Been in the photo booth industry for nearly 10 years and generate $400k annually (set to do over half a mil by 2024) in the wedding and events space. I don’t feel like I am the expert by any means in business or entrepreneurship, but I’ve built a couple successful companies on a small scale, and have an MBA, so maybe I can contribute to your success. AMA!
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%).
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.
I haven’t read the comments but I have quite a few questions. I’ve been looking at doing this for a few years (wife is a professional photographer).
- Do you hire people to run these or do it yourself? 2. Which Photo Booth do you have and how many?
- Marketing, where how and to whom?
I’d be happy to take replies privately. Thanks!
Can I borrow 500 bucks?
Sorry not in the lending business, but happy to help you come up with a way to make $500 in a day relatively quickly.
Hey!
You mentioned your focus is to create a brand that appeal to luxury/high-end markets. Care to share how you did it? How exactly did you market? How you “filtered” who could and was willing to pay, from who were bargaining?What is the salary of your employees? What does it cost you two employ one per photo booth? Or do you still gonset everything up? Just wondering price of labor?
Employees are hourly, obviously I have my own costs with payroll, social security Medicare etc, but hourly starts at $20 an hour and goes up over time / experience. Our average 3-hour event, employees will work (including travel which they are paid for along with mileage reimbursement) 7-13 hours. Just depends on where the event takes place. We bake in lots of time for early arrival, traffic, troubleshooting etc even though it’s mostly never needed.
The secondary employee used to go along with the first, but now we’ve replaced them with a contractor who just shows up as a brand ambassador and works for the set hours of the event to assist guests. This way we can spread out our key players and reduce cost per event, without coming to limit it to a single attendant. So our labor costs are probably quite high in the industry in general, Even though our hourly rates are not anything crazy, merely because we want to provide the best and account for every possible thing that could go wrong in order to deliver perfection. But I’d rather invest in good labor because the people are core to the business.
Sir or ma’am thank you for your reply. May your business continue to thrive.
How would you advice someone to start in this line of work business ? I am a photographer / videographer and I have a very interesting idea on a new kind of Photo Booth.
Well that’s good you are a photographer, so you hopefully know what you are doing behind the camera. That’s a huge advantage over most of the market who jumps right in for profit. Find out what your market is offering and what they’re not offering, try to craft something you need. If I were you as a photography background, I would create a headshot studio photo booth experience that lets you do headshots at rapid pace and create prints, and free digital downloads for your clients without editing.
You could sell that to corporate services for a fixed fee of $2-5k to just hang out in an office for half a day and snap nice studio quality headshots.
Photo booth doesn’t have to be a ‘booth’
While many people would see these images of themselves as a vast upgrade from the crap iPhone photos they are accustomed to, what you describe is not how a true quality headshot is created.
Not sure what you mean? We run a headshot booth and I can assure you, we create great quality headshots using everything that would be done in a full studio setting (keylight, fill light, depth of field, high-end ff camera + lens, and whatever else is needed to achieve the look or room we have to work with) - and there are others who ONLY do this. The only thing lacking is personality - we don’t sit there and pose each guest for an hour to get different styles, etc. These are bulk jobs, so there has to be a level of speed to get through a tradeshow or corporate office scenario.
Ok. We’re talking apples and oranges. You’re doing bulk… conferences and the like. I see what you mean.
I was referring to a dedicated one on one head shot session.
How can I get started doing this? What equipment other than the booth do I need?
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.
Remind me! 24 hours
Beep boop beep boop 🤖 I will remind you in 24 hours.
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.
Wow. I am thinking of starting that up. Any chance you can help me?
Feel free to DM me
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.
Remindme! 1 day
Remindme! 2 days
Remindme! 38 seconds
Remindme! 2 days