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| Dec 16 2010, 4:02 AM EST (current) | Je_Suis_Barry | 7 words added |
| Dec 16 2010, 3:54 AM EST | Je_Suis_Barry | 11 words added, 8 words deleted |
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For the Incubate Pirate Conference 2010, the festival organisation applied the Pay What You Want (PWYW) principle. Since then, we’ve been getting questions on how we did this and what the results were. So we decided to put up a faq on our Social Festival Model. Here are the questions we’ve been getting the most. If you need any other info or have any other questions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this thread.
What payment system did you use for the PWYW conference?
We don't know any pricing/ticketing payment system (like Ticketservice or Timoco) that has the option of variable pricing without having to pay a lot for it (if there is one, we'd like to know of course). So we designed our own payment system. People could register for the conference stating their name, the number of tickets and total price they would like to pay for the tickets. Payment could be made with Paypal or via bank transfer.
It's a pretty basic and easy-to-use program, although a lot of work still goes into manually processing registrations and payments. There is no option built in yet to automatically administrate payments from a Paypal or bank account.
To give you an idea of how this worked: within the ticketing system, we'd have different 'template mailings'; one to thanks people for their registration plus payment details, one for payment reminder, and one for payment confirmation including their e-ticket(s). Once people registered for the conference, we'd send them the first email. We'd then have to check our bank account and Paypal to see if payments were being made. If not, we'd send the second email. Otherwise, we'd send the payment conformation mail. All of this had to be done manually.
If you'd like to use the PWYW payment system we created, give us a shout. Of course you would have to customize it (the mailings and such) for your own purposes. We're planning to add more automatic processing, better e-mail templates, auto-e-ticket creator, and more in the future.
How was the handling at the entrance of the conference; did visitors receive a ticket for the event?
Yes, visitors received an e-ticket for the conference. These were also manually made (tickets had the name, number of tickets and price on them). The printed tickets were collected at the desk of the conference so we could see who came to the conference. Other than that; if people wanted to pay for their ticket on the day of the conference, this was also possible. These prices were written down on a form by the people at the desk. A receipt was written upon request. Please make sure to check this procedure out with your accountant prior to implementation, especially if your organization needs a legal accountant-seal-of-approval.
What about taxes; how were the prices paid administrated?
This is a tough issue, since tax laws differ around the globe, and differ per type of organization. You can register it as a gift, but for us, that affects the possibility to subtract the costs made for the activity the ticket is for. It also depends on what kind of an organization you are. Profit or non profit, VAT (BTW) deductable or not. Besides that, it depends on the ratio between the amount generated by PWYW and the costs made for the activity. We are currently looking at this together with our accountant and tax advisor as well, since we had a couple of scenario's thought of before we started, but can only now determine which one suits best. Any advice on this is welcome.
What were the results of the PWYW principle; what was the average price paid?
Response to the PWYW principle was very positive; we heard a lot of discussion at the conference about the value of an artistic conference, which is exactly what we were hoping to stimulate. Other than that, we think this pricing mechanism made the conference more accessible for visitors and created a lot of goodwill towards them. Below you can find the graphics and results for the PWYW mechanism.
The average price paid for a conference ticket was € 9,10. This was 90 cents lower than we expected it to be; we aimed for € 10,-. The difference between the average price in presale and tickets bought at the conference itself is very small: in presale, the average was € 9,13; the average from door sales was € 9,05. We actually expected door sales to be a bit higher, because of the face-to-face aspect when paying for the entrance. Most people paid 5 or 10 euros, obviously amounts that were easy to pay with bank notes of that same amount. Out of 149 people who bought a ticket for the conference, eleven people 'paid' € 0. The highest price paid for a ticket was € 60. In total, 231 people were gathered at the Pirate Conference (including speakers and other participants in the program). A group of 40 students who made a brief visit to the conference and paid € 0 were left out of these calculations because we felt they would blur the results too much.
Conclusion
The implementation of PWYW pricing is an extensive process, that still needs a lot of further development and research. Results differ a lot, as we can see for example from the Vooruit theatre in Gent that did the same experiment for students, and ended up with an average of € 2,- per paying visitor. We think that the PWYW principle can add to the overall awareness of the value of art, and can be a viable business model, but a couple of factors need to be taken into consideration. First and foremost, people have to like you as an organization, so people bestow you the money. So be nice to your customers. Besides that, you need to communicate really well about it. Tell your customers why you do it, and what you want to achieve with it. That way, people become aware of the situation, and might even see it as a "prestigious" matter to pay fair or even more.
Another factor that needs to be taken into account, is the public opinion about the existing pricing of your product, service or organisation. If the overall public opinion is that you are a way to expensive festival, you can expect that the average price will be low. However, more people might participate, that way compensating for the loss of income on general price. If people think you are a fair and honest priced festival, we think that they tend to reward you with a decent entrance fee. And last but not least, there's always the cheapskates. The personal approach at the counter should be the first psychological barrier for them, and as we can see from our results, only 2 people dared to not pay at all at the door. The relative anonymity of the Internet can be an obstacle for preventing the cheapo's from not paying. A really good article about a field study of PWYW is written by Ju-Young Kim et al. If you are interested in implementing PWYW, we suggest to read this article first. Full article here, summary here.
Pay What You Want results (overall)
Pay What You Want results (presale)
Pay What You Want results (door sales)
What payment system did you use for the PWYW conference?
We don't know any pricing/ticketing payment system (like Ticketservice or Timoco) that has the option of variable pricing without having to pay a lot for it (if there is one, we'd like to know of course). So we designed our own payment system. People could register for the conference stating their name, the number of tickets and total price they would like to pay for the tickets. Payment could be made with Paypal or via bank transfer.
It's a pretty basic and easy-to-use program, although a lot of work still goes into manually processing registrations and payments. There is no option built in yet to automatically administrate payments from a Paypal or bank account.
To give you an idea of how this worked: within the ticketing system, we'd have different 'template mailings'; one to thanks people for their registration plus payment details, one for payment reminder, and one for payment confirmation including their e-ticket(s). Once people registered for the conference, we'd send them the first email. We'd then have to check our bank account and Paypal to see if payments were being made. If not, we'd send the second email. Otherwise, we'd send the payment conformation mail. All of this had to be done manually.
If you'd like to use the PWYW payment system we created, give us a shout. Of course you would have to customize it (the mailings and such) for your own purposes. We're planning to add more automatic processing, better e-mail templates, auto-e-ticket creator, and more in the future.
How was the handling at the entrance of the conference; did visitors receive a ticket for the event?
Yes, visitors received an e-ticket for the conference. These were also manually made (tickets had the name, number of tickets and price on them). The printed tickets were collected at the desk of the conference so we could see who came to the conference. Other than that; if people wanted to pay for their ticket on the day of the conference, this was also possible. These prices were written down on a form by the people at the desk. A receipt was written upon request. Please make sure to check this procedure out with your accountant prior to implementation, especially if your organization needs a legal accountant-seal-of-approval.
What about taxes; how were the prices paid administrated?
This is a tough issue, since tax laws differ around the globe, and differ per type of organization. You can register it as a gift, but for us, that affects the possibility to subtract the costs made for the activity the ticket is for. It also depends on what kind of an organization you are. Profit or non profit, VAT (BTW) deductable or not. Besides that, it depends on the ratio between the amount generated by PWYW and the costs made for the activity. We are currently looking at this together with our accountant and tax advisor as well, since we had a couple of scenario's thought of before we started, but can only now determine which one suits best. Any advice on this is welcome.
What were the results of the PWYW principle; what was the average price paid?
Response to the PWYW principle was very positive; we heard a lot of discussion at the conference about the value of an artistic conference, which is exactly what we were hoping to stimulate. Other than that, we think this pricing mechanism made the conference more accessible for visitors and created a lot of goodwill towards them. Below you can find the graphics and results for the PWYW mechanism.
The average price paid for a conference ticket was € 9,10. This was 90 cents lower than we expected it to be; we aimed for € 10,-. The difference between the average price in presale and tickets bought at the conference itself is very small: in presale, the average was € 9,13; the average from door sales was € 9,05. We actually expected door sales to be a bit higher, because of the face-to-face aspect when paying for the entrance. Most people paid 5 or 10 euros, obviously amounts that were easy to pay with bank notes of that same amount. Out of 149 people who bought a ticket for the conference, eleven people 'paid' € 0. The highest price paid for a ticket was € 60. In total, 231 people were gathered at the Pirate Conference (including speakers and other participants in the program). A group of 40 students who made a brief visit to the conference and paid € 0 were left out of these calculations because we felt they would blur the results too much.
Conclusion
The implementation of PWYW pricing is an extensive process, that still needs a lot of further development and research. Results differ a lot, as we can see for example from the Vooruit theatre in Gent that did the same experiment for students, and ended up with an average of € 2,- per paying visitor. We think that the PWYW principle can add to the overall awareness of the value of art, and can be a viable business model, but a couple of factors need to be taken into consideration. First and foremost, people have to like you as an organization, so people bestow you the money. So be nice to your customers. Besides that, you need to communicate really well about it. Tell your customers why you do it, and what you want to achieve with it. That way, people become aware of the situation, and might even see it as a "prestigious" matter to pay fair or even more.
Another factor that needs to be taken into account, is the public opinion about the existing pricing of your product, service or organisation. If the overall public opinion is that you are a way to expensive festival, you can expect that the average price will be low. However, more people might participate, that way compensating for the loss of income on general price. If people think you are a fair and honest priced festival, we think that they tend to reward you with a decent entrance fee. And last but not least, there's always the cheapskates. The personal approach at the counter should be the first psychological barrier for them, and as we can see from our results, only 2 people dared to not pay at all at the door. The relative anonymity of the Internet can be an obstacle for preventing the cheapo's from not paying. A really good article about a field study of PWYW is written by Ju-Young Kim et al. If you are interested in implementing PWYW, we suggest to read this article first. Full article here, summary here.
Pay What You Want results (overall)
Pay What You Want results (presale)
Pay What You Want results (door sales)
