Ben's Inflatable Empire: $5000 Monthly Earnings from Renting Bounce Houses
Ben Bolin • Published January 5th, 2024
SIDE-HUSTLE STATS
10-20
Hours Worked Per Week
$5000
Revenue Per Month
1
Founders
1
Employees
$14,800
Startup Cost
In Progress
Months Before Profit
Referrals
Main Growth Strategy
33%
Net Profit Margin
Table Of Contents
Working As A Power Generation Tech + Bounce House Rentals
Coming Up With The Idea
Where did you get the idea to start a bounce house rental business?
My job is pretty lax. I was sitting in my cubicle, literally twiddling my thumbs, so I thought,” Why don’t I do a newsletter?”
So I did, but it wasn’t producing enough cash flow. I don’t think I was patient enough. Then I was like,” You know what? I think I need something more hands-on that I could force to succeed.”
Then there was this UPS driver who we rented a bounce house from for my son’s birthday last year. When he came over, I was just out there shooting the shit with him, you know? And I was asking him questions because I love business. I like to know the nitty-gritty details that aren’t sexy, I guess.
So I asked questions like,” How much time does it take you to do this? How are you doing this? How busy are you?” And he told me that in his first year, after about half a year, he made $41,000 in revenue. Then in the second year, he got up to $80,000 or something. He was in his third year and was like,” Yeah, I should be over a hundred grand by the end of this year.”
But he was like,” Yeah, I’m getting out of it. I’m going to be a commercial driver, and I’m gonna have to just put all this on pause.” And I was like,” Well, why wouldn’t you sell it?” He’s like,” Well, I mean, I don’t think anybody would want it, you know?” And I was like,” Well, how much would you want?” And he’s like,” I don’t know, probably like 10 or 15 grand.” I was like,” Dude, I’ll go to the f*cking bank right now.”
He was like,” All right, well, hold on. Let me talk it over with my wife.” I think I kind of scared him a little bit because I was like,” Yeah, let’s f*cking go, dude. I’ll hop on this truck right now to the f*cking bank.”
Well, it turned out there were still more excuses. So come June, I’m like,” You know what? Dude, this is stupid. I shouldn’t be waiting for this guy. I could fucking kill it. The competition is so weak, and I’m just driven.” That’s when I approached my brother-in-law with the idea to say,” Hey, dude, I’m thinking about doing this.”
First Steps To Starting
How did you start your bounce house rental business?
So I have a brother-in-law. He’s 21 and works at Walmart as a cart pusher. And I was like,” Hey, dude, I’m thinking about doing this bounce house thing, but if these things are too heavy, I’m going to need help. Would you want to work for me? Whatever I put into the business, I’ll let you match up to 30%, and you could actually own part of it.”
He was all for it. I think he put in five grand, and then we basically bought our first three used units. They were ones we found on Facebook Marketplace. It was the kind of bounce house I wanted to be our pride and joy, which is this shark waterslide, which is awesome. It’s an attention-grabber, you know? And nobody had it in our area.
Anyways, we bought that for three grand, and then we bought these two other mid-size bouncers, where one was a combo. A combo is a bounce house and a slide that can be used in dry or wet conditions. Then the other one’s just a regular bounce house. And so we bought all three of those for a total of five grand.
Those combos have actually been our breadwinners in the wintertime. Those get rented out almost every weekend, consistently. They don’t make as much as the big boys, the waterslides, but at least they’re paying the bills.
I think I paid a bit more of a premium because, at the time I was buying it, I was thinking July 4th is like the Super Bowl of inflatables, you know? So I was like,” Hey, I need to be open and ready for business on July 4th.” That was my goal. And as a matter of fact, we did a rental on July 4th. We actually did our very first rental on that July 1st, I believe it was. Then, we had every single one of them rented out for July 4th.
On that day, we made $1900 in revenue and profited about $900. We got off to a great start.
Growing Your Side-Hustle
How did you grow your customer base? What's your main marketing strategy?
There’s a lot of low hanging fruit with the businesses in my area, whose online presence is pretty weak. I felt like I could exploit that pretty easily with Google ads and Facebook ads.
And then with SEO. I’m not proficient in SEO at all. But I could at least have the time to learn it to where I feel like I could jump ahead.
Revenue + Earnings
On average, how much do you earn from your side-hustle each month?
Startup Costs + Tools
How much did it cost to start? What tools do you use?
Lessons & Advice
Do you recommend starting a bounce house rental business? Any tips for others?
About Your Full-Time Job
What's your full-time job?
Where Can People Find You?
Where can people rent your bouncers?
If you’re based in Oakdale, CA, or the surrounding area, and you want to book Ben’s bouncers, visit Jump House Rentals to book a jump house today.
Here’s what a couple of Ben’s customers had to say:
“Fantastic service and affordable pricing! I can’t recommend this company enough! They were there on time, they had everything we needed, were super affordable, and the kids had a blast on their super spacious jump house! We will definitely be ordering from here now on! – Josh
“Absolutely amazing!! We rented the large obstacle course for our son’s 5th birthday party and I cannot say enough good things about Jump House Rentals! They arrived earlier than expected to set up (very helpful to our busy day!) and made the entire process so easy. All the adults were impressed and asked where we rented from and the kids had a blast! Thank you! We will definitely be return customers.” – Lindsay
Read more of Ben’s customer testimonials here.