How to sell tickets to your community's events

Both, for different events. Regular rituals (weekly office hours, monthly Q&A) are usually part of what members already pay for, and charging for them makes the membership feel thinner. Special events are different: a full-day workshop, an in-person meetup with a venue cost, a guest expert, a small-group intensive. These cost you more to run, deliver more, and are worth paying for.

Paid tickets also do something free RSVPs cannot: they filter for commitment. Free RSVPs are cheap to give and cheap to ignore, so a free event can lose a large share of its sign-ups on the day. A paid ticket is a small promise people make to themselves, and they are far more likely to keep it. If you are tired of planning for 100 and hosting 30, a modest price is the most reliable fix.

Use a two-price structure. Public tickets at full price, member tickets at a clear discount or free. This makes the event a marketing tool: non-members see what membership is worth in money ("members get this workshop free"), and some will join rather than buy a single ticket.

Price from the outcome, not the hours. A two-hour session that helps someone finish a portfolio, file a tax return or fix a sales page is worth more than a two-hour chat. If you are unsure, pick a price that feels slightly uncomfortable to say out loud, sell to members first, and see how fast it moves.

Every paid event eventually gets the email: "Something came up, can I get a refund?" Decide your answer now and put it on the event page. A simple, fair policy: full refund up to 48 hours before the event, then a transfer to a friend or credit towards a future event, no cash refund. For online events with a recording, you can add that ticket holders who cannot attend get the replay.

Also decide what happens if you cancel. The only acceptable answer is a full refund to everyone, promptly, with an apology. Say so on the page; it makes people more willing to buy early.

Set a cap even for online events. Interactive formats (workshops, hot seats, small-group coaching) fall apart past a certain size, and a cap creates honest urgency. For in-person events the cap is the room.

Always run a waitlist. When the event sells out, the waitlist tells you demand for a second date, and when someone cancels, the next person can take their place. A waitlist of 30 people behind a 40-person event is the clearest signal you will ever get to run it again.

Send four messages: a confirmation at purchase with the date, time zone and how to join; a reminder a week before with anything people should prepare; a reminder the day before; and one an hour before with the link or address. Put the time zone in every message, because online events cross them.

After the event, send one more: thanks, the recording if there is one, and the next thing to do, which is usually the next event or the membership.

Eventbrite and Luma are strong at what they do. Eventbrite has a large public marketplace where people browse for events near them, which helps if your audience does not know you yet. Luma makes polished event pages quickly and is popular for tech and creator meetups. If your event is a one-off aimed at strangers and you do not run a community, a dedicated ticketing tool is a reasonable pick.

The cost of a separate tool shows up when events are part of a membership: attendee lists live in one place, members in another, and member discounts become discount codes you have to manage by hand.

The rule worth screenshotting: price, refund policy and capacity are written on the event page before the first ticket sells.

In HiveLearn, events live inside the community, next to your courses and discussions. Events support RSVPs, waitlists, paid tickets with cancellation, automatic reminders, calendar sync, and QR ticket check-in at the door for in-person events. Online sessions can run as live sessions or as live streams inside the community through the Zoom integration.

Tickets are sold through Stripe Checkout, and payouts go to your own Stripe account through Stripe Connect. Stripe processing (2.9% + $0.30) applies on top of HiveLearn's plan, as it does everywhere. Starter is $0 a month with a 6% revenue share, so there is no monthly fee until you monetize; paid plans start at Growth, $39 a month with 4% and the rev share capped at $2,000/month. Because members and attendees are the same people in the same place, your attendee list and your member table come from the same accounts, so there is no spreadsheet to reconcile after the event.

When not to use HiveLearn for this: if you only run occasional public events for people who will never join a community, a marketplace like Eventbrite will put you in front of more strangers. See the pricing page for which plan includes paid tickets.