A two-storey seasonal C9 install grosses $2,134 on GlowBid's default rate card and nets about $1,270 after supplier-priced materials, two people's wages at $22 an hour, fuel and the January takedown. That is a 60 percent per-job margin, inside the 50 to 65 percent gross margin Jason Geiman at Christmas Lights HQ calls healthy. Forty of those jobs net about $48,000 for the season, 150 about $186,000, before income tax. Every line is below.
I run a permanent lighting company in Ottawa and I built GlowBid. The revenue on this page is GlowBid's default seasonal rate card, which installers replace with their own on day one. Every cost is a supplier page, an IRS or CRA rate, or Stripe's fee, checked on September 7, 2026 and linked at the bottom. The two assumptions I made myself, the $22 wage and 12 percent payroll costs, are labelled. Both people on the crew are paid, even if one of them is you, so the profit line is profit and not your wage in disguise.
What does one seasonal install make?#
About $1,270 on a $2,134 job, with 7.5 crew-hours in it. This is the same two-storey we priced line by line in our per-foot pricing guide: 250 lit feet of roofline, peaks, walkway and one small tree, 16 ft of jumps, a timer. Lights included, year one, so the installer buys everything. You can price your own house in the free tool and drop it into this table.
| Line |
USD |
Where the number comes from |
| Revenue: 250 lit ft, 16 ft of jumps, timer |
$2,134.20 |
GlowBid default seasonal C9 card, $1,500 minimum met |
| C9 socket cord, 300 ft (275 ft with the 10% buffer, plus lead cord) |
$91.53 |
Christmas Light Source, $305.10 per 1,000 ft SPT-1 at 12 in |
| C9 LED bulbs, 11 packs of 25 |
$219.45 |
Certified Lights, $19.95 per 25 |
| All-in-one clips, 3 packs of 100 |
$41.97 |
Christmas Lights Etc, $13.99 per 100 |
| Vampire plugs, 4 male and 4 female |
$8.00 |
The Christmas Light Emporium, $25 per 25 |
| Photocell timer, sold to the customer at $45 |
$33.00 |
The Christmas Light Emporium |
| Materials subtotal |
$393.95 |
18.5% of revenue; Geiman says 15 to 25% wholesale |
| Install labour, 2 people x 4 hours |
$176.00 |
$22 an hour, our assumption inside Geiman's $18 to $30 |
| Takedown labour, 2 people x 1.5 hours |
$66.00 |
Same wage |
| Drive time, 2 people x 1 hour on install day and again on takedown day |
$88.00 |
Same wage |
| Payroll costs on $330 of wages |
$39.60 |
Our 12% assumption; your accountant has the real rate |
| Truck, 25 miles round trip, two trips |
$38.00 |
IRS, 76 cents per mile from July 1, 2026 |
| Card fees on $2,134.20 |
$62.19 |
Stripe, 2.9% plus 30 cents |
| Total costs |
$863.74 |
|
| Profit on the job |
$1,270.46 |
59.5% of revenue |
| Crew-hours, both people on the clock |
7.5 |
$284.56 revenue and $169.39 profit per crew-hour |
In Canadian dollars at the Bank of Canada's 1.3840 on September 4, 2026, that is $2,954 of revenue, $1,195 of costs and $1,758 of profit. Two Ottawa notes: the CRA rate is 73 cents per kilometre for the first 5,000 km, so a 40 km round trip twice is $58.40 CAD, close to the IRS line converted. And $22 USD is about $30 CAD; Ontario's minimum wage is $17.95 from October 1, 2026, so a Canadian shop paying $22 CAD runs a lower labour line than this table. HST at 13 percent goes on top of the price and is not revenue.
What does the same house make in year two?#
About $1,587 on a $2,089 job, 76 percent, because the cord and bulbs are already paid for. The customer keeps the timer, so the revenue drops the $45 line. Materials fall to one pack of bulbs and one pack of clips for breakage, $33.94, which is our assumption of about 10 percent replacement. Wages and payroll are the same $369.60, the truck is the same $38, the card fee is $60.89. Costs come to $502.43 and the profit to $1,586.77.
That gap is the whole business. Year one you are buying inventory that lives in a bin with the customer's name on it; year two you are renting it out again. It is also why Strandr's 60 to 80 percent and Geiman's 50 to 65 percent can both be right: one is the re-install, the other is the first season. A rate card that bundles takedown and books the re-install before the truck leaves in January is what gets you to the second number.
What does a season make at 40, 80 and 150 jobs?#
About $48,000, $99,000 and $186,000 net before income tax, at year-one costs on every job. Forty jobs is you plus one helper over eight install weeks, 5 a week. Eighty is the same crew running full time, 10 a week, 2 a day. One hundred and fifty is two crews. Every job pays both people $22 an hour, so your own hours are already covered.
|
40 jobs |
80 jobs |
150 jobs |
| Crews |
You plus one helper |
You plus one helper, full time |
Two crews of two |
| Revenue |
$85,368 |
$170,736 |
$320,130 |
| Job costs (materials, wages, payroll, truck, card fees) |
$34,550 |
$69,099 |
$129,561 |
| Gross profit |
$50,818 |
$101,637 |
$190,569 |
| Fixed costs (list below) |
$2,449 |
$2,449 |
$4,149 |
| Net before income tax |
$48,369 |
$99,188 |
$186,420 |
| Net margin |
57% |
58% |
58% |
| Crew-hours, install to takedown |
300 |
600 |
1,125 |
| Net in CAD at 1.384 |
$66,943 |
$137,276 |
$258,005 |
The fixed costs are the ones I can source. Insurance at $700, the top of Jobber's $400 to $700-plus range; a second crew will move that, so call your broker. Software at $299, GlowBid Core at the founding price, or $699 for Ultimate with the crew app at 150 jobs. Ladders and safety gear at $1,300 per crew, from Strandr's $800 to $2,000 for ladders and $200 to $400 for safety equipment. Website and cards at $150, Jobber's figure. That is $2,449 for one crew and $4,149 for two.
What is not in the table: your sales and admin hours, summer storage for 150 bins, callbacks, weather days, invoices that pay late, and a second truck. The IRS rate covers fuel, wear and depreciation on a truck you already own; buying one for the season is its own line.
How do these numbers compare with what the other pages say?#
Ours land inside Geiman's ranges and below the headlines. Here is what the pages that rank for this question publish, and whether they show where the number came from.
| Source |
What it says |
Sourced? |
| LightQuoter, July 26, 2026 |
$950 average ticket, 50 to 70% gross margin, $15,000 to $25,000 first solo season |
No sources on the page |
| Jobber Academy, updated October 24, 2024 |
"$8K/month" in the title; $16,000 profit in two months; Dave Moerman's $495 minimum and about $1,000 average job |
The $16,000 links to a Reddit post; the rest is an interview |
| Christmas Lights HQ, Jason Geiman, March 30 and April 2, 2026 |
Solo $30,000 to $80,000 a season; 50 to 65% gross and 30 to 45% net; materials 15 to 25% wholesale; pay installers $18 to $30 an hour |
His training community; no outside source |
| Strandr, updated September 7, 2026 |
60 to 80% margins common; $50,000 to $150,000-plus a season |
No sources |
| Thunder Lighting Supply, October 2024 |
Crew of three, $2,400 or more a day, net over $1,000; 50% margins on every example |
No sources |
| This page |
$1,270 on a $2,134 job, 59.5%; 76% on the re-install; $48,000 to $186,000 net at 40 to 150 jobs |
Rate card, supplier pages, IRS, CRA, Stripe, all linked |
Two things stand out. LightQuoter's $950 ticket is a smaller house or a cheaper card than ours; at $2 to $4 a foot, which is what they list, 250 lit feet is $500 to $1,000, and the truck costs the same to get there. And Jobber's $8,000 a month is six or seven of our jobs a month, which is a part-time season, not a ceiling.
What does a permanent lighting job make?#
More per ticket, with a different cost shape. The same two-storey front on GlowBid's default permanent track card is 48 ft of garage roofline at $25 ($1,200), 74 ft of upper roofline at $25 plus the 10 percent storey premium ($2,035), 48 ft of peaks at $28 plus the 15 percent pitch and 10 percent storey premiums ($1,680), 16 ft of jumps at $12 ($192) and a $250 controller: $5,357.00 before tax, about two and a half times the seasonal ticket. No takedown trip, no bin in storage, and no re-install revenue next year either.
I am not putting a materials line on it because our dealer cost for track, channel and nodes depends on the brand and the agreement, and a number I cannot link is a number I will not print. The method for building that card is in our permanent per-foot pricing guide.
What do installers make as employees?#
$18 to $30 an hour, by Geiman's advice to owners, and the season is short. Indeed's general installer average is $22.84 an hour across 28,200 postings, which is every kind of installer, not lighting alone, and is where our $22 came from. In Ontario the floor is $17.95 from October 1, 2026.
The hours matter more than the rate. On our table a helper works 7.5 hours per job including the drive and the January takedown, so a 40-job season is 300 hours and $6,600; an 80-job season is 600 hours and $13,200. A good helper who comes back in year two is worth more than the difference between $20 and $24 an hour, because a crew that already knows the clips is faster on the same house, and every hour saved is $22 plus payroll costs straight to the profit line.
Mistakes that eat the margin#
- Not paying yourself. The profit looked great until you divided it by your hours. Put your own wage on every job, then judge the profit that is left.
- Counting the deposit as profit. The 30 percent deposit is $640 on this job and the bulbs alone are $219. Materials come out of it first.
- Forgetting the takedown trip. It is 2.5 crew-hours and a second drive, about $150 of the $864 in costs. Bundle it in the per-foot rate and book the date at install.
- Ignoring card fees. $62 on this job, $2,488 across 40 jobs. Offer e-transfer or cheque for the balance if you want it back.
- Treating year-one lights as a loss. They are inventory with the customer's name on the bin. The 76 percent year two only happens if the bin comes back to the same house.
- A long drive radius. At 25 miles round trip the truck is $38 a job. At 60 miles it is $91, plus two more crew-hours, and the margin drops toward 50 percent.
- Quoting from a $950 ticket. The homeowner sites average every job in the country. A minimum ticket, $1,500 on the default card, is what keeps a 40 ft porch from costing you money.
Where the numbers come from, and how to keep yours honest#
Every dollar of revenue above came from a drawing. The runs were drawn on a photo of the house, the footage came from the drawing, and the rate card turned the footage into the price, so the material list, the labour hours and the ticket all describe the same house. That is how GlowBid works: draw once, and the footage, the bill of materials and the price cannot disagree. Set your own per-foot rates, premiums, minimum and deposit, and the P&L on this page becomes yours with your numbers in it. Core is $299 a year at the founding price, $499 regular, and the free roofline tool runs the same drawing with no login until you export.
