Photography Business with Santa Claus

In our recent topic on ideas to earn money at the end of the year, we mentioned as an option the setting up of a stand so that children can take pictures with Santa Claus (or Father Christmas).

It is a relatively simple business, easy to set up and also many companies use this type of activity as a way to attract customers and promote their brands, which makes it even more interesting.


Basically you will need:

  • A red armchair conditioned to the season
  • A Santa Claus suit
  • An assistant who wears the suit
  • A good resolution digital camera
  • Laptop with a good quality color inkjet printer

How to work the photo business with Santa

Basically, you should go to shopping centers, especially those where there is a lot of human traffic, and offer your services in two ways:

  • The first is to propose it as a way to liven up the Christmas atmosphere in your commercial, which will make it very attractive for them and all they need is to give you the space to work (at no cost).
  • The second option, if the first is not in your interest, is to rent or rent the space for a modest amount, always with the premise that it will be a convenient attraction for visitors to your shops.

Whatever the modality, you don’t need more than a space of about 3×3 meters to decorate it suitable for the Christmas season.

You should put a lot of emphasis on this point because good taste is decisive to attract the attention of adults and children. You don’t need to buy all the decorative items, some can be borrowed or rented (including Santa’s costume).

  • Your service proposal must be seasonal, day or even just to entertain your own special events for hours.
  • The mechanics consists of having Santa Claus greeting the little ones who circulate around the place and inviting them to take a picture with him.
  • A nice additional detail would be to have a checkbook and a mailbox where children can write their letters to Santa and deposit them in it.
  • Once you have an interested client, you proceed to take a couple of photographs with the child’s best smile, print it and in 5 minutes you deliver it to their parents in a nice green envelope.
  • You could exploit the business even more by offering some souvenirs like Christmas hats, little reindeer stuffed animals, gift socks and others. Which will give you some additional income.

The iYour business income will come mainly from taking pictures for each child, so it is important to capture as many as possible. Imagine that during a day you can take 40 photographs (average) at $ 2.50, we would be talking about $ 100 a day. In a week it would mean about $ 700 and about $ 2500 at the end of the month.

From this you must subtract the costs of the space in the commercial (approx. US $ 150), rental of Santa’s suit ($ 50), fees of the person who wears the suit ($ 150) and printing materials which gives an approximate cost of us $ 500 to $ 700 leaving you a profit margin of about $ 1800 dollars.

Now imagine that you can have 2 or 3 points of business in different commercials taking pictures of Santa Claus. You could have at the end of December about $ 5000 dollars in your bag. Not bad for a small Christmas business.

So, as I mentioned at the beginning, this is a relatively simple business to set up, it just requires a little creativity and a lot of desire to work. As I always suggest, prepare a business plan, write your ideas on paper, start trading in shopping centers and take action!

Remember, save all the costs you can, rent what you need, lend the digital camera to one of your uncles or your best friend. Pay a cousin to wear the suit, anyway.

Shape it and earn money at the end of the year.

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