|
Post by jeffgeorge on May 11, 2017 14:17:36 GMT -9
I'm just about ready to submit my first two releases to OBS/Drive-Thru/RPGNow. I've read the brief overview on the site, but I haven't started to sign up for a publisher account yet. Does anyone have any advice for dealing with them? I can certainly read and follow their directions, but is there anything I should know that isn't stated explicitly? Difficulties I should anticipate, or hurdles to be cleared, for example? Any guidance would be very much appreciated.
Specifically, I am curious about PayPal vs. payment by check. I've never really dealt much with PayPal, and don't have an active account, but I realize that checks are very last-century. Anyone have any particular comments about one vs. the other?
|
|
|
Post by glennwilliams on May 12, 2017 7:16:23 GMT -9
1) I'd recommend going with them exclusively as it gets you a few (modest) perks. 2) Expect your first couple of products to be delayed after you upload them, as they review a noob's work before allowing it on the sites. 3) Sites: don't forget it's a suite of sites. 4) Use Paypal. I check things daily and on the first, I just roll the month's sales into PayPal--easy and near instantaneous. 5) Difficulties: the entire new product set up can be convoluted, so always check to see if your product not only uploaded, but went active. 6) Marketing: don't forget. I do...frequently.
Good luck and have fun with it.
|
|
|
Post by jeffgeorge on May 12, 2017 11:18:23 GMT -9
1) I'd recommend going with them exclusively as it gets you a few (modest) perks. 2) Expect your first couple of products to be delayed after you upload them, as they review a noob's work before allowing it on the sites. 3) Sites: don't forget it's a suite of sites. 4) Use Paypal. I check things daily and on the first, I just roll the month's sales into PayPal--easy and near instantaneous. 5) Difficulties: the entire new product set up can be convoluted, so always check to see if your product not only uploaded, but went active. 6) Marketing: don't forget. I do...frequently. Good luck and have fun with it. Thanks for the guidance. If you have them pay you through PayPal, how hard is it to extract your money from your PayPal account? (I realize that for a long time--possibly forever--there won't be enough money to worry about, but a guy can dream...)
|
|
|
Post by chiefasaur on May 12, 2017 11:30:15 GMT -9
I believe you need a minimum of $50 earned on OBS before you can transfer it to PayPal.
|
|
|
Post by Vermin King on May 12, 2017 13:01:15 GMT -9
Is there a way to set it up for Store Credit? Frankly, if I put any of my stuff up, I'd just hope to make enough to cover my OBS habit...
|
|
|
Post by jeffgeorge on May 12, 2017 13:14:39 GMT -9
I believe you need a minimum of $50 earned on OBS before you can transfer it to PayPal. OK, that's not surprising. In the instructions for setting up an account, it says that if your monthly sales are less than $100, OBS can choose to roll the revenues over to the next month for payment. I infer that to mean that you don't get paid at all until they owe you at least $100. So I guess I was really asking a PayPal question, more than an OBS question. If you have a positive balance in a PayPal account, can you cash that out in some way, or transfer it to a bank account electronically?
|
|
|
Post by chiefasaur on May 12, 2017 13:17:19 GMT -9
Yeah dude, paypal links to your bank account
|
|
|
Post by jeffgeorge on May 12, 2017 14:27:35 GMT -9
Yeah dude, paypal links to your bank account OK, thanks. I just never had a need to deal with PayPal before--always just used our bank debit card when shopping online.
|
|
|
Post by bravesirkevin on May 12, 2017 16:56:39 GMT -9
I believe you need a minimum of $50 earned on OBS before you can transfer it to PayPal. There are three payment methods to choose from. You can be paid monthly by cheque or PayPal if you have the required minimum in your earnings on closing day, but the third option is to directly transfer money to PayPal at any time. For the third option, you can choose exactly how much to pay out. Doing this costs $1.
|
|
|
Post by bravesirkevin on May 12, 2017 17:33:30 GMT -9
I think Glenn covered most of the important stuff, but just to elaborate on the marketing point: OBS has facilities to assist you in marketing, and they give you an allowance of Promo Points that you can spend on the marketing as you wish. You'll get 10 a month, plus 1 for every $10 in sales you got in the previous month. You can use those to buy banner ads, an ad in the featured product section or to send promo mails to customers that have your products in their wishlists. You can generally send customers emails for free though, as long as you're not specifically targeting those who already have the stuff in their carts or wishlists, and this will become the most effective advertising you have later on down the line, once you have a few thousand customers under your belt... (You won't get thousands easily though, but you can get several hundred without too much difficulty if you do a free product from time to time.) Banner Ads and Featured Product placement work on a supply and demand system. If no one else is running banner ads, you can usually get 20000 impressions for 1 PP. From that, you'll probably get about 100 clicks to your product, and perhaps get 1 or 2 sales from that. It's very rare to find Banner Ads going that cheap however. They typically go for around 7PP on RPGnow and Wargame Vault, and 11PP on DriveThruRPG. Featured Product can cost around 40PP and in my experience, the conversion rate was about the same as the banners, so I feel like the banners are much better value. When you post a new product, there's an option to send out free copies to featured reviewers. It is worth doing that for your first few products, because it's probable that at least one of them will write about it somewhere where it will be seen. To really get the sales going though, you need get outside of the OBS site and promote the hell out of your products on forums and social media. That's a thankless task and the chances are that your carefully crafted press releases will mostly be ignored until you've built up a significant enough fanbase. You've managed to do that over here, so this place will likely serve you up a few customers, but don't neglect the others and rely entirely on the CW crowd, because there really aren't too many of us here, unfortunately. On the social media front, I've had some luck with Facebook. Less so with twitter. I'm told Tumblr and Instagram do very well, but I've been a little too busy to try them out yet. Reddit gives me a lot of business, but only when someone else posts about me... Self promoting is something you don't get away with there unless you're already super popular. You'll also want to find people to collaborate with. That's tricky as hell, especially when you're just starting out and don't have much to offer, but doing so will make the other collaborator's audience aware of you, and that's a good way to build your fanbase. Finally, just keep your expectations low. Very low. I don't think you that imagine you'll be making more than pocket money from it, but to be frank, unless you get really lucky, you probably won't even be making enough to buy a weekly Big Mac until you've gotten at least 3 or 4 sets out and have got the beginnings of a loyal fanbase. Making more than $100 a month is something that very few designers on OBS are managing to do right now. Making more than $300 a month is a herculean feat, (but one that is possible if you work hard for it and get very, very lucky). Is there a way to set it up for Store Credit? Frankly, if I put any of my stuff up, I'd just hope to make enough to cover my OBS habit... There's no need for that. OBS lets you pay any invoice from your publisher earnings, but you can simply transfer to Store Credit if you wish to allocate all your funds to that instead of being paid out at the end of the month.
|
|
|
Post by jeffgeorge on May 12, 2017 17:55:01 GMT -9
Wow, that's a fantastic package of advice and experience, bravesirkevin. I'm not expecting to get rich off of this; it would be nice if I managed to cover my hobby expenses, but mostly I'd just like to get other people getting value and enjoyment out of the stuff I make. And I'm partly doing it to learn about online marketing and sales in general, and doing it in an area where I have at least a little bit of subject matter expertise. Of course, it would be fabulous if it was actually profitable some day on an hourly basis, but I totally understand that to be a sky-high longshot. Thanks to everyone who's contributed their guidance in this thread!
|
|
|
Post by nolabert on May 13, 2017 5:04:08 GMT -9
How many sales does it take to get one of the bestseller designations though OBS? And have any of the publishers here at CW sold that many? I buy products from publishers at their own websites if they have them instead of OBS because I'm thinking they'll make more profit that way, like bravesirkevin and Brave Adventures.
|
|
|
Post by bravesirkevin on May 13, 2017 12:27:17 GMT -9
How many sales does it take to get one of the bestseller designations though OBS? And have any of the publishers here at CW sold that many? I buy products from publishers at their own websites if they have them instead of OBS because I'm thinking they'll make more profit that way, like bravesirkevin and Brave Adventures. Hard to say exactly how many sales it requires because I think it's based on a complex algorithm that compares performance and their method is a little opaque. My dungeon furniture set is a Silver best seller, I have no copper or gold best sellers though. Other publishers here definitely do have copper and silver sets out there. It's hard to say whether that designation actually helps sales much, because the truth of the matter is that the set already had to be pretty popular to get up to that status, and the x-factor that made it so popular in first place probably has far more impact on it's continuing popularity than the badge at the top of page does.
|
|
|
Post by nolabert on May 17, 2017 7:12:45 GMT -9
Thanks for the info bravesirkevin! For me, two things help me seal the deal on a OBS purchase if I'm hesitant: a full preview primarily and reviews secondarily. The bestseller designation adds to positive reviews, although I sometimes don't even notice it because it's in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
|
|
|
Post by bravesirkevin on May 17, 2017 13:45:12 GMT -9
Thanks for the info bravesirkevin! For me, two things help me seal the deal on a OBS purchase if I'm hesitant: a full preview primarily and reviews secondarily. The bestseller designation adds to positive reviews, although I sometimes don't even notice it because it's in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Full preview is quite a tricky one. I'd probably use it if I was selling a book or magazine, but with papercraft stuff, it's tough to give enough of a preview without giving the whole thing away, so I just do free stuff to get people interested in what I'm doing. That's a good point about the reviews. Hope you leave reviews on the products you like to help the publishers out a bit.
|
|
|
Post by squirmydad on May 17, 2017 16:27:44 GMT -9
For a model preview I use the instructions in that slot. That way potential customers can see the potential difficulty of the build as well as some final build pictures.
|
|
|
Post by bravesirkevin on May 17, 2017 17:56:08 GMT -9
For a model preview I use the instructions in that slot. That way potential customers can see the potential difficulty of the build as well as some final build pictures. That's a pretty smart idea. I'd never considered that!
|
|
|
Post by sunraven01 on May 18, 2017 1:23:48 GMT -9
As a customer, I find it extremely frustrating when mini packs are sold that don't have a preview of all the minis. I might be shopping for one specific model for an encounter, and you might be selling it, but because I can't see what it looks like, I'll never buy the pack it's in.
|
|
|
Post by bravesirkevin on May 18, 2017 2:35:06 GMT -9
As a customer, I find it extremely frustrating when mini packs are sold that don't have a preview of all the minis. I might be shopping for one specific model for an encounter, and you might be selling it, but because I can't see what it looks like, I'll never buy the pack it's in. What would qualify as a preview though? Would a product shot not be enough?
|
|
|
Post by sunraven01 on May 18, 2017 2:54:13 GMT -9
If it includes all the minis, sure. But I want to see everything I'm buying. Here's an example: I wanted to make a mousling war band for Frostgrave. The best option for me in paper minis was Okumarts Mice and Rats sets. You can't see every mini in the sets, which is why I didn't find out until After I had bought them that there's no female spell casting mouse with fancy staves like the male mice. There is a female with a staff, but she's very plain. As it happens, my Frostgrave wizard is female. www.wargamevault.com/product/153741/Darkfast-Dungeons-Mice--RatsThis shows five of the twenty-one models in the set. If I could have previewed the whole set, I would have known this ahead of time. Finding out after I had already paid for the set just whized me off. Like, really whized me off.
|
|
|
Post by nolabert on May 18, 2017 3:31:31 GMT -9
sunraven01 I bought the same Okumarts sets and did some sleuthing to find photos of the sets. He had more pics on his Tumblr account. For me I was more interested in the rats than the mice (not sure that I have a need for the mice but who knows what the future holds?). I'm very forgiving with buying sets. If there is at least one good mini, I'm usually ok with still buying the set since one set from Okumarts cost the same or less than a single metal or plastic mini. I do agree that a quick preview would be a help with these sets without the concern that someone could just steal the minis from the preview (publishers who give full previews usually cover the minis with watermarks tho)
|
|
|
Post by WargamePrint on May 18, 2017 3:36:43 GMT -9
I have not any problems, jeffgeorge. It's good system. I use it 3 years alredy.
|
|
|
Post by okumarts on May 18, 2017 4:13:16 GMT -9
If it includes all the minis, sure. But I want to see everything I'm buying. Here's an example: I wanted to make a mousling war band for Frostgrave. The best option for me in paper minis was Okumarts Mice and Rats sets. You can't see every mini in the sets, which is why I didn't find out until After I had bought them that there's no female spell casting mouse with fancy staves like the male mice. There is a female with a staff, but she's very plain. As it happens, my Frostgrave wizard is female. www.wargamevault.com/product/153741/Darkfast-Dungeons-Mice--RatsThis shows five of the twenty-one models in the set. If I could have previewed the whole set, I would have known this ahead of time. Finding out after I had already paid for the set just whized me off. Like, really whized me off. Sunraven, I see what you are on about now. I will aim to include a fancy staved female magic using mouse for you later today!
|
|
|
Post by bravesirkevin on May 18, 2017 4:18:34 GMT -9
If it includes all the minis, sure. But I want to see everything I'm buying. Here's an example: I wanted to make a mousling war band for Frostgrave. The best option for me in paper minis was Okumarts Mice and Rats sets. You can't see every mini in the sets, which is why I didn't find out until After I had bought them that there's no female spell casting mouse with fancy staves like the male mice. There is a female with a staff, but she's very plain. As it happens, my Frostgrave wizard is female. www.wargamevault.com/product/153741/Darkfast-Dungeons-Mice--RatsThis shows five of the twenty-one models in the set. If I could have previewed the whole set, I would have known this ahead of time. Finding out after I had already paid for the set just whized me off. Like, really whized me off. I don't disagree with your sentiment here, but it's not always possible to show every single miniature on offer in a large set. Depending on how you measure it, each of my Brotherhood sets contains over half a billion unique minis as a result of the customisation options. In that case it's mostly minor variations to the costume and ton of colour options. I use this simple gif to show off a very tiny fraction of the millions of possibilities available for just one of the six figures in the set as a preview. Obviously, that's just a particularly extreme case, but even in a set that offers only a few dozen figures it could be tricky to show off every figure in the set. I"m curious about whether you'd be put off from purchasing such a set due to the lack of a fully detailed inventory of contents.
|
|
|
Post by sunraven01 on May 18, 2017 4:58:00 GMT -9
To keep with Dave's set as an example -- because it's a layered PDF that lets you change the color of some of the model clothing in I think four different options -- I don't need to see all 21 models in all five variations. (In other words, I don't need you to show me 105 models in a preview). But it would be nice to see all 21 models before I buy. I to know if I'm looking for a female mouse model using a bow, that this specific set has a female mouse model with a bow. And from the example I linked, I can't tell if this set has that. I don't even know if it has male bow-weilding mice. I can't tell if any of the mice in this set have bows at all. There's no information in the listing, and the cover graphic is limited.
Surely you can understand why expecting a customer to google to find an artist's Tumblr/Patreon/Twitter/Facebook/LiveJournal/other social media account, just to find out what's included in the set that they're buying, is not a good idea.
|
|
|
Post by glennwilliams on May 18, 2017 5:00:26 GMT -9
Drivethru does offer the publisher a pair of options for preview (besides the recently enlarged thumbnail). Both are page previews, so should solve your problem...as a publisher (except, of course for Kev's magnificent use of layers).
|
|
|
Post by okumarts on May 18, 2017 5:16:31 GMT -9
Hey Sunraven! Here is a mouse with a much fancier staff! I hope it's a good choice for your character!
|
|
|
Post by nolabert on May 18, 2017 7:23:06 GMT -9
Surely you can understand why expecting a customer to google to find an artist's Tumblr/Patreon/Twitter/Facebook/LiveJournal/other social media account, just to find out what's included in the set that they're buying, is not a good idea. sunraven01 I understand where you're coming from and I definitely agree that it would be better if Dave included all of the figures on the cover (I just looked at his other sets on OBS and he pretty much does that for all the other sets--why not these, I'm not sure, but maybe for aesthetic reasons when he created the cover). But we have an awesome community here, and I bet had either of us contacted him to see what all the figures were, he would have been forthcoming. Look how quickly he whipped up a figure for you in this forum today. Pretty damn awesome!
|
|
|
Post by nolabert on May 18, 2017 7:26:54 GMT -9
That's a good point about the reviews. Hope you leave reviews on the products you like to help the publishers out a bit. Following jeffgeorge I've been trying to make sure I leave reviews. I like to wait until after I've used the minis in a game so that I can say something more specific about the possible uses of the minis than they're just great. Also, what is the consensus about leaving reviews for products that you didn't buy at the OBS sites? Like I said before, I try to buy mini sets from the publisher's own webstore if they have them, because I'm assuming they make more money that way. I've bought all of Kev's from his own store except for the PWYW sets he puts up on OBS. Is it ok for me to leave a review if I didn't buy it at the OBS site?
|
|
|
Post by okumarts on May 18, 2017 7:37:28 GMT -9
Surely you can understand why expecting a customer to google to find an artist's Tumblr/Patreon/Twitter/Facebook/LiveJournal/other social media account, just to find out what's included in the set that they're buying, is not a good idea. sunraven01 I understand where you're coming from and I definitely agree that it would be better if Dave included all of the figures on the cover (I just looked at his other sets on OBS and he pretty much does that for all the other sets--why not these, I'm not sure, but maybe for aesthetic reasons when he created the cover). But we have an awesome community here, and I bet had either of us contacted him to see what all the figures were, he would have been forthcoming. Look how quickly he whipped up a figure for you in this forum today. Pretty damn awesome! I love feedback and never even gave it a second thought that all the minis were not posted. If I recall correctly I was going to post some photos of the set in action and got caught up in the next set and plumb forgot. Guess what I will be doing this week?
|
|