What is a nightclub promoter?
A nightclub promoter is essentially someone who is hired to get a large amount of people into a nightclub and get those same people to spend money. Some duties of a nightclub promoter include booking talent, making and/or posting flyers, hitting the streets and passing out info, sending out bulk text messages to people and making connections. This is done all in the name of getting people to come to the nightclub being promoted.
If there is a big turn-out at the club then the club owners are happy and will probably ask you to continue promoting for their nightclub. If no one shows up it leaves the club owners unhappy and there is probably a good chance you won’t be asked to promote for that club again.
Being a nightclub promoter is actually not a very good gig. Often times the pay is minimal for all the work done. To top it off many nightclub owners will ask for your promoting duties in exchange for a “all you can eat and drink” paid tab at their club. In most cities and towns nightclub promoters are seen as kind of a waste of time or “joke”. Basically you are getting a minimal amount of money to party and get wasted. The ideal promoter for a nightclub owner would be a college student or someone who is not really looking to make any substantial money at that moment. Nightclub promotion is all about you doing busywork in exchange for next to nothing.
That being said there are some promoters who end up with lucrative contracts, but most of them promote at a different level and have opened their own promotion businesses. It also helps to promote for clubs in the bigger cities as there is more opportunity to get ahead in the business. Still, even the big city promoters often do it for the fame of meeting rich and powerful people as opposed to becoming well paid themselves.
A party or club promoter’s job is to get people into a club. Sometimes a nightclub will hire a promotion company to handle this aspect of the business. They print up flyers, send out email blasts, and use street teams to get the word out about the event. A promoter get’s paid per person they get to the club. This is done a few ways. The head promoter or promotion company will make a deal with the club to receive the whole cover charge charged at the door, and sometimes they will get a percentage of the bar sales too. Then the main promoter pays sub-promoters to spread the word about the party, and pays the sub-promoters like $2-$8 (depending on the club or city) per head. The sub-promoters all have a “list” at the door. They tell people to go to the club and say “I’m on Frank’s list” to get in. But they usually really aren’t on a list (it’s just to make them feel special). The door guy just puts a checkmark next to Frank the promoter’s name. At the end of the night, the main promoter c
