That's good to do even if you're going to a party and someone asks about what you do, you can show then right away.

Another nifty idea, load an old ipod with each album you are selling, to people can plug in and listen to albums while at the table?

#notbad Dave! That's a clever idea!

Just had a bit of a brainwave. During live shows, especially larger ones with a live stream, having a "merch table" page on the event site where people can get links directly to artists bandcamp / cd baby / soreadshirt page might generate an extra sale or two! Specially if the people hosting the stream/running the twitter account can mention it.

no but on the real, if you're going to have a merch table, make sure you have someone to help run it while you rock da fuck out. even if they're just standing at the table looking akward, it helps!

Idk why, but the SKGB bootyshorts sold pretty fast

This is a "wire shelf" you can buy at Home Depot in varying lengths, lots of bands use these to display their Tshirts:

So lean that against the wall and clip your shirts to it, get you some lights to illuminate that shit, and construct an elaborate setup not unlike the one in this fantastic picture taken with a BlackBerry™, the serious photographer's #1 choice of phone for the 21st century:

I'm going to eat my crow and admit that I mixed up my details on the square.

I'm glad to hear you've all had better experiences with that service and technology than my admittedly very limited experience.

I don't play shows

Make sure someone doesn't try to distract you to get shit for free

Square is awesome.

Standing by the table after your set is necessary.

This is how we solved the dark venue problem:

Custom merch sign made in LogoNES.

Hi
I run the merch table at the Eindbaas gigs, and we do get a lot of sales there. You've mostly got 2 groups. The first one is the group that comes in at the start of the night and says: "Hi, all shirts and cd's please."

And then there's a group that just casually stops by to take a look.

What also helps is that we've got a cool table. People are attracted to it anyway

What I try to do is keep the table as clean as possible. put one of each cd on the table, the rest in boxes.
hang shirts behind you. and organise everything. (last time i got one big box with all shirts in them... trying to find a medium yellow shirt in a messed up box with 20 people waiting.. no fun.) make sure you can pick out what you need quick.

If you sell posters, be sure to have them pre-rolled. saves time. Also, if possible, you could offer that people buy stuff, and leave it at the merch desk to pick up at the end of the night. I had a lot of people who wanted a poster, but didn't want to walk around with it the rest of the night. If you organize something like a merch-wardrobe, people will buy more stuff knowing they can pick it up later.

Also, having a cute girl selling stuff helps too

And we've got stuff for everybody. Not just shirts and cd's, but also handmade 8bit stuff, necklaces, bags, hamabeads. stuff like that. Works great for when the boyfriend wants to get a shirt, and then the girlfriend sees the cute mario earhangers...

Have price lists on the wall, so people know what stuff costs.

this post is totally fragmented, but ok.

Also, bring pens, paper, tape, some rope.
Cloth-hangers are very usefull for the shirts. you could hang them on a wire on the ceiling, or a radiator or something. Or just tape them on the wall if they let you.

Be sure to have change.

And the part about the artists hanging around the merch table works.

That's about it for now... I think.

ok bye!

i use square,

and, the paypal here is out too, the basic rate is better but the rate for exceptions is higher.  so using that too, showed up in the mail today  

this type of tech is great, i had checked out other similar things before the square came out, the rate is sooo much better this way.

What are you talking about?  The Square is awesome, and the fee is 2.75% per purchase.  Meaning for a $10 CD purchase, you give them 28¢. 

Guess what?  That's better than retailers pay to accept credit cards.  There are plenty of retailers that use The Square now.

The Square will send you a device for free.  If you buy one in the store, they will give you the cost of it back in your account.  Yeah, only tools use The Square...

You can use SquareUp if you want to look like a tool and lose some sales in service fees.

Seriously though, I've used that as part of a street team for a nonprofit selling merch at events, and it's not a bad tradeoff if you think being able to accept credit cards will up your sales volume enough to offset the loss in service fees. It's something less than 10% if I recall correctly.

THIS THIS THIS.  Every time people sell merch for me I sell dick.  I've had several AWESOME shows where I sold almost no merch because I wasn't at the merch booth and other people were selling for me, even when I pushed the merch hard from the stage.

I'm trying to find ways to make my merch sales more consistent, so I can budget better when I travel or tour