Originally Posted by D-Money

I don't think we can argue whether the free show works or not, it worked!

Now here's my opinion, as a person who has been throwing events for these shows for over 10 years, I lost count on how many parties I've thrown.

When someone attends a show, you can look at it like this:

Trade show floor (or cabanas)
Seminars
Parties

Out of those options, usually you hear about the parties the most or the networking that gets done. I hardly hear anything about the seminars or the show floor.

That being said...

Whether the show is free or not, there should be some kind of incentives to the people who throw parties. (Alec takes good care of me when I throw parties at his events by the way).

Since parties are done out of the kindness of the promoters heart, usually I scratch and claw just to break even, sometimes I take a hit on them. So why throw parties to make the trade shows better when the trade show is the one charging the money, their guests get in free, but the party thrower has all of the stress and no money in pocket.

My proposal for trade shows. Add an upsell. Make it the "party pass" and split the money with those people who open up their doors to everyone at the show. Or charge per party and have the trade show collect the money, take a 10% fee, then give the 90% to the promoter. If a trade show is free, like XBiz, and you have a party pass upsell, then you would get rid of the hustlers that shouldn't be drinking our booze and hitting on our models and pulling out guns. Those that registered for the trade show, still get the seminars and show floor. Meanwhile, the party organizers have more incentive and more money to put back into their events.

How much money did AVN pay me over 10 years of making their shows better with Players Balls that catered to the whole show? $0.00

I'm at the point where I'm not sure I even want to throw events for shows anymore. There needs to be some kind of incentive that the trade shows should offer to make it worth it.

Now you can argue that the party promoter gets visibility and branding and all of that. But in the end, it's a ton of stress, tons of criticism and heads aches.

Imagine at Internext if they charged for the badge and had an upsell for the parties? How many of you would pay for that? Personally, I think this is something that shows should start doing. Even if it's $100 for the party pass and there's only 2 parties that cater to everyone at the show. With 1000 webmasters paying $100 each, that would be $100,000. If I split that with another event, I could continue doing the big production shows like Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg or I can just pay for the drinks for eveyone at a party. Then my sponsorships for sponsors could be lower, thus giving them a higher return on investment.

I've proposed this idea years ago, but it fell on deaf ears. By the way, it's getting harder and harder to raise money to throw parties.

What do you all think? Would you pay for the parties separately? Or admission at the door?

I only bring this up because the issue is "free or not free". I think the parties are at least 1/3 of the trade shows.

Thoughts?