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Gigmasters Places Performers Online

In nine years, Gigmasters.com has grown from a simple dot-com designing Web pages for bands into a thriving small online membership marketer that books everything from comedians and clowns to singers and Elvis impersonators.

Now, the two man show -- which has booked over 25,000 professional musicians and entertainers throughout the U.S. and Canada -- is looking to double its annual revenue and pull in its first $1 million this year.

Gigmasters has built a database of about 2,700 performers and more than 100,000 users of its services, ranging from one-time only users such as brides to more frequent patrons such as professional party planners, says co-founder Kevin Kinyon.

The White Plains, NY firm gets most of its performers and venues through listings on Yahoo, Google and MSN, with keywords like booking agent and party planner. It also uses some direct mail and space advertising in publications like Strings magazine. Just this month, the firm sent out a 10,000-piece mailing to classical musicians subscribing to music magazines in St. Louis, Seattle and other cities to try and recruit users for the service, says Kinyon.

Last August, Gigmasters mailed a 6,000-piece campaign to professional party planners using lists put together by local public relations firms. Activity on its site rose 20% during that month.

Gigmasters may make another mailing this fall.

"We started the site back in 1997 just to provide static Web pages for bands, be they rock, jazz, classical," says co-founder Kevin Kinyon. "That developed into service that would book them locally."

Kinyon and co-founder Michael Caldwell got idea to start up the firm because both of them came from musical backgrounds. Kinyon's father was jazz musician. A third co-founder bailed out of the venture early on to go to France, says Kinyon.

Within about two and a half years, the pair began booking bands in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area. Since then, Gigmasters has expanded to cover all of the U.S. and Canada and grown its offerings to include a host of performers including solo guitarists, hypnotists, comedians, magicians, clowns, DJs and children's party entertainers.

"We kept getting e-mails saying we should go into those areas, says Kinyon.

Gigmasters.com works by charging members an annual membership fee of at least $150 that entitles them to bookings within a geographic radius of at least 100 miles.

Places interested in booking acts through the site could be charged a 5% commission for a one-time use or could also pay for a variety of plans ranging from three months to 12 months.

For example, when one party planner books, say, a band for $1,000, Gigmasters would get a commission of $50.

"We're like an eBay for the entertainment industry," says Kinyon.

Because Gigmasters.com is so small, it was able to weather the dot-com bust of 2000-2001. Says Kinyon: "We were financed by our friends and relatives and didn't have a lot of investors [breathing down our necks]."

And now?

"We've had e-mail inquiries about other possible investors but none of them have gone anywhere." he notes.

So for foreseeable future, Gigmasters, will just continue operating in the US and Canada. "That's as much as we can handle," says Kinyon.


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