Guide
How to sell tickets online for your event: a step-by-step guide.
To sell tickets online, you need four things: an event page that explains what people are buying, ticket types with prices and limits, a way to take card payments, and a way to check tickets at the door. A ticketing platform bundles all four. Set it up, share one link everywhere, and the platform handles checkout, ticket emails and the guest list while you run the event.
This guide walks through each step in the order we’d do it, from choosing a platform to the money landing in your bank account. It uses Jamrats for the specifics, but most of the advice holds whatever tool you pick.
1. Choose a ticketing platform (what to compare)
Ticketing platforms look similar on their homepages. The differences show up in your settlement statement and on the night. Before you sign up anywhere, compare these:
- Total cost per ticket.Add up the platform fee and card processing for a ticket at your actual price. Percentage fees grow with your price; a flat fee doesn’t. Also check whether there’s a monthly or setup fee.
- Who pays the fee. Can you absorb it so buyers see one clean price, or pass it on? Can you choose per ticket type?
- Where the money goes and when. Does the platform hold buyer money in its own balance, or is it paid to your account? When does it reach your bank?
- Door tools. Can staff scan on their own phones, or do you need hardware?
- Your data. Can you export your orders and customer list whenever you want?
For reference, Jamrats charges a flat $0.99 per paid ticket (50¢ for events of 200 capacity or fewer), with no monthly or setup fee. Card processing is Stripe’s standard rate for your country, with no markup. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.
2. Build an event page that answers the obvious questions
Your event page is your box office, so it has to answer every question a buyer has before they pay. At a minimum: what it is, who’s on, the date and start time, the venue address, age limits, accessibility details and your refund policy. If people keep asking you the same thing in DMs, it belongs on the page.
Use a wide cover image (16:9 crops well on cards and social previews) and write the description for someone who has never heard of you. On Jamrats you can pick a page design, change the order of sections, and embed video from YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok or Instagram Reels. A thirty-second clip of the act does more selling than three paragraphs of adjectives.
Not ready to announce? Build the page as a draft, or schedule it to publish at a set date and time so it goes live the moment you post the announcement.
3. Add ticket types and set prices
Most events need two or three ticket types, not ten. A typical setup is an early bird tier, general admission and maybe a VIP option. Each ticket type on Jamrats has its own price, capacity, maximum per order and sales window, so an early bird tier can close automatically on a date or when its allocation runs out.
A few settings worth getting right on day one:
- Capacity.Set each tier’s capacity so the total never exceeds what your venue can hold.
- Max per order. A sensible cap (say six or eight) stops one buyer clearing out a small tier.
- Fee setting. By default you absorb the Jamrats fee and buyers see the ticket price and nothing else. You can switch any ticket type to pass the fee to buyers instead.
You can also create coupon codes (a percentage or flat amount off, per order or per ticket, limited to certain ticket types if you like) and add fixed extra charges such as parking. For help choosing the numbers, see our guide to pricing event tickets.
4. Take payment as the seller
Before you can take orders, connect payments. On Jamrats that means a one-time identity check with Stripe, which takes a few minutes. Start it early, while you’re still writing the event description, so it’s not the last thing standing between you and your first sale.
Once it’s done, you’re the seller. Buyers pay on your event page through an embedded Stripe checkout, with Apple Pay and Google Pay where their device supports it. Your business name appears on their card statement, and the money goes to your own Stripe account. Jamrats never holds it in a Jamrats balance. Checkout is protected against bots, so scalper scripts have a harder time than real fans.
You sell in your local currency, set by your organization’s country. Organizers can sign up from 40+ countries. If your bank account is in a different currency, Stripe converts it.
Before you announce, buy two tickets yourself in separate orders. Check the confirmation emails arrive and the QR codes load. Scan one to test the door, then refund the other from your dashboard to test that flow too. A ticket that’s been scanned can’t be refunded, so don’t scan both.
6. Check people in, then get paid
Every buyer gets an email with a QR code per ticket. At the door, staff scan them with the Jamrats Organizer app on iOS or Android, or with the browser scanner if someone doesn’t have the app. Any phone works and you don’t need special hardware. Several people can scan at once, and a ticket that’s already been used is flagged straight away. For a group, scan one ticket on the order and check everyone in together.
Scanning needs an internet connection, so check the signal at the door before the night and bring a backup hotspot. Run a test scan during setup, not when the queue is out the door.
By default, your payout arrives as a single payment three business days after the event ends, straight to your own Stripe account. Weekly or daily payouts are available on request once Jamrats approves them. After the event, download your orders and customer list as spreadsheets. Customers who gave marketing consent are the start of your list for the next show, which you can set up quickly by duplicating this one.
If you’re doing this for the first time, the first event checklist puts all of this in order on one page.