Ticket Scalping - Entrepreneur Or Scum of the Earth

What do these have in common - used car salesperson, energy trader for Enron and ticket scalper? The answer is all three are looked down upon by our peers and society.

The used car salesperson has to fight the stereotype that they are always trying to sell someone a lemon. The energy trader was once viewed with respect, but now the secret is out that they did their part to de-rail parts of the economy and stuffed their pockets while everyone else is paying for it. The scalper is the guy who bought the ticket before you and is standing outside the stadium selling it to you for more. The same ticket you were going to buy yourself.

Whether these negative perceptions of the industry represent the reality or not, it brings up an interesting question. When you, as an entrepreneur, are considering a new business opportunity, one of the things you need to consider is how new entrants to the marketplace will affect you. You want barriers to entry to be high so not every person that comes along can start their own business and compete with you. You also want the barriers low enough so you can enter the business with your available capital and time constraints.

Imagine an industry where profits are high, barriers to entry are low, but people do not flood the industry because of preconceived notions against it. Would it be prudent to take a step back and really examine those notions for yourself? Ticket brokering, Ticket Scalping, Ticket Flipping, or whatever term you put on it, is this industry. Lets take a closer look at the components of it.

High Profits - Buying and selling tickets is a high margin endeavor. It is not unheard of to make 20%, 30%, 50% or even 300% return on your investment of certain events. There is always a good market for good seats to popular events. There are tricks to identifying what the popular events are and how to regularly find them. Once employing these tricks, one can continually make money wit limited maintenance.

Low Barriers - If you have a few hundred dollars you can be a broker. Nothing is free and these are about as low of barriers to entry as one can get, regardless of industry.

Preconceived Notions - I have bought and sold many houses. I put my time into finding them, fixing them up and selling them. Each time I do this, I put in a lot of work and capital. I get my return when I sell it. There are a couple of points of view to take on this. The first is that I am being rewarded for taking a risk and putting in my time and money. The second is one could say I am creating a false value and how dare I drive up the value of that house and make the family who eventually buys that house pay for it. I can tell you this, the vast majority of people take the first point of view and see house flipping as a person taking advantage of capitalism.

With real estate, we glorify the house flipper. We even give them cable TV shows. I have never been called a house scalper. Why is that? What exactly is the difference between flipping houses and flipping tickets?

There actually a few differences. Flipping tickets takes less capital, less time, shorter cycles and generates higher returns. Outside of these things, they are essentially the same. Buy low. Sell high.

Risks - No venture is without risk. The last thing you want to do is buy some tickets that you cannot use. The self-discovery can be expensive. It is a good thing there are inexpensive places to teach you insider's tricks and well as offer presale codes and upcoming event information. Google "insiders guide ticket broker business" and you can find plenty. The break even on these types of material is reached fairly quickly. Avoid one or two bad decisions and you are there.

Entrepreneurs need to keep on the lookout for new ideas that others do not want to pick up or cannot pick up. Many people will always shy aware from becoming a ticket broker because they will just say "ticket scalper" and be done with it. Use this to you advantage. This is an easy industry where many people will just not enter, hence leaving more money to be made by the ones who can expand their horizons a bit.

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