How much to charge for photo booth rental

Own your own photo booth rental business and concerned that you aren’t charging the right amount for you and your business? Don’t worry. Every business owner has been there at some point.

As you are probably well aware, the most crucial thing you need to get right before truly getting anywhere with your business, is understanding how much you need to be charging customers, so that you’re able to reap the maximum benefits. Rather than finding yourself not making enough money to survive. 

Why you can charge more

On average, photo booth rental businesses (in the UK) charge somewhere around £150 to £250 an hour, with most rental businesses requiring a minimum 2 or 3 hour booking - so anywhere between £300 - £750 is to be expected. But every business is different. Your business will be different - because you will have different needs to cater to.

The most important thing to take into consideration is your cost-to-serve. Your cost-to-serve (CTS) is the total amount you are spending to service a customer. 

So big things like PAT testing, public liability insurance, storage units, paying any staff that you have, etc., but also things you probably don’t realise you’re funneling money into. Factors like paper and ink, props, and the cost of fuel to drive you to and from the event. These costs should be covered by how much you’re charging. 

Some businesses take advantage of competition based pricing to gauge their costs, but this is a completely ineffective pricing method for your business. Pricing based on other business leaves you reliant on them having the same business model and expenses that you have. At the end of the day, your pricing needs to be able to support your business, and cover your salary, your costs and expenses, and your lifestyle.

So what should I charge?

When calculating how much you need to charge there’s a couple of things that need to be taken into consideration. 

The first is to calculate your living costs. How much money do you need to keep up the lifestyle you’ve made for yourself? Anything that you can think of that you need to pay off outside of the business likely comes under this grouping, for example:

• Food
• Housing
• Clothing
• Utilities
• Childcare
• Entertainment

Etc. etc., the list goes on. Like we said, anything you can think of to maintain your current lifestyle. Tally all these expenses and make note of your approximate monthly total. Make sure to consider occasional expenses like gifts and the like.

Next are your business expenses - your CTS - that we previously mentioned. Your insurance, props, advertising, website fees, fuel for your vehicle, staff, so on and so forth. You can use BoothBook's calculator to figure this out.

Something you should also note is...