Make Money Selling Concert Tickets
A few weeks ago Hannah Montana went up for sale on TicketMaster for a few of her concerts this month in New Jersey. This tickets were nearly impossible to get and sold out within the first 5 minutes of going up for sale. This was even more crazy, because it was a pre-sale which was even more limited to Hannah Montana club members only. I ended up getting two tickets to two of her concerts, one pair with nearly front row seats and the second pair were several rows back. I gave my sister the great seats and had to sell the other pair this week.
If you search eBay, you’ll find a ton of tickets going for sale in the $200-$500 range. I also did some other research and came across StubHub.com, which is another high profile site for buying and selling event tickets. I ended up listing the tickets on both sites to see which sold. This morning I was notified by StubHub that the tickets sold. Using StubHub was extremely easy to list, process and ship out the tickets to the winning bidder, which is mainly what enticed me to write up this post. This leads me to "Make Money Selling Concert Tickets", and there are two different ways.
The first and most obvious method to "Make Money Selling Concert Tickets" is to buy tickets once they go for sale on TicketMaster, then flip or resell them on eBay or StubHub. The advantages to this are you can flip them for a couple hundred bucks and it’s simple enough. Hard part is actually getting any (or at least good) tickets to an event that sells out within a couple mins.
The second method to "Make Money Selling Concert Tickets", is what I’m more interested in… which is the StubHub.com affiliate program. They are currently offering 8% through their Affiliate Program. The StubHub affiliate program is inhouse and I just applied to the program today, so I haven’t been able to check out the admin area yet or tracking/linking setup. If someone had sent a visitor to StubHub through an affiliate link and they ended up purchasing my Hannah Montana tickets for $500, the affiliate would have earned $45 off that one referral, which is pretty good for an affiliate program. Affiliate payments are sent out every month, at $20 minimums and are sent through Paypal.
If you have a celebrity or event related web site or blog, you could do really well with this program. As mentioned, I just joined the program today, so I am still waiting to hear back from them on my acceptance. I will push the offer on a few of my sites and keep you updated on it’s earnings and performance.
Pretty sure that scalping tickets (or reselling them at higher than face value) is illegal in my country, so this wouldn't work (at least for local gigs). Interesting that it is legal in the USA?
I know that it varies per state and there are specifics on how much you can sell them for over the percentage you paid. If you are pushing the StubHub affiliate program, this wouldn't be an issue.
There is a big difference between scalping tickets and reselling tickets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticket_scalping
Interesting. I saw on the news not to long ago that people were paying thousands of dollars for Hanna Montana tickets. It's unbelievable what people are spending money on..
Anyway, I wonder how a PPC campaign would work for something like this…
If the affiliate gets 8%, I’ve got to wonder how much are the fees at StubHub for the seller (I’m too lazy to check).
It is a decent amount they take. You can look up the info fully at https://www.stubhub.com/help-top-questions-buyer#… . But, the tickets sold and they made the process super easy… which is why I recommended them. This should help increase affiliate earnings as well.
Great idea, thanks Zac. I'm definitely planning to jump on this tip and see what I can do with it.
I don't have a busy celeb site yet but adding it to the few I have could work out well. After all, it's pretty targeted and who better to promote to lol.
I'm all for making money, but I have to say that it's douche bag tactics like this that piss me off when I want to go to an event, be it a concert or pro game, where all the tickets are sold out to people that never wanted to go and are charging 5-10x what they paid for the tickets. Pushing the affiliate program is cool, but as a fan that likes to get out and do shit once and a while, I have to give ticket scalpers a big hearty "fuck you."
Happy holidays.
Great idea. 🙂 Thanks Man.
Wickedy Wowz, now I rake it on my concert going fanatical friends and fiends. Gotta hand it to you for "admitting" *ahem* confessing you went to Hannah Montana. Signed for the aff pgm, be interesting to see what comes of it.
Cheers and Beers
Shane
haha, I didn't go… they were presents for my sister and her friend!
Wow! I was listening to this on the radio last month and the famous "Ryan Seacrest" was telling everyone how the tickets sold for $1,000s for the Los Angeles area…
-Mike
This a really interesting money making idea, although I heard about it before I've never found such a detailed guide about it. 🙂
Selling tickets for more cash than you bought them for is illegal here. And I thought this was illegal everywhere! :O
did you mean buy it from Ebay and sell on the other websites like you described ?
because on ebay you can only sell cheaper, not expensive. but still its good idea, it did couple of times.
thankx mate,
-abs
Any thoughts on the TicketMaster affiliate program? StubHub does seem like a better idea, but it wouldn't hurt to try to cash in on both times the tickets change hands 😀
The commission levels are pretty crappy, like 1%… but with the right audience, it could do well.
Ticketmaster gets roughly 10% and passes on 1%
Stubhub gets roughly 25% and passes along 8%
Stub Hub gets %5
Here are the facts about stubhub. I have been affiliated with them for several years now. Stubhub gets fees much greater than you may realize. When you buy tickets from stubhub, they get a 10% fee from you and they also get a 15% fee from the seller who posted their tickets for sale on stubhub. That’s why eBay was so anxious to purchase stubhub for 300 million dollars. So you see, the affiliate gets 8% commission from each transaction and stubhub retains 17% of each transaction…Looks to me like the REAL money is creating a site like stubhub’s and then getting affiliates to build your brand for you. Big money in the ticket business and most of it goes to StubHub!
DAMN TOUTS!!!!
@Paul:
I wish it was illegal! I paid $151 for an $81 ticket and on top of that they charged me 26% service fee! I bought two of them and it ended up costing way too much >:(
@Rey:
I mean 15% service fee…!!
We actually just created a guide to help people increase their chances of landing concert tickets to popular shows.
I hate the StubHub fees. Better to sell on craigslist. Although the problem with craigslist is nobody trusts you enough to send the money. But then I found switchon3.com which helps them trust you. I sell a lot more tickets that way and save a ton of money on fees.
I agree the StubHub fees are sometimes extreme. It's nice to get tickets cheap, but then another $50+ in fees really kills it.
your content sucks… cmon seo folk, make better content! content is king, only if audience likes it. talking about selling tickets and reselling them higher, no shit. This is common knowledge. What the consumer wants, is info on steps to making money. saying, yes buy low sell high is obvious and pointless to tell us. why not explain how to tell which concerts you can tell will sell out. how to do it locally and non locally. if you are making "Make Money Selling Concert Tickets" your keyword…aka you target market is looking to find an answer to, answer that question. think these things through before. and i guarantee the money you are making now will tripple. good day sir!
This would completely depend on the type of sites and keywords you are marketing on. In the end this is the type of research affiliate marketers need to take to make their campaigns. I am just providing you with the ideas and top ad networks for earning commissions on ticket sales.
yeah good point. I didn't mean to offend you or anybody btw, thank you.
If you think ticket reselling is terrible, have you ever taken an economics course? Usually, the face value is FAR BELOW the equilibrium market value of supply and demand. Sites like Stubhub and eBay offer tickets for values closer to the actual equilibrium market price.
Do you think making it illegal is going to let you go to the event? Chances are it will actually prevent you from finding a ticket. What happens is everyone's willingness to pay is above the ticketmaster price, so they jump on the opportunity to purchase the ticket for a dirt cheap price (yes, $100 for a certain concert may be very cheap if the demand curve is high). Thus, many fans are left without even having a choice to buy one. Artists and such want to sell them for less value so there is "hype" for their show. Think about it, if Hannah Montana's show sold out in "5 minutes," then that is something she can use when marketing herself later on. Supply and demand, simple.
Here's a good way to make money selling concert tickets: Write a blog post full of obvious advice ("Buy them from Ticketmaster, then resell for more on StubHub"), fill the text with SEO-friendly phrases to boost Google views (hint: repeat "make money selling concert tickets" like 50 times), and blanket the page with ads. Brilliant!