Depending on Donations?

[Seth M. Drebitko]

Alright recently I have landed myself a good, job that can more than pay the bills and gives me a decent amount of free time so I have been thinking about reshaping my business plan a bit...well allot. Basically I am going to sell all of my products some can be found at www.cafepress.com/inkblotpub for the base price making no profit at all. I will in return be taking donations from www.inkblotpub.50megs.com (will be getting a new url soon), 10% of the donations will be given to charity the rest will be put strait back into the company and funding the next project. I also plan on running an annual con for Indie writers.
My question I guess is how many people do you think would actually donate, I don't care about the money it would just help to get product out there quicker.
Regards, Seth

[Mike Holmes]

Well, of course, the key thing is the quality of the game. But if you take that out of consideration, I think your model will work. Though not as well as the normal "for profit" model. Why not? Well, for some reason people respect a product more if the publisher believes that it's worth selling. To whit often you can actually dissemminate more copies of a game by charging $5 for it, than by trying to give it away for free. Ironic but true.

Is your idea here basically to have a zero risk model? Have you looked at publishing using POD?

Or is there some other goal here that you're trying to achieve with this model?

Mike

[Seth M. Drebitko]

Is your idea here basically to have a zero risk model? Have you looked at publishing using POD?

For the most part it is very much like a zero risk model, I do plan to take this quite seriously though, and plan on investing quite a bit into the company.

I do plan on using a pod service to publish my books when they are ready to be printed.

is there some other goal here that you're trying to achieve with this model?

The real goal of the project is to take the time that I would spend worrying about making a profit and use it to make more great product, as well as being able to relate more with my customers.

All in all I don't feel that the project will go horribly bad, and figure that at best I will make a bit of spill over profit which will go right back into the product.

Regards, Seth

[Mike Holmes]

I'm not sure what you mean by "worried about profits." Basically I think that selling it would be as easy or easier than what you're suggesting.

Mike

[Seth M. Drebitko]

I have been thinking back on the original post and there is no real point in the thread it is just a form of a no risk model.
Regards, Seth