How to Sell Tickets Online (Fees and Checkout)

The five parts of an online ticket sale

Every ticket sale runs through five steps: the event listing, ticket types and capacity, checkout, delivery, and door check-in. A platform is only as strong as its weakest step, and the two that break in practice are checkout on a phone and the scan at the door.

• Event listing. Date, doors time, venue and address, age limits, and the one line that tells someone what the night actually is.
• Ticket types and capacity. General admission with a cap, reserved seating with a map, tiers that rise as stock sells out, promo codes, group rates, and comps for staff and press.
• Checkout. Cards and wallet payments, tax calculated correctly for the venue, the total visible before payment details are requested, and a confirmation that lands in seconds.
• Delivery. A QR code in the confirmation email, a wallet pass that survives a phone restart and a dead battery signal, or a name on a will-call list.
• Check-in. The scan at the door: how it behaves on a phone, what it does when the network is down, and whether it stops the same code being used twice.

How ticket fees are charged, and who really pays

Ticket platforms charge in one of three ways: a flat fee per ticket, a percentage of the face value, or a flat subscription. The model matters less than the question underneath it — is the fee added on top of the price the buyer sees, or taken out of the price you set? That single choice decides who is really paying, and it is usually left implicit until you look at a settlement report.

• Per-ticket fee. A fixed amount on every ticket. Simple and predictable, and painful on cheap tickets: the same few dollars that is noise on a concert ticket is a large share of a ten-dollar admission.
• Percentage of face value. Scales with price and takes more as your prices rise. It often includes a floor charge per order, which lands hardest on small purchases.
• Flat subscription. One monthly or annual fee for unlimited ticket sales. It rewards volume and needs it — you pay in a quiet month whether or not you sell anything.
• Card processing. Separate from the platform and charged by your payment provider on every order, usually a percentage plus a small fixed amount. It is never refunded to you when a ticket is refunded.
• Pass-through versus absorbed. Passing the fee to the buyer keeps your face value whole but changes the price shown on the event page; absorbing it keeps the advertised price low and thins your margin on every sale.

What the buyer sees at checkout

Two things decide whether a buyer finishes: how few taps it takes on a phone, and whether the total at the end matches the price they clicked on. Everything else is optimisation on top of those two.

• Wallet payments and stored cards remove an entire keyboard interaction on mobile, which is where most ticket buyers are.
• An account wall before payment loses buyers who will not create a login for one night out. Guest checkout that creates the account afterwards keeps the purchase and the customer.
• The total — price, fees, tax — belongs above the payment fields, not revealed after them.
• The confirmation email is the product for a few days: send it immediately, inline the QR image rather than attaching it, and print the event details in plain text.

Delivery and the door are the same problem

A ticket is only useful if it opens the door, so plan for three delivery paths — a QR code in email, a wallet pass, and a will-call list — and assume the venue’s network will fail at the worst possible moment.

• Offline scanning. Door staff need codes verified with no signal and reconciled when the connection returns. Ask how that works before the on-sale, not during it.
• Duplicate detection. A QR code is an image and images get forwarded. The scanner should mark each code used once and show what it already admitted.
• Door accounts. Give door staff a scanning role rather than an admin login — they need to admit guests, not edit prices or issue refunds.
• Live counts and same-night fixes. Attendance visible while the event runs, and the ability to refund a wrong-night purchase at the door.

What to compare before you pick a platform

• Total cost per ticket at your realistic volume, with card processing included, not the headline rate.
• Whose domain the buyer registers and pays on, and whose name appears on the receipt.
• Payout timing: when the money reaches your account, and whether ticket revenue is available before the event.
• Refunds, exchanges, and transfers, including whether platform fees come back when a ticket does.
• Capacity controls and queueing for a high-demand on-sale, and what the platform does when a hundred people hit the button at once.
• Data ownership: can you export the attendee list, in a format you can import elsewhere, without asking support.
• Room for everything that is not a ticket. Most venues and promoters also sell merchandise, memberships, or run a bar tab, and a second system for that means a second set of logins and a second report.

Where ShopDango fits

ShopDango is a white-label commerce platform: each client gets a branded storefront on their own domain, and the operator runs every store from one console. Events and ticketing are a first-class product type with QR check-in, and they sit in the same catalog and checkout as auctions with timed close and reserve handling, rentals with deposits, retail goods, and subscriptions with recurring billing.

There is no per-ticket platform fee and no cut of the face value, because ShopDango is not a marketplace and does not sell you its audience. The attendee list stays yours and the ticket price stays whole.