Get the Best Tickets to Shows Before Anyone Else

By Charlie Byrne | 07/10/2004 |

I just scored some great tickets for a hot Broadway show — on Thanksgiving weekend, no less, the busiest time of the year on the Great White Way.

I got them by using tracking software to automatically notify me when a website page changed. In this case, the site contained the “tickets now on sale” notice for a Broadway show.

In the past, if you wanted good Broadway tickets, you had to:

  • Find out when seats go on sale in New York and stand in line outside the theater for hours or days.
  • Pay a scalper some outrageous amount, maybe $300 or more for a seat with a face value of $100.
  • Pay the theater extra (about double face value) for “premium seats” — something new they’ve come up with.

You can still get good seats without paying premium fees. The key is to act fast when they first go on sale. Here’s how to do it the new, better way:

  • Plan far in advance of when you want to see the show. Pick a date perhaps nine months out. (This is also the key to getting reasonable airfares during peak travel periods.)
  • Find the website for the show you want to see. Find the Web page for ticket sales. As long as they’re not yet selling tickets for the date you’ve targeted, you’re in business. When those tickets do go on sale, you’ll have as good a shot at the best seats as anyone else.
  • Make a note of the Web address of the ticket sales page.
  • Now, go to an Internet Web page tracking site such as TrackEngine.Com, WisdomChange.Com, or WatchThatPage.Com. Enter the URL of the ticket salespage and their software will check it every day and e-mail you whenever the page content changes.
  • Sit back and wait.

That’s what I did a few months ago. At that time, the ticket sales page said “Tickets on sale for shows to October 31” — a month before the date I was interested in. Then, last week, I turned on my computer and got an e-mail notice. The ticket sales page now said “Tickets on sale for shows to December 31.”

I went right to the site and nabbed some nice orchestra centers for Saturday night, November 28th.

There are plenty of other uses for a Web page tracking site. For example:

  • Monitor a competitor’s sales page to see when they come out with a new product.
  • Monitor a “coming soon” site to be the first to know when it’s gone “live.”
  • Monitor an online information site to know when new info is posted. For example, if your area of interest is taxes, you might want to put a monitor on http://taxes.yahoo.com.

 

You’ll not only be among the first to get certain specific information, you won’t have to keep searching for it. It will come to you.

Posted in Lifestyle, Motivation, Self-Improvement, Travel