Re: What would your daily rate be?
Are you trying to estimate a bid on the entire show, or just for the labor portion of the show?
A show with sound, lighting and video I'd want to have a crew of more than 1 to handle the job, so that would have to be taken into consideration.
The standard IRS deduction for driving is .56 per mile. At 3 hours of travel average, estimate 60 mph, the mileage driven is about 180 miles. The cost for the vehicle would then be just over $100 (not including the operator driving it) When I bill this to the customer, I charge $1 per mile driven, so my charge to the customer is $180.
When I'm billing for my audio services, I bill in 3 time blocks. Half day, full day, or extended day. Half day covers up to 4 hours of time, full day covers up to 8, and extended day covers up to 12 hours. Any event requiring overnight stay is billed as an extended day. The rates for the time are $225, 400, and $600. So in your case, the average being 10-12 hours, that puts us into extended day rate. Driving time does count as work time.
So, if I were to do this job for the customer, with just me and no equipment, I'd be looking at billing $780 per show. However, as I stated, I wouldn't want this size of show with just one man, so you'd be looking at $1380 for a 2 man crew for a one off show.
Now, those are the rates I have for one offs. When I'm working with a client that wants to do multiple jobs, I can have some flexibility in the rates. If this were a longer term 4-5 day a week job, monday-friday, and it could be handled by one person, I could see the rate being around $500 per show as reasonable.
If hired by the company as an employee, you could expect to be paid anywhere from $15-40 per hour. With an average of 12 hours per show, that comes to $180-480 per show, plus $100 for mileage reimbursement. They also would then have the added costs of taxes, insurance, unemployment, etc, to pay. Keep that in mind when quoting any jobs.
