Comedian and ISH comedy award founder Nathan Cassidy

So how do you make money and get noticed at the Fringe?  

Let’s answer the first one, you need to spend less than you make.  Easy right?  No, obviously in Edinburgh that’s now very hard. With artists likely to be spending £2,000 or more on accommodation before we’ve even started with venues and publicity, how on Earth can you make money, or even break even? 

Of course some venues offer great deals in terms of not losing money, The Stand is an obvious example. But as someone who has played almost all the venues in Edinburgh and enjoyed aspects of them all, I do love the simplicity and money-making possibilities of the free model  – pay nothing or a bit of money up front, and receive 100 per cent of the box office and donations.  It’s done very well for me over the years, and there are some people who did free shows in 2021 that are now richer than Jeff Bezos!

One downside to doing the free model is that there is a perception (backed with some stats) that free shows are less likely to reviewed and previewed.  Of course there are multitude of reasons for this, for example there are many more mixed bill line-ups with free shows, but last year I thought I’d chat with a journalist to try to increase coverage of free shows.

Steve Hutchison from One4Review came  to the Counting House on the Free Festival to see one of my shows and gave it four stars. He sent me the link and said something like ‘hope you can use this’.  And I replied, ‘Use it?!  It’s my only review this Fringe!’ 

 This surprised him, and after a bit of conversation it became apparent that a lack of coverage for free shows could be nothing more than oversight on behalf of publications.  So with agreement from One4Review, Steve then reviewed six more shows on the free model over the course of two days and gave all the shows either four or five stars, and said he was so impressed with the standard. 

Some people may have the perception that you will get higher quality on the ‘paid’ Fringe.  It’s just not the case.  As with all shows on the Fringe, venues are a mixed bag – and much is subjective: you look at reviews and clips, you take a punt but the acid test is word of mouth, being at any particular venue will have no bearing on how much you enjoy the show.

 Some of our best comics have played or still play shows on the free model – Ian Stone does a show every year in the Counting House, Glenn Wool did one there last year, John Kearns won Edinburgh Comedy Awards doing the free in the past, Richard Gadd won his Edinburgh Comedy Award at the Free Fringe, Janey Godley played the Free Festival multiple years, Rhys James, Mark Silcox, I could go on…   One thing that links all these performers is that they made money from the box office at the Fringe. Of course they did, because 100 per cent went to them.

We need to support all artists, no matter their financial status.  That is at the very heart of the ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards  which I set up, where 100 per cent of any sponsorship goes to the artists and all shows are seen no matter what venue at what time – we longlisted a show last year, Good Boys Good Time, that started at 1:45am downstairs in a burrito restaurant on the Free Fringe – it was brilliant. Had it been on at The Pleasance with PR it would have perhaps been one of the most talked-about shows at the Fringe.  

To repeat because it’s so important: the best show at The Fringe for you could just as likely be at the Assembly Rooms' biggest venue or downstairs in a Burrito restaurant in the middle of the night. That is the joy of the Fringe that we at the ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards not just love but is the driving force that keeps us coming back. It is the beating heart of the Fringe, we need to support it to keep it alive.

So I thought this year I’d send out a plea to  journalists who cover the Fringe, because I know there is support from the free model but I also know artists feel that with some publications this isn’t the case.  

This could lead performers who can’t afford to lose thousands to roll the dice with a venue and PR and get themselves into debt unnecessarily, purely based on a perceived lack of support that they may get from the industry and the lower chance of touring opportunities and other career benefits that can come out of a Fringe run.  

Of course there is a multitude of reasons why artists at the paid venues get more reviews: they are more likely to have PR, they are more likely to have a TV profile so of course (and I get it)  if I was running a outlet that relied on advertising for revenue, I’d want to cover more famous people to get clicks, of course.  

But I’d also cover non-famous people, and people on the free model, I’d listen to word of mouth, I’d read press releases and I’d go to see what I believe from all the sources of information may be the best or most interesting, challenging , whatever my criteria was, shows at the Fringe.

With this in mind, I went out to some of the main journalists and publications that cover the Fringe and I asked them to give support to the following statement…

We as a publication/I as a journalist value the free model at the Edinburgh Fringe and will endeavour to review (and preview if applicable) a fair proportion of free shows at the Fringe at the earliest opportunity.

It’s a deliberately vague statement, as this isn’t about holding anyone to account and seeing how many free shows they reviewed last year versus this year. The sole point of this exercise is to highlight the joys of all sides of the Fringe and to reassure performers that there is support for the free model if you can’t afford the costs at other venues. 

To my absolute delight I received buy-in for the above statement from everyone I approached: British Comedy Guide, One4Review, Fringe Review, Wee Review, Beyond The Joke and Kate Copstick.  

While not signing up to the exact statement, Chortle vowed to continue reviewing free shows with editor Steve Bennett saying: ’Free is a brilliant model, lowering barriers to entry, and the true to the original open-access spirit of the Fringe.

‘We will continue to have free shows in the mix that we review, as we have always  done. Last year, our critic Tim Harding gave PBH Free Fringe comic Rob Copland one of our very rare five-star reviews on his route to winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award panel prize, and we enjoyed shows by the likes of Caitriona Dowden, Ian Stone, David Eagle, Louis Katz, Ashley Haden and Good Boys Good Time on the free circuit. And the latter didn’t end till nearly 3am… no time or place is off-limits to what we’ll see!’ 

Hopefully if other publications see the above statement they can add their names to it.  Again, this isn’t about necessarily effecting change from any one publication, it’s simply to say to performers that the publications and journalists here support the free model and will endeavour to cover your show, wherever it is, if they can.  

The advice is always the same to get coverage – send a good press release early with a good photo, but more than anything else, produce the best show you possibly can.  And if that’s at 1:45am downstairs at Burrito and Shake, if it's good enough, it will get noticed! 

• Nathan Cassidy has two new shows this year, both at the Counting House on the Free Festival. Piracy at 3.15pm and  It's Not the End of the World at 7.15pm.  For more about the ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards visit www.edinburghcomedyawards.com

PS: A note to journalists about accessing Free shows 

There have historically been concerns about reviewers getting into Free shows, without the comfort of a press ticket to guarantee entry.  To alleviate these concerns, here is some advice from the Free Festival and Free Fringe.

Generally, if a performer/PR has sent in a press release, then the reviewing team should endeavour to send an email back confirming that a reviewer will be in on a particular day as that should make everything easier. Equally you could try to make contact via social media.

For the Laughing Horse Free Festival shows, there are two models: PWYC (pay what you can) and Free Unticketed.  For the former you can get press tickets via the Fringe media office the usual way. If there is a queue for a  free unticketed show, the reviewer can make themselves known to the door person to jump the queue to guarantee entry.  

For the PBH Free Fringe shows the advice is to just join the queue as it relatively rare the queue is too big for the capacity.

Published: 2 Jun 2025