Would You Like A Photographer With That?

Another summer in the books! Mine ended just the way I would want - a nice long labor day weekend up at my parent’s place in New Hampshire. The weather couldn’t been better and I got to swim and kayak with my son in the lake. What could be better than that. We also took him to a place called the Polar Caves in Rumney, NH. For anyone that goes there, the cave called ‘The Lemon Squeeze’ is a must. We also did some blueberry picking near Cardigan Mountain which sounds a little boring, but it was actually really enjoyable and peaceful.

Anyway, it’s back the work at hand. Here is a quick run down of this week’s GigMasters highlights:

1. And The Jingle Contest Winner Is – The jingle contest wrapped up last week. The field had been narrowed to 10 finalists and thousands of votes were cast. And the winner is … Sol-sa, a Dance Cover Band from Elk Grove, California who has been with us since 2007. Have a listen!

2. Online Contracts – We did a soft launch of the online contracts last week and so far so good. What does it mean to do a ‘soft’ launch? That’s a technique we use where we put up a new feature without really announcing it, and little by little a few performers discover it, try it out, and give us their feedback and alert us to any bugs. This gives us a chance to work out any major kinks before making a big announcement. The worst thing you can do is announce a new feature with lots of pomp and circumstance only to find out its saddled with bugs. We’ve learned that over the years. You’ll see us employee the ‘soft launch’ technique on many of our new features. So for the moment, the online contract feature is tucked away in the performer control panel, but it will become more prominent in the very near future. I promise.

3. Photographers, Videographers, and more - While still firmly committed to performers as our core, we’ve decided to test the waters of some non-performer categories just to see what happens. I really think our booking system could work not only to hire a DJ, but perhaps a photographer or a party limo as well. And I think someone that has had a good experience with us hiring their entertainment could feel comfortable trusting us to help them hire other party vendors. So at the very end of last week, we quietly launched (yup, there we ago again with the ‘soft launch’ thing) the following new categories:

Wedding Videographers
Event Videographers
Event Photographers
Wedding Photographers
Bartenders
Hayrides
Chocolate Fountains
Moonbounces
Tent Rentals
Petting Zoos
Pony Rides
Party Buses
Carnival Rides
Carnival Games
Party Limos

It was very exciting then a few days later to see our very first request for a photographer come in! It was for a sweet 16 party down in Florida. I really hope this is the start of something big!

A special note to any performers reading this – if you have colleagues or friends who fit any of these categories, don’t forget you’ll get a 25% referral bonus for any that you can convince to sign up with us (provided they use your referral code and they stick around for at least 30 days)