I know we've talked about this before, but I want to know if anyone around here has any hard data - has anyone sold anything through RPGnow.com? (I know for a fact Cynthia has, but I haven't seen her around lately.)

If you have, how did this compare to sales from your own webpage? You don't have to give numbers if you don't want, but did you sell a goodly amount? (I consider anything over 20 in one month an exceedingly goodly amount.)

I can;t say how it compared to my own web store because my own web store is not up yet. I've sold a few copies of HeartQuest through RPGNow.com. I don't know how many I'll sell total.

Note that this is not the only web e-tailer I will be selling through.

I haven't put Kayfabe up on RPGnow, but I do know that I have sold far mmore coppies from my web site than from rpgnet mall. It's actually confusing as people that order from my site have to wait for me to email the PDF. Ordering from rpgnet mall allows you the convenience of immediately downloading it. I guess I market my site better than rpgnet mall does theirs.

,Matt

I'm pretty interested in experimenting with this to see if it works. My current plan is to sell from my website, but I might put Paladin up on RPG.net for $7 (instead of the $6 that it will be at my website.)

You know Clinton, I think I'm going to temporarily boycott Paladin...I'll buy a copy as soon as I can get a copy of Donjon too...I really loved that game...
;-)

Clinton R Nixon wrote: I'm pretty interested in experimenting with this to see if it works. My current plan is to sell from my website, but I might put Paladin up on RPG.net for $7 (instead of the $6 that it will be at my website.)

Valamir wrote: You know Clinton, I think I'm going to temporarily boycott Paladin...I'll buy a copy as soon as I can get a copy of Donjon too...I really loved that game...
;-)

I recently discovered Donjon Krawl, decided to run it for a couple of friends, and just wanted to thank you for one of the most amusingly enjoyable evenings of role-playing I've ever had.

There's just something about the system that brought out the cheerfully diabolical GM in me and the humorously swashbuckling spirit in the players. Between all the bad RPG cliches, the pleathora of "bunny" spells, and the demons wearing Tophats of Endless Purity, the night was pure Magic.

I finally decided yesterday: stay with the old dice system. The reason: I got the following e-mail.

One question related to RPGNow that I don;t think we've addressed is whether presence on e-tailers affects traffic on a publisher's own websites?

RPGNow is in the business of selling games, but also in the business of selling advertising at rates that not every small publisher can afford. I'd like to be able to afford banners on RPGHost's network, but that poses another question -- hasn;t it been established that banner advertising simply doesn't work, especially when billed by display rather than by clickthrough?

Michael Hopcroft wrote: RPGNow is in the business of selling games, but also in the business of selling advertising at rates that not every small publisher can afford. I'd like to be able to afford banners on RPGHost's network, but that poses another question -- hasn;t it been established that banner advertising simply doesn't work, especially when billed by display rather than by clickthrough?

And to underline my own point, go to http://www.rpgnews.rpghost.com and notice the news item on top. I didn't put that on top; the RPG Host people set it to stay on top, it seems. And it's about looking for more affiliates for the RPGshop store. To me, that speaks volumes about what the banner ads aren't doing.

Never had much luck with the RPGhost banner ads, when they were click for click. But I'm a big convert to RPGNews (I even posted something the other day, yay me!), theres some good stuff on there.

Moving back to the main topic here, I too would be interested in any info on RPGnow, RPGnet Mall and comparison with own site. I'm getting The Agency, ready for a commercial release, and have been considering these options for delivery.


-Matt

So, I decided to experiment with RPGnow using my new game, Paladin. It's selling well so far, so I thought that RPGnow might be another avenue that would work for it, plus I wanted to see if/how RPGnow worked.

So far, I'm burned. Their contract, which I signed - but haven't given them any product yet - is pretty standard:
- They get a non-exclusive right to sell your game.
- They take 20% of the profits, which can change at any time. They must give you at least 30 days notice before they change the commission rate.
- Either they or you can break the contact at any time and your products will be taken down.

Now, after I signed the contract, I got an e-mail describing the next steps in the process. Two things blew my mind:

Please create a banner of your own for your product and/or our site will
also greatly help your sales at RPGNow.com - we will put this in our
rotation of our Target banner system at a reduced rate of display for a
reduced price of only $50 (savings of $145). This banner will can go to
your specific product page on RPGNow.com or to your home page.

Lastly, please note that we only link back to vendor's websites if
they sell exclusively with us. This is mainly so we don't loose
customers or spend money promoting your product and not get any
returns. You're welcome to sell you product yourself or elsewhere, but
just be aware that a customer won't find a link to your home page on
RPGNow.com if that's the case.

Anyone else notice this?

"...(I) have to pay $50 to get advertising on the site I'm selling the game on...

...we only link back to vendor's websites if they sell exclusively with us...so we don't loose customers or spend money promoting your product..."

Read that carefully. Cost: $50 to advertise on their site. They don't want to spend money promoting your product.

What money are they spending to promote your product considering you have to pay them to get them promote your product on their site. Thus how could they spend money promoting your game if they (a) don't promote it and (b) are paid to promote it when they do?

Nothing comes out of their pockets for promotion.

Now I'm sure they mean to say they don't want to lose their 20% commission by sending their clients to another site with the same product, which is a reasonable business practice, but that isn't what they said.

...so we don't loose customers ...

I don;t know if it's clickable (assk my typesetter), but my URL is listed in the bibliography of my book.

So far I've sold four copies of HeartQuest through RPGNow. I have not been told to whom. The only way i can guess is if some of them visit my web site and jpin my mailing lists, which has not happened yet.

Advanced marketing techniques like sending my customers a survey to see what they thought do not appear possible that this time.

Yes, you can get the customers' email addresses on RPG.net, but it's not terribly intuitive.

1) Log into your vendor account from the main page.

2) Once you're logged in, click "Sales".

3) This takes you to another page. Click on "Customer Mailings".

4) A new page pops up. Don't type anything into the fields and click "Run Report or Do Mailing"

5) Once the new page comes up, scroll down to find the email addies.

I hope this helps.

Let me chime in this thread a bit... First someone was speaking of the Free Banner Exchange as we don't charge by click in the actual Target Banner System which runs on top of most of our sites. That particular banner system is a flat monthly fee of much less then our competitors and usually generates 500-1000 click throughs a month for it's clients.

Second, RPGnow.com has over 7000 customers and 300+ of which visit daily, mall.RPG.net most likely has about 10th of that at the most. RPGNow.com sells over 100 products a day, mall.RPG.net is lucky to even have 100 products to sell. RPGnow.com advertises in magazines, online, conventions, flyers, etc... We've been around for over 2 years and have fast helpful support. So you guess who's going to sell the most copies of your book :)

Aside from that, no one requires you to only sell at one location, you can signup at other malls and sell at your own site, we don't care as long as people who find out about you from us, buy from us.

Third, as for quantities of sales it really varies. A good d20 sourcebook is what sells the most at about 100-200 copies the first month is good. 20-50 is probably more typical for a completly unknown company with an average content. Someone like Monte cook would do a lot LOT more. Odd ball games and non-d20 stuff, well maybe 10 copies a month. Software sells pretty good, not sure of the numbers off hand.

Forth, as for the $50 banner rate, that is for allowing your banner to run through our entire network of sites (25+) at the top. This is something we charge for and can not give away to 50+ vendors at RPGNow.com or we'd never be able to sell ads at the RPGHost Network as it would be too full of these RPGNow ads.

As for RPGNow.com in general, it isn't a big money maker for us as the margins are way too low. We pay 5% to credit cards or paypal and that leaves us with 15% to cover costs... definatly not getting rich there.

Lastly, as for the "exclusive sales" or no link issue, that's been discussed many other places. In short, if you are going to sell your product on your site and at mall.rpg.net, why do you expect us to send our customers to you so they can buy elsewhere? Sure they may have loyalty and will return, but customers are customers, they find the easiest way to click a buy button. It is not unreasonable for us to have this clause when we spend thousands on promoting the site and indirectly your games.

As for the vendor interface, you can get all emails of customers who bought from us. It's clickable and cut-and-paste friendly. It's not our goal to make it hard for you to talk with your customers. You can even use the interface to send them a mailing right from our site.

One last note. Please stop confusing us with RPG.NET - we are RPGNow.com and have nothing to do with them other then they basically took all their site setup from us (including the same software base and contract percentages). Even though they LOOK like us (well not really their site is actually ugly as crap as I'm told by many) - they are not. I'll garentee you many more sales at RPGnow.com then you'll ever see at RPG.NET

James
RPGHost Networks

If my experience is any indication, RPGNow is certainly better at selling games and has a wider selection. I'e sold about eight copies of HQ through RPGNow. That doesn;t sound like much, but there has been very few links between my website and RPGNow's, which is as much my failure to publicize as anything else.

By the way, to link to buy my product ought to be http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=219&

By the way, James, you'll be getting a new product from me in about two weeks.

rpghost wrote: Third, as for quantities of sales it really varies. A good d20 sourcebook is what sells the most at about 100-200 copies the first month is good. 20-50 is probably more typical for a completly unknown company with an average content. Someone like Monte cook would do a lot LOT more. Odd ball games and non-d20 stuff, well maybe 10 copies a month. Software sells pretty good, not sure of the numbers off hand.

Humm... That 10 count number was just a rough number guess so that people wouldn't get overly excited :)

Still I'm probably not all that far off for an unknown publisher doing non-d20. The reason I think that sales are low on RPGNow.com for such things is that it's really not a promotional vehicle for these products. I mean, we give a page blub and maybe a demo - but we don't do much more. We're not out knocking on the doors of the customers asking them to check out your new RPG. We'd be getting a lot of those doors slammed on us. So the reason you get more sales on your own site is cause you self-promote and point people there. That means you're doing a good job.

But, the thing I don't understand is this... WHY would you choose NOT to use us? We cost nothing to get involved. We do all the work setting up the page. We only take a percentage on those that sell off our site. We don't try to "steal" your customers. So in short, by adding your product to our site, no matter what your numbers are now, you'd be adding another 10 or so a month to your sales for doing nothing.

As for where our money goes... that's for us to know :) Actually we pay for bid links on overture and other promotion serach engines, we send out flyers in RPGShop.com orders, we have displayed ads in at least 5 magazines, we sponsor conventions, etc... anyway ads in Dragon alone are over $1000 an issue.

I'm not going to sit here and say we go out of our way to promote non-d20 in the same way as d20. That would be a lie. We do however help your exposure no matter how you look at it. In the case of non-d20 sales I would expect that all the sales we generate would be sales you'd have never seen otherwise - not just us taking an extra 20% from your current sales.

James

James

Honestly, James - I wouldn't use RPGnow because I'm fiercely independent and want every little step of the process of making and selling my game under my control. This isn't the "why Clinton won't use RPGnow" thread, though.

Going back to my question, you answered:

As for where our money goes... that's for us to know :) Actually we pay for bid links on overture and other promotion serach engines, we send out flyers in RPGShop.com orders, we have displayed ads in at least 5 magazines, we sponsor conventions, etc... anyway ads in Dragon alone are over $1000 an issue.

I think you're missing some of the point and I'm not sure I want to debate this... but many people out there do not know about PDF, many people do not understand PDF, many people don't think it's a good idea, many people only want print, many people don't trust internet businesses, many vendors might think we're a fly-by-night operation. That in mind, we had to do some branding and recognition advertising for RPGNow.com

So, no. I don't particulaly feel that we got our money directly back from sales, but what we did do is to increase the PDF product awareness. I quite honestly feel you probably wouldn't be selling your PDF product nearly as well as you are if it wasn't for Monte Cook and RPGNow.com and a few other movers in the PDF industry. Hell, PDF has been around for YEARS... how many RPG's were being sold as PDF 2 years ago?

Anyway, pay-for-click engines are WELL worth the money you spend. They are much more effective then advertising in magazines. Being in the top 3 listings on most all search engines really does pay off. RPGShop.com uses them and spends a lot of money on them - but we're constantly getting new sales / customers directly from them. Oh, "Overture" is the old goto.com which is now a primary source for 3rd party paid clicks on most engines like yahoo and more. http://www.overture.com

James