· 2 min read
How to sell event tickets online without losing a third to fees
A practical walkthrough for organizers: pricing, payouts, fees, and getting your event discovered, with the fee math worked out.
Selling tickets online should be the easy part of running an event. Too often it is the part that quietly eats your margin. Here is how to set it up so more of each ticket reaches you, and more of the right people find the event.
Start with the fee math, not the platform's marketing
Every ticketing platform charges two separate things, and they are easy to conflate:
- A service fee, the platform's own cut per ticket.
- A payment processing fee, what the card network and processor charge.
On a $50 ticket, a legacy platform charging 3.7% + $1.79 takes about $3.64 before processing. A fairer 2% + $0.49 takes about $1.49. Across a thousand tickets that difference is more than $2,000 kept or lost, on the same event.
Ask any platform to show you both fees on a real ticket price before you commit.
Decide who pays the fee
You can absorb the fee into your ticket price or pass it to the buyer at checkout. Passing it on keeps your headline price clean; absorbing it makes the checkout total match the advertised price. Neither is wrong. What matters is that you decide deliberately rather than discovering it at settlement.
Get paid on a schedule you understand
Payouts should be predictable. With Stripe-based platforms, funds settle to your bank on a rolling schedule once your account is connected, with a short hold on the very first payment. Connect your payout account before you announce the event, not the night before doors.
Make the event discoverable
A ticket link nobody sees does not sell. Two things move the needle:
- Local discovery. People search for what is on near them. An event page that a search engine can actually read, with the date, venue, and city in the page rather than hidden behind a login, is what gets surfaced.
- A share card that looks like something. When your link is posted to a group chat or a story, the preview image and title are the advert. Get them right once and every share works harder.
Keep check-in simple
On the night, the goal is a short line. Check-in that runs on the phone you already have, works offline, and does not need a separate card reader is one less thing to rent and one less thing to fail at the door.
TixFix was built around these ideas: fair per-ticket fees, Stripe payouts you control, event pages made to be found, and check-in from your phone. If you are weighing where to sell your next event, see how the platform works for organizers.