The Full-Time Vendor's Guide To Picking The Right Cons

We used to say yes to every convention. If it had a table available, we were there. That is how we ended up at a Tuesday night craft fair in a half-empty community hall, selling two stickers and a keychain to the organiser's mum.

Not every con is worth your time. Here is how we pick them now.

Attendance numbers are a starting point, not a guarantee. An event that claims 10,000 attendees sounds amazing until you realise 8,000 of them are there for the gaming tournament on the other side of the building. What matters is foot traffic PAST your table, not total bodies in the venue. Ask vendors who have done the event before. Their sales numbers tell you more than any organiser's marketing page.

Table cost should track with your average revenue. We use a simple rule: the table fee should be no more than 15% of what we expect to gross. A $200 table means we need to be confident we will do at least $1,300 in sales. If we cannot see that happening based on past data or credible vendor feedback, we skip it. There are enough good cons that we do not need to gamble on expensive question marks.

Travel costs kill margins on distant events. A con three states away with a $100 table fee might actually cost $600 when you add flights, accommodation, food, and a day of travel on each end. We prioritise local and regional events first. Interstate cons need to be SIGNIFICANTLY better to justify the overhead. A display that fits carry-on (56x36x23cm) helps cut flight costs, but the accommodation and time cost are still real.

Audience match is everything. We sell art. A comic convention filled with our target audience is worth twice what a general craft market brings in, even if the craft market has more total foot traffic. We look at the event's programming, past exhibitor lists, and social media audience to gauge alignment. If our ideal customer is not the one walking through the door, our conversion rate tanks no matter how good the display looks.

Repeat events build compound value. The first time you do a con, you are unknown. The second time, returning attendees remember you. By the third year, people seek you out. We weight repeat events heavily in our calendar because the relationship compounds. Jumping to a new event every weekend means starting from zero every time.

We keep a spreadsheet with every event we have done: name, date, table fee, total costs, gross revenue, net profit, and a one-line note on vibes. After two years of data, picking the right cons stopped being a guess and started being a FORMULA.