[00:00:00] Welcome to episode 150 of the Bandhive Podcast. It is time for another episode of the Bandhive Podcast. My name is James Cross and I help independent artists tour smart. This week on the podcast, I'm gonna talk about what it costs to go on a DIY tour as a band, because it's a question that a lot of people ask me and I never really have an answer because it is.

So unique to every single tour, every individual band is different, but I am gonna do my absolute best to kind of share a baseline of what you can expect to pay for a one week tour. as much as I would love to give you a solid number, it just depends because like I said, no tour is the same especially when you consider all the factors. Routings are different.

Markets change the costs of marketing, change prices for things fluctuate usually upwards, but still they do fluctuate. So like gas now is cheaper than it was a month ago. All that aside, I'm gonna share the absolute baseline cost of touring in this [00:01:00] episode. I honestly would not expect to pay less unless you severely cut corners. and so when I share this number that I'm about to tell you, this assumes a few things.

One, it's gonna assume that your marketing, your shows, at least a little. Two, you have a vehicle of your own. You are not renting a van or other vehicle. Three, you're traveling an average of 200 miles per day. So on the East Coast, that's pretty realistic. If you live out in the west, like Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, somewhere like that, you're probably gonna double that, if not more.

Four. You have five members in the band and those are the only five people touring, and you're each getting a $20 per diem, which is for food and that kind of stuff. It's your discretionary spending as somebody on the road. Five. You aren't getting hotels or Airbnbs or anything like that. Instead, you're crashing wherever you can or you're sleeping in the van.

It's not a glamorous lifestyle. And six, you're playing six shows and driving home on day [00:02:00] eight. So essentially it's a one week tour with one day off and one drive day at the. I've crunched the numbers and a realistic budget for this would be 1,900 for that seven day tour with day eight being a day to drive home.

That means over the six shows your costs are $316 and 66 cents per show. So that means you need to earn at least 3 16 66 per show between the payment you receive from the venue or promoter and your merch sales based on the net profit. Cuz if you base that on your gross income of merch, you're still gonna be taking a loss just not in the same place.

So you want that to be a net profit on your merch to break.

now let's take that figure of $1,900 for the one week tour and break it down into individual costs. First we have $40 per show for promotions, So this is printing and mailing flyers to each venue, doing some social media ads, whatever feels appropriate for the market and your brand.

$40 is not a [00:03:00] lot to spend on marketing, but it is better than nothing and it's probably the minimum that I would suggest in 2020. You do not wanna skip this step. It's really important to bring people to a show, and $40 is a drop in the bucket if you think about it. And keep in mind, yes, venues and promoters are supposed to promote the show, but you cannot rely on that at this level. So you have to go out there and do your own promo work as well. And $40 is not a lot. And even if you bring in two more people with that $40 that you've invested, that's worth it. Yeah, Maybe they're only paying $10 for a ticket, but the long term effect, if they turn into a super fan, you're gonna make that $40 back big time.

Next up is $20 per day for your vehicle. Again, this is assuming that you own the vehicle, so this is money that you're setting aside for oil changes, wiper blades, anything that might pop up, and it's just kind of a reserve that you're gonna keep on the side and let it build up every single day until you need it.

Then we're gonna factor in $40 per [00:04:00] day in fuel, which is 200 miles per day at 20 miles per gallon, and the price is $4 gallon to figure this out for your own van or car or whatever. It's a very easy formula. You calculate your mileage. For the tour. So let's say you figure out, okay, it's gonna be 200 miles per day just to keep it nice and round.

Then you divide that by your miles per gallon. So let's say your van only gets 10 miles per gallon, which is rough. That's very low. But with a trailer, that might be realistic. So now you need 20 gallons Multiply that by the price. $4 per gallon, and that would be $80 per day. So you see how this formula works. You take the mileage for the day, you divide it by miles per gallon, and then you multiply that result by the price per gallon. And again, to increase the price per gallon a little bit.

I usually say 25 to 50 cents over the actual price. At the time I'm budgeting the tour because in four to six months, who knows what the gas price is gonna be, and if it goes up, we have some wiggle room. If it goes [00:05:00] down, we're saving. After that $10 a day for toll. Not every state has toll, so like the vehicle category, you're just gonna set aside $10 a day and you're gonna wait for a day where you pay 60 bucks in toll and you didn't pay toll on any other day of the tour.

So, It's a wash, you know, that's one way to do it. You can also look at the actual to, you're gonna have to pay, but that takes a lot more work. So just setting aside a certain sum every day is what I've found to be the easiest. You're also gonna do a similar thing with parking, and you're gonna set aside $20 per day, and that is to cover times when you have to pay $40 for parking.

And those times where the venue has free parking for. Additionally, $20 per member per day for food, which is your per diems, as mentioned earlier. So that's gonna be a hundred dollars total because remember, there are five members in this. We're not budgeting anything for hotels, but if you want to, you can add $200 a day, and that's for relatively low end hotels or if you get lucky and Airbnb.

And then you're also gonna put in $20 a day [00:06:00] for miscellaneous expenses, which could be anything like strings, drum heads, which you're not gonna replace off, and especially at that budget. Anything else you need, some radios, whatever it is, $20 a day for miscellaneous expenses. A couple things to note here.

Promotions aren't countered from non show days because there's nothing to promote. So day eight, traveling home and whenever your day off is in that one week, you're not gonna factor in promotions for that. You're also not gonna count parking for day eight cuz you're just driving home. So you're probably not gonna have to park anywhere and pay for it.

All in all, this brings us to that figure of $1,900 for six shows over eight days. I know that's a chunk of change, but it's totally worth it if you can grow your dedicated core fan base. Now, to do that, you have to have everything we always talk about.

That is amazing. Songs, a stellar live show, and the presence to hook an audience who's never heard you. So this means not awkwardly standing on stage or waiting until after the fourth song to introduce yourself at the latest. You should be introducing [00:07:00] yourself after the first song. If not right when you walk out on stage, you can always walk out and say, Hello, Boston, we are band name, and then start your first song.

A lot of artists just wait till halfway through the set to say, Oh yeah, by the way, we are so and so. It's like, okay, we've just spent half the set not knowing who you are. It's rough when that happens. So go out there and introduce yourself with some amazing. Keep in mind that people get bored really easily.

So if you look bored, they'll pick up on that and they'll get bored. So you need to have a big smile, move around and entertain the audience to get people to notice you. You're not there to be an amazing musician. You are there to entertain, and especially if you're an opening act, it's your job to get the crowd going.

And if you can't do that, no one's gonna care. Now, let's get back to the math though. Remember that figure from the beginning of $316 and 66 cents per show? That sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Now, here's the good news. You don't need to break even. [00:08:00] Even though it's nice. Ideally, you do break even, but instead, you should focus on making this an investment into your career and getting close to the break even point.

So you shouldn't expect guarantees or ticket sales alone to cover this break even point unless you have a consistent draw in every market that you're gonna. But here's one way that you can come close to breaking even. First, you'd want about $150 a night in performance income, whether that's a guarantee, which you're probably not gonna get, or a split deal, which is sometimes also called a door.

You'd need to be moving probably about 30 tickets at $10 each to meet this goal, as the venue will have expenses that they need to deduct from what the show brings in. And if there are lots of other bands on the bill, you're gonna need more and more people in that room because all the bands get paid, or at least they should be if they're playing for free, that's on them.

Then add to that 150 from the venue or promoter, 11 shirts sold at $30 each, which results in a net profit of $15 and 4 cents per shirt after deducting your credit card fees. The [00:09:00] cost of goods sold, which I'm estimating at about $10.

It's a little high. It's probably more like six or seven or so, but 10 just to be conservative and a 20% net hall fee If you haven't already learned about hall fees, go back to episode 146, which is titled Help The Venue is Trying to steal our merch money, and you can learn how to avoid paying too much for a hall fee, how to negotiate the whole fee and what terms to look for so you're not overpaying or even potentially taking a loss on the merch you sell.

Now this merch, the 11 shirts with 1504 profit per shirt, that's net profit, plus the $150 from the ER promoter gets you to three 15 and 44 cents, which is very close to the costs of 3 16 66 per show. Now, I'm not gonna say selling 11 shirts is easy because it's.

But it is absolutely doable. If you impress the audience enough, this is how you can avoid being out of pocket in a major way on a DIY tour. Now, to [00:10:00] recap, this is for an extremely basic one week tour. You're gonna be looking at a budget of about $1,900, and that's if everything goes.

If everything goes perfectly, you might spend less, or if things go wrong, you'll spend more. Same goes if you wanna stay in hotels or Airbnbs instead of crashing on floors. That is gonna make your budget skyrocket. But no matter what, don't let the costs discourage you even if you don't have any income, if you're your five piece band, it's about $380 each in expenses.

And again, that's assuming you don't bring in any. Realistically, if you bring in $1,500 in income, then you're only short $400, so you're out of pocket $80 each. That's really not that bad, especially considering that this is an investment in your future as a band. So if everything goes well, you're only gonna have to make up a small.

Of the tour costs out of pocket, and the rest will be income that offsets those costs. Whatever difference there is that [00:11:00] you do have to pay is gonna be absolutely worth it over time because you're gonna have those new fans. if you wanna learn more about setting up a successful DIY tour where you either break even or come very close to it, visit Bandhive.rocks/tour to schedule a free consultation with me. Again, that is Bandhive.rocks/tour, and we'll hop on a call and discuss your goals for your band on the road.

VA does it for this episode of the Bandhive, podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening. I really appreciate it and and I hope that this episode has given you the confidence to go out there and book your first tour or your 10th tour, however many it is in a way that will let you go out there and hit the road without losing a ton of money.

Because no one likes paying money to go work. That's what you're doing when you're playing shows is you're working. So if you're paying to work, that's no fun. But if you are bringing in new fans and your audience is growing, there's nothing better than that. That is the best feeling in the world.

So go out there [00:12:00] and book some shows and don't forget to visit bandha.rocks/tour to set up your free consultation today, where we'll go over your goals for your bands next tour. Again, that's bandha.rocks/tour.

We'll be back with another brand new episode of the Bandhive Podcast next Tuesday at 6:00 AM Eastern, right here in your favorite podcast app Until then, I hope you have a great week. Stay safe, and of course, as always, keep rockin.