I’m proud to announce that Holiday Bonus is now available for iPhone and iPad as well as Android smartphones and tablets!

It feels really good to play the game with your fingers on a touchscreen whilst sitting in a cosy chair by the fireplace.

There are two versions: one has smaller levels suitable for phones, and the HD version for iPad and Android tablets has larger levels like the PC/Mac versions.

You can get the phone version from here:

iPhone
Android phone

And the HD version with larger levels from here:

iPad
Android tablet

I really hope that you enjoy playing Holiday Bonus on your mobile device. Please tell you friends and family. Many thanks.

image by DrJohnBullas

Sorry about that, there are proper graphs further down.

I recently ran a Thanksgiving sale on my site offering up to 70% of my casual games and I’d like to share the results with you.

Deals

The basic deal was that I was offering 50% off my 5x match-3 games (not Fairway Solitaire and Unwell Mel because Big Fish Games own those) via a coupon code.

Then I had 3 bundles:

2x Christmas-themed games for 60% off (PC only)
3x match-3s for 65% off (PC and Mac)
5x match-3s for 70% off (PC only)

Payment Provider

I use BMT Micro as my payment provider. They have various discount schemes that I was able to use for this sale. When I create a bundle, all the games are listed individually so that keys and download links can be send out for each one. I highly recommend BMT Micro for their customer service, and ability to deliver.

Promotion

- The sale started on Tuesday 22nd November and ran for 9 days until Wednesday 30th November.

Day 1:
- I put a coloured banner about the sale on the top of my page and showed some fancy bundle images.
- I emailed Gamezebo (a site that reviews casual games) and they mentioned the sale on day 4 which was my best day for sales.
- I tweeted about it twice on the first day (got 10 RTs, thanks everyone); made a Facebook post on my Grey Alien Games Facebook page; posted on the BlitzBasic and IndieGamer forums; and wrote a blog post about it.
- I emailed my mailing list of newsletter subscribers. An email was sent to 384 people and got 137 opens (35.68%) and 83 clicks (18.75%). It was text only and maybe could have benefited from a picture. I got a few bounces and a couple of unsubscribes, not many.

Day 3:
- I tweeted about it again on day 3 (got 6 RTs). Had about 1250 followers, so my best RT % on day 1 was about 0.8%, which isn’t exactly stellar.
- I also told indiegamer about it on day 3 via Twitter and got a retweet a couple of days later and also posted a comment on their blog post about sales but it got held up for a few days before appearing.

Day 6:
- I tweeted about 3 days being left (got 4 RTs)

Day 9
- I tweeted about it being the last day (got a few RTs)

I didn’t do these things:

- Contact Jay is Games, and I probably should have.
- Send out a press release or contact any other press/bloggers.
- Post on any other forums. I only post on ones I’m an active member on so it doesn’t feel like spam.
- Advertising. Probably should have used up a free Google Adwords $100 credit if I could be arsed.

Results

And now for the bit you’ve all been waiting for…drumroll…

29 units sold. Total revenue $55. Not exactly impressive, but hey it’s more than zero!

Because most of those sales were bundles, there were only 10 actual customers, 2 of which were existing customers (presumably from my newsletter, meaning it had a 0.5% success rate, which I’m quite disappointed by). Still at least that’s 8 new customers who signed up to my newsletter so I can inform them of future deals and the soon-to-be-released Holiday Bonus for iPhone/iPad/Android/WP7.

Also, weirdly, no one used the 50% discount coupon code, even though two customers bought single games (at full price)!

Traffic

- I checked my site’s monthly bandwidth usage before and after the sale and it went from about 3GB to 5.65GB, which wasn’t much out of the ordinary.
- I also tracked the number of hits on my site via my primitive visit counter and I got about 3000 hits on the first day and 2000 hits on each subsequent day. Again not much our of the ordinary.

There certainly wasn’t any kind of server meltdown.

Conclusion

For me this sale was an experiment because I’ve never done one before. I wanted to learn how to sell game bundles using BMT Micro, and I wanted to see how effective my Twitter followers are at spreading the word and how effective some other channels are (like my newsletter).

I’m crazy busy with several main projects right now, so I didn’t have any spare time to spend on better marketing or anything; I just wanted to see what I could do with a sort of basic minimum. The answer seems to be, not very well (take heed other indies!)

Part of the problem is that I’m selling casual games and I only really got one mention in the casual gaming press, and most of my Twitter followers are indie game devs, so they aren’t that interested. I thought that I’d have made more sales from my newsletter (which contains lots of existing customers), especially as a 70% discount is a pretty strong offering, but it wasn’t to be. Also of course I was competing against TONS of other sales and indie bundles.

I’ll probably try again at Christmas though and see what happens. Wish me luck!

Hope you enjoyed reading this post.

If you have any advice or thoughts, please leave a comment. Thanks!

Oz Revenue (5 years)

Holiday Bonus Revenue (5 years)

I just posted some comments on Twitter about how being indie is a long-term game and thought I’d make a mini blog post to explain further.

“Overnight Success”

You often hear about successful indies in the press but overnight success is actually very rare. Most times the indie in question has actually been making games for years and their “overnight success” was the result of all that knowledge, or they really did just get super-lucky (right time, right place, right people, plus incredibly skilled).

What you don’t hear much about is all the indie failures, and unfortunately there are a ton of those (as there are in many fields of business). Or people like me, who keep going and make a living from it, but haven’t got rich (yet).

Holiday Bonus

I’ve been running Grey Alien Games for 6 years, and it’s been a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. I’ve shipped 7 games and I’m always learning new things and finding new ways to sell my old games. For example, this Christmas, my 5-year-old match-3 game called Holiday Bonus (PC/Mac Download) is on some new casual portals and is being localised to 8 new languages by Big Fish Games, and is coming out on iOS/Android/WP7 and web. Check out the graph above that shows the revenue of Holiday Bonus over 5 years. Hopefully this Christmas will be the biggest spike yet, and who knows what the future brings?

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The other graph is from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, my only non-seasonal game. Sure there’s a big spike at the beginning but look at that long fat tail… Oz is also coming out on some new portals soon and being localised, and I have plans to get it on mobile – so the story is not over yet! Hopefully you are getting the picture here: many eggs in many baskets over many years type thing.

It takes a long time

Basically if you go full-time indie with a year’s worth of savings in the bank and aim to get rich quickly, you are most likely setting yourself up for failure. You need to have several years’ worth of savings, or be prepared to earn money doing part-time work/contracting etc until your games get good enough to provide you with a half-decent income. Then with more practice (and a ton of perseverance and dedication), hopefully you’ll make something hot that really sells.

6 Steps to Massive Success

I documented how I saw this process a while ago in an article called The 6 steps to massive game development success. Alas I’m still at step 5 having dropped down from what I thought was 5.5 (Facebook game FAIL). Still, I’m pushing towards step 6 (“massive success”) every day and am determined to get there. Why? Well sure, I enjoy making games for fun, and for many people that’s all they need, and that’s fine. But I’m in my mid-30s and don’t live in a basement plus I have a family (+cat) to feed, so I’d really love to get some good money in the bank just to relax a little bit for once! We’ll see…

It takes a long time

Yes, I know I’ve already used that sub-heading – it’s important that’s why!

- Don’t plan for overnight success (but do plan for success).
- Don’t plan for your first game being a massive hit (but still work bloody hard on it as if it will be.)
- Don’t get discouraged when your first game, and maybe quite a few more games after it, flop or make peanuts.

Come to terms with the fact that being indie is a long-term game that takes a lot of hard work, mistakes, and mini-triumphs over many years. If you want to “make it”, keep on learning and don’t give in!

Also, it’s probably best not to play Skyrim and get some work done instead

Please share your stories in the comments. Thanks!