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Post by WackyAnne on Oct 23, 2013 8:20:22 GMT -9
Hello All, This week sees the release of my first official contributions to the forum and the hobby, and while they are still amateurish, my work and skillsets are steadily improving. Originally I planned only to adapt various rulesets and props into something playable with my son, and then give back in some small way to the wonderful community here. However, the ideas won't stop coming, and I want one day to share my Picnic Adventures! with the world. My goal is to produce family-friendly adventures with print-to-play accessories, mainly RPG, but perhaps even skirmish or boardgame. I will be generating my own paper craft props as my skills improve, but I hope also to work with various Cardboard Warriors in partnership eventually. I've been buying various kid-friendly rulesets to try out with my son, doodling in a sketchbook, planning/designing in Excel, learning (in some cases re-learning) graphics program techniques, building up backstory, trying out fonts and layout, etc. Publications is long way off yet, but while I work on the story, ruleset, and props, I know I must also work out the business end of things. Fortunately I received some training during my time in art school, but I've many questions that are specific to papercraft and digital sales. I've done research (along with shopping, of course!) on One Bookshelf, Paizo.com, d20pfrsd's sale site, and blogs. While those pursuits give me an idea of what's out there already, how people package, price, and market their stuff, I've still lots to learn, and some very practical questions that I'll need help to answer. Here are just a couple of them: 1) Should I go with Picnic Adventures! as my publisher/business name, or reserve that specifically for the product line? I've another business name in mind that will allow me more flexibility to market items outside my main target audience, but the brand strength of PA I think would be stronger. 2) Those of you that publish on OneBookshelf sites, do you find the company good/easy to work with? Do you also sell elsewhere, or is it not worth the trouble? 3) What web presence do you find is the minimum, the optimum, and the maximum for you to best keep in contact with your customer? A branded email address, blog, forum, website, facebook, twitter, tumblr...? 4) Can you recommend a good, low-cost, easy-ish to maintain, scalable with business growth hosting service? My old one's expiration is imminent, so this is one question that's actually urgent Thanks for reading, and for any suggestions you can send back my way. You can also pm me, or email me at picnicadventures at gmail.com (new today), if you prefer. Take care, Anne
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Post by wyvern on Oct 24, 2013 4:47:17 GMT -9
Good luck, and from your Hallowe'en package this week, you've made a promising start!
Can't help on the technical/business queries, but on the naming front, I'd guess it depends what other ideas you might want to develop outside the family-game style of Picnic Adventures, and how important those are/could be for you. Plus it may partly depend on what you consider "family-friendly" to mean, and how far that can be stretched.
If your core interest is in the Picnic Adventures general style you've exhibited so far, I'd go with that as your main name, and perhaps develop other alternatives as/if you feel the need - if you wanted to branch out into something more photographically-detailed in style, say.
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Post by squirmydad on Oct 24, 2013 6:22:35 GMT -9
Perhaps "WackyAnne's Wonderlands" for a company name and save "Picnic Adventures" for a line name. That way your options for development remain wide open.
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Post by glennwilliams on Oct 24, 2013 7:08:40 GMT -9
Perhaps "WackyAnne's Wonderlands" for a company name and save "Picnic Adventures" for a line name. That way your options for development remain wide open. Agree with Squirmy here. I market through OneBookshelf. Exceptionally easy and good to work with. If you have a problem, their email response time is really good . . . and they actually address the problem you have. As to web presence, I maintain a website, but a blog or FaceBook page might be enough. Forums are a pain to maintain. I get many, many spam attempts every day (and need to update my forum software to help with that but keep procrastinating). I have found some customers do not like FaceBook, some do not like forums--but the business has to reach as many customers as possible. Do not ever underestimate marketing. It is so easy to get caught up in the fun stuff like design and texturing that I forget outreach is just as important. David Wears (Kiladecus here) has recently begun marketing his products, so we should draw him into this discussion as well.
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Oct 24, 2013 9:28:56 GMT -9
This is a great discussion! I would love to some day get involved in my own line of models, and this sounds like the logical route to go for a small timer. I've always been worried about having a negligible source of income that complicates my tax filings. How do things get reported? As a 1099-misc or something to be accounted for on a self-employment form? I'm still trying to get used to my wife running her own floral business...
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Post by WackyAnne on Oct 24, 2013 11:02:29 GMT -9
Actually, Kiladecus was the first one here I spoke to about it, when he was announcing his Family Edition of Deadly Missions I didn't want to step on any toes, especially as I'm a fan of him and his work. I love what he's been doing, collaborating with other publishers on here, something I'd like to do eventually myself. However, I think we'll be tackling difference audiences even for the family-friendly stuff, as I'll be aiming more at non-gamers to bring them into the hobby(-ies), while his-at least for now-is aimed at gamer families. Anyway, thanks for all the great advice! Keep it coming, as I'm sure I'm not the only one whose had questions or will in the future.
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Post by cowboyleland on Oct 24, 2013 15:08:43 GMT -9
I guess a lot of us dream of a trickle of money coming in from designing figures or models. I'll be watching this thread closely.
I'm especially hoping Pasiphilo will tell us how he thinks selling real stuff compares to virtual merchandise.
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Post by wyvern on Oct 25, 2013 0:31:07 GMT -9
I have found some customers do not like FaceBook, some do not like forums--but the business has to reach as many customers as possible. From a non-business perspective, but one where voluntary groups I've been active within have needed a similar online "marketing" strategy, the problems with both FaceBook and Forums for some people is clearly the having-to-sign-up process, with concerns about how secure any private data provided may be, particularly in relation to scare-stories in the media. Personally, I'm not a fan of FaceBook, as their sign-up process seemed unusually intrusive to me, plus I've also found free-public-access computers in UK libraries frequently have a block on systems like FB and Twitter. But that's just me! Certainly, maintaining an active online presence that's easy to access, and is regularly updated, is increasingly important regardless of whatever you're trying to "sell", even if that's just free information. And that's very time-comsuming, of course.
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Post by WackyAnne on Oct 25, 2013 3:35:25 GMT -9
I'm well experienced with that last. I created, updated, and maintained a couple of hobby sites "back in my youth", using lean, clean, mean code - pure, hand-coded HTML. On one such site I had over 100 pages. Boy was I ever glad when CSS became available, so I could make style and format changes in just a couple of files instead. But my time and interest faded after many years, and I got out of it just as blogs were getting in. I didn't see people getting to speak their mind at regular intervals for all the world to see to be a particularly useful development. The jury's still out on that one I've a month or more worth of blogging material on my in-limbo desktop (awaiting a bit of an overhaul by my techie husband on that machine), but until I settle on my brand identity, it can wait. So far Dungeon Mama's Beginning Gaming has been a way to dip my toes into blogging, but does take a lot of work to make the posting worthwhile, and I'd rather have it on hold-ish, and then go full bore when a plan's in place. Right now, my immediate concern is re-claiming my old business domain name from the cold, dead, hands of Yahoo! Myth Threads Studio (myththreads.com) was the name I went by to sell handwoven textiles and other fine craft in my art student days and afterwards, and probably wouldn't be too hard to adapt to fantasy gaming products. The domain's set to expire, but I already let my hosting expire with them (for many, many reasons, including the costly plan they were charging me for), and I can't find how to do it after hours of searching on their site, and in my old files. Today's the last day, and I'm about burnt out with trying. Alternatively, I could go with "Better Gnomes & Goblins", which both ties into the family-friendly/apparent domesticity of Picnic Adventures!, and gives me flexibility for a broader fantasy base. Oh, and backhandedly salutes a magazine and domestic hobbies that I enjoyed, particularly as a young wife To Sum Up: 1) Myth Threads Studio vs. Better Gnomes & Goblins.... go! 2) Decent domain registration/webhost company needed ASAP! P.S. old squirmydad "WackyAnne's Wonderlands" - I love the alliteration. So much so, that I had a similar-sounding, short-lived blog called "Anne in Wonderland" under my WackyAnne google account. But that was highly personal, and I tend to reserve the wackyanne identity for friends, family, and personal hobby pursuits. It's a somewhat goofy if endearing nickname I earned in those awkward junior high/high school halcyon days. I'd like to present a modicum of professionalism when I go public with this venture, whenever that day comes
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Post by cowboyleland on Oct 25, 2013 3:53:15 GMT -9
I regret to admit I am a sucker for puns. Therefor "Better Gnomes and Goblins" gets my vote(for what it's worth.)
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Oct 25, 2013 4:54:39 GMT -9
"Better Gnomes and Goblins" is now stuck in my head, and it makes me smile each time I think of it. I can't even think "Myth Threads Studio" without tripping up on the words. he he he. Better Gnomes and Goblins. he he he.
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Post by glennwilliams on Oct 25, 2013 5:51:07 GMT -9
For web hosting and domain registration, I really like GoDaddy. I use RPGNOW and WargameVault because I don't want to have to do the work to maintain a store, and GoDaddy for a similar reason--I'm lazy and want someone else to do that work for me.
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Post by okumarts on Oct 25, 2013 6:33:21 GMT -9
It's gotta be "Better Gnomes and Gardens"!
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Post by okumarts on Oct 25, 2013 6:46:12 GMT -9
It's gotta be "Better Gnomes and Gardens"!
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Post by WackyAnne on Oct 25, 2013 17:51:09 GMT -9
okumarts I ran into a gardening/decor shop called Better Gnomes & Gardens in Victoria about 10 years ago. Having discovered a garden gnome out there for the first time as a kid, they've always had happy memories for me. Now my kidlets are my garden gnomes: seriously, my older boy stole all the tools from the four plastic gnomes I had so that he could "help out" as a toddler I logged their growth progress the same way I did my plants... and labeled them Gnomo SapiensBut Better Gnomes & Goblins is less cutesy garden gnome, and more a broad potential of fantasy sub-genres. Although Gnomo Sapiens wouldn't be bad, either!
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Post by squirmydad on Oct 29, 2013 6:36:57 GMT -9
For web hosting and domain registration, I really like GoDaddy. I use RPGNOW and WargameVault because I don't want to have to do the work to maintain a store, and GoDaddy for a similar reason--I'm lazy and want someone else to do that work for me. I second this, not the lazy part, I just have a very full plate. They've both been really good to work with once I got set up and GoDaddy's prices are quite reasonable.
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Post by WackyAnne on Oct 29, 2013 11:18:17 GMT -9
Thanks guys, I think I will go with GoDaddy. I decided to just let go of myththreads.com, partly because that idea has passed its time and isn't relevant to what I want to do going forward, but mostly because of the immense hassle and likely cost that Yahoo! requires to reactivate my account before they release it. As for OneBookshelf, it has many things to recommend it, simplicity for one, good customer service for another, and all my favourite publishers for yet another Once I've tested that out a bit, I can broaden my reach. Anybody know of any good deals, or referral offers for GoDaddy? What kind of package should I be looking to start with? I'm a decade out of the loop...
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Post by pasiphilo on Oct 29, 2013 18:42:47 GMT -9
Sorry to jump into this thead so late... For a business name, I really liked WackyAnne's Wonderland, but I also understand your hesitation to use your forum handle. Something with Wonderland in the title would be cool, though, especially considering the fantasy-oriented nature of your product. Maybe just something like Wonderland Games. Thanks guys, I think I will go with GoDaddy... Not sure if you've signed up for web hosting yet, but I've been hearing good things about SquareSpace.com. Might be worth a look. I guess a lot of us dream of a trickle of money coming in from designing figures or models. I'll be watching this thread closely. I'm especially hoping Pasiphilo will tell us how he thinks selling real stuff compares to virtual merchandise. I haven't tried selling anything digitally since I've chosen to focus exclusively on the physical product, mostly because my target audience is tabletop RPG gamers who want lots of inexpensive miniatures without having to print and build them. I've been selling Pasiphilo's Paper Minis at local Anime/geek culture/gaming conventions this year where I've so far had modest but encouraging sales and overwhelmingly positive feedback, not to mention inquiries from retailers and game designers. I certainly have a passion for designing miniatures, but since this is more than just a hobby for me, "a trickle of money" wouldn't justify me continuing with it. Personally, I think the real profit potential is in the physical product rather than the digital download. We'll see how things go from here, though.
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Post by aaron on Oct 30, 2013 6:31:21 GMT -9
Hey Ann like you I am at the beginning of the whole business side of this adventure. I'm going to be creating a web site soon, making you-tube videos , blogging, news letters and generally marketing the heck out of Temporium Oblitis. The only thing I really fear at this point is piracy, as almost my entire product will be in PDF format and as we all know to well, no matter what you do to protect it, all it takes is one person to ruin everything. So if you want a really good example of what not to do just watch me! I'm sure you can learn from all my mistakes. So far I have put almost 6 months into developing this product ( seriously this is my day job ) and I am HOPING that It will be done by Christmas. On a side note i'm developing some terrain for my game but not a whole lot with the idea is that I will say if you want additional stuff you should check out ... insert the websites of you guys here... I really love the community of paper-crafters and want to foster that camaraderie that we all seem to have. If my success can help you guys and vice verse that would be completely cool! So if I ever do get popular in anyway and you or any of you want to advertise on my sites I'm totally down with that!
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Post by mproteau (Paper Realms) on Oct 30, 2013 6:45:46 GMT -9
The only thing I really fear at this point is piracy, as almost my entire product will be in PDF format and as we all know to well, no matter what you do to protect it, all it takes is one person to ruin everything. It's inevitable, and piracy is crazy rampant. It's sad given how little people charge for their PDFs that people still feel the need to pirate the stuff. Is anyone getting crazy rich off selling their print-and-play material? Sigh. I wish the folks who pirate this stuff would just consider skipping a couple Red Bulls a week and just pay for the stuff! I guess the key is to come to terms emotionally with the fact that piracy will happen, to not make life hard for the folks who pay for the stuff, to shoot for a long tail of sales, and to keep growing your catalog. Oh, and have fun! Spread the word in your gaming circles - please don't pirate!!!
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Post by aaron on Oct 30, 2013 8:44:35 GMT -9
Ya I have already anticipated the profit margin and had to cut it in half due to piracy, but I am hoping long term it will do well enough that the t-shirts , bed sheets and lunch boxes ect... will be what saves the day! eventually I may consider plastic models but I just like the feel and price of paper. I have a friend who started making really cool papercraft models and I was like where did you get those? and he told me he got a pdf from pirate bay and it was all the world works stuff. I was like HEY!! I KNOW THEM/HIM!!! ( well not personally but still WTF !!!) I told him that each kit was like a whopping 12 bucks really?? anyway I made him delete the file and told him if I caught him on pirate bay again I would turn him in myself. I haven't seen him in a while ... LOL I wonder why?
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Post by mesper on Oct 30, 2013 12:40:28 GMT -9
Ya I have already anticipated the profit margin and had to cut it in half due to piracy I'd consider to divide first/optimistic version by... like what, 4 or 5? OK at least just at the beginning, so you know, just to stay on the safe side eventually I may consider plastic models but I just like the feel and price of paper. IMO people who are using/collecting metal or plastic models are much more committed to their hobby and willing to pay much more and on a more regular basis (OK, there are no doubts exceptions, especially here among CWF users, so sorry for perhaps rough generalisation however this thread isn't the right place nor time for this discussion) Now, that's IMO one of main reasons (apart from piracy!) why most of publishers speaks about "pizza money" or "pay-for-other-hobbies" sale revenues and just a very few can wrote like that Dave "...I now make a modest living as a paper model designer..." (quoted from Introduce yourself thread). But actually Dave's case is specific because his product can be used by all kinds of gamers: paper, metal or plastic (or mixed:) I'm not sure but frankly speaking I'm guessing that "lion-share" of his customers are metal/plastic figurine gamers... Like it or not, but face the truth, people do prefer metal or plastic minis... I have a friend who started making really cool papercraft models and I was like where did you get those? and he told me he got a pdf from pirate bay and it was all the world works stuff. I was like HEY!! I KNOW THEM/HIM!!! ( well not personally but still WTF !!!) I told him that each kit was like a whopping 12 bucks really?? anyway I made him delete the file and told him if I caught him on pirate bay again I would turn him in myself. I haven't seen him in a while ... LOL I wonder why? LOL! But look, there are also a DECENT PIRATES! Just check out this case - quoted to the letter (bolds are mine) from an OFFICIAL REVIEW on OBS (see: RPGnow product link) " I had found this in a compilation of files someone posted online. Now that I've printed it off and used it, I realized it's well worth paying for, especially since it's so cheap anyways. The pictures are easily modified in your paint program of choice to build whatever you need. Purchased it and I recommend it to others. Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]" Well at least at the end of a day he decided to not only buy the product but also wrote review and 5 stars rating. Seriously, I should probably wrote Publishers Reply with some "thank you"...
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Post by squirmydad on Oct 30, 2013 13:01:36 GMT -9
My Go Daddy info: $47.88/year (usd) for Hosting web Economy package with unlimited bandwidth and 100gb of diskspace.
I don't know anything about Squarespace but their commercials look nice.
Alternatively, if you don't want to manage a site with a cart (I know I don't), start a free blog that you can set up like a catalog with links to a One Book Shelf account. One Book Shelf charged me $40(usd) two years ago to set up my account, that's a one time fee, then they peel off 33% from each sale unless I pay for a more premium account. I consider that 33% to be my bookkeeping and sales staff fee.
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Post by squirmydad on Oct 30, 2013 16:00:08 GMT -9
Sorry, slipped my mind earlier; some of the other advantages at GoDaddy that I don't use are plugins for wordpress, databases, and a zencart app if you want everything in one place and want to run a shop yourself. Currently, with everything at onemonk.com, I'm only using 2gb of space, but 100gb was the cheapest plan.
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Post by bortorama on Oct 30, 2013 17:35:37 GMT -9
I debated replying, but... that would be me. When I started DM'ing, I snagged everything I could get my hands on from torrent sites, forums, whatever I could find. I wasn't even using the 3d papercraft stuff yet, but I downloaded it, "just in case". The more my D&D group got into it, the more stuff I added, and threw in printed dungeon tiles, 3d builds, even building a projector table for us to game on. I think it was around the 20th time I had used photoshop and altered some of the free samples from Inked Adventures, that I realized, "Holy crap I use this stuff a lot, why am I not paying for it?" Now I've bought most of that line. So now I've got a 25" by 45", 3 tiered, papercraft monstrosity sitting behind me, waiting to be unleashed during an upcoming gaming session. It's all with purchased items, or legitimate freebies. My rpgnow library has items from 60 different publishers(admittedly, many of which are freebies) including skeleton key games, permes, okumarts, microtactix, mayhem in paper, lord zsezse works, jabbro jones miniatures, inked adventures, dave graffam models, crooked staff, and more. Instead of swiping the items from anonymous places on the net, I can scroll through my library and either use what I have, or crack it open in photoshop(well actually GIMP 2, now that I've stopped stealing photoshop as well)and make any edits I need. I noticed the background in Imperfect Festivities the other day, and thought I must have missed some of the inked adventures 3d furniture. Once I got that sorted out, I used the graphics I already have to make new 3d items. Sorry for the rambling post, but I just thought I should say something. Once you realize the hard work people put into this stuff, it's hard to justify the five finger discount. No thank you needed for the purchase and review mesper , let's just call it even.
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Post by oldschooldm on Oct 30, 2013 18:31:24 GMT -9
... [do] not make life hard for the folks who pay for the stuff, to shoot for a long tail of sales, and to keep growing your catalog. I can't +1 this point enough. I build the stuff people design (after paying for it) and then I post the pictures with links to your products. Please - don't get in my way of promoting your stuff by doing useless things like password-locking your PDFs, etc.
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Post by Dave on Oct 30, 2013 18:45:13 GMT -9
Late to the party, and learned some good stuff from this thread. Here's what I think:
Piracy: There's really nothing you can do about most instances of piracy, so don't let it bug you.
Vendors: I think it's best to have multiple vendors, instead of just OneBookShelf. In my case, the extra 5% royalty for going exclusive with OBS isn't worth it -- I earn a little more by using three vendors (OBS, Ecardmodels, Paizo), and I'm very gradually adding a fourth vendor (Wargame Downloads). But OBS has wonderful publisher tools and is very good to work with. They really seem to have their act together.
Wide Selection: Create a lot of stuff, especially if you're selling products for around $2-$5 like I do. The more stuff you offer, the more you'll earn. Simple equation, huh. And it doesn't seem to matter WHAT you make, so long as the quality is good. So create whatever you want. Really. This is the best part. Create things you are personally interested in and enjoy. Make them the best you can, package them up, and move on to the next thing. It doesn't matter what the next thing is. Aim to make 100 products, and at that point you'll probably make a few hundred bucks a month doing absolutely nothing.
Advertising: I haven't spent a penny on advertising yet, because I'm not convinced it will work for niche products like mine. I make use of free advertising outlets, such as Tabletop Gaming News, the forums here, the hype machine forum on RPGNet, and social media.
Social Media: I recommend that you use as many of these as you can stand, because different people use different stuff. So get on Facebook, G+, Twitter, blog, forums. Keep an emailing list, and use the emailing list functions at OneBookShelf.
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Post by wyvern on Oct 30, 2013 23:41:58 GMT -9
Depressing comments on human nature here, with all the piracy notes. Given how much papercraft stuff is (very generously) already free, that seems a little odd to me, but I guess if everyone behaved decently, there'd be no prisons...
On the upside, I was interested especially in Dave's comments about his not-advertising policy. I came to the world of online papercraft following two articles in the news-stand wargaming magazine "Miniature Wargames" in 2012. Issue 347 (March 2012) had a piece by then-editor Andrew Hubback on wargaming riots, which first mentioned the availability of low-cost PDF downloadable buildings, with some photos, though all were modern/near future. What really inspired me to start checking what was available was another illustrated article in Issue 351 (July 2012) by Steve Goodman that was purely about card buildings, most especially Dave Graffam's vast range!
Naturally, both these pieces were on figure wargaming, but not bad as free advertising in what at the time was claimed as "the world's best-selling independent wargames magazine". (Editor and format have changed radically since however, so I don't know if they still make this claim. I wasn't impressed by the changes, particularly the downgrading of the science-fiction & fantasy coverage there, until last - northern hemisphere - spring intended to have its own spin-off separate news-stand magazine from the same publisher, so no longer check it as regularly.)
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Post by aaron on Oct 31, 2013 2:53:07 GMT -9
Advertising is the pride and bane of all business. there's an age old quote and I don't know who originally said it but it goes something like " only half my advertising dollars are working for me the trouble is I don't know which half." the fact is advertising is the life blood of any business, people can't buy what they don't know about. Dave is right though about social media, it's relatively free ( except the time it takes to keep up with it ) the more your out there the more people see it, the more they see it the more people buy it. There's another famous quote from some one I don't remember LOL " a successful business is 10% product and 90% advertising." So Ann your biggest goals should be not what your making per-say but how your going to sell it. Honestly if I hadn't stumbled into this website by pure dumb luck I would never have know about any of you or what you sell. I would probably still be working on a ridiculously long flash back series to my comic that now ( thanks to papercraft war gaming ) I am turning it into a cool game people can play! I plan on launching social media camping once my game is in the pre-selling phase, when that happens you can watch and see if I'm doing well or falling on my face... or both which is likely to happen.
Wyvern : thanks for being a reformed pirate I think many of us can fall into that category in one way or another.
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Post by cowboyleland on Oct 31, 2013 3:38:47 GMT -9
I think you got confused by the avatars, Aaron. It is Bortorama (Welcome!) who admits to being a former pirate.
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