Looking to make some money this holiday season!?
Last year I set a goal of doing $30,000 in the month of November by hanging Christmas lights in my first official year of doing lights professionally.
I had put up lights the year before if someone already had them, or went to Home depot to grab those cheap ones for them.
But this year was different.
The time to hang crap pieces of plastic was over. It was time to actually make some money and provide a better experience for everyone involved.
This comprehensive guide will teach you everything I learned in my first year and how to make a lot of money doing so.
Let’s get started.
Why set up and install professional christmas lights?
If you’ve ever driven to a cool neighborhood that has great holiday lights or light shows then you’ve probably seen professional work.
Shopping malls, hotels, ice cream shops all usually have money to invest in something like Christmas lights that attract attention and get people in the holiday spirit.
Now, where I grew up no one got these lights installed. I’m not really sure why. Maybe no one really sold them back then or if I just never noticed but the lights we used we either got from Walmart or Home depot. A lot of people just did it themselves I suppose.
My dad would always try and find the best deal but as it turns out buying anything from Walmart usually kicks you in the ass later (those lights would always burn out pretty quick).
See professional lights are about 10x better because a variety of reasons. They last way longer, they’re easier to install and you can customize the colors and cut exactly the amount you need.
If you try and setup lights from Home Depot or somewhere, be prepared to do some mental gymnastics to figure out how to get those 25 foot sections where they need to go, juggle extension cords and how to plug everything in. If you’ve done those before you know what I’m talking about.
Plus if a bulb goes out you’re f$cked because the whole strand goes out and now you have to get a tool to be able to find which bulb started the whole wire to go down.
With pro lights you can simply switch out the bulb, but we didn’t even have to do that last year. These lights are good and should last 3-5+ years if stored the right way and such.
Anyways save yourself the headache and avoid any of the lights you can find at the store, you gotta order online to find the good ones.
Go get yourself some good lights somewhere like Christmas Light Contractors and let’s keep it moving.
How to get started
The first thing I did was I pre ordered the bulk lights in September. I spent around $5,000 to get around 4,000 feet of lights. You can do that as well if you want but what I would suggest is order something like a 100 foot starter pack and do a practice house and get the hang of it before you go too crazy.
Hanging the lights does take some learning but trust me you can learn to do everything pretty darn fast.
Watch this video when you have the lights and are ready to see it done but until then keep reading, there’s a few more important details to go over.
How to quote and price your christmas light jobs
Last year I had the goal of making $30,000. So with that my idea was to charge $8-10 per foot to hang the 4,000 feet of lights and at $8 a foot would get us to $30k.
WRONG. But hey you live and learn.
We ended up only being able to charge around $6-7 per foot. I must have given out a hundred damn quotes that got turned down trying to sell them for more but eventually I just went with the flow of the market and we got cooking.
$6 per foot is still a great price. In fact across America the average cost is between $3-$7 per foot depending on what lights you use, I’ve seen some professional installers charging $12 a foot but that can be for a crazy light display or including outdoor trees.
Most light jobs do not take more than a couple hours so you are usually still making at least $100-200 per hour to hang lights which is pretty nuts when you think about it.
But In general, start with a lower price and work your way up especially as the season progresses and you get more busy you can charge more later.
The average home is about 100-150 feet of lights so we did many jobs for $600 and $750 and of course had some over the $1200 mark.
That’s the goal this year to up that average ticket price and get better at it as it is a specialized and seasonal business so you can absolutely charge quite a bit if you do good work.
In the beginning though, charge what you can and as long as you’re making good money keep doing it.
How to get leads for your christmas light business
This is a relatively short article as I could talk about getting leads for a very long time.
But what I will say is we used Facebook Ads very effectively and I definitely recommend it to anyone else looking to get alot of leads and start making money fast.
For facebook you just need a picture or video of some work you’ve done or pickup some of the Ad templates I sell with my facebook ads book but here we just want something simple and compelling. I typically spent around $20 to as much as $50 per day and got leads around $5 bucks a piece.
So trust me when I say, the easy part is getting leads, the harder part is selling the lights.
Usually with something like roof cleaning its the opposite. We don’t get many leads that aren’t super interested. When we give out a quote we probably close 60-80% of the time.
Christmas lights though are more of a luxury item that people kind of want if they have the budget for it.
It’s more like a “nice to have” than a NEED TO HAVE so often times you have alot of people just shopping around. Many will even get multiple quotes from other holiday light installers and ruthlessly play one company against the other.
There can definitely be a little bit of competition to this business that’s for sure.
This is where we talk about something my friend Steve Hunsaker has coined SPEED to LEAD. Aka the first person to respond and quote the job usually gets it so make sure you’re on top of it.
Anyways the point is, get as many leads as you need. If you’re looking to just make a few extra bucks this year don’t worry about it but if you do want this to be a season where you make $10k or $30k plus you will need to have your process dialed in.
I’ll have a separate article on how to do more of the marketing and facebook ads but for now just get some ads up and running and get it going.
Upsells and long term money
In my first year we were very profitable.
But the cool part with Christmas lights is that every job we did is a recurring job meaning that for our happy customers (hopefully all) they will come back year after year at no cost to the business.
Not to mention we also end up doing roof cleaning, gutters, solar panel cleaning and more to many of the same folks. It’s an easy upsell.
“Oh hey we saw your gutters were clogged, want us to take care of that for you?”
Easy extra $300.
So with lights yes it can be a good amount of work to get things flowing but when you do, the year after year money makes up for it.
I know alot of guys too who do many other things such as Christmas tree lights and all sorts of different things like music, high end mansions, retail stores. Another big business is permanent lights which is definitely a discussion for another day.
The sky really is the limit. But I personally wanted to keep it simple. We for example did not do a single tree or anything other than the gutters or roof line of a home.
Sometimes the best way is to just keep it simple. One type of light one type of house. We also did not do anyone who had their own lights. Way too much of a hassle and you will not make as much money.
Probably 90% of the places we did were just the simple white C9 Led bulbs. You might get more requests for different types of lights or colors but cross that bridge when you come to it as you can always quote the job first and then order the lights second.
What to do next.
If you’re brand new to lights go watch one of the several videos I have on Youtube because alot of this next part won’t make much sense.
Doing a professional installation job sounds harder than it is because the lights are actually pretty easy to put up.
Again If it’s your first time I would get your hands on a starter pack like one of these pro packs that you can get in 15 inch light spacing at 125 feet. (15 inch is better because it looks just about the same as 12″ but it’s a bit cheaper and less to worry about)
This comes with everything you’ll need and all the wire and plugs because I know for 100% I was confused as hell at first until I got the hang of it.
Everything I ordered can be found here.
I would not order any incandescent lights of any kind I would just stick to the classic C9 Warm white Led bulbs and if your customers want anything else you can order it custom for them.
Screwing in light bulbs and clipping them onto the gutters is not a bad way to make $100+ per hour.
Test everything out on your house or your parents or if you feel ready just go ahead and sell it straight to your first customer for $600-750 or something like that for the full install.
You will learn more on your first job than 100 blog articles or youtube videos so get to it!
Conclusion
We hit just over $30,000 in 30 days and it was a great experience and I’m excited to do it again this year, maybe even double our results from last year.
To recap;
Order lights ahead of time and practice.
Run ads/get as many leads as you can.
Sell jobs and come back year after year.
With 1-2 jobs a day you can very easily hit $10,000 $20,000 or even $30,000 a month that me and my 2 guys were able to do.
Let’s get after it my friend
-Spencer Claeys