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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rpghost" data-source="post: 1300187" data-attributes="member: 2834">Chris (posterboy) is right... though our product_id is at about 2330 right now, there are a little under 2000 active products at RPGNow. You'll have to dig through some old posts to see product counts from earlier this year, I'm sure I posted them.Just an FYI - gross sales at RPGNow have doubled in 2003 over 2002.Out of print product DOES bring new customers to RPGNow. Guardians of Order is a good example of that. Same with Pinnicle Ent. ... they both have large followings of people now heading our way thanks to their mailing lists and such.As for new products being added to RPGNow more quickly then before, here is a count for all of 2003:MONTH/COUNT01 62 02 60 03 64 04 57 05 85 06 52 07 67 08 67 09 60 10 76 11 77 12 68 As you can see there are some spikes and some lows, but over all pretty steady at about 60-70 new products a month. That does make for 3+ a day. Yikes. Where as in 2002 it was more like 20-30 a month.Sales volume ($) have kind of been flat the last quarter of 2003 though and that bugs me. We were growing pretty steady before then. I hope to get that back on track - maybe it was the fact that my attentions where focused elsewhere (opening the new Game Universe store <a href="http://www.Game-Universe.com" target="_blank">http://www.Game-Universe.com</a> ) and the hacker attack didn't help. Plus Xmas tends to be a time to give OTHERS a gift and PDF's are not very givable, so we don't see much of a spike for holidays like that.Actually, just recently I placed our vistor tracking code into all pages instead of just the front page. What did I see? Our daily unique vistor count went from around 950 to over 3200. That means that a significant (over 2/3rds of our traffic) is already viewing sub-pages as their first page. This means that people are following links to products or categories or publisher pages on RPGNow more then they are just going to the front page of RPGNow. Granted that for many of them the second page they hit may well be the front page. Still, the point that the front page exposure is the holy grail at RPGNow has isn't as much truth as you may think. It may just be that sales for any one product are lower now since you are sharing the pie with so many other products. It also could simply mean we have a lot of regular shoppers that buy stuff the first week they come out. That can just be a simple point of fact and have nothing to do with front page exposure. News and review sites are going to play a much higher part in sales of PDFs in the future. Too many publishers rely on RPGNow to promote their product. You need to get out there and promote/sell your own products and stop relying on RPGNow's front page as your marketing plan.I have to totally agree with Chris here. Less space for product highlight and more highlighting of the actual sub-categories would get people into a list of thumbnails that would be a much more specific interest to them.One other option would be to allow a user to choose a couple categories they'd want to see on the front page. But the problem with that is that RPGNow doesn't auto-login anyone. So you'd have to login and then return to the front page. Probably wouldn't work.So what's wrong with the Downloader Monthly we put out? What can we do to make it better? Gain exposure? The point of the magazine was to help people spot the gems in the pond. Is it not serving you in that regard? If not, we need to change gears.What does 2004 hold for RPGNow? I have no crystal ball but I see product releases continuing at a steady/strong pace. I see $ volume being spent growing slower then we'd like to see (eg slower then the amount of new products to spend it on) but still steady. I see more enhancements to RPGNow to keep us miles ahead of the eventual competition. I see more sales of backlisted products then anyone will expect and thus happy steady income for those who've been in this for the long haul. I see more out of print products from many more well known publishers hitting RPGNow which will help increase our customer base.Best of luck to everyone and enjoy the new year!James Mathe<a href="http://www.RPGNow.com" target="_blank">http://www.RPGNow.com</a></blockquote>

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