Archive for March, 2009

More sales at lower prices

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

Recently I dropped the prices of all my match-3 games from $19.95 to $9.95 and $6.95. I’m definitely making more direct sales (and more revenue) at these new lower prices.

It’s not worth me posting any figures because my direct sales numbers are pretty low and also the prices have only been lower for a few weeks, so it’s still early days yet. Plus sales may be up simply because I sent out a newsletter, posted on forums, and plastered “NEW ULTRA LOW PRICES!” across the front of my site just to make sure people noticed 🙂

Previously I’d made hardly any Mac sales but now they have picked up nicely. There’s also a tendency for people to buy more than one game at the lower prices and I haven’t even implemented bundle deals via BMT Micro yet. I have the information on how to do that and will do it when I get time (and feel like it) – then I can send out another newsletter.

An Experience is Worth 1000 Pictures

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

My Aikido Sensei in the UK, Sensei Kolesnikov, sometimes reminds us that: if a picture is worth 1000 words, then an experience is worth 1000 pictures.

I think that is a great saying and certainly I’ve experienced some pretty amazing things through my Aikido training, and no amount of retelling or photos could ever give someone else the same feeling as the actual experience. The same could be said for watching your children being born – those of you who have done that know how amazing it is, more amazing than any descriptions you may have heard before.

I moved to Vancouver from England for the “Experience”. There was nothing wrong with my life in England, it was great in fact, but I thought that it would be a pretty interesting experience moving here – and I was right! New pathways must be forming in my brain every day. I sometimes feel like my brain is on fire with all the new inputs that it’s receiving and ideas that are being generated – it’s pretty crazy! I guess that this will settle down over time though unless I keep seeking new experiences (which I plan to to). For example, I have been to some beginner Tango lessons recently with Helen and that was very interesting indeed – it felt like whole new areas of my brain switched on. Also I plan to learn skiing and take up swimming again. I’ve recently started learning ice skating too and now I can go round the rink in circles without painfully fall on my ass.

So basically I’m saying seek out new experiences! Not just ones sitting at your computer. Go out and do something new and different. Even if you don’t like it, that’s a valid experience. But hopefully you’ll find something pretty crazy that cranks your brain into overdrive. Go for it!

You can filter BFG top 100

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

You may not know this but BFG recently added a new feature to their top 100 which allows you to filter by a chosen genre. Previously you could see the top 33 in each genre by going to the main page for that genre, but the difference with the top 100 filtering is that it shows the peak, weeks on and date released!

However, a word of caution, be careful when reading the peak. The reason is that sometimes it shows the peak in the top 100, and other times the peak in the genre. For example, in the match-3 genre Holiday Bonus is shown to have a peak of 54 which I know was what it reached in the top 100 because I saw it, but Unwell Mel is shown to have a peak of 1 which it has not yet reached in the top 100, it’s only no. 1 in the match-3 genre. Also The Wonderful Wizard of Oz shows a peak of 30 but I knew it got to no. 10 (I took a screenshot at the time). So something weird is going on, I’m not sure the figures can be trusted properly (shame otherwise it would have been ultra awesome). Anyway it’s still useful to see the whole current 100 for that genre.