Although I am continuing to develop Kaidan with Dementia 5 Publishing, I was looking to get a side publication project started with a different publisher, so I took one of my recently created map, the Assassin's Lair (its posted in the Cartography - Ressurrecting the World Map thread), added a detailed map key describing all rooms, created some text on how to get this into an existing campaign, then sliced the image at 1" = 5' scale in letter sized chunks (6 pieces), then a B/W version sliced. I sent the idea to Johnn Four of Roleplayingtips.com - whom I've done some business with over the last 3 years.
Now Johnn wants me to create a Beggar's Guild map and a Thieves' Guild map with the same detailed map key and corresponding ideas.
Johnn Four, and Yax of Game Mastery Blog will write 12,000 to 15,000 words of creative text content utilizing these three maps for low/medium/high level rogue usage for D&D 4e. We'll create a PDF which will cost $15, split 3 ways - and sold exclusively through Johnn and Yax's websites, blog sites, RPGNow and various blog partnerships across the internet.
If it looks like its getting decent sales, then there plans to create other three map themed PDF sets with textual content, throughout the year.
So it looks like I've got another publishing project ahead of me, but far less work than Kaidan. Just three associated maps and the creative ideas I put in them for each product.
GP
Johnn Four described to me his philosophy for making money creating and selling RPG products...
Start out with simple and inexpensive to create RPG products (inexpensive to the publisher) of the best possible quality and sell for a minimum of $15, as lower amounts make marketing much more expensive and impractical.
Through advertising, exposure, blog articles obtain 1000 fans - which he believes is not as hard as it sounds. If you have many (?) products created across the year, you can expect your loyal fans to continue to buy your products. A loyal fan with enough products to buy can be expected to spend one days's pay of annual income for those products, which average to $100 per customer over the year. 1000 fans at $100 spent each = $100,000 (or a damn good ROI for creating RPG products).
With the collaboration with these two well known industry people (Johnn Four and Yax) and their excellent platforms for advertising, attaining the 1000+ fans is a very reasonable expectation. This hopefully means I can earn some serious income and just play the role as mapper, while I continue to create and promote for my own setting - which hopefully can achieve its own 1000 fans and double the income stream.
We'll see. Thoughts?
GP
Even if all you garner are 500 dedicated fans, you're still making $16,000 for doing something a) you're good at and b) you enjoy. The cool thing is that this venture affords you the luxury of taking your time with your own work and making sure it's the best it can be (rather than rush it out the door because bills need to be paid).
I hope it works out for you (which knowing you, it will)! :)
Agreed. Services and products that you can sell cheaply but to alot of fans are a good way to rake in a load of money (look at blizzard... they probably make a good 100 million a month off WoW alone).
This is actually the reason I am looking into developing a few sites based around that model. Mainly I am looking into PHP coded web games (text/2d graphical based adventure, war gaming, etc) though I have ideas for other things. If I were to charge $1 a month for premium membership and I have 10,000 players with 10% premium (a normal figure for a successful site of that type) that is $1000 a month. You get a couple such things going and you quickly see how effective a moneymaker they are.
At any rate I wish you the best of success on your ventures GP, it seems to be something you are good at and enjoy (two important aspects of a long term job in my opinion).
Well, 1000 fans on the internet isn't 1000 people willing to spend money on you. The usual formula I've heard batted around for translating popularity to sales is 90% buy nothing, 9% buy one thing, 1% are habitual customers.
Good luck, though.
I believe he meant 1000 loyal fans (people who will buy your stuff and keep coming back for more).
Quote from: NomadicI believe he meant 1000 loyal fans (people who will buy your stuff and keep coming back for more).
Exactly. Consider that Johnn Four has 14,000 subscribers to his newsletter and 10,000 of his blog (though they probably include many of the same people.) Yax of Game Mastery as around 10,000 subscribers to his blog and various other websites, many are different people than Johnns, though since they work together online now they've combined their audiences. Johnn and Yax has helped out many other major D&D bloggers with improving their blogs and have set up multiple affiliate commissions for various D&D products. Those other bloggers have their own audiences. So, there's somewhere between 24,000 and 50,000 targetted readers to market any product.
Add, whatever sales occur at RPGNow, though they take 35% of the profit, who are still the 800 pound gorilla for RPG PDF sales online. Any additional blog reports by non-affiliated bloggers and other advertising could wide that audience number.
No single RPG product appeals to everyone, so the majority will not buy a given product. So 1% of those numbers is somewhere between 240 and 500 buyers, which is only a quarter to half of the goal of 1,000 fans. While marketing always targets new customers as well as old customers, its far easier to sell a second product to someone who was satisfied with a purchase before, and easier to sell a third, fourth or fifth time. The hope being that within a few months of promotion combined with the addition of new buyers that that 1,000 can be achieved.
However, as already pointed out 500 buyers is significant. Heck, any numbers above cost is a success, but hope is sales are much higher. As more products become available the older products will be only sold in trickles, but combined trickles from multiple products represent ongoing income streams. Combine that with current "loyal fans".
All this is hypothetical, yet proven, so I'm hopeful I can get some of that market access and successfully market the RPG products I want to create.
So, yeah, I mean 1,000 loyal buying fans, not simply 1,000 people exposed to the product idea...
GP
PS: though fairly new to the RPG Publishing industry, I've run my own businesses (3, 2 concurrently now) for 20 years - I'm not a complete noob in running a business, I look at business plans as a skeptic, but I'm knowledgeable to whats going on and recognize opportunities when I see them. I see the above idea as having realistic possibilities.
Hmm, ok. It seems pretty optimistic to me, but it's not like you have to convince me, so starting a whole big debate about it would be just another pointless Internet argument. So I'll just reiterate, good luck. :)
No argument here, just clarifying what I meant. Again, the premise is what's possible, this is, by no means some prediction as to what will happen in sales. Still the people actually marketing this are well known with their own defined and trusted audiences. If I were doing this alone, the odds would be far greater against me in succeeding in such a project.
I am, in no way, suggesting that this project has any more success than anything else I do.
Just stating Johnn Four's sales philosophy is all, (not my own) which may or may not have any bearing on what will actually happen.
Again, I'm only following your line of logic based on 1% ongoing buyers. 1% of 50,000 is 500, so is that being over optimistic? Also, if I could actually sell 9% once - that's still 2400 to 5000 sales. If all I got were 2400 sales, that would still be a great success - it would still mean $12,000 in income just for my cut. Jusy sayin'.
GP
PS: I actually believe my much more expensive and larger publishing project (Kaidan), will sell far less than this new project should.
Hahaha this thread makes me think of the loyal fan in Oblivion...god he's annoying...
Oh, I hope I'm not being annoying.
My intention of mentioning this at all, was the for the following reason. I think the majority of world builders here only intend to create fun and usable settings for their own personal games and such information above is completely meaningless. However, I also believe that some here may want to one day try and publish their setting. Since this is my current goal and I am involved in more than one publication project, I could provide some insight on that side of world building. Just to be helpful for those interested, with some business ideas regarding RPG publications.
Don't mean to offend or be annoying, or imply what kind of success will I enjoy, just passing on some information is all.
GP
In addition to the Rogue Maps set, I've managed to shoehorn in my Gnomic Syndicate, with the total acceptance of Johnn Four.
Gnomic Syndicate (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?69553.post)
Looks like this product is likely to be published early in 2010.
GP