Revenue models for workshops

Hi All! I’m curious about revenue models on workshops that your space offers. We are flushing out our workshop calendar of which some will be hosted by members and some will be hosted by community experts. I have read a bunch of things that said workshops are a ton of work (from a marketing and coordination perspective) without a big payoff, but my city is in need, so I want to see if I can fill it, but I also want to make it a revenue stream. Thoughts on ticket splits, straight space rental, or some combo of both with minimums. I imagine your answers will vary based on member hosted vs public hosted, so please include that as well. Thanks!!!

We have had the most success with rentals that want our values, since that is the one thing we are paid to do (rentals that meet and grow our values). We have many member events that are no charge, but those events are truly for current members and do not bring in other revenue.

When I used to produce theatre years ago (I was not the venue then), as a producer when I started by enjoying ticket splits, but as I grew and learned what to expect, I enjoyed paying a low fee (paying rent).

What do you see as the need that people you know already want to pay for? What are your priorities that support that? What are your priorities that do not support that?

-Alex Linsker, Collective Agency, Portland Oregon http://collectiveagency.co

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On Friday, January 22, 2016 at 5:17:42 PM UTC-8, Trudi Eisenhour wrote:

Hi All! I’m curious about revenue models on workshops that your space offers. We are flushing out our workshop calendar of which some will be hosted by members and some will be hosted by community experts. I have read a bunch of things that said workshops are a ton of work (from a marketing and coordination perspective) without a big payoff, but my city is in need, so I want to see if I can fill it, but I also want to make it a revenue stream. Thoughts on ticket splits, straight space rental, or some combo of both with minimums. I imagine your answers will vary based on member hosted vs public hosted, so please include that as well. Thanks!!!

Hi Trudi,

Classes, Workshops, Bootcamps, and other events generated about 3% of our overall revenue in 2015.

3% of overall revenue, with about 65 such events held last year.

So at face value, these types of activities are indeed a lot of work, without a direct-financial upside for us, but the periphery-values are truly priceless, for us.

We learned to look at classes/workshops and such not as a profit-center but instead for two other periphery goals:

1) as an added-value for our existing members and clients.

2) as a way to raise awareness about our offering, our community, and potentially attract new folks to our core-service offering.

Clearly #1 (added-value for existing members and clients) meets our objectives of client-retention and product/service-differentiation, while #2 helps us raise awareness about our company, gain ambassadors (for those who don’t convert to direct clients) and other times gain clients/members (whose lifetime value could be in tens of thousands of dollars).

We publish our on our website calendar, supplemented with an email blast each time, plus adding them to local Chamber of Commerce and other organizational calendars --and as a result our events pages combined traffic now exceeds the rest of our website pages. General roll-up page here: http://www.officedivvy.com/classes/

Hope this perspective was helpful…

Ky Ekinci

Office Divvy

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