That seems like a good idea and something that you have an interest and talent in.The most important thing in a new business is a marketing plan - that sounds hard, but it is really just answering the question, How will I get people to use my services? To keep your budget low, I would do just three things: (1) get business cards, (2) print an advertising flyer explaining your business, and (3) put together a binder with pictures of things you have done to show people who are thinking of hiring you.The harder part is figuring out how to get your flyers out to people. So you should think about this. Will you give them to friends to start with? Put them on bulletin boards at local businesses and schools? Give some thought to this.Other than marketing, you have to think about how people will pay you. I would not accept credit cards for awhile, until you get established. Have customers who want to pay by check make the check to your name, not a business name.You will also need to buy supplies and equipment that you are renting out. Make a list of what you need and how much it costs. Go online and search for stuff to get the best prices.Good luck!
First off, drop the word party . If you want to make money, you ll need to put together events (party makes people think of birthday parties and such) The next step is to build a website to build your brand - I suggest using WordPress and buying a nice template (it ll take you a week to learn to build a site and will cost you under $50). Next you ll need to put up some photos (this is gonna be tough if you haven t done any events).. try to find some generic stock images that convey what you plan to offer clients. As you do more and more events, try to do deals with pro photographers who shoot the events so that you can use their photos on your site (and buy a digital camera and take a class at a community college so that you can take some of your own photos after you deck-out a venue). Next you ll need a price list and a printed portfolio to show your clients... you may want to try and request some materials from other similar businesses in you area to establish a reasonable price point for your services.... for a catalog of products, you can grab images from the website of a supplier (such as my company, eventdecordirect.com...i can send you images without the EDD watermark if you d like). Now here s how the business works: you hand out your cards, brochures and such to friends and family and ask them to get the word out. This will produce your first clients. Once you sit down and get an event scheduled, you will take a deposit and use it to start purchasing your inventory (obviously the deposit may not cover the entire purchase price for everything, so you will likely need some of your own money to get it going). You will continue to do this for a few years as you reinvest your money into building your inventory....after a few years, you will find that you re doing events which use items you already own...this is when the profits start to flow. Continue to socialize and get your name out. Tip: Many of the networking strategies used by real estate agents can work for you. This is the basic model. There are many more things you can do such as custom-creations, pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, advertising, and much more. (contact trafficbrick.com after a couple years and we can discuss these methods).Hopefully this helps =) Good luck and have fun!!
