D&D 5E (2014) One Year of DM's Guild

[Ancalagon]

You can go back and pay later.

oh -well that's a bit different.

 

[guachi]

I find DMs Guild to be a failure. There are too many products and it's too hard to find anything useful.

The main page is cluttered with a billion AL products.

You can't effectively sort by metal (sales) level.

The only thing I've purchased are a few new PDFs of old stuff (stuff that would have been on dndclassics)

 

[Ezequielramone]

I have no experience writing or selling and don't know how much is good money per word. But I have bought many pdfs in there. I started with Frozen Throne, it's kind of a DLC for tyranny of dragons. It was one of the best things I have run in my entire life. That is a great example of short adventure. After that I was more willingly to explore the DMG. As you say, I'm just realising now, most of the things I bought are related to official adventures. That's is because I and my group are playing those adventures. So, having extra encounters in the underdark (journey to the underdark), and extra chapter for ToD (Frozen throne) or more uses for the Tarokka deck is were I'm going to put money.
For other things, say monsters or spells, I like compiled products. I run my games with the notebook and having a lot of files and windows open is a bit annoying. For example, besides official books I use The (not) so complete book of spells. It's only one book (PDF) and has a LOT of spells. And that is all, I don't want to have 7 pdfs named "fire spells of hell", "the book of the healer" and so on. I apply the same for monsters.
Adventures are something different. I love to play long campaign, because they way characters grow and start to "live". I played a one shot the other day, don't remember anyone's character's name, don't even know the name of two players. That's why I don't buy short adventures. In the rare case I want to run an introductory adventure I already have the starter set. If I want something shorter I could buy some adventures in the DMG.

That is my experience and the way I think when buying things. I'd totally buy Dark Sun or Eberron updates, but the DMG don't allow such products.
I hope this helps you a bit to understand the clients.

 

[CapnZapp]

There are just too many of them. You're talking of hundreds of threads each week... and any discussion gets lost in the flood.

Nice idea, but as others have said, pretty useless.

I specifically suggested filtering on number of replies.

Merely filtering away threads with no replies (only the auto post) would go a long way.

The huge advantage is if you or I want to make a "comment", it would instantly rise to the top.

The reason people aren't commenting isn't because they're laze or ungrateful, it's because nobody will ever see their comment if the rest of us must 1) visit DMs Guild 2) happen upon the exact same product page.

Besides, DMs Guide isn't interested. For one thing, they don't want the hassle of a discussion board (which needs moderation etc).

 

[Kabouter Games]

People say they want to read critical reviews before buying products, but they refuse to make reviews themselves, claiming they aren't any good at it etc.

Maybe they aren't any good at it, but a simple and honest comment from someone is better than nothing. You don't have to be a professional writer to post a useful review.

Speaking as someone who's getting started in offering work on DMsG, and who's looked rather deeply into marketing self-published work, I couldn't agree more. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and buy it. If you like it, at least rate it. And really, how hard is it to type a few words like, "It works in my campaign." I mean, as a review that's pretty useless, but at least it's something, and the market is predicated on those stars and consumer reviews.

Consumer reviews are a double-edged sword. The overwhelming majority of consumer reviews are utterly useless. Even the good ones are usually "5 stars! I loved it!" That's great and all, but as feedback it gives zero data. Both author and consumer need to know why. I mean, don't get me wrong, as an author and producer I adore and crave positive reviews.

And the bad ones? Hoo boy! Let me give you an example from Amazon. My real-life business has a wholesale customer who resells on Amazon. She got a 1-star review because the customer wasn't happy with how UPS mangled the package. And it's wicked hard to do anything about bad reviews, even if they're stupid. For one thing, Amazon will never take down a review. Ever. For any reason. That's why there are funny shares on social media of mocking reviews on stupid things. For another, you - as the seller - can comment on the reviews, explaining what happened, and get a response from the reviewer saying, "Well, crap, if I'd known that I'd not have given the bad rating" and not only can't they go back and change the review nobody will ever read that far.

The trouble is bad reviews will always be there, dragging down your numbers, and people are shallow. They don't read the actual reviews, they just go "Ooo, only three stars? Pass." Never mind that there are only two reviews, one 5-star that says "this product is perfect" and lists all the reasons why, and one 1-star that's because the customer expected $1.95 to include a DM to come over to your house and run the module for you.

Now I've finished my latest adventure and put up the product, I'm going to take my down time this week and review the content I downloaded from DMsG to make my own content. I figure it's only fair.

Cheers,

Bob

(R P Davis on DMs Guild)

 

[Kabouter Games]

Also, Banana, GREAT blog post. Thank you for crunching your numbers and sharing the data with us.

 

[Morrus]

It's always been hard getting people to review stuff. DMsG isn't unusual in that respect.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Out of curiosity, how does time factor into it? So you make more a year in or less than a year or six months ago? DMsG is growing, but does that mean it's harder to stand out, or that it's easier to find customers?

For me personally, I'm producing less than I did in March, but I'm also not trying to "strike while the iron is hot" for the most recent adventure (I was actually planning on running Curse of Strahd). If WotC released, say, a spelljammer astral planar adventure or something, I bet I'd grind into high gear again. The production I'm doing right now is for my Astral Campaign, which is also a thing I actually plan on running. I'm generally finding that more attention on DMs Guild means more sales for everything, not just specifically the adventure products (though those benefit the most). The limiting factor is attention, one way or another.

Here's the month-by-month data:



Pretty much a confirmation of: when WotC puts out an adventure, people come to DM's Guild for support for it (they might end up buying some other things while they're there). My best month was March, with the release of Ravenloft/Curse of Strahd as a DM's Guild option. It was also probably my busiest month (I released probably 6-7 of my 9 $1.00 Ravenloft character options in March), too. As you can see in the data speed matters - after March, there's still a trickle of people buying RL stuff (people starting up the adventure late, probably), but it slows down significantly and rapidly. The other "small" spike is September, which is when SKT came out. I wasn't making SKT stuff, but my sales definitely had a bump that month.

This probably also has to do with WotC announcing interesting things happening at the DM's Guild. Like, if in 2017 we can now use Spelljammer material on DM's Guild because they're releasing a big mind flayer vs. gith adventure, I bet there will be a pretty big spike when that happens.

This presents me with an interesting plan of attack for 2017: releasing a flurry of quick products all in the first month, combined perhaps with a "compilation" product later down the line with a little novelty. That's definitely a formula that could work, given this data. It also means that anticipating WotC's moves is worthwhile: if you suspect they're going to do an Acerarak-in-Chult adventure, gear up everything you have that might have to do with liches, the Tomb of Horrors, jungles, etc., because when that drops, you'll want to strike already prepared, while people are visiting DM's Guild and taking a look at what's there.

I'm generally much more happy using products I feel others are using too.

I think this plays into the importance of reviews and comments, but it's definitely worth noting that my best-selling products don't have comments or reviews on them. Folks are using stuff and it works for them and they're not circling back to DM's Guild to describe their experiences, but not having those comments or reviews doesn't seem to stop a lot of people from picking up a product they think might be fun. The folks doing a lot of buying on DM's Guild are probably the folks one might describe as "early adopters" or at the "very open-minded" end of the customer bell curve. They're willing to experiment with an interesting idea, if it's cheap and easy. I'm sure other people help, but there seem to be more important considerations for most - by and large, the more "conservative" / "risk-averse" tables stay away from DM'sG or maybe dip in for old D&D stuff or AL stuff.

I have to agree, onebookshelf is pretty underdeveloped feature wise, and I'm not even a seller. I'd like to be able to sort purchases in to different libraries, and also be able to see more metadata about each product so I could search better.

I find DMs Guild to be a failure. There are too many products and it's too hard to find anything useful.

I think the searchability/user-friendliness/discoverability on DM's Guild is one of those things that they could improve that would lead to a better experience for everyone. Though I would say for me it's definitely not a failure (it succeeds at being a marketplace for my D&D ideas using D&D IP pretty nicely!), it certainly has a lot of room for improvement.

Hell, were I a better entrepreneur, I'd consider making a competing marketplace to OBS that's basically OBS with some usability improvements and eventually seeing if I could wheedle WotC into giving my marketplace the same deal that OBS has in time. But, there's probably not a lot of money in that - I don't imagine OBS is insanely profitable or anything.

 

[aco175]

No reviews is a problem for me as well. I have 8 products on the site and only 2 or 3 have comments or any stars. I have them all listed as PWYW and was not thinking that this was something I was going to make any real money at from the start. I was surprised that some of the older ones still sell and at what any of them sell for as any time. I try to give a large preview even though they are free and keep the graphics low to be printer friendly.

Overall maybe 1% of downloads are actual sales. I'm not sure if or how much sales would change if I went from PWYW to just a 1.00$. Some of the actual sales are 1 penny, which I think are more to go to the total sales of the product as free sales do not count for metal sales. I even had a few sales much higher than the suggested 1.00, being 5.00-7.00 for a product. Total profit from last year was around $120.00. from around 120 pages worth of material.

I see myself continuing to post adventures this year and would think that about the same would happen, or sales of past modules would bump the total sales for the year. I still enjoy the process and use what I write in my home game first, so I do not see that much wasted on my end.

 

[Remathilis]

I find the DMsG for me (as a buyer) has been hit-or-miss. I find its good when, Like IaaB said, it ties into the AP or storyline OR covers something in greater detail that WotC would (for example, Monsters of Ravenloft). That said, there is a lot of chaff product and its hard to always find the wheat.

I think its ironic that, effectively, WotC gave the fans the keys to produce whatever content they felt they weren't but we wanted. And with this newfound freedom, we IMMEDIATELY fell into the same products that glutted the d20 market in 2001; PC options, new monsters, and low-level adventures. The community of the DMsG could be using it fill in the gaps with things like level 15+ content, A decent psionics system (without the mystic baggage) or sourcebooks detailing a topic in greater detail. (the Ravenloft Adventurer's Guide is the closest I've seen to a full-fledged sourcebook on DMsG). I'm guess the former is dominant because the latter is harder and more time consuming to produce.

It'd also be nice if WotC continued to supply additional content for content providers to use; some supplement art packs and (especially) map packs (or even a simple 2d mapping program) and access to additional settings (FR and RL is nice, but WotC should at least open up a few of the settings that aren't going to get support anytime soon, like Mystara or Birthright).