GOAL SETTING AND BUDGETING FOR THE EDINBURGH FRINGE.
You’ve heard the absolute horror stories, right? Acts doing a full Edinburgh Fringe run, sold out most days, loads of great reviews, all the industry hype, and still lost money.
It’s the reality for a lot of people. And it’s terrifying.
But it doesn’t have to be.
And not because we have some kind of magic formula or cheat code, but we kind of do…
And unfortunately the cheat code is actually dead simple (and yet often really difficult to actually commit to).
THE EDINBURGH FRINGE.
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is such a wonderful thing. It’s the reason I live in Edinburgh. It has changed my life many times in many ways. From painting cow splats on random bits of wood that somehow became a bar in Bristo Square built by underpaid, under-qualified 19 year olds to venue managing, booking, and now producing shows, I adore it.
But it’s also fucking awful for everyone involved. It’s elitist. Scottish acts don’t win awards. It’s pretentious and impossible and mentally draining and physically draining and far too much pressure. Not to mention it costs you like thousands of pounds to perform at.
It’s so easy to decide to do the Fringe thinking it will make your career, and want to do it all. You want the best and most central venue, the big outdoor posters, a street team, to sell out the full run, get tons of reviewers in, get exclusively 4 and 5 star reviews, get an agent, probably some telly work, and surely an award nomination.
But you can’t do that. 1 in a million do that. And those folk got lucky.
GOAL SETTING.
What you need are goals.
Like, specific, achievable, measurable goals. And you need to stick to them. And then, you need to budget accordingly* (*admittedly the harder part).
Spend some time and be extremely honest with yourself about what you want. Do you even want to do the Fringe, or are you just doing it cause everyone else is or you feel like you’re “supposed” to?
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
So…. what do you want? I mean obviously you want all of these things, but realistically, pick the one or maybe two that mean the most to you. Is the most important thing building an audience? Stage time and honing your craft? The “big debut”? Industry attention? Or any other cool goal not on this list.
And build your plan around this.
If you want to build an audience, flyering is probably your best bet. It would be great to be in a big well known venue but the free fringe is also a cracking option. Don’t worry about the reviews and “industry”, and don’t compare yourself to someone who’s spending loads on PR. Focus on building YOUR audience. Just try to sell more tickets than the day before and enjoy performing the show.
If your goal is perfecting your stage time then of course you need to sell tickets BUT don’t bother with a big paid venue. Get on the free fringe, hustle to get some tourists in the room, and then focus on writing, performing and enjoying the process of getting better.
Really set on doing your big all-singing, all-dancing debut? That’s great! But you really need to think about the costs cause there’s a whooooole lot of them to do it big and it can be a financial risk. Just make sure your show is the best it can possibly be and know within yourself how much you’re comfortable to lose.
Finally, if you want that momentum or industry attention, then yeh you do need to budget for PR, maybe a producer and/or a director too. You need reviewers in and you need to “network” (even though it can feel awkward & gross).
HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU HAVE?
Next up, how much time do you have?
Do you work full time? That might put you in a better financial position, but you’ll be time poor. So if your main goal is reviews then you need to consider the time it takes to gather email addresses, contacting folk, writing a release, and whether or nor that is realistic without the help of a PR.
However, if you have more time on your hands, can you do a bit more of that yourself and use that money elsewhere?
How about in August? Can you flyer for your own show? Can you be off to the print shops printing any quotes and reviews for your posters?
If you’re working in August alongside performing, or you need headspace to focus on your show and the PRESSURE of this month-long marathon, that’s the time to consider paying for support. Be that a producer, a flyerer, and admin assistant.
THE BUDGET
And that’s how you start to build your Fringe budget.
Sure, it’s an oversimplification, obviously. But sometimes a lovely simple way of framing things can be helpful, especially if you’re already feeling overwhelmed.
I am absolutely not trying to shy away from the fact that plenty of people are quite literally priced out of the Fringe. No amount of goal setting and budgeting changed that. And if that’s you, then rest assured that the Fringe isn’t everything.
Also, people can set really clear and specific goals and still lose money. If anyone had the fix for this, that person would be a millionaire and they’d probably give everyone enough money to do the Fringe (lol jk they’d keep it all and not pay tax or whatever).
All of this is to say that the worst mistakes you can make when planning for Fringe are doing it simply because everyone else is, not being clear on what you want or what success actually looks like for you, spending large amounts of money on things you think you’re supposed to, and ultimately ending up both unhappy and out of pocket.
WHAT NEXT?
If you are thinking about the Fringe this year, or any time in the future, we have a budget template to help figure all this out which can be super helpful. We use this template with all of our own acts because it’s editable and you can see different scenarios with different budgets. Plus, it includes a list of all the things you might want to spend money on with hard figures.
Click below to download the editable budget, plus a (so sorry almost 8 minute) video explaining how to use it effectively.
Stay tuned, follow us on Instagram if you aren’t already, and next up, we’re talking actually writing the show…
