Question: Raffle Ticket Price's

I have a question for pricing a raffle ticket. If some one wanted you to engrave a gun for a raffle and told you
that you would get some of the raffle proceeds to help pay for your work. How much should the tickets be.
5$'s, 10$'s or what?

I think we're going to need more information to give you a good answer.

How much is the gun itself?

How much is the engraving? (in this case, how many hours will you have in it?)

How many tickets are they realistically looking to sell?

What is the raffle for? Yes, I know it's for the engraved gun - I mean what are the proceeds from the raffle going to go for? If it's one of 'your' causes then you may wish to donate some of your engraving work (and can probably get a reciept for your taxes).

When is the raffle? This will probably influence how much engraving you'll be able to do, which will influence how much you want to get paid.

I'm sure there are other considerations but those are the ones that come to me off of the top of my head.

BTW, on a semi-related note a great tip I got from a fellow photographer was to donate not just a sample or two of your work to these charity events but a certificate for your services. He explained that people very rarely actually get around to making use of the certificate and when they do it's even more (reasonably) low-cost advertising for you. Something like "2 lines of hand-engraved lettering (up to xx characters)" would be the kind of thing to donate. Note on the certificate that not all objects are suitable for engraving just to save time later. Something like this will probably get cashed in but it will probably also get you at least one other job so you should at least come out even.

How long is a piece of string Tony? It depends on so many variables; price of the gun, how much work you put into it, how many tickets are being sold, etc.

If its a $1000 gun a hundred tickets at $10 gives good odds so they're likely to sell well but that only covers the cost of the gun not your work or any profit. So $20 a piece would still give very good odds but what kind of profit would the organizer be happy with and what would you expect as recompense?

Most good quality guns though far exceed $1000 (I'm assuming we're talking shotguns here) and a quality prize will attract more interest. If you plan on selling a thousand tickets though they are going to have to be cheap because of the long odds.

All in all you have to ask yourself more about what the raffle is for. If it's plainly for profit then you should ask for a good return for your time and perhaps payment up front irrespective of ticket sales. But if it's for a charity, is it one you'd support under normal circumstances? If it is then you might be prepared to give your time as your contribution to the charity but make sure you get recognition for it. On the other hand it might just be a fund raiser for say your local gun club. In this case I'd ask myself if a) I had the time to do it for free, and/or b) why should I be expected to possibly lose out, and c) could I afford to do it without proper recompense?

So there are a lot of variables, and a lot to think over before taking the plunge. Just say on offer was a $2000 Browning how much work would you put into it? Say, for arguments sake, $1000. That's $3k outstanding and your organizer would be happy to make $2000 profit. In the right area you'd have no problem selling 100x $50 tickets at 100-1 odds. On the other hand this might seem to steep so you lengthen the odds to 200-1 ($25/ticket). What happens if only 100 tickets are sold? Can you afford to lose $500? Or do you have the heart to see the raffle only make $500. If the gun is a pure donation you might make it work for you.

My gut feeling is you have to work out if you can sell enough tickets cheaply enough that people will buy them not expecting to win or really shorten the odds and charge a higher ticket price. That's a tough one, but don't leave yourself out of pocket if you can't afford to be is my advice.

Thank's for the input so far. The gun is a used Remington 870 Wing master that was bought at Lawmen's Police Supply for $215.00. The raffle is to help a friend out who's wife is disabled to help with some medical
bills and other stuff. I have not added up all my time yet I'm still doing some cutting and finishing work hope to have it done this afternoon or tommrow. I'll post some pic's on here when I'm done or check'em out at

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=2006832&id=1236226969

We need at least 400.00$ for the gun and Gunsmithing that my friend Joe will be doing, bluing, stock work, and little odds and ends. The drawing will be October or December or whenever we hatch it out.

Tony,
It's good of you to do this to help out a friend in need.
Your heart's in the right place.
Let us see more of this project and best of luck with the auction.

That info helps.

With a raffle like that people are often willing to take much lower odds of winning and simply treat their purchase as a straight donation with a possible payoff.

That points to a lower ticket price so it's easier for people to write off the purchase.

But that only works when you have a reasonable expectation of a lot of people buying tickets.

At almost every gun show there's a youth organization of some sort (ROTC, Youth Shotgun team, etc.) selling raffle tickets. They're usually in the $5 - $10 range and everyone knows the odds of winning are extremely low. But since it's for what most folks there consider a good cause they sell a ton of tickets and everyone goes home happy - especially the lucky S.O.B who actually wins.

In this case it looks like you're wanting to raise at least $1,000 (and that's assuming you're pretty much donating your time). I figure you want to wind up with at least $500 or so 'profit' (donation).

Examine what your total costs will be and how much money you want to raise. That gives you your target for total ticket sales.

Then, as Marcus pointed out you have to decide what the best ticket price / strategy is to get there.

If you think your sales pool is limited then it's probably best to go with a limited number of tickets and pick a price / odds pair that will get you where you want.

On the other hand, if you think your cause will get a really good response then you can go with the 'as many tickets as we can sell' approach and offset the long odds of winning with a 'throw away' price / ticket.

Good luck on this!

i engraved one of those. there's about 2 footbal fields of area that can be embellished. i once did a raffle job for my local library when they were desperate for cash. plainly posted , well in advance, were the rules as to what type guns i would and would not do. also it was very clear to those who participated that the level of coverage put on their gun would be a reflection of the level of their generosity towards the library. the library was very happy at the event end, as was the winner several weeks later.