Organising an event - how do you sort selling tickets?

[Fushia123]

I am organising a small event and participants will have to pay about £5 each to attend. It’s a singing workshop with nature walk to follow - cost of singing teacher is the only cost which needs covering, I will do the rest.
Friends, colleagues, family and their friends will make up the group (max 20 people.) I don’t see them all regularly and need to decide how to get payments before the event. Have been looking into setting up a QR code thing linked to a ticket app but not sure if that the best thing to do.
Any ideas from anyone who has done anything similar would be gratefully received! Thank you

Eventbrite?

I was going to say Eventbrite too. It takes a small admin fee per ticket. If it’s all friends and family just ask them to email you an RSVP and transfer money to your bank account. For a small number of people it might be easiest. Then you can keep a list of attendees on Excel or similar?

If it's that small and mostly people you know I'd do it manually tbh. Send a PayPal.me link out for the payments, ask them to use a reference code so you know it's a payment for the event. You'll then get their email and can send them the tickets. That way you keep all the profits (make sure they send as friends and family). Bit extra work but probably not largely more than working out how a new system like Eventbrite works and paying them a percentage of your very small income.

As it is just family and friends, I'd just ask them to send the money to my bank account (or give me cash when they see me if they don't do on-line banking).

Keep a list / spreadsheet of when you asked them / reminded them, and when / how they paid.

I would add a little bit on to what you think you will need, as there will always be someone that drops out, and that covers it, as it would if you don't get as many people as you think. Cost it as if 17 or 18 were coming, not the full 20. If no-one drops out and you fill all the spaces, you can always buy some nice snacks or something with the spare money.

Thanks for your advice. Do you know whether you need a separate bank account for an Eventbright event? I’m going to advertise it on my Facebook page so may get friends of friends etc.
I’m really interested to learn how to work this all out and appreciate your help!
Thank you.

Eventbrite fees will hit your £5 ticket hard at £1.13

Other ticketing systems may work out cheaper, but for a small cheap event fees can be a waste of your money.

Eventbrite, Ticket Tailor etc are very sleek, I’ve scanned people in at events using them
It was easy - walk along the queue with the app and a handful of wristbands, call out for people with pre bought tickets, quick scan, hand out the right number of wrist bands then wave them on to bypass the day ticket queue.

But for 50 people overall that’s overkill at a cost. You can run with a checkin list and email receipt or a printed ticket etc

Simple methods are to a bank account (it can be your real one or an online account created just for that event), PayPal etc

Another option is that card payment systems such as SumUp allow you to create a web shop. You don’t even need the card machine
(I do have a card machine, but can now also take payment directly to my phone due to the model and no machine is required at all for webshop payments or QR payment links etc

Create a free account on SumUp, make a web shop in it, add tickets as a product
SumUp take 1.69% so you would get £4.91 (8.5p rounded up) on a single ticket £5 sale

I was going to use it to sell tickets to an event, (covid happened) and they would have just been listed as a product to buy that didn’t get sent out.

The webshop now has more options and looks like ‘bookings’ in SumUp works like a ticket

A couple of friends have an event coming up, they are selling the tickets physically and online
One of them already has a full online web shop so the online tickets are just another product for that, and they are both selling basic printed tickets in their shops with “ticket valid with receipt attached”
They will then have an automated list of online tickets to print for check in, plus a count of how many physical tickets they have each sold.
This means they pay basic payment handling fees on the online and card sales, and no fees on the cash sales.

As a customer I prefer bookwhen to eventbrite

i think you probably sacrifice discoverabilty (but eventbrite search isn’t that great anyway) but it works seamlessly

Great info. Thank you.
Has anyone used Trybooking?