Google-ability Survey Results, Feedback Request and The Jerx Tank
/In last Friday’s post, I asked this question:
When it comes to the google-ability of a trick, which statement best represents your feelings:
I make an effort to perform tricks that would be very difficult to find information about online.
While I don’t want people to be able to find the SECRET to an effect that I do, I don’t mind if they search and find that it’s a trick you can buy and that others are doing the same trick.
As long as they enjoy the trick in the moment, I don’t really care what they search or learn about it afterwards.
Here are how the results broke down…
59% chose option 1
10% chose option 2
31% chose option 3
I was happy to see that 59% of the readers of this site have concerns about making their magic ungoogleable. It’s not something I see discussed too much in other places so I was wondering if maybe this was some weird quixotic battle that no one else really cared about. I’m glad I’m not wasting my time discussing it here. I’m sure that 60% is probable skewed due to the nature of this site and the sort of magic I write about. With the general magician population it might be closer to 40%, I would guess. Maybe less.
If I had to argue for the third option—the “who cares what happens after the trick” option—I guess my rationale would be along these lines:
Everyone knows it’s a trick anyway, so figuring out the secret doesn’t change that fact.
If they put in the effort to track down the secret, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to know it. I learned the secret myself and I’m not some special individual.
There’s no winning this battle of keeping a secret if a spectator is determined enough, so it’s not worth worrying about.
If you’re too concerned about google-ability, your options for the material you can perform are very limited. You essentially can’t do any classics of magic because information about all of them are available online. Nor can you do many of the big releases from the major magic producers because often it’s very easy to find where you can buy the trick. In fact, the magic companies are going out of their way to make the tricks easy to find by anyone searching them. So to avoid google-ability you have to avoid a lot of classics and new releases.
The goal is to entertain. If they’re entertained for 5, or 10, or 20 minutes or whatever, then the goal has been achieved. What they do afterwards is not really any of my concern.
I’m sure there are elements of this position that I haven’t covered here. And I’m looking for some feedback from people who voted for #3. Is there part of your thinking that isn’t mentioned above? If so, send me an email.
I’m working on something that may be used for some potential testing later on and I want to get a better grasp on this particular way of thinking. It’s a mindset that I too had many years ago (when finding out tricks required a significant amount of effort on the part of a spectator), but I am firmly in the “Option 1” camp these days.
The Jerx Tank
One thing the response to this question showed me is that there is a somewhat significant market out there for magic tricks that don’t have an online footprint and can’t be googled. Such tricks could demand a premium price so long as the buyer’s could be reasonably certain the trick wasn’t going to show up on Vanishing Inc. 18 months from now.
Now, I actually have the infrastructure in place to sell a product without ever having to advertise it online. And I have the faith of my supporters that I’m not going to go back on my word about releasing something widely that I indicated wouldn’t be.
So if you have a product you’d like to pitch to me to be release in such a manner, just reach out to me over email. If it’s a good idea that’s in line with the work I’ve put out, then I’d be happy to collaborate on the project with you and either buy the rights off you or work out some other type of deal. This isn’t something I’m like desperate to do. I have enough on my plate. But if it would mean bringing some cool products to a discerning group of magic buyers, all on the down-low, I’d definitely be interested in helping that process along.
Let me be your Lori Grenier.
