People's Choice Voting, Reimagined: How $1 = 1 Vote Actually Works

People's Choice is the part of a pageant where the audience gets a say. Grandparents, classmates, the neighbor who has come to every practice: each of them buys votes for the contestant they're cheering for, and that money helps pay for the pageant.

It ought to be the easiest part of the event to run. On a lot of sites it isn't. Votes come in bundles priced so nobody can tell what one vote is worth, the money sits as site credit, and the payout takes weeks.

Here's how we run it.

One vote costs $1

Five votes cost $5. Five hundred cost $500. There are no bundles and no bonus votes, so a grandmother buying 20 votes knows she spent $20, and a director reading the leaderboard knows what it raised.

At checkout the voter also pays a Pageant Post service fee of 2.9% + 37¢. It doesn't count as votes.

What you keep

Built for a phone

Most votes start with a link a contestant texted or posted. A voter opens it on their phone, finds the contestant and pays. The leaderboard updates as votes come in, so families check back, see the race tighten, and share the link again.

Free until people vote

Listing a pageant costs nothing, and there's no monthly fee. Our share comes out of the votes people buy, so a pageant that raises nothing costs nothing.