So at the end of last year, Nathan suggested we raise the price to $40. It came up mostly because the $35 price is a burden on registration (we need LOTS of 5 dollar bills). I kind of didn’t want to because we’ve had the same price since the first year and this is the fifth and I wanted to keep it the same for this year.

Then I ran the numbers and my opinion changed.

For 2014 our projected per-badge net income is $0.07. Seriously, you’re paying $35, and out of that, $0.07 is going into the bank account for next year. That really isn’t a lot. There are some other factors at play, but it all boils down to this – if we have any major unexpected cost then we are losing money for 2014 and eating into 2015’s budget. There is NO cushion.

Sooooo . . . I think we do, indeed, need to raise prices to $40 at-con, and all precon goes up by $5. Does this bring our per-badge price to $5.26? I wish. First, there are about 500 day-badges that are going to stay at $20. Second, the percentage-based taxes take out a chunk of the increased profit. So the per-badge price would be approximately $1.98.

The increase would put approximately $5k extra in the bank at the end of the year.

A final note on the per badge price – these numbers do not take into account income from various departments like artists, vendors, gaming, t-shirt sales, etc. However, it does take into account all the expenses for those departments. So, the per badge number is biased to be low. If I ignore the departments which have income to cover their expenses then the number bumps up to about $4.70/badge ($7.65/badge at the higher rates) which is better-looking. I don’t really use the per badge number to make a lot of decisions – I use the end-of-year bank account estimates.

I think in the end the price hike will come down to one crucial piece of information – What is the GSR going to charge us this year? In 2010, 2011, and 2012, we were charged a flat fee for the space we were in. In 2013, the contract did not change and the price seemed to be the same, but the invoice had our space as $5k higher than we were expecting. Investigations reveal that we were charged daily this year instead of the flat fee as in previous years. I am investigating the reason for the change, but if the venue is going to be charging us $5k more than we expected, the price increase gives us an estimated $5k at the end of the year which will cover it.

If we do this this year, I hope we keep it at $40 for at least 5 more years.