2013-12-17
Part 4. Pricing Your Event
Do you charge for your event or do you make it free? Calculate any hard costs you have: Travel, Accommodations, Venue, Catering, etc. to determine the approximate cost of your event.
| Travel | $1500 |
|---|---|
| Accommodations | $2500 |
| Venue | $2500 |
| Catering | $1000 |
| Other Expenses* | $1000 |
| Total | $8500 |
* Other Expenses might include paying a photographer, emcee, badges, etc.
Tickets
Tickets are not going to cover all of your expenses.
Hard Costs/Tickets = ~Ticket Price
If you have $8500 in estimated Hard Costs, you’ll need to sell at least 150 Tickets at $57 each to generate enough to cover your base costs. Factor in at least 10% extra, just in case. That’d make your target ticket price around $62.50.
Selling 150 tickets isn’t easy for a first-time event. And getting 150 people to spend $62.50 a ticket is a challenge, too. So here’s an approach worth considering: Sell tickets in waves.
- Tickets 001-050 @ $35 x 50 = $1750
- Tickets 051-100 @ $60 each x 50 = $3000
- Tickets 101-150 @ $75 each x 50 = $3750
- Total Ticket Revenue: $8500
Selling the first wave at a loss helps build interest in your event. Those people will (hopefully) help attract more people to your event. The second and third waves help nudge procrastinators. If people know that the ticket price will increase by $X on a certain day, it’ll help them to commit to a ticket earlier.
Lesson 10 — If you set your prices too high, it will keep people away. If you don’t want to charge $62.50 per ticket, look at where you can cut costs to drive prices down.
- Give group discounts to businesses that might send a group. Be creative with relevant user groups. (They can help promote discount codes that won’t otherwise be promoted by official channels, and will encourage greater local participation.)
- Give tickets (or discounts) to key influencers.
- Encourage speakers to promote the event as much as they’re willing.
- Sponsors will see a greater impact if they promote the event to their customers/followers as well.
- Offer military or student discounts.
If the idea of charging for tickets makes you cringe, you’re either going to need to find – potentially lots of – sponsors or trim your expenses down to the bear minimum.
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