Helpful Tips
Pricing out your booth rental
One of the main topics I see on the Photo Booth Network and Photo Booth community is “What should I charge for my booth rental?”
Here is the thing. There are only two people that can really tell you how to price out your services. That’s you and your accountant. No other boother can tell you what to charge. Why? It’s simple. My cost is different from your cost. My overall client delivery experience is different from yours. Also, the location does not matter. My market (Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex) sucks just as much as yours.
In this article, I am going to guide you on what you should look into when creating a price point that works for you and your company.
In accounting, there is a method called the Cost Recovery Method. This method shows you how to get your investment back in full within X amount of services/sales rendered. I am not a certified accountant.. I’m just a business owner that knows his numbers and has a really good accountant!
Let’s say your camera alone costs $1,000. You want to make your money quickly. Let me show you how.
Example:
$1000 investment x 10% = $100/event x 10 events to pay back your investment
$1000 investment x 5% = $50/event x 20 events to pay back your investment
$1000 investment x 1% = $10/event x 100 events to pay back your investment
What I did there was took my $1,000 camera cost multiplied it by 10% to get my overhead cost of $100/event. Breaking that down would be this: I want to pay my camera off in 10 events and that’s how I do it. On the 11th event, I just put $100 in my pocket or in savings for a backup.
Since we introduced the cost recovery method let’s break down what an example booth rental should cost gaining my investment back within 10 events.
Cost Recovery over 10 events using 10%
Equipment:
- Booth Shell with ring light: $2,500.00
- iPad Pro 12.9 (4th gen): $1,099.99
- Anker Portable 300w Battery Pack: $399.99
- DNP RX-1 HS: $495.00
Total: 4,494.98 x 10% = $449.50/event (that’s just for 1 minute of rental)
Media cost:
- 4×6 media: $169.00
I personally charge a half case of media per event.
Total cost: $84.50/half case
Software:
- Curator: $29.00/event
Artwork: custom work
- Template: $35.00
- TTS screen: 40.00
Total cost: $75.00
Staff Cost:
- $100/ 5 hours
Total Cost: $100.00
Insurance
- $200/year Divided by 52 (52 Saturdays in a year) =$3.87/event
Total Cost: $3.87
Transportation:
- $0.57/mile
For this example, we will calculate 30 miles.
Total cost: 30x.57= $17.10/event
Just at this point, you are at $758.97 in overhead cost per event before you turn a profit.
Cost Recovery over 20 events at 5% percent.
Equipment:
- Booth Shell with ring light: $2,500.00
- iPad Pro 12.9 (4th gen): $1,099.99
- Anker Portable 300w Battery Pack: $399.99
- DNP RX-1 HS: $495.00
Total: 4,494.98 x % = $224.75/event (that’s just for 1 minute of rental)
Media cost:
- 4×6 media: $169.00
I personally charge a half case of media per event.
Total cost: $84.50/half case
Software:
- Curator: $29.00/event
Artwork: custom work
- Template: $35.00
- TTS screen: 40.00
Total cost: $75.00
Staff Cost:
- $100/ 5 hours
Total Cost: $100.00
Insurance:
- $200/year Divided by 52 (52 Saturdays in a year) =$3.87/event
Total Cost: $3.87
Transportation:
- $0.57/mile
For this example, we will calculate 30 miles.
Total cost: 30x.57= $17.10/event
Just at this point, you are at $534.22 in overhead cost per event before you turn a profit.
If I added $150/event for my own wage at 52 events then I am only making $7,800 per year. WHAT! I worked my butt off for $7,800??? Why!!!!!
If I wanted to make $50,000 for the year on one booth I would have to charge $961.54/event
Now let’s face it a wedding isn’t going to pay a very rough estimate of $1720.51 per event with a traditional or iPad booth. They will for a mirror, 360 spinner, and/or roamers. This is where having multiple photo booths in your fleet will help make you a decent profit.
Let’s now act like we paid off our booth. What number should I be looking at? Realistically, you will want to charge the same amount because it’s all pure profit at this point right? Wrong… you still need to put back money for your backups or upgrades. You can definitely lower the percentage rate to make more profit. Let’s say we move that number to 5%. That means within 20 events you should be able to upgrade your equipment.
Again, this is based on an example number. Your cost is way different than mine. Where your market is doesn’t matter because your cost of equipment is no different than the next guy.
Here is some of the things I left out above… advertising, marketing, website cost, CRM… just to name a few.
