Workshops and courses
Selling tickets for a workshop: what does it cost?
Selling tickets for a workshop without a fee per participant? A worked example with a cooking studio, and the trap of the weekly workshop.
· 4 min read
You run cooking workshops in your own studio. Twelve places at the counter, 65 euros per participant, twice a month. Until now everything went through email and bank transfers, but you want to start selling tickets for your workshop the way people expect today: pick a date online, pay straight away, get a confirmation in their inbox. The first question that comes up: how much does a platform keep, and what gets added per participant?
This article works it out with one example, and points to the one setup choice that decides whether you pay anything at all.
What makes a workshop different from a concert
A workshop has few places and a high price per place. Twelve participants at 65 euros is 780 euros for a single evening. A platform that charges per ticket feels that immediately: a percentage of 65 euros is not small change, and it comes back with every participant.
A workshop also tends to repeat. Not one big event a year, but dozens of small ones. A fee per session or per ticket therefore adds up over the whole year, even if you barely notice it on any one evening.
The worked example: a cooking studio
The studio runs 24 workshops a year, each one fully booked. That makes 288 paid tickets and 18,720 euros in revenue.
Take a made-up platform that charges 3 percent plus 50 cents per ticket. On a 65-euro ticket, that is 2.45 euros per participant:
| Per evening | Per year | |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets | 12 | 288 |
| Revenue | 780 euros | 18,720 euros |
| Commission of the made-up platform | 29.40 euros | 705.60 euros |
With Passavo you pay no amount per ticket, on any plan. On the Free plan you can sell up to 100 paid tickets per event, with no limit on the number of events. Twelve places an evening stays well below that. For those 288 tickets, the studio pays us nothing.
What you have in every model is the cost of your payment provider for the online payment. You connect your own account with Mollie, Stripe or Bancontact Pro, the money goes straight to your bank account, and we keep none of it. How that works is explained in Payout and costs. If you want the actual rates of existing ticketing platforms, with source and date, have a look at the comparisons.
The trap: the same workshop every week
This is the difference you need to know about. The cap on the free plan counts per event, and an event is one product in your back office.
- Each date its own event. You create "Pasta making" on 7 November and "Pasta making" on 21 November as two events, each with twelve places. Each event has its own counter, and it never goes above twelve. You stay on Free. You create the next date with Copy on the ticket type in Sales → Products; see Events.
- One product with time slots. You create a single workshop and add every Wednesday of the year as a time slot, with 12 in Seats per time slot. That is convenient: your participant picks a date in a calendar, and you maintain one product. But it is also one counter. After a few months it passes 100. See Time slots.
When an event reaches the cap, your sales do not stop straight away: a grace period of 14 days runs first. After that you can pay for that one event separately for €19.00, up to 2 times a year, or take a plan. For a workshop that runs all year round, Start is the logical step: €9.00 a month, up to 3,000 paid tickets a year and no cap per event.
When a paid plan does make sense
Even with separate events, there are reasons to take a plan:
- You also sell at the desk in your studio. Someone who drops by and wants to sign up on the spot can pay at the counter point of sale. That is included from Start, along with your own colours and logo in the ticket shop.
- You sell gift vouchers. A workshop is a popular gift, especially around the holidays. Gift vouchers come with Growth, together with your own domain.
- You have quiet months. If you run no workshops in summer, you can pause a monthly plan. You then receive no invoices and carry on working on the free plan.
How to set it up in five minutes
- In Sales → Events, create one event per date, with Seats in total set to 12.
- On the ticket type, turn on Name on the ticket, so you know who will be standing at your counter.
- Connect your payment provider and make a test payment.
- Put the link to your ticket shop on your website and in your newsletter.
How to set up such a workshop step by step, with the participant list and what happens when someone cancels, is covered in Selling a workshop for up to twelve participants online. What ticket sales involve in general is explained under sell tickets online, and all plans side by side are on the pricing page.
