#WriteOff09 – Day 14: Dan Blogs About Adding Registration Fees to Events
If you’re behind the game, here’s a link explaining The Great Write Off of 2009. You can find links and discussion to all posts by checking out the Twitter trending topic, #WriteOff09.
For the 2-week mark of The Great Write Off of 2009, Dan wrote about adding registration fees to events to reduce no shows. He says:
I’ll be frank; this $10 fee that TTT is charging will ensure that unless the speaker is someone absolutely spectacular, I likely will not attend any future TTT events. This isn’t a bad thing; I’m not the direct target market for these events, so maybe by not attending I’ll help them get who they’d like.However, if the purpose of your events are to bring a community together while helping to promote the individuals involved in it, I’m not sure that the nominal fee is the way to go.
I think Dan has a very good point about all this: I’m not sure this is going to help TTT events. However, I suppose it really does depend on their objectives. If it’s to ensure a high-quality events, maybe the $10 registration fee will weed out the not-so-interested-attendees and ensure only the die-hard fans show up. The $10 could also go towards recruiting better speakers or improving the event in some other way.
Just like any product or service, people have no problem using it if it’s free, but only the real customers stay behind once price is introduced into the mix. And maybe that’s not a bad thing, now is it?
Dan has some more varied thoughts on this topic and you should definitely go check him out to see what else he has to say about this issue. The comments on this post are also quite insightful too and worth a read. Thanks Dan.
