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COVID-19 sales (and Facebook ads)

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Thu, 04/16/2020 - 10:09
Jay103
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I don't know how many people here are actively selling their own games, but I just thought I'd mention that while people are all stuck at home, they may be looking for things to do. Not a bad time to, say, run Facebook ads.

If you do run Facebook ads, here's my non-expert suggestion on how to get a good result:

Get a Facebook pixel and set it up on your website (follow online instructions!)

Set up a good audience as normal (assuming you've done this before), like: people 18-50, who are married, who also list "tabletop games" or "board games" in their Likes. Whatever.

Attach the Facebook pixel to the Facebook ad(s) you run. This lets FB track which users actually hit your site.

After a week or so, when you have at least 1000 visitors to your site, create a "custom audience" which is "people who have visited your site." Then create a "lookalike audience" which is the 1% of FB users who best match that custom audience. This step may take like 12 hours to actually complete.

Then run your ads to that lookalike audience.

I literally doubled the click rate of my first ad(s) with that lookalike audience. Which is a little scary.

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Thu, 04/16/2020 - 14:26
#1
Mosker
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Additional FB advice

Especially for your non-ad posts, encourage (engineer?) commenting, discussion. That boosts them in relevant feeds.

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Thu, 04/16/2020 - 19:12
#2
questccg
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Quantities available...

With TradeWorlds, we've got about 1,100 units to produce. So it's over the 1,000 unit marker and we have more backers than 1,000. This ultimately means that there will be very LITTLE overstock. I don't even know if I can get 3 extra copies for myself ... knowing how tight production and fulfillment costs may be.

When I was talking about DISTRIBUTION, I was talking about negotiating a deal with a US Publisher and agreeing on a small but reasonable royalty deal... TradeWorlds is just TOO BIG of a production. It requires too many part and understanding about what types of materials need to be used (thickness and type), etc. And I can't afford to produce another 1,000+ units to resell to a distributor.

Secondly I am re-thinking the pricing since our margins were too short. The "core" game will be priced at $45 USD and the "expansion" collection will also be priced at $45 USD. This will leave the Publisher more room to produce the game at higher volumes (and economies of scale).

But that's the real "crux" of the matter: I need to find a US Publisher who is willing to take the game and re-sell to stores around the world. So it needs to be a fairly large player. And since pricing is very attractive and there are two (2) SKUs ... It might be easier to get the game into store (now that it's more than one game there is also an expansion).

We are being REALLY FAIR to our KS Backers who got a TREMENDOUS discount for the "whole" package. $59 USD compare to $90 USD is 1/3rd pricier. But like I said we want pricing to match distribution and wholesale. It won't work under these numbers because we don't have volume of 10,000 units like a Dominion, for example.

That being said, I have a question for @Jay103:

questccg wrote:
Can something be done to focus target audiences from FB to KS???

Something like that might be handy in the event of another product being KS-ed to our backers...?!

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Thu, 04/16/2020 - 23:20
#3
Jay103
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Not sure what you mean by

Not sure what you mean by focus from FB to KS. I mean, you could run a FB ad that pointed to the KS, and then I think you could track people who at least got to the page.. not sure if you could record people who backed after following the link, but maybe. If so, you could then make a custom audience out of those..

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Mon, 04/27/2020 - 17:09
#4
Jay103
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I just discovered that I

I just discovered that I double-mailed about 10 orders to people last week, and very nearly did it again this week (but caught it just in time).

That's a very expensive mistake! Growing pains, I guess, but.. yikes.

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Mon, 04/27/2020 - 18:05
#5
questccg
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Nothing in life is PERFECT...

Mistakes need to be acceptable. We can't expect PERFECTION from anyone. The real issue is learning from them and then moving on to greener pastures. Or learning and then finding ways to cope with the issues at hand. I'm a firm believer that we "can't" expect people to be perfect in all things and at all times.

We're HUMANS not robots. When we make mistakes we learn too... Sometimes it's from some of those mistakes we learn the most! It's not because every thing that you do has to be perfect and go exactly as planned each and every attempt and/or project.

I've learnt a lot about humility over the last 10 years as I have gotten involved in Game Design. As Game Designers, I'm sure many of you get a bunch of IDEAS which all sound cool in your mind... However until you make a prototype from the bits of notes (in a .TXT or an .XLS) that you see if the ideas really measure up to being a GOOD or even GREAT game...

So going through a ton of prototypes, some from The Game Crafter, others from my own home printer... You realize that it's more of a PROCESS. A creative one at that... But it's how you PIVOT and TRANSFORM that sh!tty first prototype into a second one which is BETTER (but still not the epic game that you had envisioned). And then you need to make compromises too when moving forwards to prototype #3 or #4. The ideas and game morph into something different which is "hopefully" a better game.

I firmly believe that we should be allowed to make "mistakes" and "learn" from them. It's important that our society should not hope for perfection but instead focus on equality.

Cheers @Jason... Glad to see you've gotten some more traction during this Pandemic (COVID-19).

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Tue, 04/28/2020 - 09:30
#6
Jay103
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questccg wrote:I firmly

questccg wrote:
I firmly believe that we should be allowed to make "mistakes" and "learn" from them. It's important that our society should not hope for perfection but instead focus on equality.

Absolutely! Though I prefer mistakes that I can fix in a panic, like yesterday's, and not ones that cost me $600, like last week's..

Quote:
Cheers @Jason... Glad to see you've gotten some more traction during this Pandemic (COVID-19).

I'm doing a second printing!

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