Yet another ( Yawn ) vaguely price related thread. Sorry.

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Originally Posted by Benny Smyth

For me to achieve £25k profit, I need to do 62 events a year (assuming every event is up to 5 hours in my immediate catchment area with lighting and sound provision).

Not really that far fetched.

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For me to achieve £25k profit, I'd need to do 533 gigs a year!! :eek: That is far fetched.


And a joke, by the way. Since I've put my prices up, it's only 320. :D:D

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Originally Posted by ppentertainments

I am also VERY sceptical about the grand a pop. More and more DJs I talk to who charge high fees are struggling - really struggling as in single figure booking this year for some.

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Well, I sort of agree with that. One bride I spoke to had all but done the deal with a DJ she'd met at a wedding fayre, but baulked at his £800 figure. As alluded to by Gavin, it's a midweek, so slightly price sensitive, but she has also got requirements, so she also refused the lowest price McDisco offerings.

I'm currently finding it easier to get higher paid work than cheaper, due to Hundred Quid Harry . In the grand scheme of things, I suspect I'm Harry to the £1k lads, so all things are relative.

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Originally Posted by Imagine

. Three a week isn't back to back by the way Gavin - the guys I'm talking about do this all week and tend to do one every other day. Still tough going...but do-able if this is your only job and not a side hustle.

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True, but what I suspect Gavin meant was that Friday/Saturday ( with possibly Sunday as well ) is back to back, and that's hard, at any age.

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Originally Posted by Imagine

* Specialist wedding DJs will shortly become a thing of the past. There....I've said it! I'll burn in hell now :(


* I've changed my online presence back to being an "all rounder". I happily boast that I'll consider any party...and it's working :)

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I've been saying that for years. Weddings are being squeezed, how many hotels are offering " A Grand Wedding for a grand"?

I think there's more money ( for many DJ's, self included ) in milestone birthdays and anniversaries. Ouch, :callumburns:

I wonder how many people who are £25k+ earners read these threads and bother to comment? How many people who have the keys to earning a decent living, are actually prepared to share them? Or are they more interested in getting our attention and then selling us training courses...? I'm not telling you what I earn, but if you buy my online training course.... :D

I found a lot of the stuff in PMC interesting, it gave some very different perspectives on what being a Wedding DJ or entertainer means. A lot of people will struggle to make revolutionary changes to how they think about themselves and their role at a party, but it's the people who manage to do that who will really differentiate themselves from others and get into the top 1%.

Personal opinion, I think trends in Weddings aren't changing that fast, I think the thing that has changed is how couples are going about finding and choosing their services.

Julian

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Originally Posted by Imagine

Nhree a week isn't back to back by the way Gavin - the guys I'm talking about do this all week and tend to do one every other day. Still tough going...but do-able if this is your only job and not a side hustle.

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Originally Posted by Excalibur

True, but what I suspect Gavin meant was that Friday/Saturday ( with possibly Sunday as well ) is back to back, and that's hard, at any age.

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Attachment 18718

My assumption on Fri/Sat/Sun is due to the lack of weddings on Mon/Tues/Wed/Thurs (above).

I can see how you can fill your diary with Saturdays.

But working 3 days a week at £1k a pop is *very* limited. The threat (I always look at it with a SWOT analysis) is another 1 or 2 DJs on the scene offering the same can quickly dilute the midweek weddings.

I don't think the wedding industry is that dire - I think the B word this year is slightly affecting this - but it's also clear there's a lot of people waiting for 2020 for the 'nice' number. So next year should be a positive year all round.

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Originally Posted by DJ Jules

How many people who have the keys to earning a decent living, are actually prepared to share them? Or are they more interested in getting our attention and then selling us training courses...? I'm not telling you what I earn, but if you buy my online training course.... :D

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For someone to learn how to get the keys to earning a decent living requires a lot of time and investment. That investment is on working out what works and what doesn't.

That 'recipe' is valuable, to save someone else the cost of making the same mistakes. So it absolutely has a value in it.

DJ industry training is incredibly cheap compared to other industries.

I only pulled back from going 100% full time because I could see a ceiling to my earnings, and that felt too limiting to me. It also meant taking on gigs I didn't necessarily want to do, so decided to go for the happy medium of reducing the number of gigs but only taking on the ones I wanted.

I'm still a firm believer that it's *easier* to charge higher prices than it is to go out cheap, and that's it's still less competitive at the higher end of the market. But *easier* doesn't mean *easy*.

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Originally Posted by Excalibur

I've been saying that for years. Weddings are being squeezed, how many hotels are offering " A Grand Wedding for a grand"?

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That was exactly the tag line used by my Holiday Inn some years ago. They even had the cheek to ask me to lower my price for these saying that it was either that, or there wouldn't be a job anyway. I coutered by suggesting that they cut the hours available from a 1am finish back to 12midnight. For that they would also save on staff costs, heating/lighting, etc. Surprisingly, that idea was accepted, so I did reduce the price slightly.

What it did do though was introduce another. lower level of the food chain into the market. Hoping to make up the profit on the night's bar take, the hotel were surprised to discover that, on average, the bar takings were down.

Well, I said, having watched a few nights, what do you expect when guests come armed with their own drinks in "present bags", boots of cars and backs of vans. The ground floor toilets had big opening sash windows, and many a time I saw guests take their quarter full glasses with them to the toilet (security see, so no-one pinches their drink), only for them to return with full glasses of liquid that, I sincerely hope had not passed through a human body.

On one occasion, the bar manager counted the discarded cans and bottles found after one wedding and totted up that they had lost approximately £380 on bar sales (this was around 2013), which was about equal to the bar take thay night.

The guests at most of ythese wedings were also mainly of a "scrote" variety and punch-ups and family verbals were not uncommon.

These "Grand Weddings" were soon phased out (though I believe something similar is now coming back). Glad I'm not!

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Originally Posted by Excalibur

I've been saying that for years. Weddings are being squeezed, how many hotels are offering " A Grand Wedding for a grand"?

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Don't get too hung up on that market.

That's hotels who are trying to pull people who would have had a wedding at the community centre/pub in to their hotel.

Someone who is spending £25k+ is highly unlikely to have their head turned by that offer.

80% of weddings aren't relevant to me.

But there are enough weddings in the top 20% for me.

40% of weddings have a budget in excess of £20k.

The DJ industry still has a lot of work to do to raise its profile.

The competition for high-end DJs isn't other DJs - it's bands and entertainment agencies.

Regarding marketing.. I've asked all my private wedding booking clients how they found me. They all said Google (great) so I asked what terms they'd used. None said they included the word 'wedding'. That was interesting news to me. Is 'wedding dj' a dirty word to some people (lol not just club djs with their heads stuck where the sun doesn't shine I mean)?

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Originally Posted by Nakatomi

They all said Google (great) so I asked what terms they'd used. None said they included the word 'wedding'. That was interesting news to me. Is 'wedding dj' a dirty word to some people (lol not just club djs with their heads stuck where the sun doesn't shine I mean)?

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Just done a search on volume of people searching for the following terms:

Wedding DJ North East
Wedding DJ Darlington
Wedding DJ Durham
Wedding DJ Newcastle
Wedding DJ Teesside
Wedding DJ North Yorkshire

Wedding Disco North East
Wedding Disco Darlington
Wedding Disco Durham
Wedding Disco Newcastle
Wedding Disco Teesside
Wedding Disco North Yorkshire

Disco North East
Disco Darlington
Disco Durham
Disco Newcastle
Disco Teesside
Disco North Yorkshire


Mobile Disco North East
Mobile Disco Darlington
Mobile Disco Durham
Mobile Disco Newcastle
Mobile Disco Teesside
Mobile Disco North Yorkshire

Mobile DJ North East
Mobile DJ Darlington
Mobile DJ Durham
Mobile DJ Newcastle
Mobile DJ Teesside
Mobile DJ North Yorkshire

Here's the top results (number of people searching per month)

Attachment 18719

These are the terms that you show up for in the top 20

Attachment 18720

So it suggests to me that you don't come up on the first page when searching for a term including 'wedding dj' so that's possibly why you're not getting enquiries from people searching for a 'wedding dj'.

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Originally Posted by rth_discos

Just done a search on volume of people searching for the following terms:

Wedding DJ North East
Wedding DJ Darlington
Wedding DJ Durham
Wedding DJ Newcastle
Wedding DJ Teesside
Wedding DJ North Yorkshire

Wedding Disco North East
Wedding Disco Darlington
Wedding Disco Durham
Wedding Disco Newcastle
Wedding Disco Teesside
Wedding Disco North Yorkshire

Disco North East
Disco Darlington
Disco Durham
Disco Newcastle
Disco Teesside
Disco North Yorkshire


Mobile Disco North East
Mobile Disco Darlington
Mobile Disco Durham
Mobile Disco Newcastle
Mobile Disco Teesside
Mobile Disco North Yorkshire

Mobile DJ North East
Mobile DJ Darlington
Mobile DJ Durham
Mobile DJ Newcastle
Mobile DJ Teesside
Mobile DJ North Yorkshire

Here's the top results (number of people searching per month)

Attachment 18719

These are the terms that you show up for in the top 20

Attachment 18720

So it suggests to me that you don't come up on the first page when searching for a term including 'wedding dj' so that's possibly why you're not getting enquiries from people searching for a 'wedding dj'.

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Ouch! Well this is certainly news. Not unwelcome but means I need some help with SEO. And how!

Thanks BTW, Gavin