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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark" data-source="post: 1592513" data-attributes="member: 5">I don't agree that you are making a reasonable assumption, and we can both spin the theoretical numbers a multitude of ways, but you leave out factors that are very important.To a point, I do agree that you are on the right track but when you consider that most of those 300,000 (by your figures) are WotC-only purchasers then the field of potential OGL-material customers thins considerably.  If we figure one-in-six will venture beyond (or even hear about) non-WotC materials, then we're down to a more reasonable (IMO) OGL market of 50,000 potential consumers for any given OGL product.As to the 5,000 users that you figure into your calculations, if we even assume that half of the estimated lurker base of 10,000 can be added to the actual user base from EN World as potential OGL-material customers, we're at 10,000 of that previously mentioned 50,000.  Frankly, half feels a bit conservative to me as potential OGL-material customers, becuase for most of them gaining that information is exactly why they are here lurking at EN World, and ergo makes them potential OGL-material customers.  And this only uses EN World's numbers, so it doesn't take into account other message board communities, but I'd have to guess that for potential OGL-material customers EN World is likely the primary watering hole.As possible annecdotal evidence to support my theory, if a print release is managing to sell out a run of 2,000 units and a PDF release manages to sell 200 copies (even after the supposed monstrous hurdle of not being a print product) then are they not capturing about ten percent of the same market that was captured by the print publisher?  We could get into the debate of how many of those 2,000 units wind up as gratis copies to contest winners, reviewers, other publishers (in trade for other products), and how many are still collecting dust on gamestore shelves and in discount bins (all of which do not afflict the PDF product), but let's leave that aside for now.Furthermore, does a release from a publisher who produces both a print and PDF version of the same product manage to sell more than ten times as many of the print version (ignoring for a moment that the print version sales include a number of customers who buy both)?Again, I'd be very surprised if EN World users, lurkers, and those they influence didn't make up somewhere in the vicinity of 10% to 20% of potential OGL-material customers, and leaning toward the latter.  I think OGL-material print publishers who feel otherwise are vastly under-rating the potential OGL-material customer base as represented not only here at EN World but throughout the Internet community.  Granted an OGL-material print publisher can probably do quite well for themself ignoring the theorized 20% if they can capture even 10% of the remaining 40,000 on a regular basis, but that's a different debate.Although you say that it depends on who you are trying to sell to, I'd have to counter that except for a limited number of break-out and introductory products, the main focus of sales and marketing needs to be on the existing OGL customer base, not the overall RPG customer base or even the WotC customer base.  That way lies madness because once you get beyond the existing potential OGL-material customer base, where do you reach a point of diminishing returns in your marketing?  Do you go after every DM that ever bought a 3.0 DMG?  Do you stop at every player who ever mentioned in passing that they might one day try out the DMing chair?  Again, this is different for breakout and those geared as introductory products.Your need to keep bringing everything back around to WotC numbers doesn't seem relevant other than as a basis for the initial potential numbers and I don't feel you cull those numbers down enough to properly bring them into perspective for the discussion at hand.  I feel you need to look at what can reasonably be expected to be considered a current OGL-material customers not just anyone who ever bought a WotC core book, or even those who might buy more in the WotC product lines.  Of course, I've been working from the assupmtion that the subject of the thread "Relation Between Message Board Visitors and Product Purchasers" was meant to reflect OGL-material customers since we're discussing this at EN World and the first post speaks to the scope inclusive of OGL-material publishers.  Perhaps I've missed the full breadth of the discussion by keying on the aspect?</blockquote>

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