Mixergy, an online resource for young entrepreneurs, recently interviewed ShowClix President and Co-Founder Lynsie Camuso via Skype about the trials of creating and running an innovative event ticketing solution.

A few highlights:

On the differences between ShowClix and Ticketmaster:
“With Ticketmaster, a lot of times there’s a set-up fee and a lot of other fees that are involved with even getting an account set up with them. We have no up-front costs to use the system. We work with you to create the account. If you do reserve seating, we build the venue map for you at no cost. Our graphics department will customize the ticketing page to match the look and feel of your website. We do a lot of work for these people up front at no cost. We always tell them the reason we do this is we’re really looking to build a partnership. We’re looking at this as we’re going to do work for you.”

On the flexibility of the ticketing system:
“Our system is so flexible and so customizable that it works across so many different industries. We work with live music promoters. We do performing arts groups, colleges and universities, festivals. It’s great because when we were first getting started, the system would work for everyone. We didn’t have to turn anyone away.”

On living and working in Pittsburgh:
“I love the city. It’s very easy to network and there are a ton of resources for start-ups. There are a lot of people who are here to help get these small businesses off the ground. Pittsburgh’s amazing because we have a great cultural district. The ballet and opera are amazing. The Carnegie museums are unbelievable. We have the Andy Warhol Museum. Pittsburgh has three rivers, so this time of year, everyone’s boating and kayaking. There’s organizations like Bike Pittsburgh, who are all about creating more bike trails. Even though we’re located in an area that doesn’t necessarily have the best climate year-round, it’s actually a great city to get out there and do a lot of active things. There’s a great live music scene, too.”

On believing in your product:
“The reason I like to sell ShowClix is because I love it. I truly believe in it. I’m passionate about what we’re doing, and I know that our solution will work well for the majority of the people we’re talking to. If it doesn’t, I’m honest with them. Maybe there’s something else that makes more sense for you, but when I’m talking to someone and I can clearly see that we can help them generate more revenue, save them time, make them more productive, it’s easy to sell a product that you’re passionate about.”

You can watch the full video and read the transcript right here. Big thanks to Andrew Warner and Mixergy.

If you’re planning on hosting a haunted house this year, be sure that your ticketing company isn’t scarier than your attraction. The horrors of hidden fees and complicated admin tools can make managing your event a living nightmare.

Well, fear not, because ShowClix has created a user-friendly solution specifically for haunted attraction ticketing. ShowClix Haunted is the quickest, easiest, and most affordable way to sell tickets to a haunted attraction online, over the phone or on-site.

The ShowClix Haunted site highlights all the ways our system benefits haunted attractions, including FREE event promotion options, completely customizable event pages, and wireless Android-powered ticket scanners that work great in remote locations. Our state-of-the-art solutions are ideal for increasing sales and speeding up your attraction’s waiting line.

Additionally, you won’t have to be afraid of the frightening fees that most ticketing companies require. Setting up an event through ShowClix is completely FREE, and we offer some of the lowest service fees in the ticketing industry. We also provide weekly direct deposit, allowing you to receive payment before your events.

You can launch a ticketing page for your haunted attraction in just 5 easy steps by using the ShowClix Ticketing Wizard. Just visit the site and click on the “Get Started NOW” button in the top right corner. If your attraction needs a more full-service system, including pre-printed tickets or a point-of-sale system, or if you’re interested in leasing wireless ticket scanners, please contact us at 1-888-71-TICKETS or via email at haunted@showclix.com. A dedicated ShowClix account manager can have your full-service ticketing solution up and running within one business day.

Last night, KDKA News in Pittsburgh ran a featured story on ShowClix, which highlighted our passion for creative solutions, cereal, and simple, fair ticketing.

Our fearless leader, CEO and Co-Founder Joshua Dziabiak, said it best:

“Being fair is really what we push,” said Dziabiak. “Ultimately, at the end of the day, being fair to the ticket buyer, the ticket seller, fair practices, fair terms.”

“We have clients that sometimes generate upwards of half a million dollars through our platform and never pay ShowClix a dime,” he added. “So, that’s kind of the beauty of it. It’s a pitch where we aren’t asking them to reach in their pocket and we aren’t asking their customers to reach far into their pocket either. We keep it small and we bank on lots of ticket sales.”

You can watch the full report right here, or read about it here.

We’ve always felt that our user-friendly system, dedicated customer service and low service fees were newsworthy. A big thanks to Rick Dayton and KDKA for lending us a bit of the spotlight!

Setting up your event with ShowClix is just the tip of the ticketing iceberg. Once your page is up and running, there are several ways you can make your event more appealing to potential ticket buyers, ultimately increasing your sales. Here are a few quick tips on how to sell out your event:

1. Offer an early bird special

Offering a lower ticket price during the first week of sales is a great way to encourage your customers to buy early. For example, Inter-State Fair and Rodeo’s early bird special helped them sell thousands of tickets their first day.

2. Utilize promotional codes

When a customer discovers a great promotional code, it’s like unlocking a secret level in a video game – it instills a sense of excitement and creates an immediate call to action. ShowClix lets you create an unlimited number of presale, group sale and discount codes.

3. Customize your ticketing page

Did you know that you can add images, embed videos, and change the font colors on your ticketing page? Creating an interactive and attractive ticketing page that matches the look and feel of your website is just as important as pricing your ticket right. Click here to see how some of our clients spice up their ticketing pages.

4. Give customers several ways to buy

Not all of your customers will want to buy tickets online, so don’t forget to tell them about the toll-free number they can call to purchase by telephone. The number is 1-888-71-TICKETS. Don’t forget to include the phone number in all of your promotional materials, including emails, flyers and newspaper and radio advertisements.

5. Keep online ticket sales open longer

Maximize your advance sales by keeping the online purchasing window open until at least one hour before your event starts. This gives last-minute buyers the chance to purchase, while still allowing you enough time to print your final guest list. Login to your ShowClix account to schedule the time your online ticket sales close.

And finally, we don’t expect you to do ALL of the work! ShowClix provides you with free event promotion through ShowClix Tactix, a program that promotes your event to relevant ticket buyers through email, social networks, syndication and search engines. To learn more about ShowClix Tactix, visit showclix.com/ticketing/tactix.

Setting up event ticketing online doesn’t have to be a complicated process. We don’t want to brag, but the ShowClix ticketing wizard can do it in just 5 easy steps.

The ShowClix wizard can launch a FREE event ticketing page for you within minutes, allowing you to instantly administer your event online. Once your ticketing page is built, you can also customize your page, manage your guest list, monitor your online ticket sales through real-time sales reports, and take advantage of our promotion options.

Still don’t believe us? Check out the video above, where Erin and Matt, two of our dedicated account managers, will be happy to walk you through the setup process.

If you want to get started, or would like to see some examples of event pages built through our wizard, visit showclix.com/ticketing/wizard.

Congratulations to ShowClix CEO and Co-Founder, Joshua Dziabiak, for making Inc. Magazine’s 2010 list of Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under the Age of 30. The list recognizes young businesspeople who are “bringing innovation to market, building unique brands, creating and nurturing trends, giving back to their communities and the world, and making money along the way.”

A few highlights:

“At just age 23, Joshua Dziabiak can already call himself a serial entrepreneur. Before his eighteenth birthday, he pocketed $1 million from the sale of his first company, a website hosting and design firm called MediaCatch. Although his next venture, an online record label, was short-lived, it sparked the idea for his current company, ShowClix, which runs a ticket-selling platform used by customers such as CBS Radio and Heineken.”

“‘We’re really trying to position ourselves as the fair, innovative alternative to Ticketmaster,’ Dziabiak says.”

You can check out the full article right here. The entire 30 Under 30 list can be viewed here.

Anyone who’s ever tried to plan a reunion and herd a couple hundred former classmates into one place can tell you it’s no easy task. Not to mention managing all those RSVPs, taking down everyone’s dinner orders and, of course, collecting money. Luckily, ShowClix has recently launched a one-stop shop for setting up reunion ticketing, allowing you to create a reunion website and automate all the details so you can concentrate on more important things, like choosing your reunion theme, planning reunion games and decorating the venue in school color coordinated streamers.

ShowClix Reunions outlines all the benefits of managing and planning your reunion with us, including FREE setup, automatic payment collection, a quick guest list for checking in RSVPs, the ability to ask targeted questions during checkout, and tools that allow you to view and interact with other attending guests right on the ticketing page. Additionally, our system allows you to customize your ticketing page to match the look and feel of your reunion.

The site also displays several examples of successful reunion pages built through our system, and a brief, informative demo video that highlights all the features provided by ShowClix. You can also learn about our pricing information, which contains some of the lowest service fees in the ticketing industry.

If you’d like to create a reunion website with us, visit the site and click the “Get Started” button in the top right corner. This will take you to the ShowClix ticketing wizard, where you can have a fully automated ticketing page up and running in just 5 easy steps. If you have more questions, or would like to discuss additional promotion and customization options, please feel free to contact us at 1-888-71-TICKETS or via email at reunions@showclix.com.

Being a technology-driven company, we understand the need to maintain a consistent visual web presence. That’s why our admin contains several tools for customizing the design and interactivity of ticketing pages. Let’s take a look at the options currently available through ShowClix.

To customize a ticketing page, login to your ShowClix account. In the top navigation, click “Customize,” and select “Design Schemes” from the drop down menu.

1. Upload a header image

If you want to carry an event’s branding over to a ticketing page, the best space to utilize is the header. Spanning the top of the page, this area is the first thing buyers will see, and can hold an uploaded .JPG up to 800px wide. The height of a header image can be set as tall as you like. However, the event info, description, and purchasing tools will be pushed farther down the page as a result. We recommend that custom headers be no larger than 800×150 in order to comply with a wider variety of browser resolutions. To upload an image, click the “Browse” button in the “Header image” field, select the .JPG file for your header, and click “Open.”

2. Choose a primary color

The primary color picker determines the color of headlines, links, tools and error messages. You can choose a unique color from the picker’s drop down menu or type in a hexadecimal number (e.g., #000000) that matches the event’s branding.

3. Choose a secondary color

The secondary color picker determines the color of body copy on your event page. Similar to the primary color picker, you can choose a color from the drop down menu or fill in a hexadecimal value that matches your brand. Make sure that the primary color choice is distinctive from the secondary color choice, so ticket buyers can clearly distinguish between links and body copy.

4. Select a background color/image

Our scheme generator gives you the option to either upload a repeating image or choose a solid color for your event page’s background. To add a solid color, click the field labeled “Background Color.” From there, you can select a color from the drop down picker, or fill in a unique hexadecimal number. To upload a background image, click the “Browse” button in the “Background Image” field, select a repeatable .JPG or .GIF, and click “Open.” Then, you can set the type of repeating image you’d like (tiled, horizontal or vertical) by choosing one of the three options from the drop down menu in the “Background Repeat” field.

5. Find out who’s going

You can keep track of your latest ticket buyers by displaying their user names and profile pictures on your event page. Select “Yes” in the “Display Who’s Going” field to make these profiles visible.

6. Enable/disable comments

We also provide a tool that allows ticket buyers to post comments about the event on your page. Select “Yes” in the “Enable Commenting” field to turn on this feature.

When you are satisfied with your custom scheme, fill in a name for it and click the “Add Scheme” button. Once your scheme name appears in the box labeled “My Color Schemes,” you can apply it to any event listed under “My Events.” Just check the box next to the event you need to skin, then hit the “>>” button to the right of the custom scheme you want. Your scheme will automatically be applied to the event page you checked, and you can view the changes immediately by clicking on the page’s link in the “My Events” box. If you want to apply the same scheme to all of your events, click the name of the scheme listed in “My Color Schemes” and hit the “Set As Default” button.

Examples of customized event pages:

If you have any questions about setting up a design scheme, or would like to have ShowClix assemble a custom scheme for you, please let us know. We’re more than happy to help you seamlessly integrate your event pages with your existing branding.

A little over a month ago, we set out to reimagine the main site, making a commitment to craft an interface that more effectively meets the needs of both ticket buyers and promoters. Last week, after a lot of labor, love, and late nights, we proudly introduced the latest version of our website, along with several tools designed to simplify event search and setup.

Let’s take a look at what’s new:

1. More Targeted Search Results

After landing on the homepage, ShowClix will immediately provide you with a list of all upcoming events in your city. If you don’t live in a major metro area, you’ll see a list of Hot Ticket events from around the country. You can sort these events by name, date, popularity, or category. If you still can’t find the event you’re looking for, use our retooled search function for more dynamic results.

2. Event Pulse

Our Event Pulse box gives you real time updates on what ShowClix users are currently buying and selling. The top ticker displays recent purchases from ShowClix ticket buyers, including links to the events they’re attending. The middle ticker shows recent tweets about ShowClix and our ticketed events. The bottom ticker keeps a running count of the amount of tickets available for purchase in our system. Additionally, our revised Members section now gives you a more in-depth look at your purchasing history, and makes picking up tickets a breeze.

3. Easily Compare Ticketing Solutions

In an effort to streamline the setup process, we’ve cut a clearer path to both small event and full service ticketing by summarizing their benefits on one convenient page. Venues and promoters can now get a rundown of the main features of each ticketing solution in order to better select the solution for them. If you’re in need of more information, our robust Features pages contain extensive information on all of our services.

4. Simplified Wizard

Our instant ticketing wizard has been overhauled to make setting up your event easier than ever. It still only contains five steps, but now you can lock in all your settings without ever leaving the page, including a theme picker that contains several custom color schemes. Plus, we prominently feature examples of successful event pages that were assembled through the wizard so you can make sure this solution is right for you. It’s the fastest and most user-friendly way to get an event online.

5. More Promotion Options

For event promoters and venues, there are more options to highlight your event on our homepage than ever before. Our promotional carousel will rotate though our biggest nationwide events, and a custom-sized box ad can also be displayed in our right rail.

6. Life@ShowClix

Our unique approach to our work environment helps support our unique approach to ticketing, and our new Culture page gives you a peek into the daily life of a ShowClix employee. Check out photos of our humble abode, and read about our various misadventures with new technology, karaoke, Nerf guns, and cereal.

If you have any feedback, feel free to drop us a line. It’s our mission to continually set the bar for user-friendly event setup and purchase. We hope you find this version of our site to be a worthy addition to our catalog of dependable and innovative ticketing solutions.

Envy On The Coast… um, “coasts” into Diesel on the South Side next Tuesday, April 13. In the meantime, check out their video for “Sugar Skulls,” featuring a claustrophobic green room and a bunch of creepy, crying Cabbage Patch Kids.

Does anyone remember playing The 7th Guest on a CD-ROM? If so, does anyone remember the room that was filled with dolls possessed by all the dead kids from the town? Yeah, it’s kind of like that, and any band that can make me relive The 7th Guest is worth checking out, in my book.

Don’t cry. Tickets are available right heyah through ShowClix.