RPGNow Dungeon Ad #114 Inquiries

[fanboy2000]

If nothing else, the print ad made some vendors at DTRPG a bit snarky cause they had promised a lot of promotion and here came GenCon and they did little and we had a 3 page ad

Anyway, yes, please send me suggestions of sites, even if they are RPG releated.

James

This is just guess work, I don't have any data to back it up, but you should try banner ads at userfriendly.org. It's a web comic about the open source movement. I've seen a lot of cross over between computer geeks and RPG gamers, not just video gamers. The ads there seem to be mostly tech jobs and business to business advertising, I bet that a good banner ad for an onlne RPG shop would get people's attention. Particularly sense it seems to be that power users and computer geeks would be the ones most likely to buy PDFs.

In that vain, I'd also sugest slashdot.org.

 

[philreed]

Phil, that's not what i tried to imply. What i tried to imply is that there are only a few good publishers on RPGnow. There's so much... 'crap' on there and that's drowning out the good stuff.

Okay, I had to ask. Your post made it sound as if there were no good publishers on RPGNow. I like to think we're working hard and have made Ronin Arts a good publisher.

 

[Cergorach]

Okay, I had to ask. Your post made it sound as if there were no good publishers on RPGNow. I like to think we're working hard and have made Ronin Arts a good publisher.

Ronin Arts is one of those few phil, don't worry ;-)
You deliver quality stuff'from what i've seen (great art work as well, something a lot of pdf publisher lack). The only problem i have with the material you release is that there are so many releases, that makes finding what i like difficult at best. I personally prefer $5 purchases, making the purchase small enough to buy it on impulse, but meaty enough to make it interesting.

I'm looking forward to "A DM's Directory of Demiplanes", i expect it to be interesting.

ps. You might want to make your forum public, as i (and many with me) am not that happy when i need to register at a site when i want to view the forums or download something (that's the lurker in me speaking ;-)

 

[philreed]

I personally prefer $5 purchases, making the purchase small enough to buy it on impulse, but meaty enough to make it interesting.

You'll want to watch for Forbidden Arcana on the 1st of September, then. It's 176-pages long and packed with shorter PDFs that have been revised and expanded. Next up, for collections, is 24 "A Dozens . . . " PDFs. Trust me, we're working to give people what they want at the sizes they want.

I'm looking forward to "A DM's Directory of Demiplanes", i expect it to be interesting.

Thanks. We're having a lot of fun working on it. If I had to guess I'd say this will be between 96 and 128 pages.

ps. You might want to make your forum public, as i (and many with me) am not that happy when i need to register at a site when i want to view the forums or download something (that's the lurker in me speaking ;-)

I'll talk to my webmaster about it. My old website got overwhelmed with spam in the comments so I'm a bit paranoid about opening things these days. That site still gets 300+ spams posted to the comment fields every day.

 

[Prest0]

I'll talk to my webmaster about it. My old website got overwhelmed with spam in the comments so I'm a bit paranoid about opening things these days. That site still gets 300+ spams posted to the comment fields every day.

Phil, I don't know if PHP-Nuke will allow you to do it, but our forums (using vBulletin) are set such that unregistered visitors can view posts but must register in order to post themselves. That sounds like the compromise you're looking for.

 

[Cergorach]

Phil, I don't know if PHP-Nuke will allow you to do it, but our forums (using vBulletin) are set such that unregistered visitors can view posts but must register in order to post themselves. That sounds like the compromise you're looking for.

It depends on which version your using. I would also advice you to have a talk with your webmaster on the use of phpnuke. There are currently many people who point out that phpnuke is very unsecure, you might want to try a different cms, such as cpgnuke. (http://www.cpgnuke.org) It's effectively phpnuke, but with a faster and more secure engine. I'm currently also in the process of moving my site from phpnuke over to cpgnuke (is basically very easy).

 

[Jraynack]

Hey all,

Just checking back on the post I started - sales have been decent this month (close to our average - however significantly better then the previous two months).

As for advertising - I suggest legwork and word of mouth in order to get new customers into the .pdf groove. What I mean simply is cons. For small publishers to go to small cons is relatively affordable. I was surprised when I set up at MegaCon (Florida) that not many people were familiar with RPG .pdf products and were excited when I showed them the quality of our products (we printed out several products for display) and told them that they are four times cheaper. We are going to Dragon Con in Atlanta next weeked just to hand out some free stuff (so those of you who are going - look out for Alea Publishing Group T-shirted staff) and get people to go to our products page. We eventual want to set up an internet connection at cons so people can purchase right at our booths.

I don't know where the other publishers are (we're in Augusta, GA), however if we are close enough, we can chip in together for larger booths at local cons. Also, with Augusta, GA being a fairly large city (120,000+ and an army base nearby - Fort Gordon) we have talked about running a small con here (a.k.a the Augusta Con) as well as advertising in the local military papers. If you are able to get your local community around you that is sufficient with gamer's and you access those gamer's, they will support you.

Furthermore, RPG comics is another good place to advertise, which someone mentioned earlier. Advertising in Knights of the Dinner Table is relatively cheap (ranging from $50.00 for the back bulletin board page and up - it is black and white though).

We need to look beyond just the internet when drumming up bussiness.

Anyway, that's my two-cents.

 

[Chaos Drake]

For advertising, I'd suggest trying eBay's RPG section. Not sure if another vendor is permitted to advertise thought.
IMHO, the page that the RPGNow adds is slightly off-putting, and even the free PDF might throw new users off since it's a joke supplement. A short flash ad or writeup would have given a better idea of the products available, but that's just me.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

Just brain storming here:

Joe has a good point about the web page looking like the magazine add. Also, I've seen the Media Kit from Dragon Magazine. Like other magazines, it is cheaper to buy long term ad space than short term space.

So why not buy a smaller space (1 page or 1/2 page) over a long term and have it "link" to a discount sales page like you've done, but make that page resemble the print ad as much as possible.

also, you must ask yourself, who are we trying to recruit? Gamers who don't shop online, or online shoppers who don't game?

RPGnow distributes everything a person needs to play d20 as well as dozens of other games. Plus, RPGnow sells short stories and some software.

What about working the software angle more? Software is the future of RPGs, if you ask me.

Also, in terms of recruitment, it is my experience that the only people who buy stuff at RPGnow are fairly "hardcore" gamers. Perhaps 1 or 2 out of every group shops online (just a guess). The others are aware of it, and just don't do it.

Why?

Shopping online is a barrier.

However, people who already shop online might be easier to convert, especially if RPGnow offers a variety of games and software.

To that end, I'd look to advertising on places like the SCi-Fi channel web site. E-bay isn't a bad idea. AFAIK, retailers can sell on E-bay. I'm not much of an online gamer, but I'm sure there are communities for x-box type groups and I know I've seen plenty of EN-world type communities for various computer based war games.

Also, I haven't seen the dragon ad, but I know that there has been a discussion recently about the benefits of PDFs. I believe that most people don't buy them because they don't understand the value. In a discussion on the RPGnow boards, I made a list of these benefits of a PDF. Perhaps telling people in the ad exactly what the benefits of PDF s are, is a good idea.

BTW, the benefits of PDFs are:
1. Immediate Delivery. You can find it, buy it, and get it delivered to your hard drive without getting out of your chair.

2. Minimum Shelf Space. Even the biggest e-book files only consume a small fraction of space on your hard drive.

3. Functionality. E-books can be equipped with hyperlinks (both internal and external) that make finding certain material much quicker and easier than flipping pages in a printed book

4. Potential Updates. The E-book format is easily updated and revised, so when you buy one you usually also get all the subsequent upgrades and revisions for free.

5. Replaceable. If you buy from RPGnow, your file can be replaced if it gets lost or destroyed. Obviously, if a printed book gets lost or destroyed, you can't just contact the distributor to get another one.

6. Cut and Paste. It is easy to select certain sections of an e-book, cut them out, paste them into a word document and print them as a personalized, specialized, collection of material. Doing the same thing with a printed book would require an optical scanner or a lot of time typing.

7.Durability: Being an electronic document, it never suffers from wear-and-tear.

8 Price. Since e-book distribution cuts a lot of the overhead costs, an e-book can be sold at about half the price that the same book would cost in print format