I've never made any claim to be the best business manager.
I'm just happy when I can pay the bills.
Other than winning the lottery tomorrow, I really don't give a hoot about money.
Do you nickel and dime clients?
- Thread starter MIXMASTERMACHOM
- Start date
I've never made any claim to be the best business manager.
I'm just happy when I can pay the bills.
Other than winning the lottery tomorrow, I really don't give a hoot about money.
With the diversity of folks here, everyone will have a different take.
You can build in the costs and present a standard price only if you have a true average that takes into account the extremes (time, distance, number of stairs, etc.) and are willing to take a long term look at your business. Or, as in Rick's case, if you charge for time whether you are there or traveling.
Most people do a diversity of events and do them over a large enough area that there really is no average, so you need to either price ala carte or build custom pricing.
There is no one right way.
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well, that makes for a very short business plan...
Make some money
Hopefully pay the bills
Drink and fix the roof again
repeat.
You can build in the costs and present a standard price only if you have a true average that takes into account the extremes (time, distance, number of stairs, etc.) and are willing to take a long term look at your business. Or, as in Rick's case, if you charge for time whether you are there or traveling.
Most people do a diversity of events and do them over a large enough area that there really is no average, so you need to either price ala carte or build custom pricing.
There is no one right way.
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well, that makes for a very short business plan...
Make some money
Hopefully pay the bills
Drink and fix the roof again
repeat.
Rick, please stop that kind of foolish talk. With comments like that the "Sympathy Train" will tend not to make a stop in a town like "yours".
I know you are a smart guy but there is a bitterness and hopelessness that is threatening to pull you down and keep you down. Get a grip Dude and get some more out of life. Do something for yourself. Forget about your brother and what he has done to you. Accept him for who he is and move on. He will always be your Brother but he does not have the right to spoil your life. Don't let him do it. Actually, you are doing a pretty good job of doing that all by yourself without him even being there.
As an online friend I will pray for your health and well being but you have show respect for yourself too. You can do it. We are all rooting for you. You have a giving heart so get yourself out of that hole and live the rest of your life in a fruitful way. Cheers.
In a round about way you do Rick. You charge $250/Hr those costs are built in to your fee and your plan. If I were to pay $30 for parking some nights that would be 10% of my income down the drain. Now that being said as I previously mentioned I don't pay for parking anywhere I play so really it's a non issue. I also don't believe in leaving money on the table or charging for services I don't render.
The top money I made this year on a gig was $1K. My average gig was $450. Not including charity or the Community Involvement For the Disabled gigs the lowest was $200 a very easy very short weekday gig.. The difference in price on any of these is the amount of work I have to put in and the time spent on it. That's why I build packages around the client and not sell them the cookie cutter. If they don't need a wireless mic I don't give them one. If they do there is a fee for that mic. It cost me to buy and maintain it. The batteries weren't free so why shouldn't I get paid for it?
I don't break it down to line items it becomes a package and a set price and im not an ass about it I carry the Mic with me if they needed it I wouldn't be asking for extra for using it but everything has value.
Great link Canute
As an online friend I will pray for your health and well being but you have show respect for yourself too. You can do it. We are all rooting for you. You have a giving heart so get yourself out of that hole and live the rest of your life in a fruitful way. Cheers.
Thank you for the kind thoughts.
I'm fighting an internal battle at the moment -- it's not been kind to me. I figure if it's gonna treat me that evil, I'm coming back at it even harder...
So, forgive me if I'm angry at the moment -- this is a fight for life, and the only way I can win, is to be just as bad as it is.
It depends on what you are doing.
I just quoted a job that had they taken the full package would have required one or two box trucks to effect delivery. It was also not clear if we would have the amount of setup time requested and if not - then they would be liable for whatever additional manpower was required to effect setup in the time available. The cost of the trucks was part of the over-all quote. The additional manpower was a separate liability.
When a customer orders a product or service that presents with it certain expenses in preparation, assembly, or delivery - you need to recover those costs. Sometimes you can simply mark up the price to cover it - other times that would make no sense and people need to see the separate item and delivery cost. Would you pay $695.00 for a mirror ball? Of course not - but, a $95 mirror ball flown to Hawaii (UPS 2nd Day) will run up a $600 air freight bill.
I know there are DJs who line item every one of their personal pet peeves: a charge per stair, charge per mile, etc. Sometimes they just look petty and cheap. Know your venues and if you don't - then go look at them before you quote a price.
I just quoted a job that had they taken the full package would have required one or two box trucks to effect delivery. It was also not clear if we would have the amount of setup time requested and if not - then they would be liable for whatever additional manpower was required to effect setup in the time available. The cost of the trucks was part of the over-all quote. The additional manpower was a separate liability.
When a customer orders a product or service that presents with it certain expenses in preparation, assembly, or delivery - you need to recover those costs. Sometimes you can simply mark up the price to cover it - other times that would make no sense and people need to see the separate item and delivery cost. Would you pay $695.00 for a mirror ball? Of course not - but, a $95 mirror ball flown to Hawaii (UPS 2nd Day) will run up a $600 air freight bill.
I know there are DJs who line item every one of their personal pet peeves: a charge per stair, charge per mile, etc. Sometimes they just look petty and cheap. Know your venues and if you don't - then go look at them before you quote a price.
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If you went to work every day....it'd be the same drive to and from the office, and cost the same amount. So that cost should be a consideration in negotiating your original salary. What I am talking about (and what Mix was originally asking about) is unusual circumstances BEYOND the norm. If your regular 9 to 5 job suddenly asked you to work in another state for a few days, would they expect YOU to pay travel expenses? Hotel accommodations? If they suddenly expected you to buy your own office supplies and toilet paper, would that be CDB?
He has not been using any lately that is why all that shyt is accumulated in him. He needs a strong laxative! Don't worry, he will be alright!
He has not been using any lately that is why all that shyt is accumulated in him. He needs a strong laxative! Don't worry, he will be alright!
Hey, I got toilet paper -- I just don't happen to have any water at the moment.
I do have a lot of trees though -- they come in handy
So, here's a typical day on The Farm, for those of you that actually have a functioning house:
You wake up in the "warm" 4 rooms, and it's about 60. The bathroom is about 39 (it's on the other side of the house) -- slightly colder than the fridge. If you need to take a dump, you need to warm the bathroom with the electric heater for about 30 minutes. Then you need to use the bucket to get water to flush said toilet.
If yer lucky, you get a dump twice a week, and a shower once a week.
Funny thing about 2 feet thick brick houses -- once they get cold, they stay cold -- when they get hot, they stay hot. Improvise, adapt and overcome, is the best I can come up with...
Sorry I didn't mean to start a riot. I was just trying to have a discussion that's all. We all have different ways we would do certain things. I'll admit a painful truth. It's a big downfall of mine. I would easily go out and do gigs for cheap. Excited in the beginning to be able to be back as a DJ doing what I love to do. I would kick butt out there at gigs and just excited to be back. So I never looked at ways to make more improving on business. I had a day job so I didn't have to depend on DJing to pay the bills. So I would go out for cheap not realizing how I was hurting myself more then helping myself in this business.
Now I've had a change of heart since I decided to retire from my day job. I should have started changing things a long time ago. It's one thing when i came back to start off charging a nice price to get people to know what I could do but I shouldn't have stayed there. I should have looked at ways over time to increase our prices and get away from the el cheapo clients only wanting to pay between $200.00-$350.00. My bad like I said.
Now with that said some of us get to charge not quite as much as some others say we should because we don't have such a large over head. What I'm saying is there are those who could never go out to do a gig for $350.00 no matter how tough things get because that would never net them enough money to survive. Some do this full time and don't have another source of income and they have to command a certain rate or they will go under.
Now when I go to play in a bar I already know the pay isn't going to be much and I accept that. I do that just to make some gas money and fill up a date I wouldn't be working at all. Now lastly about the gig for the sweet 16 that I quoted $350.00 for 4 hours. This is what happened. The lady I was supposed to speak to was in the hospital I was told and they were to get back to me the next day after me calling them back. They never did and I don't have a number to contact them back if I could or would. That simply told me if they are still having the party that they are looking for someone to do it for a cheaper price and I refuse to do the gig for less.
If they did call me back the price wouldn't change. I would stick to my guns. Now the sad part in this is that there are those potential clients out there that just want to know how much do you charge? That's all they are concerned with and don't care about anything else. So normally they just want the cheapest DJ they can get to do the event they are planning to have.
Craigslist isn't a big help if you just look on there and see some of the ads people post on there looking to book a DJ. I've seen lately some ads on there where they want to pay a DJ $150.00-$160.00 to come do an event for them and some will take that. That's obviously someone like myself in the past who has not thought of a business plan. They just come to do the gig for exposure and to make some fast easy money to them. That's where the client a lot of times gets what they paid for and that is a mess. Only person they can blame when that happens is themselves for not caring more about how their event is to turn out. Doing a better job at planning an event then just throwing one together.
One of my business plans is to have a nice pricing list laminated on some good paper with our logo on it. So when at an event and a person what's to ask how much do you charge to do an event, they can look at the thing and know what the starting price will be and what it includes. I was thinking about finding a nice venue to take pictures of our setups and putting them on our website with different prices for different events for different hours at different prices. Just a thought I had in mind. Not sure about doing that last one. I'm still undecided. And there you have it in a nut shell.
Now I've had a change of heart since I decided to retire from my day job. I should have started changing things a long time ago. It's one thing when i came back to start off charging a nice price to get people to know what I could do but I shouldn't have stayed there. I should have looked at ways over time to increase our prices and get away from the el cheapo clients only wanting to pay between $200.00-$350.00. My bad like I said.
Now with that said some of us get to charge not quite as much as some others say we should because we don't have such a large over head. What I'm saying is there are those who could never go out to do a gig for $350.00 no matter how tough things get because that would never net them enough money to survive. Some do this full time and don't have another source of income and they have to command a certain rate or they will go under.
Now when I go to play in a bar I already know the pay isn't going to be much and I accept that. I do that just to make some gas money and fill up a date I wouldn't be working at all. Now lastly about the gig for the sweet 16 that I quoted $350.00 for 4 hours. This is what happened. The lady I was supposed to speak to was in the hospital I was told and they were to get back to me the next day after me calling them back. They never did and I don't have a number to contact them back if I could or would. That simply told me if they are still having the party that they are looking for someone to do it for a cheaper price and I refuse to do the gig for less.
If they did call me back the price wouldn't change. I would stick to my guns. Now the sad part in this is that there are those potential clients out there that just want to know how much do you charge? That's all they are concerned with and don't care about anything else. So normally they just want the cheapest DJ they can get to do the event they are planning to have.
Craigslist isn't a big help if you just look on there and see some of the ads people post on there looking to book a DJ. I've seen lately some ads on there where they want to pay a DJ $150.00-$160.00 to come do an event for them and some will take that. That's obviously someone like myself in the past who has not thought of a business plan. They just come to do the gig for exposure and to make some fast easy money to them. That's where the client a lot of times gets what they paid for and that is a mess. Only person they can blame when that happens is themselves for not caring more about how their event is to turn out. Doing a better job at planning an event then just throwing one together.
One of my business plans is to have a nice pricing list laminated on some good paper with our logo on it. So when at an event and a person what's to ask how much do you charge to do an event, they can look at the thing and know what the starting price will be and what it includes. I was thinking about finding a nice venue to take pictures of our setups and putting them on our website with different prices for different events for different hours at different prices. Just a thought I had in mind. Not sure about doing that last one. I'm still undecided. And there you have it in a nut shell.
It's not all black and white. Don't make the mistake of squashing your income to save your price.
I will do a gig for $350 but, it has to provide real income, which at that level means virtually no out of pocket expense. For example, if a local school calls for a dance and I know the date poses no conflict for me than yes, I would certainly do it. A local school has virtually no expenses for me, it's a cake-walk to do, and so it's a quick payday.
For example, my kid's middle school (10 minutes away) asked about 2 dates recently. One was on a Friday when I would be setting up for a $11K event the next day. (Hotel 10 minutes from the school.) I could certainly do it - but, I would end up working much later into the night back at the Hotel. The second dance was on a Friday that was wide open. They indicated they budget about $250 for a DJ. I sent then contracts for $350 each date (no explanation, no "educating" the client, no apologies) This was the rate I could get enthusiastic about and would make it worth a break in the setup of another job. Of course, that was too much for them and they found someone else.
Nothing in there implies that they are an unreasonable or uneducated customer, or that I am an unreasonable DJ Diva when it comes to gigs/prices. We just had incompatible needs. They needed to stay on budget and I needed to stay on task.
The real problem was me deciding that I would cave in and do it for $250.00 just to say i got a gig in the books. Then the other bigger problem was doing such gigs like that for the price of $250.00-$350.00 constantly. So that's what people would expect. If they were friends of mine I would try to tell them to keep the price a secret but most wouldn't do it. So someone else would come along expecting the same deal. Don't let me be totally broke, I would rush to do the gig so I could get some money in my pocket. Obviously what I should have done was to let such things go because at the end of the gig with such little money I would still be broke basically after putting gas in the van or paying for other things. Not making enough money to advance with upgrades that we wanted to do. Basically to keep it simple just settling for whatever came along.
Okay, so the only gigs you get are referrals where they expect to pay $250. First off, telling someone to "keep it secret" is stupid. They will ALWAYS spout price and you can GUARANTEE the next person will expect the same rate the last person got. Do you not do any advertising? Do you not go out and get any of your own, fresh leads (where they don't know you worked for $250 last week/month/year)?
A better plan of action would probably be to recognize that these cheap-o referrals are going to continue. You take them if you have nothing else but start spending your time, RIGHT NOW on developing your own, freshly-generated leads. If you don't have a decent website, quit making excuses. Get it done, RIGHT NOW. There are plenty of web service providers that have site generators and you could have a decent site up in 10 minutes. Quit making excuses for why you don't pictures or video from events. Quit thinking about the losers you use to haggle with over pennies and, more importantly, if you're not going to take immediate action to do something better then, for goodness sake, QUIT WASTING OUR FREAKIN TIME!
You always make the assumption that the people who don't get back to you are looking for someone cheaper. Have you ever considered that they spoke with you and decided to look for someone better?
Mix reminds me of a few other guys that were on this board .... asked alot of questions, received alot of great information, neglected to utilize any of it and proclaimed to be an expert in the biz by telling others how they should run things. 
That's just it. This last one i never really got to talk to. All I could do was give a price and nothing more. So there really was no conversation. Not much you can do when that happens. You can try to talk to them but you can't force them to talk about something they don't want to talk about when they are only stuck on price.