Big Success this year

[gregsalyers]

I live in an outlying neighborhood. Large acrerage lots. We never get any trick or treaters...none. Last year was my first year doing a haunt. I expanded greatly this year and even got the cities endorsement. We were open two nights. On thursday it was for clubs and groups. We had about 6 clubs and 150 people. On friday we had a line from the time we opened at 7:30 until an hour after we were supposed to close. We got fantastic feedback, most people said we were clearly better than the professional haunt in town. We had about 17 scenes and 18 actors......we made aboout $300 in donations.

I am sure allot of you did significantly better, but we were thrilled.

[UnDeRTaKer313]

thats great man!
home haunt owner myself. Hell's Gate is our haunt
i heard you need help making a website. hes some tips, if your just a home haunt check out a hosting site and then just choose a template and input all of your info its really fast you can have a website up and running in an hour if you tried.
Hope this helps
a good site is www.000webhost.com and a good domain site to buy your domain is go-daddy.com

we bought our domain from go-daddy and then host it for free on 000 webhost but were bought to upgrade to premium service.

let me know if you need any more help id be happy to assist.

[Front Yard Fright]

That's great to hear! I'm glad to hear that the city is supporting you too! Do you ask for donations or did the people just give them to you? We started off doing our haunt for free, but as more and more money was put into it, we realized that we needed to get some money back on it.

In 2006 I made a guest podium/donations box (Seen here) and we had some people throw some money in... But not nearly as much as we put into our haunt.

For 2007 we asked for a two dollar donation from each person who went through. (We say "Donation" because as soon as we start to charge people, we become a business, and with that opens a HUGE can of worms I don't really want to deal with!) We made about 700 dollars or so, which was fantastic, but yet again not as much as we put in our haunt each year. (Our haunt too was credited for being better than some of the local pro haunts around my area... So I knew I was doing a good job!)

For 2008 we asked for five dollars a head. Not bad considering most haunts around here run from 8 to 10 bucks each. We ended up making about 3,000 dollars this year alone... Making us break even! It was a fantastic accomplishment and I can see your haunt getting there in the near future!

As your haunt grows, as will your attendance. Word of mouth works wonders for us. We've had people driving over an hour and a half to come to our haunt because they heard it was good. As you grow, advertise more and get the word out. You will find it will pay off in the end!
.

[SpFXChic]

Glad to hear that your season was a success! Great word of mouth should mean that next season will be even better!!! Congrats!

[Jim Warfield]

"Good" is good, average is average.
Compliments are Great to hear coming from your customers no doubt about it.
Now the warning:"People become more critical with the more the ticket costs because they expect more for the money."
You buy a $12,000 car, then you buy a $40,000 car, which one do you expect more from? Then your Uncle gives his old beater for free and it runs problem free for three years! Wow! Whata car! Way beyond one's expectations, and thereby it will always be very fondly remembered....

[Raycliff Manor]

Congratulations Greg! Thanks for sharing your success with us! The success stories of other haunters motivates me as much as the laughs and screams of those we entertain!

Kel