Lessons from selling (400) events online

Hi i'm new here. I love the idea of indie hackers, i feel like i've wondered into the best kept secret on the internet. It seems too good to be true, but i really believe it is possible to become financially independent leveraging the internet to magnify the impact of your your hard learned skills, and i'm going to try and prove it to myself in 2021.

What i've learned from selling over 400 workshop events to the public, through the internet, hopefully this helps someone on their journey:

1. Images are more importanterer - the picture has to be beautiful, interesting and communicate the value proposition.

2. Value is relative to the market - choose your niche, some will pay more, some will pay less for the same thing:

   • Start with a high ticket price, but have mechanisms to discount basically everyone. Early bird bookings, "limited time" specials, coupon codes. You will be pleasantly surprised how many people actually pay the asking price, but you will always have that amazing buzz of a full workshop.

3. If you want to reach everyone, you won't reach anyone. Facebook is a great place to target ads, but drive people directly to your own website as soon as possible.

4. Use a booking system, even if you run small events, it makes no sense to manage bookings individually, through multiple channels.

5. Communicate more rather than less. Not everyone wants all the details, but enough people do that you should send all the details to everyone.

6. Drip feed comms so its not overwhelming. We do a thank you email on "reservation" with more information about payment and why they should pay ASAP. Then a confirmation email on payment, with more info and reminders about the event. Then an email 7 days out, 3 days out and the day before. By the time event day comes people are really excited and know everything you want them to know.

7. Automate as much as possible. Once the advert is posted and promoted the funnel takes care of the rest, all the way from booking to email thank you's after the event.

8. Be more human. Automation is great but make sure you put your human touch in to every step, or you become "the system" and no one will love you.

9. Listen to the people who actually pay you, lots of people sit on the sidelines telling you what they want, but its irrelevant, make sure the people who are actually giving you money are getting more than they expect, it costs nothing to be thoughtful.

10. Bonus tip for physical workshop events,

    • 3 hours is long enough
    • People are intimidated by things they haven't done before
    • People are probably too intimidated to "buy now" they need more info and reassurance.
    • Make sure everyone goes home with a "thing" - the thing should resemble the picture people clicked to get there. Thats their basic expectation, anything less will be a disappointment.
    • Have +1 assistants for the size of your workshop, back in the real world things go wrong and you can't run a workshop and try and reconnect the projector/compressor/belt sander at the same time.
    • Remember most people are there for the fun of it, make it fun, don't go down the rabbit hole with the one geek and leave everyone else hanging.
    • Remember to be a great host.

ps i learned this over the last 7 years building this non-profit project that teaches anyone to make stuff:
www.themakerspace.co.za