[Inpycon] conference fee

[Kiran Jonnalagadda]

My 2p:

1. The ticket price should cover the bare minimum expenses required to run the event. This is typically venue+food. You have to divide the venue cost by expected average turnout to get the per-ticket part of the venue cost.

For students, skip the venue cost but include the food cost. This means Rs 900 is just about right for student tickets (300 per day x 3 days). Limit the total number of student tickets available so that there are enough others to pay for the venue.

2. Ticket prices should be tiered (early bird, regular, late etc) to encourage folks to register early. The people who register later pay extra to subsidize student tickets and swag. Convincing people to register early also gives you a better sense of what the turnout is going to be like, which helps with planning. For example, you can negotiate better rates with caterers if you can commit to higher numbers.

Most people register just before a deadline, so you should have many of them, raising the price a little bit each time.

3. To make #2 work, you have to make participants commit by paying up. I recommend insisting on online payments only. Payment gateways support pretty much every bank these days, and everybody has a bank account. In the rare case someone is with some obscure bank, they can do a NEFT transfer and email you about it. We get roughly 1 person in every 500 asking for this.

If you do accept offline payments, many people will chose to pay offline because it means they can defer commitment while reserving the price. It's your headache to follow up with them and convince them to pay up.

4. Some people have more money than time. They can't commit early, but they don't mind paying extra at the venue. This will be roughly 5% of the turnout. This is not a problem for food because caterers anyway plan for a 10% margin in numbers, and there always dropouts: people who pay for a ticket but don't turn up.

Best,
Kiran


-- 
Kiran Jonnalagadda
http://jace.zaiki.in
http://hasgeek.com


On Sunday 10 June 2012 at 3:06 PM, Anand Chitipothu wrote:

> > I would suggest keeping offline payments but getting away with on-the-spot
> > registrations, if that would help us with managing food and swag. Let them
> > register online but pay the money on-the-spot, and such cases need to be
> > given any discounted price.
> > 
> 
> 
> Thats what we tried last year and it ends up creating big queues at
> the venue. If someone can't pay online and he can register and pay
> offline within 2 weeks after registration. That way we know the people
> who are not going to turn up query early and make better judgements
> for arrangements.
> 
> And I think it is important to keep on-spot registrations. There will
> always be people who'll get to know about the event very late. By
> keeping on-spot registration fee very high, we can reduce the number
> of people who register on-spot.
> 
> Anand
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