What kind of Sales can you expect from PDF?

[Twin Rose]

Campaign Suite sales were a little above average on our main web site, but below average on RPGNow. This was also our first month on SVGames, and we have a lot of customers ordering CDs in anticipation of the coming CD release in February. I'm not sure what - if anything - it all means.

 

[Krug]

BTW, RPGhost, you might wanna set a minimum price difference for your specials, as well as a time limit. There's a publisher that has a 3 cent discount on one of their products.

Pretty annoying, especially if it crowds out those publishers who are having real discounts on their products.

 

[rpghost]

Thanks for the notice. I'll look into that. I agree, that's unfair.

James

 

[BMF]

I don't understand this and why people are thinking there would be a Xmas rush. Quite the opposite is what I expect. People are with famaly and not online much. Sales are down on all our sites. Then RPGNow only sells electronic products - who's going to buy one to "give" as a gift? No one. It's a personal purchase. So you're not going to see any rush in sales for gifts- sure people might spend their Xmas money online - but cash that people usually get at holidays goes to rash purchases at the game store in town, not a charge online.

I noticed this last year. I agree that it is pretty common sense that sales of PDF books will go down around Christmass time.

However, I just thought that gift certificates might be a way to combat the "christmas slump." Amazon provides a service like this, with electronic gift certificates. It could incent role players to send their friends and family to RPGnow to buy them gift certificates for the holidays. I don't know anything about how to impliment such as thing, its just a thought.

 

[rpghost]

However, I just thought that gift certificates might be a way to combat the "christmas slump."

It's on my TO DO list for both RPGShop.com and RPGNow.com but it's a lot of programming headaches.

James

 

[rpghost]

Couple people nagged me about some features, so I finally implemented them on RPGNow and RPGShop:

- Added an Advanced Search link. You can now search and exclude certain things from your browsing. I did what I can, there are "issues" to getting the d20 fiters right.

- Impletmented a continue shopping link I've wanted to do that
for a year now but you finally figured it out. No longer do you have to start back at the top after you put something into your shopping cart.

- Sub-Category displays. You can now see sub-categories off the main menu. I did this for RPGShop too, but it was just too much of a resource hog so I took it back off - it's only on RPGNow right now. We're looking at getting a another server soon so maybe it'll be on rpgshop then.

- The order completion screen (currently credit card only customers) now displays the links to your product downloads right away. No need to wait for the email to wonder through the internet ether.

Let me know what you think. As always, if you can think of a way to make things easier or better or just have a problem, let us know or we can't address it!

James

 

[Monte At Home]

James,

Regarding the subcategories, what's the difference between d20 rule books and d20 sourcebooks?

 

[rpghost]

Regarding the subcategories, what's the difference between d20 rule books and d20 sourcebooks?

I think the original idea was that RULE books are those that have new game design/style of play (like changing the way magic works). Sourcebooks were for addons to the typical way to play (like a bunch of monsters or items).

I'm not sure now that you mention it if that's really helpful or not... maybe they should be combined. The reason we split them into many sub-groups was that people were complaining their products where not geting any exposure in a list of 50 d20 fantasy products.

As allways, I'm certainly open to suggestions.

James

 

[frobnic8]

So if I can get that to 3 items per order average that would be great news for everyone. But how?

I don't know how out of date this issue is for you, but if it would save you X% on average if there were three items in each order instead of two, then why not offer a X/2% discount for orders of three items or more.

You might have to tweak the numbers to work for you, but offering a discount (that still leaves you with a net profit) to encourage the desired behavior seems like a good place to start.

 

[HellHound]

However, the numbers in the PDF industry have changed a LOT since 2003 - now with the plethora of low-price products, you can no longer calculate how profitable it will be for James based on number of products in a sale, instead it woud have to be measured by dollar value. In the case of $5 products (the old baseline), 3 products meant $15 sales, so that would be the measure now.