For Eventbrite, Each Facebook Share Is Worth $2.52

How much is a shared link on Facebook worth? For online ticketing service Eventbrite, each time someone shares a link to an event with their Facebook friends it results in $2.52 worth of ticket sales. In contrast, a Twitter share is only worth $0.43, and a LinkedIn share is worth $0.90. Sharing an event through Eventbrite’s email sharing tool is worth $2.34, almost as much as Facebook. On average, across all social channels, each share is worth an average of $1.78 for Eventbrite.

Events are inherently social, and if you know your friends are going to go to an event you are more likely to go as well. Facebook and email most closely match your real friends, so it makes sense that those shares are worth more in this context. But Facebook has an edge because it broadcasts to all your friends. On average, each shared link on Facebook results in 11 new visits to Eventbrite, compared to 7 visits per share across all channels.

As CEO Kevin Hartz told me a couple weeks ago when he raised $20 million, Facebook now sends more traffic to Eventbrite than any other source, including Google. It is no wonder that Eventbrite is making a big push into social discovery, adding more Facebook hooks into its service. The more it can get people to share events, the more tickets it sells.

The big question is whether this phenomenon is particular to Eventbrite, or whether all commerce sites can benefit from social sharing. Companies should start tracking revenue per social share and see where the money is coming from. My gut instinct is that Facebook will be more valuable for products which get a bigger boost when your real friends are using them, and Twitter will compare better for other more general types of products where people are just looking for a trusted recommendation based on topic knowledge. Twitter might also result in better clickthrough rates for pure media sharing (i.e., advertising versus commerce).

What’s your revenue per share? Send me an email or share in comments.