Its the same in the construction industry. When they make a bid the estimate on making X% of profit and if they make less than that percentage then it is consider a loss. I don't get it but maybe thats why those decisions are above my pay grade lol. It almost always gets blamed on the workers too. The last job i was on "lost" To put in perspective how this job went, we had to run an 18" round pipe thru a wall and when we asked the guy who bid it if we were going to knock the hole in the wall or if another contractor was supposed to do it he responded "What wall?"

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On the big end of things, it goes back to what's reported quarterly to Wall Street as your business expectations.
For example, I currently work at for the world's largest office supply retailer, and can safely say that our stocks and business volume, and profits are all 200%-600% more than our next best competitors. However, if we report to Wall Street that we're expecting to net $5 Million in profit the first Quarter of 2010, and only bring in $4.8 Million, then it's a loss because we didn't live up to the stock-holder's expectations, and our stock value goes down, even though we're worth $4.8 Million more than we were three months ago.

Now on the smaller scale, it's quite often that an owner is not actually getting a wage or salary, but is expecting that when all is said and done they will be making $5000 or $100/hour if you're putting 50 hours into the project; whatever way they want to look at it. In the case of construction, as is the case of Scenarios, if the cost of supplies goes up after the initial numbers have been crunched, you require more paid man-hours, sales don't meet the expectation, or even if you end up working more hours yourself; then you may have only made $2500 or $50-$20/hour; and that's a HUGE loss compared to what you were expecting to make, especially if you're the type of person to start spending it ahead of time.

Finally, as far as making a 'small profit'; that is extremely relative. For instance, I spoke with two different companies today about their office supply needs. One said they don't buy much and were spending ~$10,000/year, where-as another company thought they were spending TONS on supplies, and it was only ~$1000/year. So because of that, I'd still be kind of skeptical about only making a 'small profit'. It could mean a total income for the company after all costs of $200, or it could mean the producer themself made $2000 on the event. It's all completely relative!

Hopefully that makes some sense to everyone. I still believe that it's a cop-out to say that there's little-to-no profit if you're making anything on these. People should be able to make a profit on events and have it worth a fair wage for the amount of hours they put into it; but from what I've seen, only volunteers and players walk away without money in their pockets after any decent event!


**Disclaimer:
Not ALL events are profitable, as I would not be surprised to find out that the last Blanding event was a legitimate loss due to extra unexpected cleaning costs; but this is quite likely to be the exception, and not the norm. The event that my team hosted was considered internally to be somewhat of a failure compared to our forecast; but we still turned a profit that (when scaled down) was in line with Tblack's original post!

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Its a good idea and im pretty sure you'll end up making money with the numbers you put on the board, but I would say that the hardest thing about it is to actually promote it and reach the amount of people that you calculated to arrive. I've been promoting for this club for about a year now and in my experience there's going to be ups and downs because you never know whats going on the same day that your throwing your event mybe someone will be doing the same thing your doing that same day but at a better price and guess what happends then you take a loss. Whats helped me tremendous is that I know a lot of people that I met just going out, So when I have an event they and all there friends come to support me. I guess its not exactly the same but promoting is always the same you have to know how to bring the folks in, once you have that down packed and everyone knows you can promote a hell of a game for the write price then your getting know and before you know it your building your promoting status, and your making a good bonus for a side job!

Hope this helped

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"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV
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-Albert Einstein

You forgot the costs of taxes and such. If you are making a living from the event, then you will need to adjust for it. You also need to account for it if you are accepting CCs, because that will leave a paper trail.

13% for SS
3% for Medicare
15% for income tax (your gross is calculated for income, not Net. You then can take off "deductions", but you still will be pushed into the upper income bracket with the gross)

Also, don't forget the 3% CC fees.

First off, chances are that not all of these things are necessary; especially since taxes have different brackets and you're almost guaranteed to stay in the lowest one with Scenario profits.

Aside from that, credit cards charge an average of 7-9% to the vendor unless you have an outside agreement; but only the largest companies will have that with specific versions of specific brands of cards (IE: Staples and the Staples/Citi Small Business MasterCard) In fact, I can safely say that they average vendor will be paying ~7% on Visa and Mastercard, and I believe the last numbers I received stated ~9-14% for American Express; and often even more for Discover and the other smaller cards. Realistically though, I wouldn't expect a producer to be taking care of that unless they're pre-selling and then it's probably via PayPal, or the field management would take care of that aspect; especially if profits are being split in any way.

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Yes, but unless you are running it through an Scorp, you are adding that to your income. I doubt most people do it as a full time job, so they need to add it to their income. I put it in the second lowest tax braket, because the 10% bracket is low and worse, it is going away next year. So expect it to be in the 15% bracket.


Uh, my old company (Sold it to pay for surgeries) it was ~$.50 plus 2.8% for online. My swiped sales were ~$.40 plus 1.4%.

WikiAnswers - What percentage does a credit card company charge the retailer for using a credit card


Yes, they'd probably do Paypal, but again that is 3.5% or so. (An older post has it at 3.9% plus $.30)

PayPal fees for dummies :: The Brush Blog

While, a vendor may be willing to do CC charges at the event, you'd probably do better if you didn't let him do it. Why, because they'll charge you 5-10% plus $.50 so they can milk you for that much more.

Really, anyone can do this. All you need is a phone, internet, and some time to do some serious talking.

specific details aside, seems easy if you have patience.

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