Cheap Comedy Fest is designed to address all the issues people have had with online comedy festivals over the last year of pandemic.

  • It costs only $5 to apply, that’s less than it costs to buy a drink at most bucket mics.
  • There is also both a video submission contest and tournament to decide the 8 finalists for champion of Cheap Comedy Fest.
    (This means you can still participate without submitting a video.)
  • We’re being transparent as possible about everything, including the budget.

Here’s The Schedule

Cheap Comedy Fest Schedule

The Video Submission Contest

  • You’ll send us a 3-5 minute stand-up (or Zoom stand-up) video hosted on YouTube, Google Drive, or Vimeo.
  • A panel of judges will pick four comics to perform on the final night and possibly become champion of the first-ever Cheap Comedy Fest, winning both immeasurable glory and at least $20.

The Virtual Comedy Tournament

  • With your submission to Cheap Comedy Fest, you are also entered into The Cheap Comedy Fest Tournament, a bracket tournament to decide four finalists.
  • These four comics will go head-to-head against the four comics who won the video submission contest to decide who will be the first champion of Cheap Comedy Fest, winning both immeasurable glory and at least $20.
  • Preliminaries are decided by vote, with everyone (comics + audience) sending the host their two favorite comics. The top two comics will go on to the semi-finals.
    • If the comics vote differently than the audience, a third person will advance. (The “comic’s comic” rule, to avoid decision-by-bringer.)
    • If there is a tie, the host will vote as the tie-breaker.
    • If more people sign up than projected, we may have to have another round of semi-finals.

The Budget

About half the money will go towards advertising the event to get audience members. The rest will go towards paying the video judges and headliners for their time, as well as the winners of the festival.

Here’s what the budget looks like with the projected participation of 50 comics:

Budget for Cheap Comedy Fest

Getting An Audience

We’re not gonna try making this a bringer show. Instead, we’re using as much budget as possible to advertise to an audience.

Everyone who submits gets a chance to be featured in our promotion. That means your submission fee also gives you the chance to benefit from paid audience acquisition if you’ve got quality content to plug (podcast, YouTube, website, etc.).

We’ll primarily advertise on Facebook with to people who like comedy. People who click on our ad for Cheap Comedy Fest will be directed to a landing page for the event.

The landing page will have 3 things

  1. Promo flyer style banner at the top
  2. Links to attend
  3. Featured comedians

Like this:

Want To Participate?

Sign up here.

Also, make sure to follow these instructions so we get your headshot and submission videos:

How to submit to Cheap Comedy Fest

Check Out The Blog

To find out what’s going on behind-the-scenes and see how Cheap Comedy Fest is being developed, check out the blog.

We’ll have articles about pretty much everything involved with getting this festival running.

Since half of the modern comedy business is marketing and promotion, we hope comics will find it useful to read how-to content about:

  • Graphic design
  • Building a website
  • Online promotion
  • Business