Archive for July, 2010
How Gates Helped Us Build a Multi-Million Dollar Ticket Selling Business, Part 2
Earlier this week, I talked about the first three “gates” that Goldstar has used over the years to build a business that currently serves more than a million people and thousands of venues, sending scads and scads of people to live events each year that otherwise might not have gone. Before I move on to [...]
Industry Tweeting @goldstarjim
So after about a year and a half of managing and running the @goldstar Twitter account, I’m making a change. The problem was that @goldstar is the one that Goldstar members were going to and there were often things that I wanted to say that were more like what we talk about here on the [...]
How Gates Helped Us Build a Multi-Million Dollar Ticket Selling Business, Part 1
Goldstar was started in 2002 by me, Robert Graff, and Rich Webster. The company is 100% founder, family and employee owned, and despite selling tens of millions of dollars worth of tickets each year, has needed very little money to get there. We’ve grown consistently over our eight year history at a 50 to 100% [...]
Group Sales is Dead, Part Two
The following post is by Trevor O’Donnell, noted arts marketing and sales consultant and author of the recent Live 2.0 post “Group Sales is Dead.” Recently Jim McCarthy published a post I wrote called “Group Sales is Dead,” which he tells me generated a surprising amount of interest. If you’ve read the piece, which you [...]
Plan Your Garden; Don’t Just Complain about Weeds
In the future (or if somehow people from the past traveled to the present), “paywall” is one of those words that would probably puzzle them. Just like when we sing the “Star Spangled Banner,” most people probably don’t have a perfectly clear idea of what a “rampart” is*, in the future “paywall” is one of [...]
The Broker’s Dilemma
Last week, I was honored to be asked to speak at Ticket Summit in Las Vegas for the second or third time. Although I’ve always wondered why an audience that’s primarily composed of ticket brokers was interested in hearing from me, I’ve always been pleased to accept their invitation because Ticket Summit is a surprisingly [...]
Lebron Passes Up the Opportunity for Greatness
I’m not judging Lebron James. Really, I’m not. I’m just disappointed. (For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, well, you really should read something other than the Arts and Leisure section sometimes and/or come out of the unabomber cabin you live in every few weeks just to see what the [...]
Online Comments are as Bad as Hitler
As a person who’s been in the internet biz for, well, most of the existence of the internet biz, I’ve always been a big fan of open systems of review and comment. In fact, here at Goldstar, we built the world’s first review system for live entertainment, and comments appear unedited and in real-time. So [...]
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Popular Articles
- Our Story, and We’re Sticking To It
- Several Non-Opinions about Ticket Pricing
- Group Sales is Dead
- “Discounting Silliness” Presentation Now Live
- How Not To Discount, A Recap
- More Pie Now!
- Change is Only Dramatic to People Used to the Current Thing
- Audience-Oriented, It’s What’s For Dinner
- The Nutcracker is Bad for Ballet like Easter is Bad for Churches
- Awaiting the Great Pumpkin, er, Great Performance
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