Paul Cross, TicketBud : Sell tickets without paying a transaction fee

Ticketbud is an event marketing, event registration and online ticketing service that allows you to easily and affordably sell tickets online. Most other ticketing applications charge enormous fees for each ticket sold PLUS a percentage fee on top of the ticket price. When event organizers get their invoices from these firms, they can suffer from sticker shock.Ticketbud won't tell you to "just increase your ticket price," or "pass our fees on to your guests." When you are trying to establish a relationship with your attendees, you don't want to start by gouging them with fees.That's why Ticketbud only charges $19.99 per event regardless of how many tickets you sell. You also get to try Ticketbud free, because you are allowed to sell up to 5 tickets before paying for your unlimited Ticket Window.

“We created an application anyone can use to sell tickets to their events and not drown in fees. It's also simple enough that anyone can use it regardless of computer experience. Event set-up time to selling tickets on Ticketbud is the fastest in its class of online ticketing applications. We are very proud of that. Our slogan is "grow something..." and it fits our company's culture beautifully. “ says Paul Cross, President, TicketBud. Paul answers a few questions about the platform and the India plans for Ticketbud.

What was the idea behind TB? Why did you want to start a venture of your own when there are similar platforms available?

Ticketbud started out to help one child at a school raise money for books and teacher's salaries. We built it because all of the other platforms were so cost prohibitive, bilking the person throwing the event in needless fees. We did not realize it would grow into what it has. We wanted to change the model of ticketing and we think we succeeded. For years you have seen multiple layers of fees for every ticket sold. Everything from per ticket fees to ticket surcharges to shipping and handling fees to a percentage of ticket price. This is terrible for the small to mid-sized, local event. In these models the ticketing firm has cleverly advised its users to simply pass their fees on to the attendees. Ticketbud believes this is disingenuous. Why have your guests, who you are trying to establish a long term relationship with, shoulder these fees? We are technologists not pirates. We went with the flat fee per event and it’s been an overwhelming success. We are very happy.

As far as similar platforms, our core difference is that we allow event hosts to sell unlimited tickets to their event for a one time flat-fee. This has been a game-changer. We then put all our effort in the underlying technology to simplify and streamline the process. It takes our event hosts on average about five minutes to set up their event and start selling tickets online.

How important is technology for TB?

Besides our passion for helping the small event organizer succeed, our leading edge technology is what has propelled Ticketbud. We run 64 bit linux, incredibly stable and secure, we have 99.99% uptime. I partnered with some old friends, kernel people who thought it would be fun to write a web ticketing app. I'm very blessed to work with wizards. They use Emacs as their editor, and i'm not talking about the old Apple product. Our core team started coding before they were teenagers so there is pretty much nothing they can't do. It's great to have all this horsepower for a ticketing application.

Funding? Expansion plans?

Our goal is to build an international ticketing brand, where our local event organizers can rely on our technology to help them succeed for an extremely fair price. We have consistently declined investor funding because it has given us the ability to have our flat-fee model. If we were to take on funding, we would have to answer to investors that would invariably ask us to increase our fee structure. Our way is harder because we do not rely on the marketing and ad dollars as other well funded competitors do, however our long term approach creates relationships that are incredibly strong and deep. Everyone loves Ticketbud.

India plans

Ticketbud can and is being used in India, however direct support for the Rupee is not available. The event tickets need to be denominated in US dollars or Euro’s and then converted to Rupees after all proceeds have been deposited into the event host’s account. It’s a simple process however we hope eventually there will be support for the Rupee. We are big fans of India and several members of the team have been there on trips of cultural and spiritual exploration. India has taught the world many things and we want to be there to support its local events.

Final thoughts

All of us have a background in the high tech industry but we also share a deep commitment to charities, non-profits and the small local events that host fundraisers. The team has each individually, over many decades donated their time and skills for various causes. We understand that event organizers already face enormous costs putting on events. Ticketbud exists to help these folks.

Click here to visit their website : http://ticketbud.com/