PTM 019 – Event Marketing: How Applying for a Craigslist Job Led to Traveling the World and a Nice Paycheck

Taylor: Welcome to the Part Time Money Podcast, Episode 19, Making Extra Money as a Freelance Event Marketer. I’m your host, Phillip Taylor, creator of PT Money Personal Finance.

All right, today I’m here with Mr. Phillip Hines, and Phillip is a college student and he recently wrote a book on – you can get on Amazon with your Kindle – it’s called How I Make $20 an Hour Going to the Beach, Concerts, Festivals and Professional Sporting Events and How You Can Too. So Phillip’s going to tell us all about the freelance event marketing industry. Phillip, welcome.

Hines: Hey, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on.

Taylor: What motivated you to start making some part-time money?

Hines: Well, I really just needed money at the time. I mean, I was 19 and was in college and had a lot … had about $10,000 in student loans I had to pay off. So I wanted to pay it off quickly, and I started searching for different jobs on Craigslist actually, and I just kind of fell into it that way.

Taylor: So, how did you get in $10,000 worth of student loan debt already at 19?

Hines: Just …

Taylor: Is that how expensive college is these days?

Hines: Yeah, I mean, shoot, yeah, it was about a year and a half, two years of school, so, yeah.

Taylor: OK, and so you decided instead of waiting until you got done with school to start paying it off, you decided to start attacking it before you got out of school?

Hines: Yeah, I had a semester where I just … I was doing my school and I just did a lot of reading, started learning about personal finance and compound interest and it was really starting to bug me that my student loans were going to be a lot harder to pay off because some of the interest was compound because I had private loans. So, yeah, I just really wanted to tackle that and then actually open up a Roth IRA by the end of the summer. So that’s why.

Taylor: Wow, that’s awesome. I was never as motivated in college, so kudos to you for that. So that’s sort of your motivation, I guess, for getting into this, so you mentioned you found this job on Craigslist. So talk to me a little bit more about that process of finding this opportunity.

Hines: I did. There’s [Audio glitch 00:02:55] a lot of people, Craigslist has lots of stuff for sale, [Audio glitch 00:03:01] I was kind of leery of it because of scams and things of that nature, but, yeah, there’s a section on Craigslist under … if you go to the ‘gigs’ section and there’s an ‘event’ section and that’s where big companies worldwide and national companies, they put up job listings for part-time event marketing jobs, and most of the jobs are $15, $20, even go up to $30 per hour just promoting big brands at big festivals on the weekends. So that’s where I found them.

Taylor: So did you look in … you’re in Virginia, right?

Hines: Yeah, I’m in the Virginia Beach area.

Taylor: So do you look at your local Craigslist or was there a way to look at more of a U.S. wide Craigslist version or …?

Hines: You’re right, there’s two. I started out just looking at the local Craigslist with … actually, I open up … in the first chapter of my book, I talk about how I got my first job, and basically what it was, it said looking for promotional models to work in front of a Home Depot for like six hours sampling a major brand. And so I got the job with no experience, thankfully, and what I did was I just I handed out samples of Coca Cola Full Throttle for like six hours and I made like $15 an hour.

Taylor: Nice.

Hines: And it was a weekday event. You’ve got to be flexible. But that’s kind of how it started. There is a website called eventspeak.com that’s a national job website specifically for event marketing, and there’s also like forms and stuff. It’s really informative for people looking to do this kind of work.

Taylor: Right, awesome. And how do you search Craigslist nationwide? I’m not sure I know how to do that. Do you know how to do that?

Hines: I don’t know.

Taylor: OK, but that never came up in your searching?

Hines: No, I just do the jobs that are local, but a lot of times, it’s like anything, once you get in with the company they have more work and you just kind of go from there.

Taylor: Is there something special about the Virginia Beach area that has a lot of these types of gigs or do you think there are a lot of them nationwide?

Hines: Oh, they’re all over the place.

Taylor: OK.

Hines: The cool part about these jobs is most of the time you’ve probably seen people working at these jobs; you just didn’t really think about how they got them. Virginia Beach, it’s pretty busy in the summertime, but it gets cold here in the winter. There’s a lot of these … you can do full-time work with this type of stuff throughout the year if you’re in big cities like New York, Chicago, L.A. So, no, it’s nationwide. Even in rural areas, there’s a lot of companies that do in-store demos. Right now, I’m doing an in-store demo for Soda Stream – it’s a homemaking soda machine, and that’s a national program going on right now. So there’s opportunities in every state.

Taylor: OK. So what kind of person are they looking for? I mean, you’re a young college student. Is that typically who they’re going after? What did you called it, you called it kind of a promotional model job. So do you have to have model looks or …?

Hines: No, it’s called promotional models, and I think that’s because sometimes it blends in with … sometimes we work with modeling agents, we work with other models. No, you’ve just got to be energetic. They don’t really tell you this, but you have to be OK looking most of the time and you have to be in OK shape. But as long as you’re friendly, you’re energetic, you can get the job. The age, most people are ages like 18 to 30-35, that’s in my experience. I’ve never really worked with anyone much older than 35 unless they’re a manager, so …

Taylor: Gotcha. Talk a little bit about the schedule that’s required for most of these opportunities, maybe how long they last and when they typically are. That way we can kind of guide the listener to … this is something that they could work on. So maybe just how long the opportunities are and where they’re actually located.

Hines: Yeah, that’s one reason these jobs are ideal for college students because most of the gigs are on the weekends. So it kind of keeps you out of trouble. You’re working the entire weekend. Most of the jobs are on the weekends. Where I am in Virginia, the summertime is the busy month, busy time, so that’s when the events are. Most of the events are at festivals. I work a lot of festivals. It’s a weekend festival, and so it might be like 10 a.m.–9 p.m. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So a lot of times, they’re long events. You’ve got to be able to stand on your feet and deal with thousands of consumers every day, but most of the times, it’s on the weekends.

Taylor: And is it typically about $15 an hour is what the pay is?

Hines: Yeah, $15 an hour is on the low end. The average is about $20, and it depends on the … if you’re in New York City, you can expect to get maybe $25 or $30, in Virginia $15 to $20. Right now, I’m applying for a job and it’s $23 per hour. It’s at a marathon at the Virginia Beach oceanfront. But other jobs I work, I get $18 an hour. It’s around $20, yeah.

Taylor: Nice.

Hines: I mean, if you … the industry rate is around $15 to $25, so I average out to $20. You really shouldn’t take less than $15 because I’d say they’re maybe taking advantage of you.

Taylor: Gotcha. Good stuff. So you mentioned one website earlier, Eventspeak. How did you find out about this marathon job, and maybe give us some other websites that people can go to find these types of gigs.

Hines: OK, well the job, it’s called the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon. It’s every year in Virginia Beach, and I just saw the job posting on Craigslist about a week ago, so I popped on there and I just replied to it, and then they got back with me and I have an interview with them Thursday, I believe. Events … Eventspeak is the main one, and beyond that, just look at your local Craigslist. So like, if you’re in Washington D.C., look at the Washington D.C. Craigslist because a lot of the job postings are on there. Eventspeak is good, but it doesn’t reach everywhere. I haven’t found many jobs off it in my area, but I found a couple I think.

Taylor: OK, and how do you stay away from maybe the companies that are not as reputable or … and have you run into any of those situations where you work for somebody and they end up not paying you or something like that?

Hines: Yeah, that’s a good question. Actually, the first job I did, the very first one that got me kickstarted, they were kind of an issue and it was my first job, so I didn’t really know. They took like six or seven weeks to pay me, and any time I would … in fact, I called a couple of times they said, well, we ran out of checks, so we’re not going to be able to pay you for another week.

Taylor: Wow, what an excuse.

Hines: Yeah, it was pretty wild. I was like, OK. But I’ve never, that was the only company … I mean, most companies are pretty good. Check the website. That’s kind of a way to do a little background check. Even if they have a website, that doesn’t mean they’re going to pay you on time, but just search for them on Google and then just call them. I mean, most of the time, I’ve never really had a problem. I’ve always gotten paid actually, so, yeah.

Taylor: Most of the time I’m sure these marketing companies are waiting for a check from the … for instance, in your first gig … they were waiting on money from Home Depot to get to them and then they could pay you, right? So there probably is a natural delay.

Hines: Yeah, some companies, they’ll tell you that. They’ll say we’re waiting to get paid by our client and then we’ll pay you. But in the case with that, I was actually working for a promo company and our client was Coca-Cola. We just happened to be working at an event at Home Depot, so …

Taylor: I see.

Hines: Coca-Cola was probably the client at that point, so, yeah. But most, as far as the pay goes, this is what you can expect. Expect to get paid about three weeks after you work.

Taylor: OK.

Hines: Three to four weeks. No longer than four weeks, but about three to four weeks. You’re not going to get paid every two weeks because you’re not on a payroll most of the time.

Taylor: All right, so you mentioned you apply on Craigslist, so you’ve probably gotten pretty good at knowing what they’re looking for when you hit reply and apply for these jobs. So maybe give us some advice for someone applying for one of these event marketing gigs for the first time. What should they put in that reply to e-mail?

Hines: Sure, yeah, actually, I have a whole section in my book about that. I give a … actually, give a simple sample simplate [00:12:41 – I think he meant to say template]. Basically, I give an e-mail that I use, a generic template. Of course, I tailor it to each job and that sort of thing, and that same format pretty much has gotten me plenty of jobs, over thousands of dollars. But pretty much, you want to get to the point. Don’t be too long. Tell them why you’re going to be good at the job. You can list your experience, but you really need to just … if the job is … for example, I applied for the marathon job. They’re looking for people that are best suited for that environment with runners and that thing. So just sell yourself well.

But a big point, and this is specific to event marketing jobs, is most of the time, they want you to send in a headshot and they’ll say a promotional resume. If you’ve never worked, then you don’t have a promotional resume, but once you get a few jobs, just have a separate resume and you just kind of list just the clients that you worked for. You do need to have a headshot because that’s another reason they call it promotional modeling. They look at your face.

Taylor: So where would you suggest someone get a headshot?

Hines: You don’t have to get a professional one, just do it yourself.

Taylor: OK.

Hines: I mean, don’t send in a picture, a crazy Facebook profile picture, but just a regular picture, that’s it. That’s all I have.

Taylor: OK, cool. And in terms of taking it to the next level, it sounds like anyone can really jump on Craigslist and maybe find one of these jobs any odd weekend. But it sounds like you’ve really sort of stepped up to the next level and really made this a concerted effort to really bring in a lot of money over the past few months or a year or whatever, so maybe talk about how to do that, how to take it to more where you’re doing this on a routine basis.

Hines: OK, well, No. 1, there’s lots of different things. I’d say the biggest one is, man, well, the biggest one is when you get the job, just do well. So when you get the opportunity, just do as best as you can, because you might not think, but your managers and the hiring recruiters talk to each other. So when you get the job, do well and you’ll probably get more work. Secondly, a lot of it is timeliness. When people put ads up on the internet and on Craigslist, there’s rapid response, so in many cases, it’s almost like first come, first serve, so if you see a job posting, apply with it within a few hours if you can, because there’s a good chance that if you don’t, you’re probably not going to get it. In my experience, because I’ve worked with some people that they just started working and then they got a job over someone I’ve known who’s been working for 2½ years, and it was all because that person applied first. So you just have to be quick on it, but when you’re doing the job, do as well as you can. That’s really the main thing.

Taylor: So maybe set up some type of Google alert system or Craigslist alert system where maybe you’re notified when the new jobs kind of … I’m sure you can … there’s some technical way to do that. I don’t know if you do any of that particular or do you just go to Craigslist every day and check?

Hines: You’re right, no, I don’t have … I’m sure there’s some way you can do an alert. I just, yeah, I pretty much, I guess I check every day. I mean, It’s kind of second nature to me. I mean, if I know I have something going on for the next couple of weeks, there’s really no point in me checking, but yeah, I guess I do check it pretty frequently and I know that some of my friends that … or I should say people that I work with, they do the same thing. So you just have to be quick with it, that’s it.

Taylor: So how much have you made doing it over the past year?

Hines: This past year, I haven’t done as much as I have done in the past couple years.

Taylor: OK.

Hines: I mean, this year, because I’ve been extra busy with school trying to take some summer classes and graduate. This year, I’ve, maybe, total maybe, made, I don’t know, like $1,200-$1,500 just part time. I also do photography, so it’s kind of an addition of that and some other stuff.

Taylor: So I think you said you took a semester off to do this for a while?

Hines: I did, yeah. I don’t really talk about this in my … I mention a quick thing about tours. This is something that … it’s kind of like the Mecca of event marketing. I took a semester off. I had a really good opportunity to do a national tour. Our client was Dell and it was called the Dell Intel Extreme Gaming Tour. We traveled the country. Each weekend, we would go to a different city and we’d set up this big display of 25-30 computers and we would just let consumers test out the products. So we went, actually, I was in Texas. I went to a football game at the University of Texas. We went to Anaheim conventions, all the way up to Seattle. So yeah, it was a two-month gig and it was really fun. I got to see the whole West Coast. Everything was paid for, and then I made pretty good money too, so it was great, yeah.

Taylor: Nice, nice. Well, that’s good stuff. So what made you want to write a book about it?

Hines: To make some more money. My uncle, I have an uncle whose name’s George Beam, he’s been a writer for 30 years, way before e-books and that sort of thing. But he’s keeping up with things and he encouraged me to start doing some e-books and I was like, well, if there’s something that I can write about, then I guess I will. So I thought this was a good topic. As far as I know, these sorts of jobs just … they’re advertised on Craigslist, but I don’t know, no one really knows about these jobs. I’ve had a lot of friends … that’s another reason I wrote the book … I had a lot of friends that say, how do you get these jobs, where do you get these obscure jobs and how do they pay so well? So just kind of naturally people asking me questions. My uncle was kind of like, hey, why don’t you go ahead and try this out? So I was like OK, I’ll do it.

Taylor: Yeah, I think it’s a great idea. I mean, any time you can help people, you actually teach them how to do something for themselves and make a little money doing it, and you’ve actually had the experience yourself, you know it’s going to be something that’s rewarding. It’s probably very easy to write the book and enjoyable and you’ll probably do real well with it. So people can find it on Amazon.com and how do they … I’ll obviously have a link to it in the blog post along with this podcast, but how do people find your book?

Hines: Yeah, it’s just on Amazon.com. I mean, the title’s kind of long, but you can just type in my name, Phillip Hines, Phillip with 2 Ls, and just type in marketing or something and it will come up. Yeah, it’s on Amazon and it’s actually also on Barnes and Noble for the Nook, so you can get it on there as well.

Taylor: Oh sweet, awesome. Well, I appreciate you being on with me. Any other tips or advice for anyone maybe looking to get into this industry?

Hines: Yeah, definitely. Well, No. 1, I include a resources section in the back of my book, and the whole … like you were talking about, the purpose of the book is to help people. The book is designed … if you get it, you should be able to find a job, just because I list about four or five different staffing companies, all of which I’ve either worked with or I know people who have worked with them. And I’ll just say one of them now, it’s Fusion Event Staffing. It’s a big, big company. I think they’re based in Georgia. I’ve been working with them for three years. The jobs that I do that pay $18 an hour, and they have their own sort of job portal on their website, so what you need to do is you go to fusiongateway.com and then you create a profile and then you’re automatically in the system and then you can start applying for jobs. So I think that’s an important point. There are lots of opportunities right now. A lot of people just don’t know about them. You just have to kind of look in the right places.

Taylor: Awesome, awesome, Phillip. Well this is good info. I appreciate you being on again and I definitely encourage everyone who’s interested in this to click through and check out Phillip’s book. And yeah, talk to you later, Phillip, thanks a lot.

That does it for this week’s episode. Thanks so much for listening. You can find more episodes at PTMoney.com on iTunes under the Part Time Money Podcast. See you guys next week.