How to become a Ticket Broker

There is more than just deciding to become a ticket broker. There are many questions you need to ask yourself if you want to become an efficient ticket broker.

What type of ticket broker do I want to be?
This might sound like a silly questions, but believe it or not there are different types of ticket brokers

• Retail Ticket Broker
• Wholesale Ticket Broker
• Affiliate Ticket Broker

Let’s go into what it is to be each type of ticket broker and then discuss how to become said ticket broker.

Retail Ticket Broker
This is ticket broker who may or may not have an actual retail establishment and may or many not own actual ticket stock and if they own stock will of course also be a wholesale ticket broker. A retail ticket broker earns income by selling their own stock and other ticket broker’s stock on their website and on other websites through a ticket exchange such as EventInventory, TicketTechnology or TicketNetwork. They will typically use a POS (point of sale) provided by one of the above mentioned ticket exchanges and of course a credit card processor, sometimes an in-house credit card processing machine and sometimes an online payment gateway. Sometimes retail ticket brokers even use such avenues as ebay, craigslist, stubhub and fansnap. Beware of ebay and craigslist as they could potentially result in large chargebacks and legal issues.

Becoming a retail ticket broker can be quite expensive and one of the hardest type of brokers to be. Not only do you potentially have to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars of your own ticket stock, join a ticket exchange, a POS, a website, company name (DBA, Trademark), employees, tax id, storefront, and many other items. Starting off without a good business model and everything you need might help you join the ranks of hundreds of other failed ticket brokers that are not working for other people in other jobs.

Wholesale Ticket Broker
What is a Wholesale Ticket Broker? Simply put a ticket broker who’s main source of income is other ticket brokers selling their ticket stock on their websites then fliping the tickets and running the other, then having then drop-ship the tickets to their customer. All the while, hoping that the ordering ticket broker’s credit card doesn’t bounce or result in a chargeback. In today’s market there are more Wholesale Ticket Brokers than retail. This happens when their website or advertisement methods fail them. They either struggle to sell their stock or in a way to excel. I would recommend that everyone stay away from wholesale unless you are able to hold hundreds of thousand of dollars worth of stock. Eating tickets sucks and you can always find a lot of wholesale ticket brokers to agree. But believe it or not some wholesale ticket brokers actually do good with it. How do you recover from slowly becoming a wholesale ticket broker? I’ll go into that in a later post. It is easy to be a wholesale ticket broker, just expensive. Just do the research on what is hot in your local area or even on a national level and spend tons of money to buy tickets that with today’s market will most likely have to be sold under face value 20 minutes after you buy it. The biggest ting a wholesale broker needs to realize is to never give up on the retail aspect and not only selling their own inventory themselves but also selling other tickets broker’s inventory on their website. The benefits are endless, not only are you gaining the customer base that will know and love your website and your company and you control the mark up. Like with a retail ticket broker, a wholesale ticket broker is most always one in the same.

Affiliate Ticket Broker
This is one of the most profitable ways you can possibly go. TicketNetwork proudly proclaims that they have more affiliate “ticket brokers” than they do full ticket brokers and that these affiliate ticket brokers make many times more than full ticket brokers. It’s easy to see why, it’s nothing but profit. To become an affiliate ticket broker, you’ll need a good domain name and a good marketing plan. And by marketing, I refer to search engine optimization which for any great affiliate ticket broker is key to success. Unless you’re going to be a whore to the search engines and pay huge amount of money to pay-per-click. Keep in mind that you don’t want one of the free websites or cookie-cutter websites that the ticket exchanges may offer you. By doing this, you’re cutting your own search engine optimization throat. You want a custom xml website that is designed with SEO in mind. Then you have to do all the hard work that comes along with actual SEO. When your website receives an order, you don’t have to worry about processing the order, chargebacks or any other complication. You simply receive a percentage of the sale.

Recommendations
It never hurts to upload your ticket stock to all 3 exchanges. There are always a number of ticket brokers who have good websites that are only using one of the available exchanges, thus making your tickets available to all these brokers and selling even more stock.

Don’t get locked down into a long contract with a ticket exchange, especially when you’re new in the market. With all likely-hood you’ll end up hating the exchange you chose but you’re stuck.

Never forget that search engine optimization is as important to your business as your incoming profit.

As with any business, always plan things through and never mix personal feelings with business.