Wdja

I had heard some very negative stories of WDJA before i joined, but i took the plunge earlier this year as some of you know. I got my first booking just a few days after joing which paid for the joining fee 4- 5 times over.

Today i have received confirmation of my 4th booking who have enquired through WDJA. I can highly recomend anyone to join it unless you are in my area then bugger off

You're only getting them because I'm already booked and letting you

But...Seriously it is really good that you have come out and said so. It is true that we have had those who have given us more than our fair share of a slagging. Unfortunately one or two of them have been folk that command a misguided respect from others within our industry, but personally I think they are just sad lonely people that have nothing better to do all day than sit behind their computers with a box of kleenex waging war with their keyboards. It is a unique and excellent concept and it does work. We have even had a couple of folk trying to steel the idea and the name and do us damage, one of them is already registered on the Nominet site as an Abusive Registrant and the other is still in the process.

I know for a fact that there are lots of DJs sitting pretty doing well out of WDJA but like to keep themselves to themselves and say nothing so its really good that you have posted this...I hope your success continues...as long as I'm already booked myself of course

Good on ya Damian.
I've converted a WDJA one today as well..........one of my favourite venues as well.

I've only had one so far this year that's for a date I've been avaliable personally on, so most of the time haven't even been able to quote

Paul has been kind enough to forward a few "out of my area" enquiries that didn't have members closer by to quote though

To be honest Dan its been pretty much the case myself, guess I get on average about 1 a week this time of year and prob am able to go after and convert about 1 every 6 weeks which is fantastic for the membership fee. I assume me and you will have the odd area that crosses but also areas that don't clash.

Do you reply to those that you can't quote for just to say sorry you can't help and wish them all the best? I always think its good and that way at least they know their enquiries are actually reaching some DJs.

I reckon I should choose more of your areas Andy I've had 5 this year (1 of which had no contact number and an email address that bounced!), and Paul forwarded another 3.

To put that in context my own website generated just over 26, counting just Wedding DJ enquiries, not the other things I do.

We're not far adrift Dan, its only about 7 weeks into the year and I must admit I do find the northern areas such as Lancs, Gt Manchester and Cheshire do bring in slightly more than the more central ones that I have such as W Mids...Shropshire appears to be the not so busy one for me.

My site doesn't do as well as yours...prob about 2 a week if I worked it out, most of mine is repete stuff but I am starting to see the dance floors take off a bit better than the latter bit of last year, but in all fairness I only started with the black and white one in June and the Abstract one in October so early days yet.

I'm starting to think more about starcloths, I have a 3x5m S+H P light one so far but I use that with my booth and I have a LED3x5m one too but am not sure what sizes I should go for. What sizes do you use?

6m x 4m is the optimum size really, 3m can be a little bit too low for some venues and you'll rarely get ceiling heights above 4m - even if you did, you can't safetly rig above that height without needing extra bracing, which very few venues would have the facilities for.

I was thinking 2mx6m as I am getting a lot of work in marquees and generally speaking the side walls of marquees are only about 2m high...guess maybe 2x4m is worth looking at as they could be hung either way depending on if its a marquee or ballroom. Thing is I want to stick with S+H as that's what I already have and the quality is excellent but its the price that's not so excellent.

i would love to get into the starcloth hire side of things, i jsut dont have the money to invest, and not only that i dont want to be stepping on Dans toes as he only lives a couple of miles away, soon to be even closer.

To be honest, unless you have 15-20 bookings a year per cloth it's not economical to own it yourself, at the moment I sub it in at a keen enough price allowing me to make a little bit ontop on the hire cost and of course charge for my time in doing the job.

I'll soon be investing in the pipe & base rigging kit which you can use with either starcloth, drapes, blackout cloth etc. - material is easy to hire from anywhere and have it couriered to you, but not so easy with the rigging!

Andy, I'm pretty sure the standard height around a marquee is 2.4m (8ft) so you might as well go for 6m x 3m as a minimum. The problem with marquees, is alot of the time the marquee company will have got there first - with starclothing/draping normal hotel rooms its a much bigger wow factor and there's more of a market there, I reckon.

A couple of companies I am working with just supply the net type thing with the lights in for the ceiling but not starcloth and the main marquee of the one firm is 2m up to the bars where the roof slopes in...of course another advantage of the marquees is that you don't need any pipe and base kits as it velcros round the bar of the marquee. Another venue where I do regular have let me install a bar perminantly at 3m and that is where the back-drop fastens.