we go.
a quick disclaimer: since this is all from my limited perspective, there will obviously be biases, oversights, etc. although i said initially i've worked for two years in the "industry", i didn't really have a typical experience, the majority of that time was spent basically as a roadie for this travelling event that was only masquerading as a fan convention, in reality it was more similar to a travelling circus or carnival. but with the experience gained working there, my friends and i went off on our own and started our own fan convention, and that's mainly what i'm going to be writing about here. within our small team, my primary responsibility was finance, so most of what i have to say is going to be about the money. that said, arguably it is pretty much the most important aspect, besides getting people to show up. for the record, the reason we had to eventually discontinue our convention was not due to financial issues, it was for lame legal reasons.
also, since my experience is with starting a new con from scratch, i can’t say anything about what it's like working for a big existing con, i imagine the dynamics must be quite different. for one, you don’t have to worry so much about building an audience or losing your own money (since the con probably has its own bankroll), which compared to what i went through sounds like easy mode. then again, since large cons have so many staff involved, if i had to guess that probably means a bunch of annoying stuff like endless meetings, petty infighting, and other drama as people struggle for power and influence in a large organization where, mind you, even the top people generally do not get paid at all. but, i suppose it has been observed in the past (e.g. in internet drama) that there’s a peculiar inverse relationship between the stakes involved and the viciousness of power struggles...
to begin, i said earlier this is niche content and there's a good reason for that, ideally there would be no need for this advice at all because nobody should ever do something so insanely risky and with so little reward as organizing a fan convention, especially a brand-new one. yes, my first piece of advice is of course “don’t do it”, because as an organizer you risk losing thousands of dollars for the exciting opportunity to... entertain a large group of strangers for a day or two. you might think the worst case scenario is that nobody shows up, but in fact the true worst case scenario is that you do gain traction and sell a bunch of tickets, then mismanage everything terribly losing a bunch of money, and then the event itself is either a complete disorganized fiasco and nobody has a good time or worse, it doesn’t happen at all, and then to cap it all off some youtuber makes a documentary about it called “The {name}Con Disaster: A Brief Summary” (runtime 1:48:37) that drags your name through the mud and gets 4 million views. fun!
most likely, though, you’ll just lose a bunch of money, even if a bunch of people buy tickets and show up and the event is otherwise a success. in fact in almost all situations the best case scenario is simply not losing money, because it’s very rare for convention staff, even up at the very top, to get paid at all. yes, the only way most fan conventions are able to barely break even is by being all-volunteer organizations, including those right up at the very top. sure, piles of cash are changing hands and being made by various vendors, service companies, and the convention center, but rarely is there any possibility of it ending up in your hands. so, you end up in this weird situation where you’re the center of this massive exchange of money you’ve facilitated, and for all your efforts none of it comes your way. on top of that, you don’t even get to experience the convention yourself because inevitably you’ll be too busy running around, putting out fires and making sure the whole thing doesn’t suddenly fall apart. truly, it is a thankless job.
the only reward is the irreplicable sensation you get, the “organizer’s high” you feel strolling through the crowds on the day of the convention, feeling like a bigshot and knowing that all those people are here only because of you. you cycle around checking in with your staff and handling any issues that come up, operating at absolute maximum capacity because you're perfectly in your element, since after all you put it all together and know every single moving part. the best representation i’ve seen of that feeling is the opening scene of the movie snake eyes (1998), this long single tracking shot following nick cage as a corrupt cop effortlessly switching gears and taking care of business with maybe a dozen different people in rapid succession during the lead-up to a big boxing match on his home turf.
why is it so hard to do so much as break even hosting a fan convention? well, as an attendee, you might see a convention as a gathering of like-minded people trying to have a fun time, but all a company in the event industry sees is an enormous pile of cash just waiting to be skimmed from. as event organizer, your main job is to be custodian of that giant pile of cash entrusted to you by attendees (or, if you're just starting out, entrusted to you by yourself, friends, banks, and/or credit card companies), carefully trying to portion it out between dozens of rent-seekers circling around like vultures screeching for their share. the real problem is that everything in the event industry is ruinously expensive, costs massively inflated for no particularly good reason. why are venue rental fees stratospheric, why do they try to charge you thousands of dollars for a single wired internet connection with "grandma's house in 2011" speeds, why do event rental companies charge ¼ the new cost of a tv to rent it for a single day, and so on? it's so absurd that i am convinced the whole industry must secretly be some kind of financial black hole that money vanishes into, an exit valve for the economy that destroys money to control inflation.
maybe what i saw is just the world of business-to-business commerce, but i can think of a couple reasons why the event industry is like this. to start, there's a large category of events like weddings or other celebrations where a massive amount of money is spent with no expectation whatsoever of making it back, a kind of modern potlatch where families or corporations demonstrate their power by destroying wealth. during one of our events, the other half of the convention center was taken up by a gigantic indian wedding that probably spent significantly more than us when you factor in the elaborate decor, the catering, the open bar, the flashy dance-floor setup, and so on. another large category of convention center events are industry trade shows, where organizers can charge exhibitors and attendees significantly more because they facilitate a lot of valuable networking, often resulting in business deals that make tens of thousands of dollars, if not millions. i went to a large education conference one time and i was astounded to hear that the base ticket price was $495, though the teachers attending didn't really care because it almost always came out of the school district's "continuing education" budget. the unfortunate reality of fan conventions is that you have to somehow survive in the same world as events like those that drive prices for everything up with their huge budgets.
no matter how ambitious you are, my top recommendation is to START SMALL. it might be hard to limit yourself, seeing all these huge conventions that are around nowadays, but remember nearly all of them started small and ramped up over the course of years (sometimes decades) as they gained momentum. unless you have a compelling reason not to (e.g. you’re friends with a celebrity who’s agreed to show up and promote it) or have boatloads of money to burn on marketing, do not bite off more than you can chew for a first-time event.
obviously, starting out sucks: you and your team likely have very little experience, no brand recognition, no mailing list of former attendees to spam, no prior attendance numbers to pitch vendors or sponsors, no easy way to prove to people that you’re capable of handling things and won’t just run off with the money or mismanage things into oblivion. things can easily turn into a disaster, either financially or logistically, and the best way to mitigate the risks is by starting small. a smaller event is both easier to manage and limits the scope of any potential mishaps. then, if things go well, you build on that momentum going forward into later years, snowballing both your experience and attendance, expanding the event if you decide it’s warranted.
although large established events have a lot of advantages, there is one major advantage of being small: you can afford to be flexible, especially when it comes to the venue. large events don’t have much choice of venue because most cities only have a couple large to enough to accommodate such events, and sometimes there's only a single one. since venue rental is by far the largest expense for a convention, being able to shop around is a huge advantage. don’t only ask for quotes from the city’s biggest convention centers (usually ripoffs), also look at fairgrounds, community colleges or universities, hotel conference centers, expo centers, and other miscellaneous events centers. fan cons aren’t a terribly stuffy events so i don’t think attendees are particularly sensitive about the venue as long as it promises to be a good time, just find one that’s cheap and isn’t falling apart or in the middle of nowhere.
one last thing to remember: it's always better to sell out tickets than to undersell, it’s easier to stop selling tickets than it is to sell more tickets.
the technique i've developed to finance starting up a fan con is something i call “credit-card bootstrapping”, made possible by the ability to pre-sell event tickets. it’s simple: you put your early expenses onto a credit card, and then pay it off as money gradually comes in (hopefully) from ticket presales. ideally you sell tickets at a rate that’s able to cover each monthly payment in turn and avoid paying any interest, but there are also a lot of business credit cards that offer 0% APR for the first 12 months as long as you make the monthly minimum payments, which are usually manageably low. we were able to carry a balance of over $10k for a year or so interest free, making only monthly payments of $100 to keep the 0% promo rate active.
the major benefit of the credit card method is that you don’t have to put in any of your own money or take out any loans with interest to get started, and if the event goes well you never have to. otherwise, after the event is done, you’re left with a bunch of credit card debt at some horrific interest rate, though credit card companies don’t want you to know this: you can simply not pay and let it go to collections. true, it will tank your credit score and make it impossible to get any financing anywhere, but hopefully by then you’ve already escaped to thailand or somewhere so it won’t matter. depending on the collections agency, you can also try to send them an offer for an immediate lump-sum settlement that’s a fraction of the original debt and they’ll frequently accept it just to get it over with quickly, they buy the debt from companies for pennies on the dollar so they still make money if you pay off less than half of it.
another well-known benefit of using a credit card is the points or rewards, which are usually so small (like 1-2%) that they’re hardly worth getting out of bed for unless you’re a big spender. but, turns out that cons are expensive and organizing one briefly turn you into a big spender, so it’s worth looking into. especially consider taking out a new credit card for the welcome bonuses, they are usually much more generous than the rewards from normal spending and you can pretty easily hit the spending goals (a typical one is like “free $900 if you spend $5k in the first 3 months of account opening) with con expenses. with how con finances tend to go, you have to take advantage of every edge you can get, and credit card rewards are basically free money (or, another way to think about it, a 1-2% discount on everything you buy with it). we were able to book several free flights for people coming in using our credit card rewards, in addition to getting a normal statement credit.
fair warning, though, not every business you deal with will accept credit cards, and some of them that do will tack on an additional fee for taking credit cards, which unfortunately does tend to happen with some of the largest payments like venue fees. if you get 2% rewards and the additional credit card fee is 3%, probably consider paying some other way, unless you don't have the money available otherwise or that payment would help you hit a good welcome bonus spending goal.
the section title is one of the fundamental rules of finance, known as the “time value of money”. it is partially the reason why many cons offer “early-bird discounts”, the value of having a little bit less money in the bank right away is worth the same or more as having a little bit more further down the road. after all, many large down payments have to be made BEFORE the convention, and having to take on debt to do so is more expensive because of interest. also, holding plenty of money in the bank at all times gives you access to valuable optionality, you have the ability to handle sudden urgent payments or take advantage of limited-time opportunities.
in practice, what following this rule generally means is do NOT be in a hurry to pay off bills. if you’ve got the organizational ability, pay them off right at the deadline, if you’ve got the balls, wait until they start reaching out to you demanding immediate payment and then pay. for especially large bills like venue fees, see if you can arrange a payment plan where you pay the balance in a series of periodic installments, although if they try to charge extra for that don’t take them up on it. sometimes you may need to go even further: one time we had to make a huge payment to reserve the venue for our chosen dates but didn’t have the funds together yet, so to buy time we told them we’d mailed a check. several weeks later the venue told us the check must’ve gotten lost because they still hadn’t received it (of course they hadn’t, we had never mailed it), but by then we had the money and just paid them right away with a wire transfer. bonus: even though it was in the contract, they never charged us the late fee, it’s possible they didn’t even know what was in their own contract (which i read thoroughly because i’m a nerd). related to that, NEVER remind anyone you owe them money or offer to pay anything unprompted – do not do something like mention “oh hey so about that late fee you forgot to charge us...”. if they want their money, they need to come and get it, and sometimes they forget and won’t come at all! fact is, you need to be ruthless to survive in this industry.
besides ticket sales, sponsorships, and vendor fees, another tempting source of potential revenue is from selling con merch. don’t let your ego carry you away – although having a bunch of merch with the logo of YOUR event on it makes it feel so much more real and gets pride for what you've created swelling in your chest, other people do not have close to the same personal investment in the event and will not be beating down the doors to purchase merch with its logo. overall i wouldn’t worry too much about the merch if you’re just starting out because your con “brand” will be weak if not nonexistent and it will end up distracting from more important things you should be focusing on. even large conventions don’t often make a whole lot off their merch, though i think they frequently sabotage themselves with shitty art and designs. just do something cheap and simple like stickers or pins, and if people don’t buy them you can always eat the cost and hand them out for free as souvenirs. also, try to avoid ordering too much of anything with a specific year on it, the extras will be difficult to get rid of at the next year’s convention 😉.
most importantly, do not, i repeat do NOT under any circumstances try to sell shirts unless you’ve REALLY got something going, it is an absolute pain-in-the-ass money pit. the margins on shirts are awful, the unit cost is so high (unless you buy a million of them) that it’s hard to make much money with even the cheapest shitty 3-color print gildan ones unless you sell them at unconscionable prices like $40 each. they’re also heavy, take up a lot of space, and turn into a logistical and sorting NIGHTMARE because of all the SIZES. i do think it is ok, however, to buy a bunch of staff shirts for your team to help them stand out, and giving them shirts is a nice little benefit to make up for not getting paid.
one thing i will say is that if you really want to make extra money selling stuff to attendees, it doesn’t necessarily have to be con-branded merch. there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from operating a convention-sponsored store selling a bunch of products you think attendees will buy, besides the fact that handling retailing on top of everything else may be stretching yourself too thin. all i will say is that if you buy in bulk from china, the margins on certain popular products like plushies are VERY good...
as an organizer, vendors are great because not only are they a huge draw for attendees (shopping is one of the big reasons people come to cons), but they also PAY YOU EXTRA to be there. get as many as you can, reach out to them yourself and invite them even, and try to treat them well. the only problem is that as a new untested event vendors will be hesitant to come from afar, so you’ll have to rely mostly on locals. obviously, the amount you can charge vendors is heavily based on attendance size, and if it comes down to it for a first time event you might want to entice them by making it very cheap unless you have something compelling to convince them it’ll be worth it like huge pre-sale ticket numbers.
although it's tempting to try and do a revenue share with vendors, in practice i think it’s best to do a flat fee in advance. revenue share is logistically complicated and there’s all sorts of ways unscrupulous vendors can cheat you, either by underreporting their numbers or just running out on you without paying at all, since rev share has to be collected after the event. a flat fee in advance solves most of those issues, plus it follows the “money now is worth more than money later” principle.
one thing you shouldn’t be shy about when starting out is handing out free tickets to your event. since you’re relatively unknown, most people you give free tickets to probably weren’t ever going to buy tickets anyway, so it’s likely not costing you any sales while possibly helping get the word out and drive additional ticket sales. maybe they'll end up telling their friends they’re going and so then the friends will have to buy tickets to come with them, you never know. maybe they won't come at all so it doesn't end up mattering that you gave them away for free. we usually freely hand out tickets to random people we meet around town: random convention center employees, our uber drivers, guy at the print shop, cool guatemalan waiter we smoked a cig with who offered to put our beers as “desserts” on the receipt so we could get them expensed.
the most POWERFUL free ticket technique, however, is using them as “payment-in-kind”, paying for stuff using free tickets instead of money. at times it basically feels like printing your own currency and it's always astounding whenever people accept free tickets instead of money, knowing that you have the power to instantly conjure up however many more you want just by clicking a few buttons online. there are few situations where this trick works particularly well – for example, giving social media influencers free tickets in exchange for a few posts promoting your event, and maybe a couple extra so they can also run a ticket giveaway. it can be surprisingly versatile, once we managed to get a nice discount on some billboard space by giving them a bunch of free tickets, and another time an event manager at a convention center let us rent some stage stairs (normal cost: $400!!!) for free after we offered her four tickets instead. the only thing is, though, the desirability of attending your event will play a big part in how much value you’re able to get out of this technique, if you’re hosting something niche like an event for furries you’re probably not going to be getting discounts by offering free tickets unless you happen to find exactly the right people.
shopping normally at the grocery store or wherever, you get used to being the “little guy” with no influence whatsoever, forced to pay the posted price for the products the massive corporations decide to offer you. things work a little differently, though, when you're spending big money and hiring companies to do things for you, whether it’s a home renovation or putting on a convention. the first thing you might notice is that pricing isn’t the same, in fact most things don’t even have a set price and they’re highly customizable, you submit a proposal for what you want and then receive a quote. even when there is a set price, it’s usually still negotiable or customizable to some extent.
the important thing to remember is to NEVER accept the first quote you get. always try to see if you can bring it down a little, ask to remove a couple of unnecessary line items to reduce it, and of course shop around and see how much other companies quote you as well. remember: it never hurts to ask, the worst they can do is say no, and you might potentially save hundreds or thousands of dollars. one time we managed to finagle a significant discount on wifi access by driving a hard bargain, although to be fair convention center internet prices are always inflated to such absolute bullshit rip-off levels that there was plenty of room for them to drop it.
literally thousands of books have been written about negotiation over the years so it can seem a little intimidating, but you don’t really need to worry that much because you won’t need to do any high-intensity face-to-face conference room type stuff like they do in Big Serious Business. the average “negotiation” for organizing a fan con is conducted entirely over a couple of emails, first some business sends you a quote for $5.2k, you reply “can you do $5k plz”, and then they respond with either “sure”, “no but we can do $5.1k”, or “no if we do any less than $5.2k we will go bankrupt”. you can get away with some really dumb negotiation tactics, too, my old boss was an incorrigible cheapskate and his strategy consisted primarily of sending offensively low counteroffers, like on an $8k quote he’d respond “can you do $1.2k”. it worked surprisingly often, and even in the majority of cases when it didn’t, business is business so they rarely took it personally and would always honor the original quote if needed.
when you’re on a strict budget, it can be easy to fall into a trap of trying to optimize every last purchase, trying to get everything as cheap as humanely possible. the problem is that you start running into severely diminishing returns the less expensive whatever you're purchasing is, and over the course of organizing an event you will have to make a LOT of little purchases that it will be tempting to try and optimize as well. the thing is, it’s really not worth your time to spend 30 minutes researching where to buy the absolute cheapest pair of scissors if each pair of scissors is already like $5, or worrying about buying the name brand vs. generic brand snacks at costco when the price difference is only $10.
instead, a far better use of time is to focus money-saving efforts on the biggest costs, because that's where you stand to save the most money at once. shopping around and finding the cheapest venue, for example, can immediately save you thousands of dollars at once, the kind of money you could never hope to save just by shaving a few dollars off of all the miscellaneous supplies.
one time it didn't look like we'd get quite enough volunteers to comfortably staff our convention, so we resorted to hiring a couple people from craigslist and a gig work app. naively you might think that paid workers would outpeform volunteers, but in fact the volunteers were far better and it wasn't even close. i guess passion goes a long way, plus gig workers tend to be people who for a variety of reasons cannot hold down a steady job, so you can imagine what that might mean. we spent most of the day moving this one guy we hired to successively easier jobs as he proved himself incapable of each one, until at the end we realized it had gotten to the point where we were just trying to keep him out of the way. there was no reason for us to waste money keeping him around so we went to go let him go, but it turned out he'd already mysteriously disappeared, never to return (he wasn't the only one, either). he left no contact information so we ended up distributing the money we were going to pay him to our top volunteers, one of whom was absolutely adamant about refusing payment because he said he'd had such a great time it barely counted as work.
on a related note, nearly every convention center requires you to hire security guards, dock attendants, and/or EMTs for your event, usually done through the convention center at outrageous hourly rates. i wouldn't be that mad if it wasn't for the fact that they are almost always absolutely useless. dock attendants are just guys who sit at the loading dock and let you right in after you say "oh we're with the convention", without requesting any other verification. security guards, meanwhile, sit around inside the convention like human scarecrows to discourage shoplifting, but expecting them to actually do anything active is asking too much, every time we caught a shoplifter the security guards had nothing to do with it. the emts meanwhile hang around nearby in case there's a medical emergency, sometimes in a dedicated room, and naturally if there actually is a medical emergency they are either nowhere to be found or act like asking them to do their job is some kind of unexpected imposition.