Paid Caters to Celebrity ServicesBy Justin Lee, theWHIR.com
August 7, 2007 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Scoring front row tickets to a big stadium rock concert is no easy feat, unless of course you know a guy who knows a guy who is friends with the promoter. And even then, you will probably have to pay an amount so obscene it would make even Gene Simmons blush.
That’s where Paid (paid.com) comes into play. With a clientele that is primarily comprised of music and sports celebrities, Paid offers a range of services designed to meet their specific needs, providing them with official Web sites and fan club services to give customers a quality concert-going or sports-watching experience.
The company offers a diverse set of businesses, including celebrity services and AuctionInc e-commerce technology businesses. Using its proprietary patent-pending technology, Paid’s AuctionInc brand shipping calculation and auction management software and services are used to update Web site development and hosting, online auctions and e-commerce features.
And rather than outsourcing its hosting services to an outside company, Paid CEO Greg Rotman says the company prides itself on doing it all in-house.
“We’re co-hosted and colocated at various facilities, but most of it is in-house,” says Rotman. “Because of the kind of security associated with celebrities, you don’t really have a choice. With their photos, their videos, you can’t afford to outsource the hosting. It’s dangerous to a certain extent.”
Paid offers a range of e-commerce features, including storefronts, ticketing and fan experience packages and Web site content, such as multimedia features, to draw in tens of thousands of visitors daily.
The company also supplements its online services with events that enable fans to interact with the band or athlete, such as meet-and-greet’s, autograph signing events and other sports marketing services for its sports clientele.
“What you’re really trying to do is to create a robust community for this core group of people, which in some cases spans a million people,” says Rotman. “It’s a fairly large social community and that’s really the end goal at the end of the day. These are their best friends. The artist wants to know that they’re being taken care of.”
Rock-behemoths like Aerosmith and Deep Purple have both enlisted the help of Paid celebrity services to manage VIP experience ticket packages for their live performances, as well as redesign their Web site, develop and moderate its official fan community and manage both mobile and online merchandising, marketing and fulfillment.
The VIP experience tickets are offered in four different packages, Rotman explains, starting with the first tier, which consists of a ticket in the first five rows, hotel accommodations, a backstage pass, a meet and greet with the band, merchandise and a party where food and beverage is supplied.
The remaining three packages are the Ultra Sweet Spot, which includes a seat within the first 10 rows, backstage tour and the party, the Sweet Spot package, which includes a seat in the first 20 rows, the party and merchandise and finally, the top spot package, which is basically just the ticket and merchandise.
Paid also factors in the level of seniority among fan club members, says Rotman, offering the better seats and packages first to long-standing members.
With the price of concert and sports tickets esclating, along with merchandise and alcoholic drinks onsite, it’s not hard to envision a couple spending $500 for the evening. Paid offers a welcomed alternative to this, offering an exceptional experience for less than that amount, Rotman says.
“It’s a real experience versus ‘I got to see a concert last night,’” says Rotman. “And that is the big difference. We give real value for what the fans are paying, and still doing it for a lot less than buying it the other way.”
