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Event risk and pre-selling
For organizers who need to know an event will sell before they pay a deposit on it.
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How to find out if people will come, before you spend moneyFour ways to test whether anyone wants your event before you pay a venue deposit, with the real cost of each and a worked example in dollars.Read the guideIn this topic
- August 22, 2026Cancel it or move the date? A decision frameworkHow to decide whether a struggling event should be cancelled or rescheduled, what each choice costs you, and the deadline for making the call.
- August 22, 2026What an empty room actually costs you, line by lineA full accounting of what a badly attended event costs, including the losses that never appear in the budget, and which of them you can avoid entirely.
- August 22, 2026What to tell people when you cancel an eventWhat a cancellation message needs to contain, wording you can copy for three common situations, and the mistakes that turn a cancellation into a grievance.
- August 22, 2026Setting a minimum attendance you can actually defendHow to choose the number of tickets an event needs before it goes ahead, why organizers set it too high, and what to tell people who ask where it came from.
- August 22, 2026How to price a first event when you have no sales historyA method for setting a ticket price when you have never sold one, using your costs and your real reach rather than guessing from what other events charge.
- August 22, 2026Testing two dates or two cities without running three eventsHow to let your audience choose between two dates, prices or cities by listing both and running only the one that fills, without misleading anyone.
- August 22, 2026Venue deposits, and how to avoid paying one too earlyWhat a venue deposit is protecting, the questions to ask before you pay one, and how to hold a date without putting your own money down first.