Thoughts from a first-time self-publisher Part 2.
Hello again! If you haven’t already, please check out the “prologue” post I made last week to kick off this blog series.
I was really surprised at the response to my initial post and am inspired to keep going. I have added the ability to subscribe to the blog on the main blog page and have also enabled comments. Please consider subscribing to stay updated and please leave a question or comment! I also got some great feedback on what people - mostly other designers at this point - really want to know about being at this point in the process of launching a Kickstarter. I will do my best to address all the questions I received, though probably not all at once!
Before we get started, some updates on the financials of the Kickstarter. There were a few things I forgot about from the last post:
Blind Playtesting Services: $200. I used The Player’s Lair for blind playtesting Super Snipers 3 different times during its development. Ivan has also been a wonderful un-payed playtester and support and I couldn’t recommend them more highly. Blind playtesting is an absolutely vital part of the process and one of the truest tests as to whether your game is ready for publishing.
IGA Pro Membership: $250 ($75 a quarter). The Indie Gamers Alliance gives me access to playtesting services, consultation, tons and tons of discounts with services for publishers, and provides convention services.
Conventions/ other promotional: Approximately $600. For a number of reasons, I am unable to have the presence at conventions that I would like to. I attended CuseCon last year and will have a table there this year. This number reflects the cost of the convention, fliers, stickers, business cards, and $250 to have the IGA demo my game at GenCon.
Additional Money Spent since the last post: $100 for additional game renders for use in advertising.
This brings the new grand total to: $21,600
Pre-Marketing Results so far:
Before my pre-marketing campaign kicked off, I wrote down my “numbers” so that I could see just how much of an impact it is having. On the left is where I was on July 19th, 2022 (day before the campaign started), and the right shows where I am currently (8/4/22):
FB page- 127 followers. 128 (+1)
Public Group- 45. No change
Private - 59. 61 (+2)
Pre-launch- 47. 79 (+32)
Email list- 34. 174 (+140)
Discord- 53. 54 (+1)
TTS- 101 subscribers. 104 (+3)
YouTube- 17 subscribers. 18 (+1)
Results? In just about 2 weeks, I have a sizable jump in my email list and a decent jump in followers on my pre-launch page. These campaigns start with a lot of A/B testing of different ads and audiences and we very quickly started to meet and beat the benchmarks for converting leads (currently at $2.29 per lead). The primary purpose of the ads is to have people click and then go to my Landing page. The primary purpose of the Landing Page is to collect emails of people interested in the campaign. Within these metrics, I am very pleased with how things are going and feeling confident that I can have the audience I need for the 10/18 launch date.
Email subscribers receive a welcoming email that’s purpose is to: 1) Get them to sign up for the pre-launch notification on Kickstarter and 2) Connect them with the community: FB, TTS, Discord, Etc. I am doing moderately okay on the first metric and not great on the second (so far). I’ll be sending out the August Monthly update soon and this will be to a much larger audience than July’s and I am hopeful to start bringing more folks in this way.
You will note that I didn’t start from a position of strength with anything but maybe my TTS subscribers. Cultivating a community around my game has been challenging (mostly from a time perspective). I had a spike of interest following the 2021 announcement of being a finalist for the Cardboard Edison Award but didn’t know how to capitalize on it.
I think that’s probably good for this week. Next week I will talk more about reviewers and previewers. I received a suggestion to talk about the best part of this process and the most challenging each week and I will start that this week:
Best Part of the Week: My community really showed up and I was able to get in 5 playtests in 2 days to test out a possible change for Super Snipers. Ultimately, the consensus/ results were to stick with the polished game I have and continue to develop the change (a Blitz mode) as a variant. I am super grateful for the enthusiastic playtesters who know and love my game enough to be able to help me think/ play through this stuff.
Most Challenging part of the week: Time. I’m feeling overwhelmed by my to-do list for this on top of prepping for an upcoming vacation, making a big transition at work, playing in two bands (one where I need to do an album release soon!), getting time in with family, and finding game design time for a game that my co-designer and I are working with a publisher on.
Thanks so much for reading!
-Galen-
