How To Make Money Running A Free Conference
Last week my friend Teri and I hosted Bootstrap Alive, a 3 hour encounter upward on bootstrapping a company (aka growing a company without outside capital). We were inspired by this very helpful mail service by Noah Kagan… and so I wanted to pay it forward and explain exactly how nosotros did it.
Note: I hate when people with very footling experience write posts every bit if they are experts. So I'll say upwardly front that this was our offset event and we are non experts. This is more of a "how we did it" kind of affair.
This post explains:
- The verbal steps nosotros took to make Bootstrap LIVE freakin' awesome
- How we establish a venue for gratis
- How nosotros sold 120 tickets and fabricated $2,000
Land a whale – make it EASY for them to say Yeah
To brand this event amazing we had to establish brownie. If nosotros had credibility and so everything would be easier…then this was our starting time step. Selling tickets, getting PR, landing other speakers…everything would be easier with credibility. We decided the best way to do this would exist to get a semi-famous host in the tech world: Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com. Non only is Andrew very talented at interviewing people, but he has a TON of clout.
I hung out with Andrew a few times in the past but by no means were we best buds, so we really took a ton of time to impress him. Our goal was to go far VERY easy for him (and the other speakers) to say yes. Before we even asked him we created the issue page on Eventbrite with all the details like speakers, schedule, location, and stuff similar that. We didn't really have any other speakers or fifty-fifty a location, merely we took a risk of saying nosotros did anyway..,knowing once we got Andrew we could get the other stuff. This made it easy for him to say yes.
Stick out and land great speakers – our electronic mail template
Pop folks similar Andrew and the rest of the speakers get asked to exercise stuff all the time – interview requests, java meetings, etc….so we had to stand out from the crowd.
In Andrew's instance, it was a handwritten letter and bottle of scotch. In the alphabetic character, we made it very, very, very clear almost how this event would benefit him. Hither's the exact letter nosotros sent him. Feel costless to copy it.
Once we wrote the letter, we plant his work accost and Teri personally delivered it. He said yes correct on the spot.
Here'southward the email we sent Neville. Funny and straight to the betoken (this is the start fourth dimension we ever spoke).
In our opinion, landing great speakers was KEY. We wanted accomplished people who were actually experts in their field, had a great story, and were genuinely dainty and fun people…not the VP of marketing of some featherbrained company, a self-proclaimed skillful, or someone bragging nearly being a "growth hacker."
In the cease nosotros finish up with three awesome founders:
- Chris Herndon, Apartment List
- Nikhil Auroa, Back To The Roots
- Neville Medhora, House of Rave, Appsumo, and NevBlog
Funny story: when I called Neville and convinced him to come up I told him we'd take care of accommodation…This really meant having him sleep in my room and me crashing on the couch. This was amazing for me because he'due south a super cool and smart dude and he fifty-fifty came to our book club…and so it was absurd to have him around for a calendar week. He ended up loving my dog so I think we both won. 🙂
The Venue
This was really pretty freaking easy. Most offices Love hosting meetups. We cold emailed a few co-working spaces and they all said yep. I tin't emphasize this plenty, merely the primal in these emails was to appeal to their interests. NO Ane CARES ABOUT YOU…THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT THEMSELVES. Remember this. We would email the office managing director and tell them how we were going to have 150 entrepreneurs in 1 room and this would help the work space land a new client or two. We ended upward picking Geekdom SF, a share working space in SOMA. The venue even supplied free beer and pizza.
Selling tickets
This was the hardest part, simply it really wasn't fifty-fifty THAT hard as nosotros sold out ii days before the event even took place. Weeks before nosotros even sold a ticket we sat down for a few hours and systematically wrote down everywhere we wanted to advertise.
Besides $l in Facebook ads, all of the advertisement was gratuitous.
The issue was posted and/or blogged near in the following places:
Startup Assimilate – anyone can postal service here
The Fetch – same as Startup Digest
Jason Evanish – my buddy who retweeted us
Ryan Hoover – same as Jason. We sent them free tickets in commutation
Spider web Wallflower – my buddy Sieva took care of this one. He simply common cold emailed her and asked
The Bootstrappist – I offered them gratuitous tickets and in return they advertised the effect
Neville Medhora'south email – I didn't ask him to, but Nev sent out a link to his followers
Key takeways: Discussion of mouth sold the most tickets. If your event is crawly people volition find out. It sounds scary and cryptic but it'due south truthful. Most events sell xc% of their tickets two days earlier the event…simply we sold the majority of them two weeks before.
Making money!!!!
This is the stuff yous Actually wanna know, correct? How much money did nosotros make?
Before I dig into this, the main reason we did this was not to brand money. I do program on hosting more than events with profit in mind, but this event was just a exam. Had nosotros wanted to make more cash I would accept increased ticket prices, establish sponsors, organized a special dinner, yadda yadda. We wanted to do this our fashion, which was a agglomeration of badass speakers and a fun crowd…so no sponsors telling usa what to do or any other nonsense to go far the way of our goal.
Here's a breakdown of ticket sales:
Early bird – 60 x $19 = $1,140
Regular price – 20 x $25 = $500
Late buyers – 2 x $50 = 100
Discounted tickets – 20 ten $ten = 200
Free tickets – 20 10 $0 = 0
Total acquirement- $ane,940
Costs breakup
Neville's flight – $250
Andrew's scotch – $fifty
Facebook ads – $fifty
Professional videographer – $500
Full costs- $850
Turn a profit = $one,090
Note – knowing that we will host future events, we went big and hired a pro video guy. This will assist with future result ticket sales. And similar a bootstrapped business, all of the cash is being reinvested into hereafter events. Now we accept a trivial flake of greenbacks to fly in the next guest.
What worked for usa
Take a purpose: We had a very clear purpose: to learn about the early days of bootstrapped companies (specifically the first $150k in sales).Having a clear goal helped us make decisions regarding the flow and purpose of Bootstrap LIVE.We besides had a fiddling inspiration: Noah Kagan's blog post on conferences, Neville Medora'due south video on the power of organizing events, and this Creative Live interview with Tim Ferriss.
Have a plan:Nosotros were very systematic in our arroyo and minimized take chances whenever possible. We knew how many tickets nosotros had to sell, where nosotros had to advertise, what our goal was, and who we wanted to come. If y'all want to throw an event, sit for a twenty-four hour period and write out a plan. One time nosotros had a programme nosotros executed like crazy.
Make the speakers HAPPY past making things Like shooting fish in a barrel and FUN:Information technology was imperative that nosotros brand the speakers happy. Apartment List and Dorsum To The Roots are growing like crazy, so we printed their job openings on the back of the programs. Nosotros even made a detailed itinerary for Andrew. Before the event, we emailed everyone the questions we'd be asking. The goal was to make it and then easy for everyone to say yes. The ideal situation was to make it SO easy that the guests (including Andrew) simply had to show up, sit downwards, and take a conversation (but in front of 120 people).
Exist ignorant, confident and over work:A lot of people didn't realize how cool this event would be because nigh events suck. Thankfully, Teri and I rarely always get to meetups…so nosotros didn't know this. Once we set our goal, we worked our asses off to execute, over prepare and sweat the details. This fabricated everything fall into palce
In the end this was a very, very fun fourth dimension. In the big scheme is was pretty small, simply information technology helped us prepare for future events.
Wanna hear about future events? Sign up hither and I'll shoot yous an electronic mail when we accept the details all prepare.
Source: http://www.theantimba.com/how-to-make-money-hosting-a-conference/
Posted by: baldwinfrant1961.blogspot.com
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