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I’ve created a simple interactive map below centered around Darling Harbour in Sydney. Click on the placemarks to view examples of various media I’ve used: text, images and video. I’ve also embedded the entire customised  map bundle within this blog, but it’s also viewable on Google Maps over here (in satellite view this time).

If running an event or course, online booking and payment options are standard offerings – you can either set up your own booking forms and merchant gateway, or use a one-stop-shop third party platform. I’ve used the Eventbrite booking gateway for my Australian courses over the past year – it’s a good system, but it could be better. Much better. Here are my main issues:

The Fees

If you’re running a low-ticket cost event, the fees are what they are: acceptable. But if you are selling higher cost tickets, e.g. $300 plus, the fees add up in a hurry. If you use their credit card processing facility – the main reason many people would use a platform such as Eventbrite at all – a $500 ticket will incur a fee of $27.45 (2.5% plus $0.99 per ticket to a max of $9.95 plus 3.5% of ticket value). Selling 10 plus tickets will whack a dent in your sales revenue. There should be a sliding fee structure for higher priced events.

Five Days to Payout (and the rest).

A five business day payout after the completion of the event is in the terms and conditions, but… the five day period starts in US time, i.e. an event run on Wednesday in Australia, is Tuesday in San Francisco – so Eventbrite doesn’t start the count until Thursday, Australian time. Five business days becomes eight normal days; and add an extra day to that if there’s a bank holiday in the US. And of course the international transfer itself can add another day or two.

There appears no reason to sit on the money this long except to gather maximum interest on other people’s money.

Extra Fees from ANZ & HSBC

If a person makes a booking using Eventbrite’s processing facility using an ANZ or HSBC credit card that person gets charged an additional ‘foreign processing fee’ of $20-25. I have had to refund this fee to close to 20 people who have booked my courses using these cards. Both ANZ and HSBC say the problem is with the credit card providers; the credit card providers say it’s a bank charge. Eventbrite, despite being told about this problem in Australia have ignored it. This is fundamentally an Eventbrite issue and they need to sort it – being their apologist is no fun.

AMEX NOT Accepted

American Express cards cannot be processed through Eventbrite in Australia, despite their own promotions to the contrary (ACCC, take note). This is a major drawback for corporate level events and courses where AMEX is the first card of choice for many businesses.

Over The Top Self-Promotion

Sure, if you’re running a free event you should expect some form of provider self-promotion, but not when hundreds of dollars of fees are being paid. The ‘Powered by Eventbrite’ branding and self-serving calls to action on all of their (your) ticketing touch-points are anything but discreet. You could forgive a person for thinking they were about to attend an Eventbrite event.

Small Thanks

I have paid thousands of dollars in fees over the past year, yet not once has anyone from Eventbrite acknowledged me as a valuable (or loyal) customer. I find this strange at best and disconcerting at worst. Software-as-a-service doesn’t negate the traditional rules of service.

With a plethora of online ticketing alternatives, Eventbrite needs to address these issues. In the meantime, maybe try a local Australian solution such as Eventarc.

image by gtmcknight

Online agencies – some of them are helpful and others, well, not so much. Based on my own observations here’s a hit-list of what any client should reasonably expect from you as their agency or consultant:

1/  If a client expresses interest, take the time to explain what you are doing, why and how – empower them at every opportunity to help themselves.

2/  Don’t charge for jobs which only take a few minutes to complete – even if the client thinks it must have taken you much longer.

3/  Freely hand over the login details for any online accounts which you have set up on behalf of your client.

4/  Don’t charge to send through data-laden reports – only charge for actionable insights you’re able to pull from the data.

5/  Don’t engage in black-hat SEO techniques (if a client seems to want this, explain the risks).

6/  Don’t pretend you can do everything – refer work onto specialists where appropriate (what goes around comes around).

7/  If a client is still without a website CMS that they can easily handle internally, take the time to explain to them why they are being disadvantaged in terms of time and money.

8/  If a client’s business is not suited to Facebook, don’t sell them a Facebook presence.

I know there’s plenty more – feel free to throw in your 2 cents worth.

[Image by Nomadic Lass]

The ‘story’ can then be shared via permalink, or embedded directly within a website or blog as I’ve done below. Even traditional media is getting in on the play: ABC Australia is running a Storify on the Qantas grounding over here.

QR codes have been around a while. They’re big in Japan and South Korea, appearing on billboards, consumer products, vending machines, magazines, newspapers, or anywhere there’s room to insert the symbols – including within the haircuts of rock stars. Think of them as bar codes for consumers, or ‘paper based hyperlinks’ – scanning one automatically triggers any number of predefined responses or code actions, such as opening an URL, sending a text message or sending vCard contact information (there are many other possible ‘actions’ across various social media platforms, maps, WiFi connections and online video).

While QR codes have been slow to take off in Australia I’ve noticed a recent shift in interest from local marketers, and more importantly the public at large; I would expect to see plenty of them popping up in offline places near you in during 2012.

Generating your own QR codes
This is simple – I use a comprehensive online code creator from Kerem Erkan, but there are many others. There are numerous actions and code customisation options to choose from when creating your own QR code; the final code can then be copied and posted online, or downloaded in various formats and placed within any offline media as you would a standard image or graphic.

The QR code example below has an embedded action to open the homepage of the NET:101 website when scanned.

Scanning a QR Code
This is commonly done with a QR reader app on a smartphone, making them a convenient way to interact with a mobile audience (the reader app I use on my iPhone is Qrafter). Some phones are now coming out with QR readers as native functionality, making the scanning process a quick & easy one.

Customising a QR Code
Marketers are taking QR codes to the next level by applying customised branding. This can be a little tricky, requiring graphic design manipulation without braking the code – here’s a good blog post on how to do this.

The code below is a customised version of the code above – it still performs the same action but presents with softer code edges and incorporates the NET:101 logo and primary brand colour, red.

A few other examples of customised QR code design: