It’s Halloween time again. Time for all the kids to dress up in crazy costumes and beg for candy, and high school kids to steal your jack-o-lanterns and throw them at mailboxes while driving sixty miles per hour (No I’ve never done that…..okay…once). But it also time for some creative entrepreneurs to make some serious bank.
Over the next week, I am going to be writing a few articles on how to make a living, or how to supplement your income off of Halloween.
How many of you have stood in line for hours, just to be scared for fifteen minutes? I am not the biggest fan of anything haunted, I just don’t like paying someone to scare the crap out of me, but there is a HUGE fan base out there, and people will travel for hours just to go to a new haunted house. Why not make that new haunted house for people to flock to?
How to get started: For starters, let me give you a few ideas on places you can start a haunted attraction.
- A Haunted House: Finding a old house is pretty simple, there are hundreds of thousands of houses out there in foreclosure right now that you could get for a steal. The main thing you want to keep in mind is planning. You will want to make sure there will be plenty of parking, a place for the crowd to stand in line at, and you will want to check with your local zoning board, and chamber of commerce to make sure that your even allowed to conduct business in that location.
- A old warehouse: There are so many abandoned buildings out there, you could easily find a landlord who would be willing to do a three month lease for you. You can plan on spending about 5k a month on your lease, and you will need at least 2 months ahead of time to set up shop.
- Corn Field: Talk to local farmers to see if they would be willing to lease you a portion of their fields for a year. On average, they would be making about $1000 to $1200 a acre per year, so you could offer to pay them their projected profits per acre you need to use. So if you wanted 10 acres, your annual cost would be about $12k. So it would be a win win situation, they would be guaranteed their profits, plus they could still farm any of the non damaged corn, and you would have a very scary place to conduct business (think Children of the Corn)!
- Old Barn: Self explanatory, The Haunted Barn. Maybe you already have a old barn on your property, or maybe you know someone who does. The biggest thing you need to do is have a engineer examine the building to make sure it is safe for people to walk through.
- The Haunted Forest: If you own a bunch of wooded acreage, or are able to obtain it, this is a great location for a haunted attraction. Just make sure you check with local zoning before you make to many plans. Most local communities are more than willing to give you a temporary commercial permit, so they can bring tourists into town, and capitalize on more tax dollars.
Coming up with cash: I know that this is a big business to get started, but with some creative ideas, it is really obtainable. To come up with some of the cash you need to get started, think about selling advertising space in the place your line forms. Anytime you can bring thousands of people together, you can always count on a company being willing to buy advertising. Get banners printed for the local businesses, and sell the space for $250 a year. If you sell fifty spots, then you’ve already came up with over $12k, and nobody has even walked through the door yet. That should give you some money in the bank to start paying labor. Think about putting a concession trailer in the middle of the line to profit off of the bored and hungry customers. If you don’t want to do it, then you could charge rent to a local food establishment. Rent out spaces all along the entrance for local retail stores to sell their products. Look for a major sponsor. Call all of the big radio stations, and ask if they would be interested in becoming the partnering sponsor for your attraction. Then you could name it XYZ Haunted House, brought to you by L Rock WKPT. This will give you cash, and a great form of marketing. The radio station will say your name to thousands of people many times a day.
Marketing:Without a good marketing plan, your just another scary forest.
- Think about having contests with all of the local radio stations for free VIP tickets for four of their “lucky” listeners. Offer to let their morning show host from your location, and have the dj’s go through your haunted house while airing.
- Offer VIP packages for businesses interested in having their Halloween parties there. Give everyone that makes it through your attraction a bumper sticker that says, “I survived The Haunted Old Warehouse 2009″. This won’t help much in your first year, but it should amp things up for years to come.
- Rent a billboard for the month prior to your opening with a very simple slogan, like; “Haunted Acres……YOU WILL NOT MAKE IT THROUGH”. This makes people feel like you challenged them, and they need to prove that they can make it through.
- Hire the local high school football team to work as characters at your attraction. They will be sure to tell their friends about it, and their friends will tell their friends, and so on and so on.
- Put small signs along any road you can. Think about the signs you see during a election, you can get bulk quantities printed for cheap, and you can plaster them everywhere. Most cities will allow this temporary form of advertising as long as you remove them within a certain period of time.
- Start a competition between two competing schools in the area. Say, which ever school has the most people show up wearing there schools shirts, then next year you will have an exhibit named after their school.
Earning Potential: Your earnings in your first year will be a direct result of how good of a job you do marketing it. If you sell your tickets for around $15 a piece, and you can bring in around 1500 people in a night for five weeks (Thurs-Sunday), then you could easily make $450k in ticket sales alone, and that is not including the money you make from advertising and rents. 1500 people is a small number for most haunted attractions, you could easily pass up to 5000 people through on any given night.
Summary: I have talked to a few people who own very successful haunted houses, and they love what they do. They spend all year planning on how to scare the crap out of people, not because they have to, but they have become addicted to it. Their entire life revolves around Halloween, and they wouldn’t have it anyway else.
Always remember to put money back to invest and grow. You can always start small, and grow it a little bit every year.
Success Stories:
Dead Acres – Haunted Hoochie: This is a big haunted forest in Ohio that started very small, and put a little more money in it every year, and now they are recognized every year as one of the top ten in the world. Notice all of their “sponsors” on the right side of their website.
The 13th Gate: These guys started way back in 1994 with a small, mobile haunted house, and have since grown to be the number 1 rated haunted house in the world for the past two years. They are based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Dent Schoolhouse: Based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. The Dent Schoolhouse is a theme based haunted house based out of a scary old school house. They opened their doors in 2005, and business has been thriving ever since!
Resources:
Hauntworld.com: They call their selves the International Headquarters of the Haunted House and Halloween Industry. They are the biggest ranking system for haunted attractions. If you ever get your name on their top thirteen, you can guarantee you are raking in some big bucks. They have a trade magazine you can subscribe to.
IAHA: The International Association of Haunted Attraction. This is a association you can join to network with other attraction owners.
Haunted House Association: Another association for haunted houses. You can find information about haunt trade shows and vendors here.
Vendor List: This is a link to any vendor you could ever dream of. You can find anything from animotronics to make up and sound systems to costumes and props here.
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