Business Idea - Community Events

How about a business idea that taps into the entertainer and MC in many of us?

Every community has it’s opportunities to provide entertainment, and also make some income for the entrepreneurial minded person.

1. Game Contests - This would be a great way to provide entertainment in bars and coffee house type venues, and you could make some quick cash by having the bar or coffee house owner pay you a fee such as $100.00 per night for organizing and putting on the contest.

What kind of game contests do I mean. Well take a cue from favorite board games for starters.

Trivial Pursuit is probably the best type of game to adapt to a contest that would work in a setting with lots of people.

But do some research and see what other game ideas you might find too that could be adapted into contests.

It would be easy to find the information for the contest questions, rules, etc., from the internet or even from the game itself.

You could do a series of weekly contest nights with different themes, and if you located 4 or 5 venues in a large enough area you would be able to bring in a nice income every week.

The bar/coffee house owner could provide the prizes, which they could easily do in the form of free drinks and food, or gift certificates.

You could also source some inexpensive T-shirts, caps and/or trophies and have them printed with something for the contest winners.

Plus you are providing a valuable and inexpensive service to the bar/coffee house owner, because you are providing a “draw” that will bring in extra customers that will be buying food and drinks, and will more than make up for the fee the owner pays you to run the contest.

This is probably one of the easiest and quickest money-making ideas there is.

2. Local American Idol type Contests - This is another great money making idea that can be run in the same type of format as #1, and that would be a perfect venue because again you would be providing a “draw” for the business owner to increase business, and also providing some great entertainment for the community.

Plus you would give some talented local entertainers and amateurs a chance to get exposure, and perhaps you could offer a winning prize such as an audition tape sent to a talent agent or even work to get a local talent agent to attend the final night of the contest.

You could also try and recruit local high profile talent and talent agents to be your judges.

And you could make the contest last for a number of weeks, just as the national TV show does, so you would guarantee yourself an income for a period of time.

You could also make money by charging entry fees from the contestants, instead or or in addition to the sponsorship fee from the venue owner.

And when the contest was over you could start a new one.

3. Food & Beverage Tastings - Pretty much everybody loves food and if you specialize in sponsoring food tasting related events you would be providing some fun evenings entertainment in your community.

You would also be giving local chefs, caterers and restaurants a chance to increase their exposure and gain new customers by giving them a venue to showcase their food and drink.

Organizing a food or beverage related event can be done with an extraordinary number of themes.

Classical wines, Spicy Foods, Ethnic Cuisine, Fun Cocktail Drinks, the ideas are pretty endless once you get started.

And you could find ways to expand this idea by giving your food providers opportunities to put on demonstrations, give classes and sell recipes that you publish for a fee for the event.

4. Karaoke - We all know about karaoke, and it does take some investment to purchase a karaoke machine, but the technology has gotten a lot cheaper and you can now purchase portable units at varying levels of quality from as little as $100.00 on up into the thousands of dollars.

And you can even find a good deal on karaoke equipment on eBay.

Now again take some tips from #1 and 2 above.

Bars and coffee house type venues would be the best places to start with this business idea, but you could also target lots of other community and family events, fundraisers and more that would be looking for a fun evenings entertainment.

This is similar actually to being a DJ, but you are providing a way for the event attendees themselves to provide the entertainment for the evening by bringing the equipment and MCing the festivities.

5. Singles Events - The singles dating market is huge, and would be a great market to tap into. And you would be providing a fun service in your community by giving singles events and avenues to meet up and meet each other.

There are so many ways to go with this option, speed dating nights, singles mixers, singles themed events such as astrological dating, or compatibility matching tests, games and more.

Do some research here and you will probably find a ton of ways to create a business, and even a full time income in this market if it interests you.

6. Masked Ball & other costume related events - Lot’s of people love to dress up but rarely get the chance to enjoy an occasion to do it other than Halloween.

But you could organize interesting themed costume and other themed type balls to give people a chance to go all out with a really quality costume or full scale ball gown and black tie wear, and provide a grand evening’s entertainment besides.

You’ve probably heard of a “Viennese Ball”. These are still annual events that draw people from all over the world to Austria, and there are many local mimics of this theme around the world.

This would be a big event to put together, and to add even more credibility to the event perhaps it would be great to tie it into a fundraiser of some kind.

You would still retain a fee for doing all the organizing and running of the event, but you would also gain a lot of credibility for the event too.

And this could even be the beginning of a career launch for you as an event planner extraordinaire!

7. Beauty Pageant Type Contests - This would be another idea that could be themed, such as “Most Beautiful Cowgirl” or “Hottest Hairstyle”.

These could be serious contests, or even more tongue-in-cheek fun type contests where the contestants actually poke fun at themselves and a stereotype.

This would be another great idea for venues such as bars and coffee houses, and again you would be providing a great service and lots more business for the owners, while earning yourself some great income too.

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Now these ideas should get your creative juices flowing, and I’m sure you could think of many more once you started looking around your community with your eyes and ears open for ideas.

And the start-up costs for any of these ideas is pretty minimal, in fact except in the case of karaoke, practically nothing.

What you really need instead is the ability to organize and MC or find someone to do the MCing for you.

And to market these ideas, you simply need to approach the venue owners with your idea.

Be sure to be very prepared, and organize your idea completely before you approach a business owner with it.

In the case of a contest, plan the number of weeks the contest would run, whether it would be teams or individuals, the themes for each week, rules of elimination, prize ideas, etc.

In the case of the other events you will have to put your thinking cap on and decide how you want to approach putting on the event.

Singles events would still be great for bars, coffee house, etc., but also could be done in upscale restaurants, local small convention and meeting rooms and such.

The same would be true for food events.

A big event such as a masked ball would need more thought about venue, and sponsorship ideas such as a fundraiser or other tie ins, and need more ideas about publicity and promotion too.

You can have a lot of fun with this business idea!

And the ideas and info in this article should be enough to get you going, whether you need to raise some quick cash, or want to turn event planning into a full time career.

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