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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgbrowning" data-source="post: 3143677" data-attributes="member: 5724">Unless you can provide me a reason as to why I'll suddenly generate around 15% more sales when the switch is flipped to start up the old site, I don't know why you're optomistic.When the switch is flipped, I'm losing 10%, my vendor is going to gain my loss. And that's going to happen everyday, for every sale, until the site growth generates 15% above and beyond what DTRPG and rpgnow.com was already growing.So, please explain where that's a mistatement if you think my bottem line won't be affected in such a manner.One of my questions that hasn't yet been answered is how? Seriously Morrus, you've been doing this for a long time as well. Where are those new sales going to come from? The new site will have roughly 90% of the market already. I'm not going to gain access to any new market share: I was already on everysite involved. I ran my numbers and determined that the 5% better take I'd make by going exclusive with the new site would result in the same loss of revenue since I'd also lose all the revenue at e23 and Paizo.There are no big publishers left to sign on excepting Steve Jackson (won't happen, e23, edit: maybe I'm wrong <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />) and Palladium. Palladium signing on would be great, for themselves, for the new site and for the potential new customers that would be then drawn to the site and to the PDF concept in general. But I'm far from optimistic about Palladium signing. I'd only rate is a no, as opposed to a hell no. They're the only bigger rpg company I know of not doing some sort of PDF sales already.So I'm back to wondering where these new customers are going to come from? But again, it's not just having the new site reach 15% new rpg pdf buying customers in order for me to make the same amount as I was making before, the new site has to reach 15% new customers on top of what the old independant sites were reaching already when they were competing against each other for business. If DTRPG, rpgnow.com and ENGamestore had a historic growth rate of 15% a year, the new site has to make a 30% growth the first year for me to see my profit remain the same. But that would only mean my profit remained the same for the very last month of that 30% growth, while the site's profits went up the instant it upped our rates and continued to proportionally increase with every 1% of additional new rpg pdf customers growth: unlike my increase which would result only in a reduction of a loss.I think everyone can understand why I'm discouraged. I'm facing the grim fact that a solid and healthy 15% growth rate in the PDF purchasing market next year isn't going to result in any increased revenue for me. All the profit from a 15% market growth is going into the the new site's coffers because they're taking it from me up front and telling me "You'll make it up."Can I switch that arraingment if they think its so damn peachy? Can I get a 5% reduction in my fees and tell them they're going to make so much more money based upon "growing the market"? I mean seriously, a lesser cut of a greater market is still a bigger pie piece, right?Yeah. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />I'm roughly 40% up this year in PDF sales. I'd be interested in how much of that increase is the result of sitewide revenue growth at the sites that are merging vrs. how much is the result of only my hard work. If new customer growth was 20% in the past 12 months, I would account for 20% of the growth of my PDF sales. Such a situation would be a perfect example of how the sites benefit publishers and how publisher's benefit the sites. However, I'd be surprised to find a 20% growth rate in PDF cutomers last year based upon what information I can glean from the sources available to me.So to jump back to my point, where are those new sales going to come from? Even if I'm wrong and there was a 20% growth in new rpg pdf customers last year, if the same happens next year, I'm really only looking at a 5% growth rate. My partner isn't however. On my sales, if I grow my gross revenue by 20% next year, my parter's are actually going to see a 68% growth in their profitability.For every $100 dollars I increase my revenue (gross), they used to see a $25 income for them. Now for every $100 dollars they'll see $35. And making more money doesn't solve that problem because they'll still going to get $35 out of every $100 I increase my gross revenue. They're giving me a hole to dig out of by increasing my fees and by increasing my fees they've made it harder to dig out of that hole at the same time.I'm in that market as well. PDF publishers haven't been pampered. The competition between PDF publishers is fierce, but in general, quite friendly. Compare average sales numbers for a new product from two years ago with one now: you'll find they're down across the board. A PDF released now won't make as much money in two years as the same PDF released two years ago. We're already seeing the downward trend as individual publishers and now we're seeing fee increases as well.joe b.</blockquote>

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