Just wondering how you got your first gig and eventually got more clowning party/event work from it?

My first gig was a birthday party for a family member. I did it for free although I was offered payment.

Other parents at that party saw me and "liked me enough" to hire me for their kids birthday parties. It just went from there.

What about you guys?

My first one I just did balloons, didn't even have my outfit ready yet. The girl was afraid of clowns, so I didn't wear makeup, just my shirt shorts and sneakers along with my crazy red derby.

I remember an important first lesson I learned from it.

DONT BRING THE ENTIRE BAG OF BALLOONS!

I ended up making about ten balloons for each child about ten of them, and I did this as a favor to the mom and birthday girl so there was no payment....sigh...

Oh well, live and learn! :)

My first gig was also a child's birthday party. A friend of a friend asked me to do it. It was a paid gig, but I accepted a small fee just to cover expenses since it was the first party.
We had a great time. I learned not to use a balloon pump that you pump with your foot. The kids kept saying, let me pump it up!! Ouch!!! They kept stompin on my foot! Grin.
Jubilee

We're basically a ministry group, we do birthday parties to fund our group, so our first gig was an Adult day care[free], the we were asked to do a children church service and received our first donations, and from there birthday parties. Our has all been word of mouth. Although I've been thinking about doing more.

My first clown event was organised by a youth organisation who funded the training that brought me into clowning. We performed our first event in Salisbury Cathedral and got on TV! I origionally joined the training as a volunteer helper and quickly dicovered there was a clown bursting to come out. Sad to say that out of the twenty people involved, my wife and I are now he only ones who still clown except Rolly Baine who trained us.

The first time I got hired to twist balloons was by an agency that saw me twisting on the street.

I'd been twsting balloons on the street for 4 years before I ever got offered to get paid to do it.

After that I started to improve my image and had a costume made and business cards .The agency started getting me more jobs. Little did I know they were taking a 50% comission.

On the way to one of those balloon jobs I had to stop by the post office and the lady there asked me if I could do a show for her friends son's birthday party.

I bought a few magic books and some props and had about 15 minutes of material for my first show and I did 45 minutes of balloon twisting. The show was laughable because it was so not funny. The grandmother came over to the kids and encouraged them to applaud because she could see I was really trying. But I really went to work after that to improve my show.