Cost of a Conference

From its inception the Creatures, Crimes & Creativity Con has been about the fun of writing and the fun of meeting writers.  But sadly, there is one part of planning a conference that is NOT fun.  Like it or not, you have to deal with the money issue.
The biggest expense is the venue.  To get bids you have to know what you want.  After you figure out how many breakout rooms you’ll need, you add a bookstore area, registration space, vendor space, a hospitality suite and a room big enough to hold everyone when your keynote speaks.  We also decided to offer meals as part of the registration package, in order to promote networking by keeping everyone in the hotel at meal time.  Once we knew what we needed we got proposals from several hotels, college campuses and even a VFW hall.  Tours and negotiations finally led to the Hunt Valley Inn.
You may want to offer your keynote speakers an honorarium, and/or to cover their travel expenses.  This makes local writers more attractive, but you need names that will draw attendees.
You need a budget for promotion.  This could simply be post cards or Facebook ads, but you might consider ad space in other conference programs or elsewhere.  Do the research to see how much such things cost.
And don’t forget the cost of your own Con programs.  This will be everyone’s primary souvenir of their Con so budget to get a nice one printed.
Unless one of the organizers is an IT whiz your budget must include putting up a slick web site.  Building the registration page turned out to be a bit more complex than expected, but the convenience of letting people register online is worth a lot.
Don’t forget that even the registration will cost money.  You’ll have to provide name tags and a nice bag or backpack for people to carry their stuff in. 
Many of these expenses – meals, programs, registration packets, etc – depend on the number of attendees you expect.  Here’s where the guessing comes in.  You have to pick a number, based on other cons you’ve been to that were similar to yours.  Once you have your guess for attendance you divide that number into the total projected cost and voila!  You know what the average guest will have to pay for you to break even.
Average?  Well yes, because you’ll want an early bird registration price, and if it’s a multi-day event you’ll want to offer a one-day price.  You may want to introduce other variations like a student rate, or retiree pricing.  You may want to charge less for the authors who will be on panels.
Your budget could change if you find a couple publishers to sponsor parts of the Con, or get vendors for all the space available, or sell souvenirs at a profit (coffee mugs, tee shirts, etc.)  Ideas like these could offset some of the cost.