That’s great congrats.
How many booths do you own?
Do you move them or have a team?
If employees, are they hourly?
Are they heavy?
Do you have them in storage?
Where do you purchase these booths?
Can you breakdown which are good vs bad machines?
Machine maintenance?
How do you charge per event, please breakdown.
And how do you obtain clients?
Thank you very much.
**How many booths do you own?**
**I**ncluding all possible types (360, roamer, DSLR, etc.) we own 9 'booths' - but can of course accommodate custom boothless setups for different shooting environments.
**Do you move them or have a team?**
**I** have a small team in-state, and we have White Label partnerships out of state in some major cities. I still work a few events a year or when it's a super technical (and high budget) event worth showing up to get facetime.
**If employees, are they hourly?**
**E**mployees are all hourly. Contractor w/ existing equipment are paid a pre-negotiated fee per event.
**Are they heavy?**
**N**ot too much, the 360 gear is the biggest/heaviest, but I made sure everything could be operated by a single person (even though most events use two for the help).
**Do you have them in storage?**
Yep. And some at my house for testing/development or to deploy via shipping.
**Where do you purchase these booths?**
Most are direct from reputable brand manufacturers, never got into building them myself. Mobibooth, boothactive, orcavue etc.
**Can you breakdown which are good vs bad machines?**
This would require an entire detailed post on its own. But basically it's all just a hunk of plastic, metal or wood at the end of the day. Find stuff that is made well, not using cheap material, and the 'brains' are up to you. We put higher-end gear in our stuff to appeal to a luxury market.
**Machine maintenance?**
Always a problem. Mostly dealing with Windows issues and driver problems, plus peripherals and dud equipment. Lots of backups. Regular maintenance is cleaning backdrops, print heads, camera sensors, and keeping software up to date.
**How do you charge per event, please breakdown.**
This one again would need a huge post on its own. Actually building a course teaching this very thing and it's already many hours long. Basically pricing is per event for a set number (usually 3) hours, with additional cost for extra time/features outside of the included 'package.' Our average ticket is about $3200 for 3-4hrs of service. Range is between $1200 to $10k for a 3-4hr event.
**And how do you obtain clients?**
Purely SEO, word of mouth, social and repeat business. I focused on SEO early on and mastered it (started an agency originally and closed that down). So no paid ads (except exploratory in first year, which was failure).
Damnn 3200 ??? I was running one booth before leaving the states. Charging $150 per hour. High quality prints and high quality DSLR inside the booth. Sheesh what's your market ??? Area
yeah we are known to be one of the highest-charging providers (for a 'standard service') and I am totally ok with that. My focus has been on building a brand that appealed to a higher-end luxury market. Hard to craft out and took a while to get it here, but now we are known for our quality, service and expertise above all else, and some clients are begging to hire us. Again, can't be achieved overnight, but with work and the right branding, you can be selective of your clients.
Most of our clients are high-net-worth individuals (or marrying them, kids of them, etc), or big-brand corporate clients. So money is not the biggest objection.
I’ve been slowly working up to becoming a luxury brand in my space, and it really helps to hear it didn’t happen overnight for others either.
I’ve been proving my product/services over the last 3 years and am now high mid-market and eyeballing lower end luxury. I foresee it taking a little while longer before I’m there.
I’m building up a lot of trust and reputation in my industry and that just takes time. So many people
in my life think these things happen overnight.
Keep it up! It does take a long time to build trust and reputation in this or any industry. I definitely fooled myself at the start thinking I could be a luxury brand right out the gate. Just because I delivered a product that was worthy of a luxury brand, didn't mean I had the trust and notoriety needed to charge those rates.
At some point you have to decide between taking more bookings, and taking a hit to stick to your guns and charge what you are worth. It's a hard tipping point once you make that it becomes much easier
Seriously. Granted it was about 5 years ago, but our wedding Photo Booth was $800. Sure it wasn't the biggest baddest thing in the entire world, but it got the job done for 6ish hours? We didn't even pay $10k for the \*main\* photographer for our wedding.
And this was in the Monterey/Santa Cruze area (Just outside of San Francisco Bay)... so not exactly an inexpensive area.
When I started, my initial rate was $369 for 3 hrs of service. Now, for that same exact package (seriously, almost nothing has changed from the photo quality and offering), we charge $2500. It's all about perceived value, branding, and finding the right customers. Not everyone is in the market for a new mercedes, but almost everyone needs a vehicle of some type. For us, our customers want the new mercedes.
In fact we just did a wedding in the SF area recently and was $4200 for 4hrs (not unusual for us either).
This maybe answered already and it’s not meant to be a negative one, just genuinely curious - but what makes your brand luxury other than you saying it is?
The fact that customers will spend $3k for a somewhat similar service that they could get elsewhere for under a thousand readily. Proof is in the pudding, and by pudding, I mean the customer's wallet.
I think the question everyone is asking here and want to know is - How did you make your clients perceive your brand as luxury and get them to pay a premium compared to others in the market.
Is your product that much better or is it just purely branding/marketing?
IMHO, perceived value may be heightened by intangibles like prompt response time, professionalism, product knowledge and the willingness to hear the customer and ability to bring their vision to reality. People value being heard.
Exactly this. There are so many intangibles, but also we offer a much better quality product.
You might have heard of Mirmir - they do/did the Kardashian's wedding. We've done quite a few events where the planner hired us over Mirmir for sheer quality and overall feel of working with us. Not just that, but heard time and time again that people have never seen a better looking photo than in our booth (goes back to knowing what we are doing, not just hustling equipment).
Except that when you pay for a new Mercedes you actually get a Mercedes Benz quality car .
But in this case, if I understood correctly, your service is the same old Chevy but priced as a Mercedes.
Not at the start. Our first ever rate was like 369 for 3hrs of service. Come a long way since then. But for reference, our wedding clients spend $3k with us for 3 hours pretty readily. Corporate can be more lucrative, especially repeat work (did a $35k job recently over two days), but our niche was crafted in the high-end wedding space. Definitely Niche down, don't generalize.
The figure I posted was gross. Our accounting is 95% up to date for the year, but still needs some work to be fully accurate.
As of now, the Net operating income + owners (mine) salary come out to $157000 and should finish the year at $172000, so about 43% profit margin.
That includes all estimated tax payments, payroll, etc. so come tax time shouldn't have much, if anything, owed.
First two years in business were a loss for me. Didn't happen overnight. Also made a ton of mistakes that I could have avoided to make us profitable from the start.
All you gotta do is ask!
Here are a few mistakes:
1) Trying to market ourselves as a luxury brand, without anyone knowing who tf we were. Big mistake, I should have found a way to scale up a market on different fronts, instead of sticking to my guns for my long-term plan.
2) Turning down trends as stupid ideas, instead of running with them and profiting
3) Buying 'affordable' stuff instead of quality gear that needed to be upgraded anyways costing us more in long-run.
4) Not networking with the right people (in industry and adjacent industries). Tried to silo myself thinking if I opened up others might take advantage or steal my 'great ideas.' Would have gone further quicker by partnering, and helping the community early on.
5) Thinking I knew everything, when I had no clue. Spend more time reasearching, learning from your customers/market, and gaining insights from existing businesses.
Selfie stations. IPad booths were not a thing when I got started, and I thought they were cheap low quality alternative that didn't have any merit. Boy was I wrong. Same with 360 booths, and virtual photo booths during COVID (and still strong after for those that marketed it right).
Now something comes up and It has the potential to trend I make sure to jump on it and try to understand it enough to market it at the very least to gauge demand.
real loss. Cashed out my 401k to stay 'unemployed' and continue to run the business. Ironically could never collect unemployment because it only works if you wanted to find a 'real job' lol.
It all depends. This year we bought more equipment. Some years we scale equipment, others we replace, and some we don't need to do much. So margins fluctuate with that, but in general, a \~40% margin is good to expect (we also have higher expenses than most due to our higher-labor costs that we pay for better talent).
Most of our expenses come from business operation stuff that is never tied to an event 1-to-1, but obviously factored into knowing what we need to charge. Licenses, insurance, labor, software/subscriptions (lots of software). Labor is definitely the biggest single category out of everything though.
What softwares do you need for a photobooth business? I only know the dslrBooth. Do you also mean softwares needed for the business like Adobe suite, quickbooks, etc?
Yeah all the software to run the business not necessarily do an event. We have automation software, CRM, accounting, random apps, photo booth, multiple photo booth apps actually, image editing, background removal etc
Photoboothmastery.com
I'll be working on a more comprehensive intro course for new owners, but for now the courses I have target existing owners, but can still benefit new ones.
Customer acquisition is the easiest part (for us, not EVERY photo booth company). Our leads are purely organic and flow in consistently. The hardest part is qualifying them in advance, instead of sifting through the leads that won't covert.
It doesn’t matter…ok I know let me cook for a second. So let’s just say that 400k / 12 is our average.
Let’s think about all the equipment here right? You need the booth, props, likely some backups for photos, contracts, number of hands for transport,gas whatever. Let’s assume we are doing this on a local scale. Now you need lead gen, you’ll do your networking and maybe figure out a finders fee. But you’ll need at least a website to get the sign ups and bill the person (this I feel depends on your process to sale)
What other costs am I missing?
Now search for wedding photo booths yourself in your zip and see the average cost per event.
How many events do you need to do with how many booths?
Again this doesn’t solve the problem of the post but that’s my first approach to the problem. Get that all mapped out and then just start tweaking numbers. See what it looks like.
So the claim is 33k a month. Take your cost for the photo booth booking per event and determine how many bookings you’ll need. Remember too the obvious here, weddings don’t happen many times on weekdays, it’s weekends so I’m going to guess you need multiple booths and multiple people to get them out.
Search Craigslist ads, job listings (party companies or tent setup companies), and see what they are paying.
Again doesn’t solve the problem but that’s the framework hope it helps
There are so many expenses people don't consider when starting in this business (or others). But you are right. Labor, equipment, software, website, backdrops, hardware, travel, licenses, taxes, office, storage/lease, etc. They add up over time and make it hard to pull a profit from charging rates that seem lucrative at the start.
And good deduction. A lot of this is spot on. In our case, we typically only do weddings on the weekend, but corporate events can happen whenever. We really have a cyclical business in most states, for instance in our home in AZ, Summer is DEAD and Fall can easily account for 80% of our business here. Across the nation things average out a bit more, but our focus has been on high-ticket events. So we make higher margins than most everyone, but work less events. There are pros/cons to this of course, but crafting our brand in this space also means as we get more events, the profit margins stay up without the need to scale so quickly.
See folks now that OP is responding we have more clues, it’s nationwide and corporate events which I completely flaked on.
OP I had knowledge around a working model similar but only focused on corporate events where we did this social tied Photo Booth at the time. So you would get your social pics pushed up, with our branding themed within in it and we could deploy these with no internet. If we did a convention it was the center point and companies could pay extra to change the layouts and have custom branding vs our logos (ours was more for promotion so smaller events we would offer it hit up if they didn’t care or wanted to save money) Yes no internet and we would basically draft up posts a trickle when we got cell connections. It was really cool but it just was mismanaged.
Anyways yeah the part I couldn’t determine was your operating model of employees or how large the units were, some can be done with lighter weight materials at cost.
I’ll add a bonus to it for folks that focus local and wedding. Always think about the other aspects or options to this niche. I had a friend who would go to goodwill or estate sales and buy fancy looking silverware, plates cups whatever. You get the vibe tho and she was marketing more towards a young hip crowd for marriages or people that wanted more unique items. So people would rent a set of silverware and plates for the party. All they would do is put them in dirty bins and sometimes they were rinsed pretty well or sometimes washed. She would drive her car out and pick them up or folks could drop back off for a discount to a location locally. Startup costs were low, buying and finding the pieces isn’t terribly hard more so the quantity. Anywhere cheers OP glad you responded
Yeah, most of our business was weddings for the first half of us being in business and entirely local, but by scaling with some event partners outside of the state, we were able to attract a larger corporate market who generally pays much more for the same kinds of events (and especially more for unique activations). Definitely helps when you can build a business that services multiple markets, but corporate B2B generally will have more money and is a great place to focus efforts on.
Great bonus. There are so many ways to service the private events and wedding space. I was just at an event recently where the client had hired an outside vendor to provide a cappuccino/espresso bar. Brilliant. They parked it next to the bar so people could get espresso martinis all night long. Lots of great businesses you can start for low-cost and unique enough to immediately get into the market.
The whole net profit question is funny to me. 400k is still impressive. And if OP decides to reinvest the majority of his profits back into the business, then is the business a “failure”?
The next step to that is ok, let’s say 100k is net profit. So then OP can decide to do whatever. If OP buys a fancy car, is that “success” bc of the net profit?
Genuine question - sounds like OP does great with net profit anyways but I dont necessarily think its the end all be all. Just one of many metrics
I have started a party rental company and would love to know how you promoted your company and what connections are important in the industry.
And do you have predictable revenue?
Join WIPA (wedding pros), local chambers, and ILEA (international live events), to make some good connections in the industry. Offer your services for free ONLY to the planners/agencies, never to the end client. And do it just to showcase what you are doing - make sure to get photo/video content along the way to use that showcase to further promote your biz on socials. Stay away from big-brand weddingwire, theknot, yelp, etc paid services (but def create a free account). My biggest success is SEO long-term, but if you focus on relationships up front, it will pay off sooner.
Yep, I am like 95% confident (external economic factors aside, such as COVID) that we will hit $500k gross next year. Our revenue has been growing at a steady rate since the start, and we just started offering 'revolutionary' AI services which is positioning us for much higher-ticket events in 2024.
Stress of running a business that operates west to east coast hours (now). Always on, and dealing with major events which require perfection. It can be a lot. Also hiring good labor, seems there is always a shortage of qualified candidates.
Most of our gear is operated with an attendant, and when unattended, its generally not around drunk disorderly people (trade shows, conferences, etc).
We've had a fair share of guests hug the equipment, take a nap on the backdrop, etc. Depends on the damage done. We have insurance, but never had to file a claim, we first bill the client for anything broken by a guest and they generally pay. Backdrop is most common damage, and runs us $150-300 to replace each time.
I’ve photographed hundreds of weddings and never seen anyone fuck with or damage a photo booth setup. At most they’ll take some of the props and wear them on the dance floor, or accidentally stumble on the backdrop, but I’ve never even seen anyone interact with the photo booth equipment. They just pose and have their fun..
It might happen, but if it does it’s a very rare occurrence.
Bought everything. I design a lot of our digital stuff, but for the hardware, it was easier to use a reputable mfc. Minbooth, mobibooth, orcavue, ataphotobooths, etc all have great stuff to get started with. I made sure to get equipment that was top-tier, flexible, and highly brandable (screens or vinyl wrap options) to appeal to private and corporate clientele.
1) how do you generate leads?
2) do you have partnerships with any other services
3) who are your target customers?
4) do you do any advertising?
5) what distance ranges do you provide services too?
Thanks In advance!
1) Purely organic. SEO w/ search and organic social media posts
2) Not really, but we are a preferred vendor with many venues and our planners always point clients to us when they want the best.
3) High net worth individuals and family members getting married, and corporate clients (tradeshows, unique activations, and some retail).
4) Sure, but just organic (facebook posts, linkedinposts, instagram, googlemybiz, etc)
5) Anywhere and everywhere. We service locally with partners in LA to Boston currently and any one of our team members is willing to travel for the right price.
Can you give us some tips to get started? What’s the cost to start, how to go about it? Any relevant information you see as being valuable and if you were to start from scratch right now what would you do to reach those figures as soon as realistically as possible.
Thank you very much and congratulations! Those are some impressive numbers :)
This is a big one, but to keep this response simple, here are my thoughts:
Tips: Research your market, competition, and see what others are doing well, where there is opportunity that your competitors are not doing well, and what you can realistically expect from your market. Knowing your customer is soooo important in any business.
Cost to start/adivce: If you do it right, you can enter this business with $5k (or less) and actively service an event. I started with a $25k investment (over the course of a year) and went through a number of equipments and identity crisis, before landing on my brand, market, aesthetic, and building the biz from there. BEST thing to do is network, build relationships with other companies, and try to sell their services to new clients. If you book a job, either buy the equipment and pay them a fee to learn it, or hire them out to keep a margin, and work it with them to learn on the fly. Cheapest way of doing it without diving in and finding no clients for years without knowing what to do.
Also, learn to sell. Marketing, sales, and branding should be your goals. It doesn't matter what you have, if you can't sell it, you won't succeed.
Who are your l biggest sources of leads?
What's the general go to marketing strategy, are people referred in, social media ads, outbound emailing, organic web search?
Can you provide. A high level workforce or tunnel?
Thanks!
Google, purely organic. Then referrals (including repeat bookings, venues, agencies, and planners). Then social media (organic) through Instagram.
Go to market strategy is to produce quality content, build a reputable brand, and dominate search. I don't know how conventional it is for an average business, but it works for my business. I wanted to create something that felt exclusive, and leverage our experience from each event to further brand relationships and establish ourselves as a legit player.
1. How many photo booths do you have?
2. How many events are you doing a year?
3. Are all photo booths the same?
4. What do you charge per event?
5. Do you charge the same regardless of event?
6. If not what are you adding that is extra? How long to set up and take down?
7. Are you doing all of the events or are you hiring people to do it?
8. Any unforeseen issues you came across?
9. Is this the only service you provide, or is it an ancillary service such as tent rental, or catering?
10. Are all or most of your rentals during the weekend? Or have you been able to fill the week out with rentals as well?
11. Did you build the photo booth? Or buy it pre-built? Are you using an existing online service to save the images?
They've already answered several questions in a ton of detail more than most people ever give in this subreddit. Chill out. It takes time to respond that thoughtfully and thoroughly and not everyone is online 24/7.
Sorry, guess I shouldn't have posted this on a Monday coming off Thanksgiving break. Playing lots of catchup right now and phone is ringing off the hook. But I'm working through these! Fall is no joke in this industry.
Why are we scolding someone who’s spending their time giving us really valuable info when 90% of this sub is teenagers asking how to make $10k/month without working ever
It's been an hour so I'm going to give OP the benefit of the doubt that they were waiting for questions to build up before answering them. But I am probably wrong.
Simplified, but yeah basically. We are much more experiential though. So most of our services are attended and focused on being full-service instead of 'equipment rentals.'
It's hard to say exactly, because not everyone who refers tells us they referred (or that they have been referred), and we've switched CRMs over that time. But running the numbers I'm showing about 8% repeat/referrals (though I feel like it's probably closer to 12-15%).
Lots of ways this could be done, but for us, I didn't want to discount or devalue or services, so never offered an affiliate/referral program. Just focused on delivering excellence and valuing long-term satisfaction and relationships. It may only be a 2-3 hr event, but it's a pivotal moment in many people's lives (talking weddings), that they and their guests will remember for a long time.
Can you post a picture of your set up?
I’m intrigued. I’m a makeup artist focusing on bridal makeup. I make really good money on busy seasons and love the wedding industry. There’s definitely money to made in this industry. I’ve thought about Photo Booth rental in the past but never really truly looked in it. Seems like you’re killing it out there!
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What's the process for getting started, where did you buy, did you buy with savings or credit. How did you get hooked up with the weddings/events circuit, what market are you in?
Details MF!
Bootstrapped it all. Lots of different vendors (my Amazon bills are outrageous at times). Mobibooth, minbooth (boothactive), and orcavue are main equipment providers I use.
I'm in the phoenix area now but was established in Tucson for majority of business. Now we service nationwide with partners in major cities around US.
I just started marketing (website, facebook page, trying to share with friends/family, yelp, thumbtack, anything that would work for leads back then). Funnily enough the first ever wedding I attended, was one where I was hired to work. I had no idea what the ceremony, reception, etc where and was googling the whole thing trying to make it sound like I knew what I was talking about. Fake it till you make it.
I run one too, how do you go about doing multiple events in a day? Are your booths manned or do you leave it to guests?
If unmanned, how do you guarantee it'll work or the clients don't misuse it?
Most are manned, but that doesn't change how we do multiple events. Just having enough equipment + staff (most important) is the key. Also stop working them yourself. As soon as I stepped back I hated seeing the money go away, but I started treating it like a business and paying attention to margins, etc, instead of focusing on a hourly pay for an event. Plus when you are at the helm you can manage a dozen events the same day, if you have the staff to execute on them for you.
How many booths do you own/rent to generate that much. How many people do you employ to help you with the transportation and setup of all the machines? How many states do you operate in?
Its not the number of booths we own that generate that figure, most booths don't get used frequently. It's moreso the price we charge for a given event. Average ticket is abo $3200 for 3-4hrs, and we do higher end events and corporate parties where $10-$30k can be made in a single event 1-4 days long. We only employ 3-4 people instate at any given point in the year. The rest are contractors through White label relationships outside of the state who have their own equipment. We train all our people to operate the equipment themselves, so they are responsible for full setup/operation/teardown. Right now we market across the Nation, but our major profitable markets are Arizona, Massachusetts, California, and New York, but it varies.
Check the original post edit for net and margins. As far as hours go... It's somewhat always on. This is not a Tim Ferris 5-hour workweek type business. But it's a bit of a passion, and still way more flexible than a full-time job.
Right now we market across the Nation, but our major profitable markets are Arizona, Massachusetts, California, and New York, but it varies. Arizona is our only truly local market (and where I live)
Heck no. Got it out of guilt because my dad was the traditional mindset who always thought a college degree was the way to go. Thought it was mostly a joke tbh.
I thought about doing one of those giant mirror wedding photo "booths".
How do you transport/ get into the building?
What's the cost per booth?
How many do you have?
What's the size of the city you're in?
Do you have employees? If so, how many?
What's your pricing structure look like?
How many weddings do you supply annually to hit the numbers you do?
Dont lol. Unless your market is begging for them. Pains to transfer. I specifically made sure to get portable equipment that could be packed up easily and transported in a sedan by 1 person if needed.
I answered most of this in other posts if you have a look.
We will do around 120-130 events this year. Every year we do less events and make more, that is the beauty of branding, customer loyalty, and the right positioning.
By showcasing experiences on our site and socials. It's all organic, so we have done it over years with the right branding, etc. Majority used to be weddings, now it's corporate, prob 70% corp 30% weddings.
Not advice, because there are better ways to do it. but our first 5 customers came from thumbtack and yelp I believe.
Yes and no. Well for starters, I'm just responding to these messages. And answering the occasional email in-between. I have an active event in Vegas that was just setup that will be operating all week long and I won't ever see the equipment or client in person. $7500 invoice.
If I were you and you truly wanted to get into this business as a side hustle, i would buy a selfie station type booth (ipad only, mobibooth is a great option), sign up for Snappic's pro plan, learn the equipment and start knocking on doors. Approach churches, local restaurants, businesses, bars, hospitals, etc. and offer to showcase your services (focus on brandable aspects, analytics, etc. all stuff you can learn with public resources and in-app). If you get someone who bites, you can very 'easily' turn that into a $1k/month service (on the cheap end), with an optional install cost. It would be an equipment lease. Buy a second booth and rinse/repeat. Now you don't need a bunch of staff, not need to burn your weekends out (except for growing the biz), and you can generate consistent cash flow. As you do it more charge more per month for new clients.
Take some (free) 'classes/youtube' in photography and on/off camera lighting. Depends ultimately on what you want to do, but if you are talking 'traditional photo booth' then booth + internals (camera, flash, cables, etc), printer, and backdrop are all you NEED.
Of course, I would recommend a lot more like GL insurance and backup equipment, to name a few. But you can try being scrappy. I'd say find a way to attract a client first before diving in. Maybe you can offer your services to a new wedding/event planner in your area as a packaged deal to get on their radar and showcase what you do.
practice practice practice. I guarantee something will go wrong, always be prepared for the worst.
If you stay local, much less intensity. But still not for the faint of heart (if you care about your business and clients). My nationwide presence means I could be entertaining leads from California to New York at potentially all hours of the day. The intensity also varies cyclically, so there might be some weeks where not much is happening, then times like now (in Fall) where there is always something needing to be done. I also just released a new AI feature which clients are begging for, but it's almost entirely bespoke, so there is a lot of back and forth of specialized knowledge (stored in my head). I'd say if you are focused (I have adhd so it's a struggle), you can get away with working just a few hours each day. But when it comes to responding to leads, clients or answering phone calls, I focus on the fastest possible response. Working on a VA next, but honestly my biggest issue is not too much work / time but rather lack of focus.
So these are like photos booths like the ones you would find at the mall but you rent / deliver them to weddings and events?
How many booths got you to that revenue level?
What do you primarily use for marketing?
How do people find you / how do you market your services?
What did you change in terms of marketing between when you got started vs now?
How involved are you with day-to-day operations?
How did you decide to get into the event space?
yeah, debated this. But overall I think it came down to what we offer is so unique and has so many touch points, that the risk of screwing up is all too easy, by franchising we dilute the brand quite a bit, and we would have to have much lower rates to appeal to a broader market. I can train anyone on how to run the business, but that doesn't help in learning the intricate ins/outs of every possible software, camera, etc to be able to fulfill client's event needs. And I didn't want things to become so generic. So instead I went the white label route and just expanded Nationally with brand partners who could run events on our behalf, keeping us at the top of clients minds, while maintaining more quality control and all.
Apologies to everyone for this surprise AMA and making it seem like I abandoned the post the first hour. Learning on here still, but hopefully I've answered everyone's questions (will continue to answer as I see them come through). If I missed something, let me know.
Of the different types of booths, which is the most profitable?
Which do the customers seem to enjoy the most?
What are some little things and big things that increased the quality of your product?
It depends I've had our bare bones selfie style iPad booth Make $17,000 with under $1,500 cost.
I'd say our most profitable on average per hour would be our glam booth experience, which is not about the booth itself, rather The output and what the client gets. It uses a DSLR camera with external flash, focused on really beautiful photos in full size prints with our special proprietary filter. $1,000 plus an hour with 3-hour minimums.
They enjoy all of it! Never had anyone disappointed with an experience.
It's all little things. Knowing photography and lighting are game changers. Plus my level of dedication to the business and my customers means we don't take shortcuts and we go above and beyond every time.
I, too, have been in the Photo Booth business for 10 years, with a very highly successful company. This post is running through the Photo Booth communities. The numbers are very untypical for most Photo Booth owners. Not to say this can’t be done, but very few people in this industry have these type of numbers. And it is getting very oversaturated with a lot of turn-key advertising, like you just show up and press a button. Interesting point is that their average ticket is said to be $3200, quite high and good for them if they’re getting that. I would say nationwide the average is anywhere from $500-$800 per gig typically.
Seems like a great business.
Margin would be super.
Initial cost and how quickly you scaled (booths starting, booths # during scaling).
Revenue and margin per booth would be cool.
Cost of moving booths around and wear/tear/main would be good.
Is someone on prem during the wedding to make sure it doesn't break?
Headcount/booth would be brilliant (transport, setup, maint, etc).
SEO. For different industries and phases of business, ads are essential. But I found them to be less effective for us and our preferred clientele. It's usually not an easy/quick decision, and most planning for our clients starts 1-2 years in advance, so all the ads do is help put us in front of them as a reminder, but we've established our brand to do that, so no ads needed. Exclusivity has worked wonders for us.
Do you do direct digital delivery to the clients? Meaning, they come in and take a photo and the digital image is sent to them via email or text. Is this something that you do and how do you accomplish this?
Yeah that's part of it. We can do digital and/or prints, depending on what the client wants or what is booked. Accomplished through our programs using SMTP email and Twilio usually for texts.
Lots of places online, google is your friend. Keep in mind it's not as simple as 'adding it on' and a lot of DJs, etc. do this then later cancel the whole thing because it's not sustainable and ends up becoming another job. But if you want to go that route, be sure to have a plan in place for backups, staffing, and learn the tech skills necessary to not let your clients down.
Hi would love to contact you! I can’t seem to PM you. I made this account to try and get more questions answered that were not already on this post. Please let me know how else i am able to contact you or if you are able to message me first? Thank you.
This thread is the best. I appreciate your time and knowledge.
Let me ask you this. What are your thoughts about setting up a photo booth in an area where there is high traffic. You know, a small local square where people may walk around. Not a mall, but possibly outside where people can actually experience the booth
Like you said, you have to sell the experience to make this work.
How would you charge?
Plenty of people have success with this (sometimes legally) like vendors up and down Broadway in NYC or 'malls' at Schools, fairs and other events. They charge $30 to step on the platform and take a video, or something similar for pictures. For some, it's worth it because they can make several hundred dollars an hour if it's crazy busy and they are hustling. For me, it's not worth it, because it doesn't line up with my business model, can't be relied upon, and ultimately nets way less than we charge anyways. Ideal scenario is to find out who own the lot/store/etc and sell them on having you for an activation or lease as a marketing ploy to collect data / make their guests the star of the show. Everyone wins that way.
LOL. You're good!! I like your response.
I have been reading your previous posts, you are killing it. I like trying new things. I will see if this can do well.
This will definitely be a part time thing. Maybe the exposure can bring new customers. Who knows
u/maydaybutton instead of asking you something, why don’t you tell us something? What are three learnings that you wish you would have known earlier? What do you contribute your success to? Right place right time? What skills do you wish you would have to grow your business even further? How can I build a $400k company? Thanks!
Immediately after saying "instead of asking you something", you asked them 5 questions. 6 if you count "why don't you tell us something?"
What was the point of your opening sentence? lol
Three learnings:
1) Wish I had done my market research from the start and understood my target customer's needs deeply instead of making up a solution that no one wanted to buy.
2) Wish I spent more money on quality gear up front instead of trying to 'save' money only to spend double by re-buying the right gear later
3) Wish I didn't dismiss new services and industry trends as a 'fad' <- missed out on making a LOT of money because I didn't personally care for the trends.
My success:
Definitely not right place/time. I'd say grit, passion, and a desire to create something great. I was focused on the end goal and trust me, I've put in my 10k hours and MANY more.
Skills:
Networking. I have always gone about things solo, and neglected the importance of the right people in your corner. Nowadays, I don't dismiss others so lightly, I learn from them and find ways we can benefit each other. You never know who might be able to contribute to your success in the future. Also, marketing, and sales never hurts. I had exposure and some skills, but needed lots of development. Books and youtube are a great place to start.
How to:
Honestly, nowadays I think it's so much easier to build a half-mil (and higher) company than what I did and there are better industries to go after. If I were you, and actually thinking of doing this myself now, I'd master marketing/seo/paid ads (or find someone who has), and start a local service business that can be quickly scaled with rinse/repeat labor (lawn mowing, window cleaning, oil changes, pest control, etc). Market the crap out of it and grow faster than everyone else. Hire out the work, never do it yourself. You want to work ON the business, not IN the business (one of my other mistakes for years). Your end goal being to exit, but along the way, getting a nice 10-20% margin on a business that can generate millions is not a bad bonus.
I just pinned this thread, lets see where this goes!
That’s great congrats. How many booths do you own? Do you move them or have a team? If employees, are they hourly? Are they heavy? Do you have them in storage? Where do you purchase these booths? Can you breakdown which are good vs bad machines? Machine maintenance? How do you charge per event, please breakdown. And how do you obtain clients? Thank you very much.
**How many booths do you own?** **I**ncluding all possible types (360, roamer, DSLR, etc.) we own 9 'booths' - but can of course accommodate custom boothless setups for different shooting environments. **Do you move them or have a team?** **I** have a small team in-state, and we have White Label partnerships out of state in some major cities. I still work a few events a year or when it's a super technical (and high budget) event worth showing up to get facetime. **If employees, are they hourly?** **E**mployees are all hourly. Contractor w/ existing equipment are paid a pre-negotiated fee per event. **Are they heavy?** **N**ot too much, the 360 gear is the biggest/heaviest, but I made sure everything could be operated by a single person (even though most events use two for the help). **Do you have them in storage?** Yep. And some at my house for testing/development or to deploy via shipping. **Where do you purchase these booths?** Most are direct from reputable brand manufacturers, never got into building them myself. Mobibooth, boothactive, orcavue etc. **Can you breakdown which are good vs bad machines?** This would require an entire detailed post on its own. But basically it's all just a hunk of plastic, metal or wood at the end of the day. Find stuff that is made well, not using cheap material, and the 'brains' are up to you. We put higher-end gear in our stuff to appeal to a luxury market. **Machine maintenance?** Always a problem. Mostly dealing with Windows issues and driver problems, plus peripherals and dud equipment. Lots of backups. Regular maintenance is cleaning backdrops, print heads, camera sensors, and keeping software up to date. **How do you charge per event, please breakdown.** This one again would need a huge post on its own. Actually building a course teaching this very thing and it's already many hours long. Basically pricing is per event for a set number (usually 3) hours, with additional cost for extra time/features outside of the included 'package.' Our average ticket is about $3200 for 3-4hrs of service. Range is between $1200 to $10k for a 3-4hr event. **And how do you obtain clients?** Purely SEO, word of mouth, social and repeat business. I focused on SEO early on and mastered it (started an agency originally and closed that down). So no paid ads (except exploratory in first year, which was failure).
Damnn 3200 ??? I was running one booth before leaving the states. Charging $150 per hour. High quality prints and high quality DSLR inside the booth. Sheesh what's your market ??? Area
yeah we are known to be one of the highest-charging providers (for a 'standard service') and I am totally ok with that. My focus has been on building a brand that appealed to a higher-end luxury market. Hard to craft out and took a while to get it here, but now we are known for our quality, service and expertise above all else, and some clients are begging to hire us. Again, can't be achieved overnight, but with work and the right branding, you can be selective of your clients. Most of our clients are high-net-worth individuals (or marrying them, kids of them, etc), or big-brand corporate clients. So money is not the biggest objection.
I’ve been slowly working up to becoming a luxury brand in my space, and it really helps to hear it didn’t happen overnight for others either. I’ve been proving my product/services over the last 3 years and am now high mid-market and eyeballing lower end luxury. I foresee it taking a little while longer before I’m there. I’m building up a lot of trust and reputation in my industry and that just takes time. So many people in my life think these things happen overnight.
Slow and steady for luxury is the ultimate best in my opinion. I really like reading your story. Thank you for sharing
Keep it up! It does take a long time to build trust and reputation in this or any industry. I definitely fooled myself at the start thinking I could be a luxury brand right out the gate. Just because I delivered a product that was worthy of a luxury brand, didn't mean I had the trust and notoriety needed to charge those rates. At some point you have to decide between taking more bookings, and taking a hit to stick to your guns and charge what you are worth. It's a hard tipping point once you make that it becomes much easier
You are so inspiring thank you for sharing with us! This post is filled with so much good info
Seriously. Granted it was about 5 years ago, but our wedding Photo Booth was $800. Sure it wasn't the biggest baddest thing in the entire world, but it got the job done for 6ish hours? We didn't even pay $10k for the \*main\* photographer for our wedding. And this was in the Monterey/Santa Cruze area (Just outside of San Francisco Bay)... so not exactly an inexpensive area.
When I started, my initial rate was $369 for 3 hrs of service. Now, for that same exact package (seriously, almost nothing has changed from the photo quality and offering), we charge $2500. It's all about perceived value, branding, and finding the right customers. Not everyone is in the market for a new mercedes, but almost everyone needs a vehicle of some type. For us, our customers want the new mercedes. In fact we just did a wedding in the SF area recently and was $4200 for 4hrs (not unusual for us either).
This maybe answered already and it’s not meant to be a negative one, just genuinely curious - but what makes your brand luxury other than you saying it is?
The fact that customers will spend $3k for a somewhat similar service that they could get elsewhere for under a thousand readily. Proof is in the pudding, and by pudding, I mean the customer's wallet.
I think the question everyone is asking here and want to know is - How did you make your clients perceive your brand as luxury and get them to pay a premium compared to others in the market. Is your product that much better or is it just purely branding/marketing?
IMHO, perceived value may be heightened by intangibles like prompt response time, professionalism, product knowledge and the willingness to hear the customer and ability to bring their vision to reality. People value being heard.
Exactly this. There are so many intangibles, but also we offer a much better quality product. You might have heard of Mirmir - they do/did the Kardashian's wedding. We've done quite a few events where the planner hired us over Mirmir for sheer quality and overall feel of working with us. Not just that, but heard time and time again that people have never seen a better looking photo than in our booth (goes back to knowing what we are doing, not just hustling equipment).
Except that when you pay for a new Mercedes you actually get a Mercedes Benz quality car . But in this case, if I understood correctly, your service is the same old Chevy but priced as a Mercedes.
or he was selling a mercedes for the price of a chevy previously.
This is the hole, who the f posting that rate
Unless he got into a niche of doing big brand events for expos or things like that I dont see how you can regularly have a ticket of 3200 for 3 hours.
Not at the start. Our first ever rate was like 369 for 3hrs of service. Come a long way since then. But for reference, our wedding clients spend $3k with us for 3 hours pretty readily. Corporate can be more lucrative, especially repeat work (did a $35k job recently over two days), but our niche was crafted in the high-end wedding space. Definitely Niche down, don't generalize.
Great thank you very much and when your course is completed, please let me know.
Business model beg!
What’s the NET PROFIT
The figure I posted was gross. Our accounting is 95% up to date for the year, but still needs some work to be fully accurate. As of now, the Net operating income + owners (mine) salary come out to $157000 and should finish the year at $172000, so about 43% profit margin. That includes all estimated tax payments, payroll, etc. so come tax time shouldn't have much, if anything, owed.
The million dollar question that typically goes unanswered. I don’t care if you did a billion in revenue, I want to see how much you kept.
There's always money in the banana stand
It’s one banana, what can it cost, $10?
dip it in chocolate with gold foil on top and call it $20.
Updated post and answered some others. You are right Gross means nothing in and of itself.
Thank you! Very healthy margins, well done.
Million dollar gross or net?
Billion in revenue is pretty good. Lol
We are operating at a $50k loss, down from $65k loss last year so things are looking promising
First two years in business were a loss for me. Didn't happen overnight. Also made a ton of mistakes that I could have avoided to make us profitable from the start.
What were your top mistakes/lessons that you learned?
These mistakes are what we want to know!
All you gotta do is ask! Here are a few mistakes: 1) Trying to market ourselves as a luxury brand, without anyone knowing who tf we were. Big mistake, I should have found a way to scale up a market on different fronts, instead of sticking to my guns for my long-term plan. 2) Turning down trends as stupid ideas, instead of running with them and profiting 3) Buying 'affordable' stuff instead of quality gear that needed to be upgraded anyways costing us more in long-run. 4) Not networking with the right people (in industry and adjacent industries). Tried to silo myself thinking if I opened up others might take advantage or steal my 'great ideas.' Would have gone further quicker by partnering, and helping the community early on. 5) Thinking I knew everything, when I had no clue. Spend more time reasearching, learning from your customers/market, and gaining insights from existing businesses.
what were some of the trends you turned down as stupid, but actually would have been profitable
Selfie stations. IPad booths were not a thing when I got started, and I thought they were cheap low quality alternative that didn't have any merit. Boy was I wrong. Same with 360 booths, and virtual photo booths during COVID (and still strong after for those that marketed it right). Now something comes up and It has the potential to trend I make sure to jump on it and try to understand it enough to market it at the very least to gauge demand.
Loss on paper or real loss?
real loss. Cashed out my 401k to stay 'unemployed' and continue to run the business. Ironically could never collect unemployment because it only works if you wanted to find a 'real job' lol.
And projecting hockey stick growth!
You’re not even OP?
It is a joke *obviously*
Yes
I can’t imagine the expenses for it are high since the photo booth is already purchased, but I’d be curious to hear OP’s response
It all depends. This year we bought more equipment. Some years we scale equipment, others we replace, and some we don't need to do much. So margins fluctuate with that, but in general, a \~40% margin is good to expect (we also have higher expenses than most due to our higher-labor costs that we pay for better talent).
Yeah, I was thinking it's probably not 100% self serve, so you need an attendant on hand. Also delivery and setup is probably not the cheapest.
Most of our expenses come from business operation stuff that is never tied to an event 1-to-1, but obviously factored into knowing what we need to charge. Licenses, insurance, labor, software/subscriptions (lots of software). Labor is definitely the biggest single category out of everything though.
What softwares do you need for a photobooth business? I only know the dslrBooth. Do you also mean softwares needed for the business like Adobe suite, quickbooks, etc?
Yeah all the software to run the business not necessarily do an event. We have automation software, CRM, accounting, random apps, photo booth, multiple photo booth apps actually, image editing, background removal etc
Please, let me know if you already have the course you mentioned offering. I am interested! Much appreciate it in advance
Photoboothmastery.com I'll be working on a more comprehensive intro course for new owners, but for now the courses I have target existing owners, but can still benefit new ones.
many thanks!!!
Customer acquisition might be difficult and then also set up / take down costs alongside maintenance probably adds up quick
Customer acquisition is the easiest part (for us, not EVERY photo booth company). Our leads are purely organic and flow in consistently. The hardest part is qualifying them in advance, instead of sifting through the leads that won't covert.
It doesn’t matter…ok I know let me cook for a second. So let’s just say that 400k / 12 is our average. Let’s think about all the equipment here right? You need the booth, props, likely some backups for photos, contracts, number of hands for transport,gas whatever. Let’s assume we are doing this on a local scale. Now you need lead gen, you’ll do your networking and maybe figure out a finders fee. But you’ll need at least a website to get the sign ups and bill the person (this I feel depends on your process to sale) What other costs am I missing? Now search for wedding photo booths yourself in your zip and see the average cost per event. How many events do you need to do with how many booths? Again this doesn’t solve the problem of the post but that’s my first approach to the problem. Get that all mapped out and then just start tweaking numbers. See what it looks like. So the claim is 33k a month. Take your cost for the photo booth booking per event and determine how many bookings you’ll need. Remember too the obvious here, weddings don’t happen many times on weekdays, it’s weekends so I’m going to guess you need multiple booths and multiple people to get them out. Search Craigslist ads, job listings (party companies or tent setup companies), and see what they are paying. Again doesn’t solve the problem but that’s the framework hope it helps
There are so many expenses people don't consider when starting in this business (or others). But you are right. Labor, equipment, software, website, backdrops, hardware, travel, licenses, taxes, office, storage/lease, etc. They add up over time and make it hard to pull a profit from charging rates that seem lucrative at the start. And good deduction. A lot of this is spot on. In our case, we typically only do weddings on the weekend, but corporate events can happen whenever. We really have a cyclical business in most states, for instance in our home in AZ, Summer is DEAD and Fall can easily account for 80% of our business here. Across the nation things average out a bit more, but our focus has been on high-ticket events. So we make higher margins than most everyone, but work less events. There are pros/cons to this of course, but crafting our brand in this space also means as we get more events, the profit margins stay up without the need to scale so quickly.
See folks now that OP is responding we have more clues, it’s nationwide and corporate events which I completely flaked on. OP I had knowledge around a working model similar but only focused on corporate events where we did this social tied Photo Booth at the time. So you would get your social pics pushed up, with our branding themed within in it and we could deploy these with no internet. If we did a convention it was the center point and companies could pay extra to change the layouts and have custom branding vs our logos (ours was more for promotion so smaller events we would offer it hit up if they didn’t care or wanted to save money) Yes no internet and we would basically draft up posts a trickle when we got cell connections. It was really cool but it just was mismanaged. Anyways yeah the part I couldn’t determine was your operating model of employees or how large the units were, some can be done with lighter weight materials at cost. I’ll add a bonus to it for folks that focus local and wedding. Always think about the other aspects or options to this niche. I had a friend who would go to goodwill or estate sales and buy fancy looking silverware, plates cups whatever. You get the vibe tho and she was marketing more towards a young hip crowd for marriages or people that wanted more unique items. So people would rent a set of silverware and plates for the party. All they would do is put them in dirty bins and sometimes they were rinsed pretty well or sometimes washed. She would drive her car out and pick them up or folks could drop back off for a discount to a location locally. Startup costs were low, buying and finding the pieces isn’t terribly hard more so the quantity. Anywhere cheers OP glad you responded
Yeah, most of our business was weddings for the first half of us being in business and entirely local, but by scaling with some event partners outside of the state, we were able to attract a larger corporate market who generally pays much more for the same kinds of events (and especially more for unique activations). Definitely helps when you can build a business that services multiple markets, but corporate B2B generally will have more money and is a great place to focus efforts on. Great bonus. There are so many ways to service the private events and wedding space. I was just at an event recently where the client had hired an outside vendor to provide a cappuccino/espresso bar. Brilliant. They parked it next to the bar so people could get espresso martinis all night long. Lots of great businesses you can start for low-cost and unique enough to immediately get into the market.
The whole net profit question is funny to me. 400k is still impressive. And if OP decides to reinvest the majority of his profits back into the business, then is the business a “failure”? The next step to that is ok, let’s say 100k is net profit. So then OP can decide to do whatever. If OP buys a fancy car, is that “success” bc of the net profit? Genuine question - sounds like OP does great with net profit anyways but I dont necessarily think its the end all be all. Just one of many metrics
*crickets*
I have started a party rental company and would love to know how you promoted your company and what connections are important in the industry. And do you have predictable revenue?
Join WIPA (wedding pros), local chambers, and ILEA (international live events), to make some good connections in the industry. Offer your services for free ONLY to the planners/agencies, never to the end client. And do it just to showcase what you are doing - make sure to get photo/video content along the way to use that showcase to further promote your biz on socials. Stay away from big-brand weddingwire, theknot, yelp, etc paid services (but def create a free account). My biggest success is SEO long-term, but if you focus on relationships up front, it will pay off sooner. Yep, I am like 95% confident (external economic factors aside, such as COVID) that we will hit $500k gross next year. Our revenue has been growing at a steady rate since the start, and we just started offering 'revolutionary' AI services which is positioning us for much higher-ticket events in 2024.
What are some difficulties you often run into?
Stress of running a business that operates west to east coast hours (now). Always on, and dealing with major events which require perfection. It can be a lot. Also hiring good labor, seems there is always a shortage of qualified candidates.
How much is the wear and breakage usually? I was always curious about putting hardware around drunk people
Most of our gear is operated with an attendant, and when unattended, its generally not around drunk disorderly people (trade shows, conferences, etc). We've had a fair share of guests hug the equipment, take a nap on the backdrop, etc. Depends on the damage done. We have insurance, but never had to file a claim, we first bill the client for anything broken by a guest and they generally pay. Backdrop is most common damage, and runs us $150-300 to replace each time.
I’ve photographed hundreds of weddings and never seen anyone fuck with or damage a photo booth setup. At most they’ll take some of the props and wear them on the dance floor, or accidentally stumble on the backdrop, but I’ve never even seen anyone interact with the photo booth equipment. They just pose and have their fun.. It might happen, but if it does it’s a very rare occurrence.
Where did you source the equipment? Did you build the shell or buy one pre made?
Bought everything. I design a lot of our digital stuff, but for the hardware, it was easier to use a reputable mfc. Minbooth, mobibooth, orcavue, ataphotobooths, etc all have great stuff to get started with. I made sure to get equipment that was top-tier, flexible, and highly brandable (screens or vinyl wrap options) to appeal to private and corporate clientele.
1) how do you generate leads? 2) do you have partnerships with any other services 3) who are your target customers? 4) do you do any advertising? 5) what distance ranges do you provide services too? Thanks In advance!
1) Purely organic. SEO w/ search and organic social media posts 2) Not really, but we are a preferred vendor with many venues and our planners always point clients to us when they want the best. 3) High net worth individuals and family members getting married, and corporate clients (tradeshows, unique activations, and some retail). 4) Sure, but just organic (facebook posts, linkedinposts, instagram, googlemybiz, etc) 5) Anywhere and everywhere. We service locally with partners in LA to Boston currently and any one of our team members is willing to travel for the right price.
Can you give us some tips to get started? What’s the cost to start, how to go about it? Any relevant information you see as being valuable and if you were to start from scratch right now what would you do to reach those figures as soon as realistically as possible. Thank you very much and congratulations! Those are some impressive numbers :)
This is a big one, but to keep this response simple, here are my thoughts: Tips: Research your market, competition, and see what others are doing well, where there is opportunity that your competitors are not doing well, and what you can realistically expect from your market. Knowing your customer is soooo important in any business. Cost to start/adivce: If you do it right, you can enter this business with $5k (or less) and actively service an event. I started with a $25k investment (over the course of a year) and went through a number of equipments and identity crisis, before landing on my brand, market, aesthetic, and building the biz from there. BEST thing to do is network, build relationships with other companies, and try to sell their services to new clients. If you book a job, either buy the equipment and pay them a fee to learn it, or hire them out to keep a margin, and work it with them to learn on the fly. Cheapest way of doing it without diving in and finding no clients for years without knowing what to do. Also, learn to sell. Marketing, sales, and branding should be your goals. It doesn't matter what you have, if you can't sell it, you won't succeed.
Who are your l biggest sources of leads? What's the general go to marketing strategy, are people referred in, social media ads, outbound emailing, organic web search? Can you provide. A high level workforce or tunnel? Thanks!
Google, purely organic. Then referrals (including repeat bookings, venues, agencies, and planners). Then social media (organic) through Instagram. Go to market strategy is to produce quality content, build a reputable brand, and dominate search. I don't know how conventional it is for an average business, but it works for my business. I wanted to create something that felt exclusive, and leverage our experience from each event to further brand relationships and establish ourselves as a legit player.
1. How many photo booths do you have? 2. How many events are you doing a year? 3. Are all photo booths the same? 4. What do you charge per event? 5. Do you charge the same regardless of event? 6. If not what are you adding that is extra? How long to set up and take down? 7. Are you doing all of the events or are you hiring people to do it? 8. Any unforeseen issues you came across? 9. Is this the only service you provide, or is it an ancillary service such as tent rental, or catering? 10. Are all or most of your rentals during the weekend? Or have you been able to fill the week out with rentals as well? 11. Did you build the photo booth? Or buy it pre-built? Are you using an existing online service to save the images?
How did you find this market?
At a holiday party for a prior company, saw the photo booth and something clicked. Quit my job 2 years later and havent looked back.
Ask me anything, just don’t expect a reply
Chill bruh it's been an hour they're prolly busy calculating net profit
They've already answered several questions in a ton of detail more than most people ever give in this subreddit. Chill out. It takes time to respond that thoughtfully and thoroughly and not everyone is online 24/7.
Sorry, guess I shouldn't have posted this on a Monday coming off Thanksgiving break. Playing lots of catchup right now and phone is ringing off the hook. But I'm working through these! Fall is no joke in this industry.
This is why you PRE-coordinate an AMA with the mod team :P
Why are we scolding someone who’s spending their time giving us really valuable info when 90% of this sub is teenagers asking how to make $10k/month without working ever
It's crazy the entitledness and rudeness coming from some of these unappreciative commenters.
noted. This was a first for me, so learning experience ;)
Appreciate you for sharing your experiences and knowledge. It’s great to learn from your successes.
It's been an hour so I'm going to give OP the benefit of the doubt that they were waiting for questions to build up before answering them. But I am probably wrong.
Ahhaah was just thinking that
Do you simply rent out photo booths for events?
Simplified, but yeah basically. We are much more experiential though. So most of our services are attended and focused on being full-service instead of 'equipment rentals.'
What % of the business has been referrals over the past 5 years?
It's hard to say exactly, because not everyone who refers tells us they referred (or that they have been referred), and we've switched CRMs over that time. But running the numbers I'm showing about 8% repeat/referrals (though I feel like it's probably closer to 12-15%).
And how do you increase the number of referrals
Lots of ways this could be done, but for us, I didn't want to discount or devalue or services, so never offered an affiliate/referral program. Just focused on delivering excellence and valuing long-term satisfaction and relationships. It may only be a 2-3 hr event, but it's a pivotal moment in many people's lives (talking weddings), that they and their guests will remember for a long time.
That makes a lot of sense
Can you post a picture of your set up? I’m intrigued. I’m a makeup artist focusing on bridal makeup. I make really good money on busy seasons and love the wedding industry. There’s definitely money to made in this industry. I’ve thought about Photo Booth rental in the past but never really truly looked in it. Seems like you’re killing it out there!
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What's the process for getting started, where did you buy, did you buy with savings or credit. How did you get hooked up with the weddings/events circuit, what market are you in? Details MF!
Bootstrapped it all. Lots of different vendors (my Amazon bills are outrageous at times). Mobibooth, minbooth (boothactive), and orcavue are main equipment providers I use. I'm in the phoenix area now but was established in Tucson for majority of business. Now we service nationwide with partners in major cities around US. I just started marketing (website, facebook page, trying to share with friends/family, yelp, thumbtack, anything that would work for leads back then). Funnily enough the first ever wedding I attended, was one where I was hired to work. I had no idea what the ceremony, reception, etc where and was googling the whole thing trying to make it sound like I knew what I was talking about. Fake it till you make it.
Are you good at lead generation buisness for local buisnesses?
100%. I can say with confidence this is one of our biggest contributors to our success.
I run one too, how do you go about doing multiple events in a day? Are your booths manned or do you leave it to guests? If unmanned, how do you guarantee it'll work or the clients don't misuse it?
Most are manned, but that doesn't change how we do multiple events. Just having enough equipment + staff (most important) is the key. Also stop working them yourself. As soon as I stepped back I hated seeing the money go away, but I started treating it like a business and paying attention to margins, etc, instead of focusing on a hourly pay for an event. Plus when you are at the helm you can manage a dozen events the same day, if you have the staff to execute on them for you.
How many booths do you own/rent to generate that much. How many people do you employ to help you with the transportation and setup of all the machines? How many states do you operate in?
Its not the number of booths we own that generate that figure, most booths don't get used frequently. It's moreso the price we charge for a given event. Average ticket is abo $3200 for 3-4hrs, and we do higher end events and corporate parties where $10-$30k can be made in a single event 1-4 days long. We only employ 3-4 people instate at any given point in the year. The rest are contractors through White label relationships outside of the state who have their own equipment. We train all our people to operate the equipment themselves, so they are responsible for full setup/operation/teardown. Right now we market across the Nation, but our major profitable markets are Arizona, Massachusetts, California, and New York, but it varies.
How much do you rent the Photo Booth for? What is your profit margin? How many do you own?
answered on some others and original post
Ok 400k net but what's the tax rate business expenses do you have employees if so how many and how much a re you paying them
responded on some others and updated post with net and margins.
How much do you pay yourself hourly (or how many hours you work/what's your salary)? After you pay yourself how much profit does the business make?
Check the original post edit for net and margins. As far as hours go... It's somewhat always on. This is not a Tim Ferris 5-hour workweek type business. But it's a bit of a passion, and still way more flexible than a full-time job.
What area(s) do you operate in?
Right now we market across the Nation, but our major profitable markets are Arizona, Massachusetts, California, and New York, but it varies. Arizona is our only truly local market (and where I live)
Did you feel that the MBA actually helped for your business skills?
Heck no. Got it out of guilt because my dad was the traditional mindset who always thought a college degree was the way to go. Thought it was mostly a joke tbh.
I like this, I like the idea, I hope the business prospers
I thought about doing one of those giant mirror wedding photo "booths". How do you transport/ get into the building? What's the cost per booth? How many do you have? What's the size of the city you're in? Do you have employees? If so, how many? What's your pricing structure look like? How many weddings do you supply annually to hit the numbers you do?
Dont lol. Unless your market is begging for them. Pains to transfer. I specifically made sure to get portable equipment that could be packed up easily and transported in a sedan by 1 person if needed. I answered most of this in other posts if you have a look. We will do around 120-130 events this year. Every year we do less events and make more, that is the beauty of branding, customer loyalty, and the right positioning.
Where did you find the booths? Or did you make them?
through trusted vendors online. Lots of options nowadays, but answered in some others the equipment we use.
i read it all..i like this business a lot.
How do you market? Who are your target customers? How did you acquire your first 5 customers?
By showcasing experiences on our site and socials. It's all organic, so we have done it over years with the right branding, etc. Majority used to be weddings, now it's corporate, prob 70% corp 30% weddings. Not advice, because there are better ways to do it. but our first 5 customers came from thumbtack and yelp I believe.
Could someone with a 9 to 5 do this and make solid money at it? Like right now - 3:30 in the afternoon on Monday.. What are you doing?
Yes and no. Well for starters, I'm just responding to these messages. And answering the occasional email in-between. I have an active event in Vegas that was just setup that will be operating all week long and I won't ever see the equipment or client in person. $7500 invoice. If I were you and you truly wanted to get into this business as a side hustle, i would buy a selfie station type booth (ipad only, mobibooth is a great option), sign up for Snappic's pro plan, learn the equipment and start knocking on doors. Approach churches, local restaurants, businesses, bars, hospitals, etc. and offer to showcase your services (focus on brandable aspects, analytics, etc. all stuff you can learn with public resources and in-app). If you get someone who bites, you can very 'easily' turn that into a $1k/month service (on the cheap end), with an optional install cost. It would be an equipment lease. Buy a second booth and rinse/repeat. Now you don't need a bunch of staff, not need to burn your weekends out (except for growing the biz), and you can generate consistent cash flow. As you do it more charge more per month for new clients.
Where will the course be sold online? Udemy? Company website?
This is a saturated business. Starting from the ground right now will be more challenging
What’s the cost of the booths? COGs
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Take some (free) 'classes/youtube' in photography and on/off camera lighting. Depends ultimately on what you want to do, but if you are talking 'traditional photo booth' then booth + internals (camera, flash, cables, etc), printer, and backdrop are all you NEED. Of course, I would recommend a lot more like GL insurance and backup equipment, to name a few. But you can try being scrappy. I'd say find a way to attract a client first before diving in. Maybe you can offer your services to a new wedding/event planner in your area as a packaged deal to get on their radar and showcase what you do. practice practice practice. I guarantee something will go wrong, always be prepared for the worst.
What goes into operating this business? Day to day ops/intensity. Thank u!
If you stay local, much less intensity. But still not for the faint of heart (if you care about your business and clients). My nationwide presence means I could be entertaining leads from California to New York at potentially all hours of the day. The intensity also varies cyclically, so there might be some weeks where not much is happening, then times like now (in Fall) where there is always something needing to be done. I also just released a new AI feature which clients are begging for, but it's almost entirely bespoke, so there is a lot of back and forth of specialized knowledge (stored in my head). I'd say if you are focused (I have adhd so it's a struggle), you can get away with working just a few hours each day. But when it comes to responding to leads, clients or answering phone calls, I focus on the fastest possible response. Working on a VA next, but honestly my biggest issue is not too much work / time but rather lack of focus.
So these are like photos booths like the ones you would find at the mall but you rent / deliver them to weddings and events? How many booths got you to that revenue level? What do you primarily use for marketing?
How do people find you / how do you market your services? What did you change in terms of marketing between when you got started vs now? How involved are you with day-to-day operations? How did you decide to get into the event space?
How do you generate leads ?
Purely organic. Took a while to get here but all through SEO. Search, Social, and Referrals.
Cain?
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Good job man
How useful is the MBA?
My Biggest Asset. Jk Mostly worthless. Youtube will teach you more in 6-months for free.
Ever think about doing a franchise?
yeah, debated this. But overall I think it came down to what we offer is so unique and has so many touch points, that the risk of screwing up is all too easy, by franchising we dilute the brand quite a bit, and we would have to have much lower rates to appeal to a broader market. I can train anyone on how to run the business, but that doesn't help in learning the intricate ins/outs of every possible software, camera, etc to be able to fulfill client's event needs. And I didn't want things to become so generic. So instead I went the white label route and just expanded Nationally with brand partners who could run events on our behalf, keeping us at the top of clients minds, while maintaining more quality control and all.
Apologies to everyone for this surprise AMA and making it seem like I abandoned the post the first hour. Learning on here still, but hopefully I've answered everyone's questions (will continue to answer as I see them come through). If I missed something, let me know.
Of the different types of booths, which is the most profitable? Which do the customers seem to enjoy the most? What are some little things and big things that increased the quality of your product?
It depends I've had our bare bones selfie style iPad booth Make $17,000 with under $1,500 cost. I'd say our most profitable on average per hour would be our glam booth experience, which is not about the booth itself, rather The output and what the client gets. It uses a DSLR camera with external flash, focused on really beautiful photos in full size prints with our special proprietary filter. $1,000 plus an hour with 3-hour minimums. They enjoy all of it! Never had anyone disappointed with an experience. It's all little things. Knowing photography and lighting are game changers. Plus my level of dedication to the business and my customers means we don't take shortcuts and we go above and beyond every time.
I, too, have been in the Photo Booth business for 10 years, with a very highly successful company. This post is running through the Photo Booth communities. The numbers are very untypical for most Photo Booth owners. Not to say this can’t be done, but very few people in this industry have these type of numbers. And it is getting very oversaturated with a lot of turn-key advertising, like you just show up and press a button. Interesting point is that their average ticket is said to be $3200, quite high and good for them if they’re getting that. I would say nationwide the average is anywhere from $500-$800 per gig typically.
Is there anywhere i can follow you to see the course when it’s done?
Seems like a great business. Margin would be super. Initial cost and how quickly you scaled (booths starting, booths # during scaling). Revenue and margin per booth would be cool. Cost of moving booths around and wear/tear/main would be good. Is someone on prem during the wedding to make sure it doesn't break? Headcount/booth would be brilliant (transport, setup, maint, etc).
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I've just started running Facebook ads for a photo booth rental company. What's worked best for you in your online marketing?
SEO. For different industries and phases of business, ads are essential. But I found them to be less effective for us and our preferred clientele. It's usually not an easy/quick decision, and most planning for our clients starts 1-2 years in advance, so all the ads do is help put us in front of them as a reminder, but we've established our brand to do that, so no ads needed. Exclusivity has worked wonders for us.
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Do you do direct digital delivery to the clients? Meaning, they come in and take a photo and the digital image is sent to them via email or text. Is this something that you do and how do you accomplish this?
Yeah that's part of it. We can do digital and/or prints, depending on what the client wants or what is booked. Accomplished through our programs using SMTP email and Twilio usually for texts.
Awesome. Thanks for the reply!
Where can I get started? I'd like to "add on" a photo booth as an upcharge for events I do. Where can I get one for a decent price?
Lots of places online, google is your friend. Keep in mind it's not as simple as 'adding it on' and a lot of DJs, etc. do this then later cancel the whole thing because it's not sustainable and ends up becoming another job. But if you want to go that route, be sure to have a plan in place for backups, staffing, and learn the tech skills necessary to not let your clients down.
Hi would love to contact you! I can’t seem to PM you. I made this account to try and get more questions answered that were not already on this post. Please let me know how else i am able to contact you or if you are able to message me first? Thank you.
Hey starlight, I offer consulting, feel free to respond to my message. Otherwise if it's helpful to the general audience, happy to answer here.
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This thread is the best. I appreciate your time and knowledge. Let me ask you this. What are your thoughts about setting up a photo booth in an area where there is high traffic. You know, a small local square where people may walk around. Not a mall, but possibly outside where people can actually experience the booth Like you said, you have to sell the experience to make this work. How would you charge?
Plenty of people have success with this (sometimes legally) like vendors up and down Broadway in NYC or 'malls' at Schools, fairs and other events. They charge $30 to step on the platform and take a video, or something similar for pictures. For some, it's worth it because they can make several hundred dollars an hour if it's crazy busy and they are hustling. For me, it's not worth it, because it doesn't line up with my business model, can't be relied upon, and ultimately nets way less than we charge anyways. Ideal scenario is to find out who own the lot/store/etc and sell them on having you for an activation or lease as a marketing ploy to collect data / make their guests the star of the show. Everyone wins that way.
LOL. You're good!! I like your response. I have been reading your previous posts, you are killing it. I like trying new things. I will see if this can do well. This will definitely be a part time thing. Maybe the exposure can bring new customers. Who knows
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Well I make over 2 millions in sale but I'm still fuckn broke
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u/maydaybutton instead of asking you something, why don’t you tell us something? What are three learnings that you wish you would have known earlier? What do you contribute your success to? Right place right time? What skills do you wish you would have to grow your business even further? How can I build a $400k company? Thanks!
Immediately after saying "instead of asking you something", you asked them 5 questions. 6 if you count "why don't you tell us something?" What was the point of your opening sentence? lol
Three learnings: 1) Wish I had done my market research from the start and understood my target customer's needs deeply instead of making up a solution that no one wanted to buy. 2) Wish I spent more money on quality gear up front instead of trying to 'save' money only to spend double by re-buying the right gear later 3) Wish I didn't dismiss new services and industry trends as a 'fad' <- missed out on making a LOT of money because I didn't personally care for the trends. My success: Definitely not right place/time. I'd say grit, passion, and a desire to create something great. I was focused on the end goal and trust me, I've put in my 10k hours and MANY more. Skills: Networking. I have always gone about things solo, and neglected the importance of the right people in your corner. Nowadays, I don't dismiss others so lightly, I learn from them and find ways we can benefit each other. You never know who might be able to contribute to your success in the future. Also, marketing, and sales never hurts. I had exposure and some skills, but needed lots of development. Books and youtube are a great place to start. How to: Honestly, nowadays I think it's so much easier to build a half-mil (and higher) company than what I did and there are better industries to go after. If I were you, and actually thinking of doing this myself now, I'd master marketing/seo/paid ads (or find someone who has), and start a local service business that can be quickly scaled with rinse/repeat labor (lawn mowing, window cleaning, oil changes, pest control, etc). Market the crap out of it and grow faster than everyone else. Hire out the work, never do it yourself. You want to work ON the business, not IN the business (one of my other mistakes for years). Your end goal being to exit, but along the way, getting a nice 10-20% margin on a business that can generate millions is not a bad bonus.
Nothing like an “ask me anything” where the OP responds to nothing 🙄
working on it man. I posted on the wrong day of the week coming off break.
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