Danno13

The last dry hire "disco" I provided was £155.. that was a 1kw PA, mixer (no sound source, as they were using a laptop), 1 wired mic, 2 EVL spins, 2 LED pars, cables, stands, setup and delivery to 25 miles from home. A twin CD player would have cost them £30 extra for a basic Numark one (no good for mixing) or £45 for a Denon DND-4500. I don't do retro lights, but I imagine the spins & pars would be equivalent...

Yes, you could but thats the same with all advertising, you could pay £100s for an ad and not even get any enquries. Whereas at least with goodparty you can see the enquiries and buy the ones which suit you.

I responded to 4 enquiries last month, it's the first time I've used it in ages. None of them came back to me

So that should mean you just raise your prices by inflation then? Else you're actually earning less each year... unless of course you increase your profit margins by the rate of inflation, or more, each year.

As soon as I get an enquiry for a date in the next year, I quote a price with an increase for inflation/increased expenses, plus the fact I have a year more experience and there's more demand for my services, as referals are exponential.. and the leads due to various marketing and advertising I do tend to follow that trend as well. My price for new enquiries next year has actually gone up quite considerably due to the above and me buying a new van. Though I'm still honouring a "inflation increase only" price for repeats and referals, which I think is a fair way to do it. The day I gi

If they were unhappy with the other DJ then its the perfect justification for paying more to get you, so no, I wouldn't budge.

Exactly what I was thinking in regard to this..

It's possibly location dependant, I don't live in a big city and my nearest city is 15 miles away (Worcester) and isn't very big! So I couldn't very often get 5 nights a week, the exception is school prom season when I'm likely to do mon/tues and a thurs, plus Fri, Sat and Sun weddings. I also don't do pubs, or karaoke or anything like that which attracts midweek work. I worked out my time to be around 10 hours per gig, based on 5 hours performance, 1h30 setup/packing away and loading, 2 hours travelling and at least 1h30 in taking the booking/paperwork/speaking with the client/venue, possibly

So you could live on £170 a week?? Before tax and NI... And I don't want to work 5 nights a week, that would be almost a 50 hour week! May as well get a day job and not have the lifestyle and free time you get from DJ-ing as a full time job.

Also, the other thing is, if you do Weddings, people often travel from all around the country (and further!) to be there, so if you're getting referalls from those people, they want to book you regardless of whether you need to charge a bit more to cover the costs. I have two this year which are a good 2 hours away, they both saw me at a Wedding that was just an hour away (near Lichfield funnily enough!)

The way I think of it is total expenses for the year / number of weeks you want to work (so take a couple out for holidays). That comes out at roughly £280 per week for me (i'm excluding labour costs for when I put other DJs out), so there's no way I could do gigs for £150. It's obviously different for everyone though.

On going costs of running the business, investment in equipment... I couldn't make a profit doing the lighting alone at £100-150, let alone provide my DJ abilities for 4-5 hours as well.

Well it's in our line of busines, same as if you were needed for a gig for 1000 people you'd probably look to hire extra PA. I never like to say "no" to a client (within reason), as it gives them reason to go elsewhere.

I've seen most of the people I use work, but its very hard to do this seeing as I'm full time and am usually working myself whenever they are! And I wouldn't use people i'd only spoken to online, as I mentioned I make the effort to attend the various shows throughout the year, to meet people, or of course at NADJ meets - I attend the South Wales branch every month, and looks like I'll be popping along to Newbury for the South Central branch at least every other month now too.

I imagine everyone will have different answers as it really depends on your own business and the image/style you wish to potray. I know lots of DJs who are good in their own ways, but don't necessarily sing from the same hymn sheet as me. Theres a split for me - some of the DJs that work for me regularly, I've met through various DJ forums, firstly by having an idea of their outlook from the way they post and act on the forums, and then eventually meeting them as we know people can often be completely different in real life. The rest have been from networking at NADJ branches, both i

Easily over 100. 10-12 tracks every couple of weeks is almost 300...

No such thing as can't/don't tongue out icon Find someone else locally who can provide that part and add it to your quote.

But how would you administrate a DJ licence? What would the criteria be? Who would administrate it? How would all this be paid for? Its just not workable, which is why I disagree with it... The ProDub licence is simply needed if you copy music (and are honest enough to care about the legality of your business) you can call it all the names under the sun, but it doesn't change anything. It's here, we knew it was coming, we thought it would be more expensive (without the LWP we'd be paying £250 to PPL, £250 to MCPS EVERY year, no minimum band based on not copying as much in the next ye

I think we're getting our wires crossed here, I never said we needed a DJ licence, I don't agree that we do, I was just arguing that it would be far more expensive than the ProDub licence.

It's the JockJams mix - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_Jam_megamix

Again.. you should have got the money at the start, be firm and don't "kick off" until they give you your money, don't get walked all over! Some people are bound to try it on, and clearing payment at the start of the night (or 14 days in advance preferably) will stop them! Next step would be to send them an invoice for the remaning balance with a copy of the contract proving their agreement to pay. Send it recorded delivery. Then small claims court if they don't pay after 30 days.

Of course you wouldn't be classed as dodgy if venues were educated about the licence and new that you didn't need it! And yes, any DJ licence would be far more costly than the ProDub due to the extra admin involved. I don't think the ProDub is a "silly" level at all, part-time or full-time doesn't make a difference, its still a business and your decision as to what you charge.

Thanks Dan, the figure of £125 comes from my total expensese throughout the year divided by the amount of bookings I'm likely to take. Yes, things like deisel etc. will vary with location etc. but everything else is pretty much fixed no matter how far you're travelling, or even how many gigs you do! To be honest that's a very low estimate as I'm just using my accounts data from Sage which doesn't take into account Tax and capital allowances, as I don't work that out until the end of the financial year. The figure is also dependant on me booking another 20 events between now and next March

If you don't charge, then not only are you not earning money for your time, but its costing you money as you still have expenses to pay. I'd personally have to charge at least £125 before they were getting me for free, below that I'd be donating my money as well as my time to help them out. I'm guessing thats what Andy was getting at.

I think both options need higher bands! Especially the bottom one, you can realistically expect to cover £10k - £12.5k of equipment for under £150! (Assuming we're including CDs?)