A PDF store without a publisher fee or royalty cost?

[DaveMage]

Regardless of losing a personally saved record, the record at paypal should still be intact.

Ah!

I've never needed to use that feature - good to know!

 

[TheLe]

The only thing this endeavor would appeal to is the publishers themselves, but that has never really been a problem. Having a site that gives more money back to the publishers would not bring in the customers, and that's the real problem.

I've tried lots of different upstarts, but they all came back with very bad returns. The Enworld store brought in less than $25.00 a month in sales for me, Your Games Now brought in less than $1.00 per month, CreationCrash.com brought about the same.

So what would give customers incentive to shop?

`Le

 

[Mark]

Ah!

I've never needed to use that feature - good to know!

Glad to help. It has saved me a few times when companies have told me they have had a database crash.

 

[Mark]

So what would give customers incentive to shop?

If I was paying 20-30% less in fees, I'd be more prone as a publisher to create exclusive products and sales both as a way to gain a bit more per unit and as a way to support this website which has been the backbone of my Internet communication with other gamers. That extra traffic in turn helps the website garner additional advertisers and revenue from advertising and the customers get some extra savings. Win, win, win.

 

[Bagpuss]

Imploded how? I can't envisage a method of preventing something when I don't understand how it could happen. The model I'm looking into holds no additional costs for the store; the very worst it can possibly do is sell no advertising, in which case it breaks even.

How does it break even surely you will have server costs, bandwidth costs, what covers them if you aren't getting revenue from advertising?

 

[TheLe]

If I was paying 20-30% less in fees, I'd be more prone as a publisher to create exclusive products and sales both as a way to gain a bit more per unit and as a way to support this website which has been the backbone of my Internet communication with other gamers. That extra traffic in turn helps the website garner additional advertisers and revenue from advertising and the customers get some extra savings. Win, win, win.

It really doesn't work like that at all. Publishers have little desire to make exclusive products for one sales site, especially for an upstart new one. Publishers are inherently greedy, and so they typically will not sell a special product at one site exclusively when they can make more money selling the same product at all the retail sites.

Let's also talk about pure numbers. If new books will usually sell 100 copies when released at OBS, I would need to be able to sell least 130 books at the new site to justify an exclusive. Exactly how long will it take for the new site to gain enough traction to hit this number? It can be expensive to develop a book, and losing out on those near-guaranteed 100 sales at OBS is a hard pill to swallow.

Now, even if a few publishers create exclusives for the new site (note that I would be willing to do this), we would really need many of them to participate to gain any kind of momentum with customers. It's not like game consoles, where that "one really cool" Xbox exclusive game will get thousands of kids to rush out to buy an Xbox.

Still, its not a bad idea.

Maybe "creating one exclusive" per publisher could be requirement to join the new site?

~Le

 

[dmccoy1693]

Why create "exclusive" products when you can sell said product with a "2 weeks exclusive promotion" at one site? Still promotes the site while allowing for those that only shop at OBS to buy it there. No need to sell the product at a discount either.

 

[Mark]

It really doesn't work like that at all.

(.. .)

(note that I would be willing to do this)

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Unorthodox Poster.

Why create "exclusive" products when you can sell said product with a "2 weeks exclusive promotion" at one site? Still promotes the site while allowing for those that only shop at OBS to buy it there. No need to sell the product at a discount either.

Sure. That's not a bad idea.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Side benefit might be that you create more buzz about the product while those that are waiting for the product from OBS to go live. Might help distinguish alpha gamers since they'll want it from the one site and will follow you to where you do such a promotion. Also you'll have direct access to a customer's email from the paypal transaction.

 

[Morrus]

How does it break even surely you will have server costs, bandwidth costs, what covers them if you aren't getting revenue from advertising?

Well, I'm not gonna publically share the entire business model! Suffice it to say that from EN World's end, there's no cost. It can only profit.