One of the biggest grey areas in DJing is pricing.
Clients often want to get good value for money, but they often do not know what makes up the often hefty prices charged by DJs.
The following is a list of as many items as I can think of that influence not only my pricing, but also likely most other DJs' as well.
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Annual Public Liability Insurance & Professional Indemnity Insurance
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Annual PAT Testing
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Annual Equipment Insurance against accidental damage, theft and mechanical failure
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Class 1 Business Insurance for your vehicle
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Fuel to and from venue. This is usually based on mileage to and from venue.
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Parking at venues that have chargeable parking (this can be expensive at city centre / beach locations for lengthy events)
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Vehicle maintenance
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Website Domain(s) for Website & Client Portal
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Website Hosting and email hosting fees
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Website design, graphic design and management
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Marketing Costs (business cards, online and print ads, trade shows, wedding fairs, social media marketing, pay per click advertising)
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Equipment maintenance and replacement
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Laptops and backups
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Music DJ Record Pool Subscriptions (monthly and yearly). Spotify is not a viable option for mobile DJs!
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Music ad hoc purchases not available through DJ Record Pools (Amazon, Beatport, iTunes) etc.
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Internet, Work Phone, and Office Supplies
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A range of modular setups for varying venue sizes, audience sizes and event themes
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Equipment storage in terms of rental of storage space vs allocating or creating additional structures to store a significant amount of gear
In addition to monetary costs, there are also significant time costs which most people don't realise.
For a typical 5 hour event a DJ will spend time on the following:
- Admin time related to handling the initial booking, meeting the client, capturing event specifics, chasing payments, sending reminders
- Building a custom playlist for each event either to exact specification by client, in collaboration or in isolation
- Updating music collection. Sourcing DJ Friendly tracks with intros and outros, clean versions of tracks containing explicit content, finding interesting bootlegs, mashups, remixes and blends to make sets more interesting and fresh
- Practicing everything from setting up and tearing down efficiently, packing equipment, checking equipment, DMX programming light fixtures, cabling different setups, practicing mixing music, experimenting with new gear
- Loading an unloading of the gear into a vehicle from office / home or off site storage - before and after event!
- Transport to and from the venue
- Loading and unloading of vehicle at the venue + often parking at another location or off site car park
- Setup and teardown at the venue
- Providing entertainment for the duration of the event
- Post event followup and feedback loop