Archive for 2010
Wave Goodbye to A “Magical” Product
For the handful of non-geeks out there who care (or even know) about Google Wave, yesterday the company announced that it’s all over. The future of communication has been canceled. Here’s my own Wave experience. I saw the video in the long form. I got pretty excited about the potential. I even wangled myself an [...]
How Not To Wipe Out on a Jet Ski AND Save Your Arts/Entertainment Organization in One Easy Lesson
I’ve only been on Jet Skis a few times in my life, but once, quite a number of years ago, I was jet skiing on a muddy South Carolina river with my younger brother. He was a pretty seasoned hand, and I was a total novice, and I think he enjoyed being able to run [...]
Life, Liberty and the Right to a Printed Ticket?
In New York, the state government has continued to pass laws directly related to ticket resale. This time, it’s “guaranteeing the right to a paper ticket.” Here’s the story and here’s a snippet: “With little fanfare this month, New York State bucked a show biz trend pushed by Ticketmaster and megastars Bruce Springsteen and Miley [...]
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 need 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 [...]
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