Photobooth Insurance

So you’ve just started a photobooth business, and have been calling around for a few insurance quotes. You realise quite a few insurance companies don’t offer cover to your mobile business. Well, look no further we have the answer for you! We would recommend Booth Cover, it is Australia’s only comprehensive 100% dedicated photo booth industry insurance provider.

Here’s a few reasons to choose Booth Cover:

– Australia’s only dedicated photo booth insurance product
– Range of insurance options (Public Liability, General Property, Equipment Breakdown, Trailer and Air/Sea Shipping)
– Professional cover at an affordable price
– Backed by Australia’s largest brokerage (Oracle Group)
– Trusted by many booth companies across Australia

For further information regarding coverage, visit Booth Cover

Public Liability Insurance

So, we’ve been in the photobooth industry for quite awhile now, since 2012. We started with one booth, with the intention to hire this one booth out each weekend. At the time we thought, we’d be happy with 1 booking per fortnight, we never imagined that we would grow from 1 booth, to many by the end of our first year. We never imagined that we’d average 230-250 events each year, just operating in the one city, Melbourne. In our second year of business we made the decision to sell the booths we designed, the booths that we found worked for us, the same booths and the same processes that made our business a success. Since then, we’ve helped quite a few people get started in the industry, all across Australia, we’ve seen people succeed and sadly we’ve seen people fail.

I was once asked, ‘What makes a successful business’? This question stayed with me for awhile and I started thinking about all the people that we helped get started over the years. The success of a business is driven by the people behind the booth, the people that drive the business. The owners that are more driven to push their business against all obstacles and all hurdles are the ones that succeed. These owners take the time to learn their booths, learn their hardware, learn each device, learn software, train staff. They encounter issues at events, and put measures into place so it never happens again, they improve their systems, they streamline their processes. They invest time in improving their system, they take time in improving their Google rankings. The more effort that’s put in, the more successful the business.

One power couple I came across was Dan and Janelle from Wooshka Photobooths. We all have similar stories of getting into the industry, and there’s was much like mine. I saw a booth for the first time at an event and thought, hey that looks like a brilliant business idea, I think I can do that! They took the plunge and got started two years ago, and since then their growth has been ridiculous. They now have 8 booths, a large team of reliable attendants, streamlined processes for efficiency, and they’re continually pushing to get their business to first place on Google (officially this happened today).

So, it got me thinking further and chatting with other business owners to see what are the 4 most important factors in running a successful photobooth business? Success can viewed in many different ways, and largely depends on the values of each person. For me, success is seen as setting a goal or an objective and being able to reach or surpass that goal. It can start out as small goals, and each year those goals are pushed further. Whether it’s setting a goal to have your booth booked out each week, or whether it’s to scale your business to go global. Anyway, without rambling on too much, here are our top 4 important factors in running a successful photobooth business.

Top 4 important factors in running a successful photobooth business:

#1 – Traffic/SEO: Take the time to learn SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), if you master this, and learn how to apply this onto your site, you’ll drastically improve the number of inquiries. You might have the best booth, the best website, and an amazing service, but without traffic, you really don’t have anything! SEO can be learnt, take the time to read articles everyday, take action everyday to improve your SEO, and eventually if you continually push, it’ll happen, you’ll get to the first page and your hard work will pay off. Best of all you’ll realise that you’ve saved so much money on paid advertising. Things don’t happen overnight, so whilst you work on your SEO take advantage of sites such as Photobooth Finder, and other directories that will drive traffic to your site. One thing is for sure, traffic is important, so if you can’t get to the first page of Google, you’ll need to set yourself a marketing/advertising budget and learn Google Adwords and/or Facebook advertising.

#2 – Conversion: So, the second most important factor is converting that traffic into bookings. This can be through the strategy you decide to adopt, whether it be pricing, brand, website, unique features. If everyone has the same product/same service/same price, you’ll find yourself always bringing down price to compete. If you improve your site and try and build a brand you can try and differentiate your service. Price is a big factor, people are always shopping for lower prices, but there are also people willing to pay more if you can justify why they are paying more. All depending on how many booths you have, you’ll be able to play around until you get the right pricing.

#3 – Processes/Structure: As your business starts to grow, you’ll start getting busy. If you have processes that are streamlined, it’ll make running a business easy. Especially during the peak seasons. Take the time to put together training programs for new attendants, have a process for everything including booking systems, template designs, invoicing, checklists. When you have processes, it helps reduce any risk of anything bad happening, which is usually caused by human error! Structure your business, so eventually you can focus on growing your business.

#4 – Evolve/Improve: The traditional photobooth has changed, and with the speed of technology, new features are continuously being added to popular off the shelf booth software. As more competitors enter the market, they offer more services, more features, more ways in which they can differentiate their business. Companies are getting creative and investing more into their business to stay in the game, better backdrop variety, better props, better lighting, more social features. The photobooth game is evolving, and the ability to move with change will play an important factor in the success of your business. You can learn from other photobooth companies and share information on how to improve your business by joining popular Facebook support groups, there are plenty out there, and trade tips, and share information.

So that’s it, my top 4 factors in running a successful photobooth business!

It’s been awhile since we’ve posted, but The Booth Box team has been a little busy welcoming a few new additions to our photobooth family. Take a sneak peak at a few new toys, we’ll soon be updating our ‘Buy’ page to include further details.

Starting a photobooth business or expanding your existing business has never been more appealing with the recent announcement of the Australian Federal Budget.  Small businesses, sole traders and those starting a business will enjoy tax breaks, less red tape and accelerated asset depreciation in a stimulus package worth $5.5 billion. The big incentive is that small businesses will be able to claim unlimited tax deductions for items under $20,000, and some capital gains tax obligations will be waived.

If you’ve been contemplating on getting started in the photobooth industry or expanding your existing business, now is the perfect time to start!

Accelerated depreciation

All small businesses will get an immediate tax deduction for any individual assets they buy costing less than $20,000. (Currently, the threshold sits at $1,000).

This $20,000 limit applies to each individual item. Small businesses can apply this $20,000 rule to as many individual items as they wish. These arrangements start from Budget night and continue until the end of June 2017.

Tax cuts

The Government is reducing the tax rate for the more than 90 per cent of incorporated businesses with annual turnover less than $2 million. The company tax rate for these businesses will be reduced by 1.5 percentage points to 28.5 per cent.

To help all Australian small businesses grow, the Government will also provide a 5 per cent tax discount to unincorporated businesses with annual turnover less than $2 million from 1 July 2015. This delivers a tax cut of $1.8 billion over the next four years.

Cutting red tape

The Government will reduce red tape within the Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) system by expanding the FBT exemption for work‑related portable electronic devices. This will help small business employees stay connected in the digital economy.

Small businesses will also benefit from Capital Gains Tax rollover relief when changing their legal structures but keeping the same owners.

Want to read more about the 2015 Federal budget:  http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/highlights/jobsandsmallbusiness.html

 

I came across this article, it’s a little outdated, September 2014, but still amazing read on a successful NYC based photobooth company that made $7 million in 2014.  Charging clients for custom events anywhere from $40k to $120k per event.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2014/09/22/the-bosco-the-photobooth-company-making-a-mint-from-party-pictures/

 

Need to revamp your existing props?  These FREE printable photobooth props are an awesome solution to adding that extra bit of fun for guests!  They look great in photos and are perfect for Wedding celebrations.  Simply click on the download button, print them on cardstock, add some sticks, and watch the people go crazy posing inside the booth.  Did we mention that it’s FREE!

Photobooth Props - The Booth Box

DOWNLOAD PRINTABLE PROPS

There are so many highlights for 2014, we survived another busy year! With the safe arrival of our beautiful little girl, and the challenges of running and keeping on top of the business with the new family dynamics, it definitely has been challenging especially during the December peak season. Beating our December record bookings from 2013 to successfully completing 43 events, it has been a crazy month of Christmas parties. We wouldn’t have been able to survive this peak season without our team, big big thanks to The Booth Box team – Ryan, Marie, Kier, Patrick, JR, Jamaica, Leila, Sonny. A very special thanks to our parents, without their help I’m not sure we’d be standing!

A rewarding feeling is also knowing we’ve helped people across Australia establish their photo booth business, and hearing their accomplishments with being ‘flat out’ with bookings, and compliments that it has been their best decision to start a business, it does make us feel proud. Reflecting back on the year and looking on to 2015, we have a lot to be grateful for and a lot to look forward to. New ideas, and new concepts we will be putting more challenges in place for 2015, it’s going to be an exciting year.

When we first entered the photo booth industry we purchased a photo booth that weighed over 100kg, although we were told it was quite portable, it didn’t quite meet our expectation for portability. We soon realised that we needed a trailer, and needed a special lift trolley, and we needed at least 2 people to transport and handle the booth for each event. Simply, more people to handle the booth equals less profits.   Thus began our quest… To design a totally portable photo booth, so portable and compact it can fit into a standard car eliminating the need to purchase an expensive van or trailer. So portable it can easily be handled, transported and setup by one person in a short amount of time. Most importantly, it must have the latest technology, produce quality photos and prints, and it must look good. We succeeded in our mission, and designed a booth that met all our expectations.

If you’re currently in the research phase and considering purchasing a photobooth, either as a new business venture or to grow your existing business, you should consider the following:

1.  How portable is the booth?

2. Does it require a trailer for transportation?

3. Is it an open style booth or enclosed, or does it have the flexibility to offer both?

4. Can it be transported in a car or does it require a van/truck?

5. If your business grows, how much space will it take in your storage area?

The above are just a few considerations to keep in mind when researching the right photobooth for your business.  There are plenty more considerations, and we’d be happy to chat about them to help you through your research phase.  Give us a call or drop us a line!

So, I admit it… I have a little (HUGE) obsession with photobooths. I love digging up old photo strips from highschool, reading articles about photobooths, reading the history about photobooths, designing photobooths, and most of all I love seeing old vintage photos taken from inside the photobooth. I came across a pretty awesome site that is all about the ‘photo booth’ – if you love the booth, check out the site: http://www.photobooth.net/