Should I just sell tickets for my event on my website?

Back in the olden days, building a website was hard work and it cost a small fortune and even if you built one there was no guarantee that you could get people to find you on Google so it made loads of sense to come to a ticket agent such as Skiddle to promote your event.

Times have changed, it’s no longer prohibitively expensive to get a website built and you can probably get someone to build a rudimentary sales system to sell your tickets. However, the more tickets you’re selling, the less rudimentary you’re going to want that ticketing system/ticket engine to be. Building a ticketing system is an expensive, timely process (Skiddle is over 11 years in the making!).

Selling tickets on your own website

Years ago, Skiddle produced a simple widget that enabled you to simply add a bit of code to your website to sell tickets from your own website. This simple solution gave you all the functionality you’d expect from a market leading ticket selling system on your own website as well as having your events on sale on Skiddle.com.

More recently we’ve developed an integrated solution. Essentially, our R&D team create a white labeled solution so your website visitors can buy tickets without ever leaving your website, thus reinforcing the brand. One of the main advantages of using Skiddle’s white-label solution is you still get that decade worth of online ticket selling technology on your own site as well as the ability to include your events on Skiddle.com and through Skiddle’s network of affiliated websites.

Off the shelf ticket shop solutions

In more recent years there has been a move towards event promoters selling tickets through their own websites as a way of having more control over the way they sell and promote their own events. We understand this and encourage people to promote their events as much as they can themselves. There are plenty of off the shelf options for selling tickets on your website, some good, some so very bad! Skiddle’s ticket shop is one option for your site, however it’s important that you find the right solution for you and your event.

Registration is the lifeblood of any event. Whether you’re selling tickets to the event or whether the event is free to attend, you still need to have a good feel for the amount of people that are going to be there, this informs every decision you’re going to make about the event.

The technology you choose to use has a massive impact on the way you deal with this. You don’t have to spend ages any more with loads of spreadsheets trying to work out who’s going, who registered, who’s cancelled, which registrations have been duplicated and after the event who didn’t turn up – whatever technology you choose it’s likely to have elements of this basic technology out of the box. What you’ve really got to consider is the added value you can get from using the technology. As discussed above the added value a promoter gets when they choose Skiddle technology is Skiddle.com itself, something that is not to be sniffed at!!

Do the big event brands use ticket agents to sell tickets?

The big events and big brands have massive amounts of marketing and PR surrounding them which helps them to create a bit of a head of steam when promoting their event. This is brand marketing by and large and they are able to use this head of steam to get people to their own sites to sell them tickets directly. They don’t tend to rest on their laurels though, they still use listing directories and ticket agents to distribute a certain allocation of tickets – this ensure they get other organisations to do a large amount of the event promotion on their behalf.

Whether you’ve got a big brand or a small brand it’s important not to get too caught up in the penetration of your brand in the marketplace because there’s always room for more exposure and websites such as Skiddle.com provide a single resevoir of information which is trusted by our audience which can then be used to provide additional exposure to your event either through advertising on the site, inclusion in our regularly emails, inclusion within the events guide or even news coverage. This is the winning formula, even when selling tickets directly through your own website, your inclusion on Skiddle.com and our affiliates allows potential event goers to find your content in so many ways that would be impossible when just featuring your event and selling tickets on your own site.

Why do ticket agents charge a booking fee?

The booking fee is the bugbear of event organizers  Many event organizers see the event booking fee as something that they could rightfully have on top of the face value of the ticket, however the most important thing to remember about the booking fee is it’s only out of this money can an organisation like Skiddle offer the extra value to the user that creates the kind of buzz that most events big and small could only dream of creating.

Selling tickets on your own website through off the shelf software that you pay for on a one off basis, generally means that you don’t pay for each transaction, on the other hand the downside is you have to do all the marketing yourself and you’ll have a system which will rapidly seem antiquated and, let’s be honest, unless you’re Glastonbury, it’s likely you’re going to be left with boxes of tickets, scratching your head about how to get more people to your event.

Get promoting and get selling – choose the right ticket solution for you

Thinking about the question posed at the beginning:  should you sell tickets on your own website? Yes, absolutely! No one is going to promote your event as tirelessly as you will and if you’re a big enough brand in the hearts and minds of event goers this just might be the right solution for you. On the other hand if you choose the type of system that just gives you a ticket shop, you’d better be prepared to do a lot of the work yourself and the results may less than set your world on fire.

An onsite ticket solution such as Skiddle’s white-label ticket shop solution with the backing and promotional capabilities of a community website such as Skiddle.com is more often than not the best solution for the majority of event promoters in the UK’s saturated event market.

Learn more about Skiddles ticket engine solutions.