It should be simple - your favourite team/band/theatre play is just about to perform in a couple of weeks. You've waited months for this, now you're going to log on, book the tickets for yourself and your best buddy and bingo…you'll be at the event of the decade for a night to remember. If only it were that easy - you have your credit card ready but the words that you dreaded flash up on your PC screen….SOLD OUT!

You try a few more ticket websites, but dismay soon blossoms into a magnificent panic as there seem to be no tickets online or through any of the usual ticket agencies. Then it strikes you…ebay…of course - should have thought of it sooner. You tap in the address, sure that you'll be able to snap them up here. You're right - but the bidding has gone insane and the tickets are already selling at 5 times their face value and there's still a few days till the auction ends. No chance here, unless you suddenly win the lottery.

If this sounds at all familiar, this article will provide you with some tasty little bites of information to help you secure just about any ticket you would want to purchase. You may have noticed that some people seem to be able to get the hottest tickets around - ones that you ordinarily would have no chance of laying your hands on. Interested? Let's get going.

First, unless you have not made the leap into the information age, let me tell you that your best chances of getting hot tickets is by having an internet connection and a little working knowledge of the Ticketmaster site. I cant help with the first but by the time you're done here you'll know just about all you'll need to about Ticketmaster to become…well…a ticketmaster.

The most obvious tip is that your best chances of getting some premo tickets to that hot event you're after is by trying to buy them within the first 5 minutes of them going on sale. Don't put it off until later, tomorrow or next week as you wont have a prayer. If you are a frequent purchaser of tickets (or you want to make some nice cash reselling tickets on ebay) then you will want to register (free) with Ticketmaster. This way when you're about to purchase tickets you will not waste time frantically typing in your details before the purchase procedure. If the event you want to get tickets for is not yet on sale you'll need to know when Ticketmaster will start offering them. This is not always easy but check out the Ticketmaster alerts page while keeping up to date with the artists/teams etc website for details.

If you're intention is to profit from reselling tickets then you must bare in mind what the maximum amount of tickets you're allowed to purchase are. If you ignore this and try and grab more than the allocated maximum you'll end up with nothing and that could cost you a small fortune in profits.

It also helps if your internet connection is fast - a slow connection does not exactly give you the advantage when the site opens up ticket sales. Also, ensure that you do not have too many applications running as it can slow down the speed of your PC - again, because the timing is critical you want to give yourself the maximum competitive advantage.

Here's an interesting little fact - you would think that the best seats are the ones to go first? Well they may be offered first, but online it's possible to get them later (eg upto half an hour after going on sale) - that's because some buyers who get first priority to these can back out (often unwittingly as they discover there is something wrong with their credit cards). Oh and that reminds me, ensure your credit card is working perfectly before trying to get those hot tickets.

Now some advice for the profit-hunters among you. Reselling tickets can be a very good, exciting and relatively easy way of making a significant amount of extra money. If you do this, there is one key thing you need to know - how likely is it that a particular event will be sold out. With a little bit of knowledge and research you can pinpoint several events every week that are likely to be total sell outs - using the information you have just read you can purchase tickets to them and then profit from them till the cows come home. To state the obvious, eBay is the best place to sell the tickets you've obtained - you're almost certain to have a huge amount of interested buyers. Like most things it takes a little bit of effort to get started but this is a good and honest way of making some extra money each week. I needn't tell you that many are doing this full time for a living - I'll let you discover the possibilities yourself.

Well, hopefully the last few minutes have been highly interesting and useful for you. I wish you all the best, whether you wish to get hold of the best tickets to the hottest events for your own profit or pleasure!

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