Trying out a super-sale

[Morrus]

You might have something there... I recently integrated RPG.NET reviews into RPGShop... I'm sure we can do something simular with ENWorld reveiws. If you have a php function (url) that I can call passing a product title and have it return matches with links, I'll integrate it in under the onsite comments.

Umm .... errr .... don't think so! I wouldn't know how to start implementing something like that.

I still have to get a link up to your pdf site too. Just still don't know where it would fit best. Maybe the new front page is a good place for that. But I fear it being abused...

How so? I'm happy to work with you on this one.

My preference would be to get the newsfeed there. At present, there's no "editorial policy" - anything which a publisher submits is approved without editing (just a quick scan to make sure it's appropriate).

 

[rpghost]

This is absolutely correct. And RPGNow already penalizes its most successful vendors by charging more money for Gold service members who sell more books. This is completely backward. Those who generate more revenue should be rewarded, not penalized.

I certainly don't know where you get that figure from since at least our top five sellers at RPGNow are all non-gold vendors.

For what it's worth, roughly half of the total $ volume sold at RPGNow are from non-GOLD VENDORS.

James

 

[d20Dwarf]

I certainly don't know where you get that figure from since at least our top five sellers at RPGNow are all non-gold vendors.

For what it's worth, roughly half of the total $ volume sold at RPGNow are from non-GOLD VENDORS.

James

True, I should have presented it as a theoretical. Apparently those that do high volume are smart enough to understand the disadvantage of the current system.

May I ask if there's a reason why gold membership is structured the way it is? It seems like it would be more profitable to set it up as a fee, or at least cap the annual fee if it's going to be percentage based?

Incidentally, will you be at GAMA, James?

 

[rpghost]

My preference would be to get the newsfeed there. At present, there's no "editorial policy" - anything which a publisher submits is approved without editing (just a quick scan to make sure it's appropriate).

First Morrus, please don't take what I'm saying here as if it was ME saying it. I'm only bringing up some concerns that were brought to my attention (regardless of wether I believe them or believe there is any solution).

Second, the search function is rather simple. I can give you some PHP code that should pretty much work by you just changing some of the SQL around to match your tables/fields. Email me if you're interested and/or have someone on your end who can edit/install it. It's very much like our newsfeed.

Third, if you had editoral control over the news I'd have put it up as soon as you asked. You don't. Thus, no matter where I put the feed, people will go to your site and add news just to get it to show up on our site. This is ok for those who act responsibly. But I'm sure someone will start "abusing" it. Sure it won't sound like abuse if someone posts a news blurb EVERY DAY, but it is.

My main concerns about about frequency of posts by a single publisher, size of the post, number of offsite links (esp if they don't use a new window), formating of the news, etc... Besides all that, it's hard to find a good place to put the news. Again, maybe our new front page can be made into that place... maybe not.

And to play the devils advicate, if it's only publisher self supported, why don't I just make a news function for our members to use? We need some added value from the staff there I guess.

James

 

[rpghost]

May I ask if there's a reason why gold membership is structured the way it is? It seems like it would be more profitable to set it up as a fee, or at least cap the annual fee if it's going to be percentage based?

Incidentally, will you be at GAMA, James?

I had a talk on our forums about doing a pay-for-exposure on the front page concept. Wasn't really well recieved.

Anyway, GOLD VENDOR is meant for 2 people really. The first kind of person is a publisher with little resources to do much on their own in the way of managing their sales and customers or their marketing. GV lets publishers handle a lot of things that a bigger publisher might just do on their own. GV gives you a bit more exposure on the site when bigger publishers get more exposure on news sites by default.

Still, the REAL reason for GOLD VENDOR is that 20% really isn't enough $ for our company to grow with. It's maybe enough to survive on these days with the larger volumes, but still, it's not a healthy margin if you poeople expect us to be around for the long haul. So instead of just upping the % for everyone, I did the thing that would cause least resistance. Started adding new cool features that cost more to use. Thus since 50% of our revenue is now generated by GV, that means our net margin is more like 22.5% which is a bit healther. Still it's not easy, which is probably why there hasn't been a lot of competition. I'm a programmer and self-employeed so I do a lot of the work and thus costs are very low. Any large company having to pay full time staff would have a hard time with these margins.

A startup fee or monthly/annual fee is very hard for the upstarts to pay. It would undoubtably have caused many companies not to bother to try. But then again, with the glut of new products maybe we should make it a $19.95 manditor purchase of the e-publisher guide to join

As for the GTS... we plan to have RPGNow there in a big way hitting up a lot of the vendors. Regretfully, my new son and my new store are going to keep me from going there this year. But there will be staff there. We'll be using RPG Objects' booth as a home base to check in now and then.

James

 

[d20Dwarf]

A startup fee or monthly/annual fee is very hard for the upstarts to pay. It would undoubtably have caused many companies not to bother to try. But then again, with the glut of new products maybe we should make it a $19.95 manditor purchase of the e-publisher guide to join

You smile, but *some* barrier to entry might be of real benefit in the long term. Having a million products doesn't necessarily benefit RPG Now or its customers, and having the wide variety of quality (which can be measured objectively, people) hurts consumer confidence in both the short and the long term. It might cause existing customers to completely "silo" (to use Dancey's terminology) their buying and browsing habits to a few select publishers. We see this with print products as well, but that's a different story. The bigger problem, though, is the impediment this represents to attracting new customers, both those who are savvy online and use pdfs as well as those who aren't familiar with the medium.

As for the GTS... we plan to have RPGNow there in a big way hitting up a lot of the vendors. Regretfully, my new son and my new store are going to keep me from going there this year. But there will be staff there. We'll be using RPG Objects' booth as a home base to check in now and then.

James

Ok, I've already planned to talk with Gareth at GAMA, I just wondered if I would be meeting you as well.

 

[jgbrowning]

While I appreciate the sales and people coming to the store... i've been getting complaints that this sale is really screwing up the top lists. In short, we currently rank based on Quantity sold. But if someone massivly discounts like this they end up dominating the top lists. This is unfair. I'm not saying this was the intent of the sale, but it's happened before with other companies.

James

I've watched MMS:WE dive from 4th to 20th and I'm happy. Happy? Yeah, happy. I've gotten about double the normal sales since this has been going on. I'll gladly be 20th for double the sales.

From the customer's view, the sale is great! I think the sale should be showcased on the front page of rpgnow.com so everyone clicking on the main page gets a head-up on the sale. That way, the customer immediately knows about the sale, and even a brand-new customer who's not familiar with the site knows of the sale.

This suggestion may upset some publishers, but lets not fool ourselves guys, most of us are not a EN Publishing, a Malhavoc, a Ronin Arts, or a Microtactix. When these guys do a sale on their entire line (or the majority of their line) we all benefit. I see no reason why James shouldn't use a big sale like this as advertising, similiar to how he advertises accessibility to the old TSR products or GM's Day Sale. Throw this baby on the front page! Double my sales!

However, list concerns do have some valid points. Obviously a sale such as this is an abberation, and the numbers selling are abberation. From this viewpoint the hot list is not working. The list is supposed to provide the customer information on what product is "hot." All of EN's stuff is only hot right now because it's being effectively devalued around 80%. This skews the hot list because without the devaluation, other product would be "hot." Since the list is only a units sold measurement, someone trying to use the lists to get an idea of what people are buying the most of isn't getting the best information.

I can only see one solution to this problem that should *cross fingers* be equitable to everyone, but requires changes to the program.

Do the "hot" list rankings based upon the original, non-special, non-sale price (ie. the number in black color). For MMS:WE that would be $10. If i put my PDF up for 1/2 price, i have to sell two to equal one sale for the "hot" list rankings.

Even this has its problems (the EN sale would still skew it, but by about 80% less) and should both please the customer who getting a "less biased" view of what's "hot" and please the manufacturors for the same reason. But it would also stop "faulty pricing" on products from the get go. I've seen some PDFs go on "special" on their release date.

Personally, I love this sale and would welcome other big PDF companies to do the same thing. I'd love james to plug the sale on the front page and try to get even more benefit from it. I think this simple change to the hot listing would help rectify some of the negative impacts manufacturers see. It's a way of using both cooperation and competition to drive sales for everyone.

joe b.

 

[jgbrowning]

Incidentally, this sale has had little effect on the long term bestseller lists - those move very slowy over periods of months, not days. This is ony affecting the recent top sellers list, and is therefore very temporary in its effect. Give it a few weeks, and you'll never know that the sale had happened!

I disagree. The sale has a very large effect on bestseller lists. Not the hot sellers, they'll be gone in 20 days, but the bestsellers.

For example, EoM has just sold 70+ copies and that will take me two months to surpass (for the second time ) if my sale remain steady with the past three month's sales.

For a product that's not selling as well as MMS:WE, it could take a lot longer, or it could never happen. The bestseller list before you started and after the sales over will be very different. I think you're underestimating your effect.

But my credit card thanks you for the sale......

joe b.

 

[Morrus]

First Morrus, please don't take what I'm saying here as if it was ME saying it. I'm only bringing up some concerns that were brought to my attention (regardless of wether I believe them or believe there is any solution).

S'OK, James. .

Second, the search function is rather simple. I can give you some PHP code that should pretty much work by you just changing some of the SQL around to match your tables/fields. Email me if you're interested and/or have someone on your end who can edit/install it. It's very much like our newsfeed.

OK, we can talk about this for sure. I'm a little worried about the effect on my server though - I can't feed the reviews to my own front page because it crashes MYSQL every time.

Third, if you had editoral control over the news I'd have put it up as soon as you asked. You don't. Thus, no matter where I put the feed, people will go to your site and add news just to get it to show up on our site. This is ok for those who act responsibly. But I'm sure someone will start "abusing" it. Sure it won't sound like abuse if someone posts a news blurb EVERY DAY, but it is.

My main concerns about about frequency of posts by a single publisher, size of the post, number of offsite links (esp if they don't use a new window), formating of the news, etc... Besides all that, it's hard to find a good place to put the news. Again, maybe our new front page can be made into that place... maybe not.

And to play the devils advicate, if it's only publisher self supported, why don't I just make a news function for our members to use? We need some added value from the staff there I guess.

Yup, I see your point. I think we have room to work on this, though. I don't mind stepping up the control over the site for a good reason like this.

The way the feed works is you get the title of each article only (which we can make sure always looks tidy and consistent with some judicious editing), and clicking on it takes the reader to the article in question at the PDF site. I could add something so that there's an obvious link back to RPGNow from the site.

Off-site linking - you mean where publishers link to their own site instead of RPGNow? That we can fix with a simple policy for submissions.

You know, I'd suggest dropping one or both of your top lists from the front page (as time goes by, they are becoming less and less useful anyway - that's a natural byproduct of your rapidly expanding business, and I don't think you can do anything about it - thus this entire conversation); that leaves you plenty of room to add other exciting stuff! Keep the lists available by a link. RPGNow should load faster like that, too.

 

[SkeletonKey Ed]

My only concern about using ENworld's reviews as a source of a product's "quality" would be that ENworld only reviews d20 products. RPGnow sells much more than just d20.

There may be a way that customer comments on RPGnow could be used to generate a list but even that could be tampered with.

I'm just thinking out loud.

Cheers -

Ed Bourelle
SkeletonKey Games