Whether you are a party promoter or just a denizen trying to make a few dollars, there are several tools available to you to start promoting your next event/party.  Below are five tips on how to promote a party or event for little to no cost to you.  Yes, you can practically promote your event for free!

1)Small handout flyers-A great way of telling people about your event is to create small flyers that you can handout to people at clubs, on campuses etc... You can easily create a flyer on your computer or you could find an affordable printing service online. This step idea may cost you a few dollars, but no more than $100 dollars for say 5,000 flyers. 

2)Promote on the web-The internet is a event promotion tool that is sometimes overlooked. A site like Eventorb.com allows you to  post your events and spread the word to everyone who comes on the site. Best of all, it's free to sign up for sites like Eventorb.com.

3)Word of mouth-Tell a friend about your party. If you are lucky, that friend will tell a friend and so on and so forth. Sooner or later, news of your event will travel through word of mouth.

4) Head to a college campus- A college campus is a great place to find event attendees. So take some of those flyers and head to a campus near you.  While on the campus, look around: there are probably bulletin boards where you can post your event!

5)Send a text message-Send a text message or an email to five of your friends and ask them to send it to five of their friends. Yes, this may be somewhat of a "chain letter" but may prove to be a successful way of advertising your event.  Make sure to have an interesting text message. A text message like "a party full of surprises" is sure to capture some attention. Be creative!

Without any doubt, the single most complimented feature on the Orb has been our event calendar, which allows you to see events on the day they occur represented by their default flyer image.

But wait! That's not all, hovering your mouse over the flyer typically exposes a fly out with the details of your event, and clicking on the flyer takes you to your event page. Even better, for those of you who never noticed it the calendar typically shows multiple events where applicable, and allows you to scroll through all the events available on that day. Some pretty nifty stuff if we may say so ourselves.

So we decided to take our event calendar to the next level by allowing you to create a concise version of an event and even upload a flyer -- all of this, without leaving the calendar page. When you're done, "presto", your event magically appears on the calendar. If all of this sounds too good to be true, then don't take our words for it, click on this link -- http://www.eventorb.com/calendar to check it out for yourselves.

As always, happy promoting!

We've added a few new features that should go a long way in improving your event promotion experiences on the Orb. As usual, all of these new add-ons have come directly from many of you who currently promote your events on the Orb.

Profile Videos
Previously, the only way you could upload your event videos to EventOrb was if you created an event first. Obviously, this can be a bit of an obstruction sometimes when you just want to upload a video without having to create an event for it. We have saved you the extra step of having to create an event before uploading videos, by allowing you to upload videos directly to your profile. 
 
What makes this even better is that, not only do you get to upload your videos with ease, but you can easily choose to assign your video to an event later on if you like. Videos can now be moved from your profile to an event, from an event to your profile or quite simply, from one event to another event.

RSVP
We gave our RSVP system a makeover to make it more useful to you. Previously visitors to your event page could just 'tag' an event to indicate whether they were going or not going. We have changed this system of tagging an event to RSVPing the event instead. Now, alongside indicating whether they are going or not, visitors can also leave a comment as well. To make this even cooler, once visitors RSVP your event, you get an email notification that lets you know about it. 
 
Best of all, we've added a spanking brand new set of tabs to all your event pages. The first tab shows the comments and Event GPA ratings that visitors have left for your event and the second tab shows who has RSVPd your events and the comments they have left. Of course, you can quite simply set your event to private to make these visible to only those whom you choose to give access to.

Multi-Photo Upload
We were recently subjected to intensive finger wagging and eyebrow raising from a few of you, expressing your disapproval of the fact that you had to upload your photos one by one for your event. We understand that this could use some huge improvements. We hope to add an ActiveX control in the future that allows you to select multiple photos you want to upload from your hard drive and upload them in one big batch. 
 
For now, we've added three more fields to allow you to upload four photos at a time for your events. Hopefully that improves things enough until we deliver an ActiveX solution to issue of multiple photo uploads.

Well, that's about it for now folks. Even as you read this our developers are working arduously on the next set of feature enhancements. Hope you enjoy the new features.

As always, happy promoting!

Just when you thought you'd seen enough new features being added to your favorite event promotion website for 2008, we pulled another magic trick out of the hat. This time, we've unleashed a full featured discussion board for the hard working boys and gals in the event promotion business.

Who doesn't want to know how much money other promoters are making, or which venues guarantee you a sell out crowd or even how to land lucrative sponsorship deals for your event. Well if you're like me, then you want to know all of the above and then some. Check out the event promoter forums at http://forums.eventorb.com.

The forums use the same login and password you used to sign up for the rest of the site, so there's no need to create a new account to join in the discussions. Just login and let your voice be heard. Enjoy!

Ever wondered why almost every flyer that got handed to you in the street had a picture of a scantily clad woman on it? You guessed it,it turns heads and grabs attention. Does it work? Well run a little experiment in your spare time. Hold on to about five flyer that you come across from promoters, lay them out flat on a table and pick the one that grabs your attention the most. If it's not the one with the pretty lady posing, come back here and post a comment bringing it to my attention, you're probably on to something big.

 Anyway this post is dedicated to the hardworking flyer designers out there, whose art is often ignored. I think every artist, regardless of your preferred medium should give flyer design a go at some point. See if you can create a design that will grab people's attention in a community proliferated with flyers and such. Here are some flyers that do it for me.

	Talk about leaving stuff to the imagination, aint nuthin but a damn silhoutte in this thing! It works because you get to fill in the blanks, which depending on your imagination makes for a hell of a flyer.		This is simply a work of art. Definitely an eye catcher
	I like the 70's Movie Poster look and feel of this flyer.		This gets the job done, and still leaves enough clothes on the model.
	If you can't excite them, then mystify them. This one is oozing with mystery that lures you in.		Ahh Illustrations! I love illustrated flyers. The majority of them always have a smooth clean look. Probably something to do with the fact that I never grew out of my "cartoon" phase (seriously).
	Another eye grabbing illustration		An artsy head turner.

Event Promotion is probably the most adrenaline pumping hustle I have ever engaged in in my lifetime, and trust me, I have engaged in a few. From beginning to the very end it is a mixture of uncertainty, excitement, anxiety, frustration and prestige.

My first encounters as an event promoter came in my college days, where money was never enough for some reason (there is no living like a rockstar off the money you make working in the computer lab). As with most business ventures that I engage in, I spent very little time researching or thinking about the pros and cons or if it was something I wanted to get involved with or not -- I'm a learn by doing kinda guy. So if you ever came up to me and asked me what you needed to become an Event Promoter, at least on a somewhat amateur level like I was, here are the things I would recommend.

1. A good graphic designer to create posters and flyers
2. A partner who brings something unique to the table -- I usually recruited partners that were better verbal communicators than I was, or just looked better in a suit than I did.
3. A night club or other venue -- most club owners have a gazillion things to do in running their clubs, you will basically be offering your services to help drive a crowd to their doorsteps.
4. A DJ
5. Security
6. A cashier
7. Advertisers

So the process went a little something like this (bear in mind that things might have changed somewhat since I was last an event promoter):

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