Marketing Resource
One of my readers, Stephen Burns, has made a good marketing page on his website. It contains information about which security wrapper and installer he used, which download sites he uploaded to, and a shareware summission service by Glimmer Games (I’ve used it before too and I recommend it as good value). Perhaps the most useful part is a list of Portals that he’s contacted. The list contains links to the actual developer submission/contact pages which are not always that easy to find!
Seems like the guy is being pretty thorough in the marketing, he just needs a good strong game with tons of bling to get pimping. Also, he has a very ambitious plan to produce 8 games per year. Good luck!
June 8th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Hey its Stephen :). But Steve it cool as I was a big fan of Steve Iwin and loved his Passion for Nature. When he passed away last year it was tough and it affected me (also liked Peter Brock :(). I have that crazy passionate thing going as well, but for games and making stuff. I wanted to be a mountain climber as well and climb K2. Now I would prefer to be a good dad and look after myself for my kids (Kids not here yet :)). Freezen my you know what off 400 meters from the top of k2 does have its downside.
Just because its 8 games doesn’t mean they are 8 good ones ;).
June 8th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Hi Stephen. Sorry about that fixed. The silly thin is I looked at your name to make sure I got it right and went “OK ph, yep fine” and then type V anyway, doh! 🙂
Hey I climbed (well Hiked) up a mountain in Austria, it wasn’t that high @ 1500m but it was tiring 🙂
June 8th, 2007 at 10:16 am
My marketing strategy was based on your Blog post. Your tips are great. Also because you released the stats on Xmas it got the juices flowing in the head last year. I was just going to throw it in last year, but I am ready for another crack at it. Working with some real positive coders is heaven for development. Also I hope my coders feel good as well working with the design documents.
The highest mountain I have been up is Mt Emei in China at 3079 meters. It was awesome and I want to go back one day. We also just walked to the top as we were part of a tour group. Very easy mountain to climb and your above the clouds.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Cool glad the blog helped! Hey these stats have not been released before, but Xmas Bonus has now sold 375 copies (via direct sales and portals – most via postals). Total revenue is around £652. This revenue is low because I used a publisher for the first year of sales who took a cut (can’t disclose). Since last November I self-published (relaunched it @ $9.99 in some places) to the portals and on my own site and thus made more money per unit. I was gonna give these new stats (and Easter Bonus stats) to Gameproducer at some point.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:23 am
The Chinese mountain sounds cool 🙂 We hiked up in about 1.5-2 hours so it was quite draining but the views were amazing and so was the feeling of achievement.
June 11th, 2007 at 4:14 am
Our target sales for Molipop is around 200 (Or about 16 per month over 12 months). After 4 weeks on the market I will be sending the results to gameproducer and then a 6 month update later on (I would like to get to 16 🙂 sales). I was expecting a little bit better then what I am seeing atm. From my own data I’d say puzzle games see the most action on portals. Due to the results our next 4 games for the 2nd half have been adjusted accordingly (cough meta games).
Marketing is 50% of a “indie game makers time” (if you want to get more sales). If you want portals to look at you I suggest meta games now. I will be posting up a meta game guide in 3 weeks (My design template for the 2nd half of 2007). Basically the marketing effort this June is equal to me rolling out another design document and final art. This week I will be posting my design template for this first half of 2007 (the vanilla puzzle game production kit).
June 11th, 2007 at 8:02 am
yeah meta games are where it’s at plus a story too. This is on top of the standard map, different playmodes, profiles etc. So you are hoping for 16 direct sales of Molipop per month? I confess that I think that may be difficult because the game doesn’t stand out particularly – you’ll have to do a heck of a lot of marketing! It wouldn’t be hard if you spread it on lots of portals but then you wouldn’t get the full retail value of the game.
June 11th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Then its onto operation “bling it up” 🙂
June 12th, 2007 at 9:22 am
blingtastic!
June 14th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Released the puzzle pack “just add bling”. My meta puzzle pack add on will be out in 3 or so months when we release our first meta puzzle game.
Also another puzzle game will roll out this week. Its clone wars ya baby :).
http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/15383/13060
http://www.silkjade.com/Lightforge/Puzzle-Pack/Puzzle-Pack-home-1.html