How to Capture Contact Info for Your Workshop Without Paying Commissions

When you're running workshops and small events, margins are tight. So it stings when you realize you're giving 5 to 15% of every ticket to a booking platform just to collect attendee contact info.

For a €40 yoga class with 12 participants, that's €24 to €72 in platform fees per session. Run that weekly and you're handing over €1,200 to €3,700 per year. That's money you earned and should keep.

You don't have to accept this. Here's how to collect attendee contact info and manage registrations without paying platform commissions.

Why capturing contact info matters

When someone registers for your workshop, their contact information is what lets you:

• Send reminders so people actually show up
• Announce your next session to people who already know your work
• Re-engage people who attended once but haven't come back
• Build a real audience instead of starting from zero every time

Paying a percentage of every ticket just to collect this information doesn't make sense when alternatives exist.

The usual setup (and why it costs you)

Most workshop organizers start with the big platforms because they're familiar. You create a listing, people sign up, money comes in. Convenient.

The problem shows up in your payouts. After the platform's cut, payment processing fees, and sometimes service charges on top, you keep less than you expected. For someone running workshops as a side project or building an independent teaching practice, that margin erosion matters.

A simpler approach: separate registration from payment

Instead of one platform handling everything (and charging for the privilege), split the process:

1. Capture contact info first. Set up a lightweight landing page that collects attendee contact info (email and/or phone number). Tools like BookOrWaitlist let you create one in minutes with no commission fees.

2. Redirect to your payment link. After submitting their info, attendees land on your Stripe, PayPal, or Square payment page. These processors charge flat rates (around 2.9% + €0.30 per transaction) with no additional platform markup.

3. Keep the data. Every contact goes straight to your list. You own it completely. No export hoops, no platform lock-in.

Running the numbers

Imagine you teach a monthly craft workshop. You charge €45 per person and typically get 15 attendees.

With a typical booking platform (8% total fees):

• Monthly revenue: €675
• Platform fees: ~€54
• Annual fees: ~€648

With the split approach (only Stripe processing at 2.9% + €0.30):

• Monthly revenue: €675
• Processing fees: ~€24
• Annual fees: ~€288

That's roughly €360 per year back in your pocket. Not life-changing, but real. And you get full ownership of your attendee data on top of it.

These numbers will vary depending on your ticket price and volume, but the pattern holds: platform commissions eat into your margin more than straight payment processing.

What about the waitlist?

Here's the part most organizers overlook. When your workshop fills up, a payment-only page shows "sold out" and that's it. Interested people leave with no way to reach them.

With a separate registration page, you can switch to waitlist mode. The page still collects contact info, but shows a message like "This session is full. Leave your info and we'll notify you when the next one opens."

These waitlisted contacts are valuable. They already tried to sign up. When your next session opens, they're the first to hear about it and the most likely to book.

On traditional platforms, you might not even have waitlist functionality. Or if you do, you're paying fees on those signups too.

A note on trade-offs

This approach isn't perfect. Separating registration and payment means you'll need to check that people who registered also paid. For small workshops (under 30 people), this is easy to manage manually or with a quick check against your Stripe dashboard. For larger events, it can get tedious.

You also lose some convenience features: no built-in ticket scanning, no integrated refund management. For most small workshops, these aren't dealbreakers. But if you're running 200-person conferences, a full-featured platform might still make sense.

Getting started

1. Create a landing page with your workshop details and a contact form. BookOrWaitlist or any simple page builder works.
2. Set up a payment link with Stripe, PayPal, or your preferred processor.
3. Connect the redirect so attendees go from the landing page to payment after submitting their info.
4. Turn on waitlist mode when your workshop fills up.

Try it for one workshop. Compare what you paid in fees to what you'd have paid on your usual platform. Then decide if it's worth switching permanently.