Sell More Games

I check Google Analytics every day. I want to know what’s happening. The good thing about GA is that they update it daily (just daily), so you can’t get too addicted.

Today, for the first time my site conversion was over 1%. Site, not game. That means that 1 of each 100 visitors, not downloaders bought a game from my site, or actually… bought one of my games, since I don’t track affiliate sales in GA.

1.01% site conversion is an average for last 30 days (little update, next day it went up to 1.05%). You can see on the graph it peaks to as high as 2%. Unfortunately there are still days where I sell nothing.

The good thing is that site conversion was not correlated with number of visitors. It means that even in peak times those were quality visits. Obviously, site conversion is correlated with your games conversion. So the better your games convert, the better your site converts.

Interesting peaks
April 1st, Tuesday - 2.17% - well, that was April Fools day - I don’t know if that’s just coincidence but I posted a joke on that day that prices for all my games will rise 10x next day :)

March 23rd, Sunday - 1.96% - I send out newsletters on March 20th

April 4th, Friday - 1.75%

April 8th, Sunday - 1.58%

March 16th, Sunday - 1.39% - well, Sunday is just the day for buying stuff online.

While Sundays have usually high conversion rates it doesn’t mean that I have highest volume of sales on this day. The most busy day is usually Saturday.

When you go to the Big Fish Games website don’t you feel depressed? Almost every game there is a hidden-object game… at least that’s the first impression. But I bet you’ll be surprised when I tell you that hidden-object games state only 35% of top 100 games. Still, it is the largest group. Here’s a full break down of top 100 games on Big Fish Games.

I put all action, strategy, RPG and other games that doesn’t fit into 4 major categories categories.

There are also two interesting colums on the list: peak and weeks in. I was very curious what is the lowest peak for a game to get into top 100. If you are aiming to make an average game you better give up before you become disappointed… or change your thinking and aim higher.

Wonder what is average peak position for games in top 100? Try to guess… Read the rest of this entry »

I am sure you’ve heard the 5th Symphony of Beethoven: taa-taa-taa-taammm. The initial motif of the symphony has sometimes been credited with symbolic significance as a representation of Fate knocking at the door. Well, two weeks ago it knocked at my door.

Apple seems to like my games. Everytime I submit our game to Apple downloads it is rated high and gets good coverage. I have also found out that Apple stuff tries to find good software on their own. That’s how they picked Path of Magic (after PR). But somehow they found out about Pony World, added it to their catalogue and made it featured game for kids.

In the first day we received over 2000 downloads and it didn’t dried off quickly. But we received just one! order. Imagine my shock and disappointment. When your game gets 0.02% CR it is a dissaster.

The problem is - the game was not fully ready to be launched. We added it to our catalog to get players feedback, but without pushing it to hard to the crowds. It was also Mac Intel only.

Once Apple featured us we quickly released Universal Binaries and fixed 2 or 3 bugs. That made a trick. CR increased to 0.5%. It’s not a good one, but it’s soo much better than 0.02%. I knew that the game may not sell like fire… that’s why we’ve been working on Pony World Deluxe for last 3 months. Still, 0.02% is something hard to believe for a game like Pony World.

It shows that Power PC has still very big share on Macs. Don’t even try to fool yourself with Mac Intel only release. It will not get you far.

It also shows that you never know when or who can feature you - and once it happen - you better be ready!

If you could ask software journalist about the biggest disappointment of the year 2007 most of them would say: Windows Vista. I am pretty sure that there’s a lot of reasons behind that… and I just found one yesterday on my own. I’ve setup new computer for my mother. It did come with Windows Vista Home (or Basic) edition. I installed Runes of Avalon and … it doesn’t work.

It’s not the game’s fault. It’s Software Passport aka Armadillo that is not compatible with Vista. There is of course a new version that is compatible with Vista, but guess what… there’s no upgrade, you need to buy full new license. What the heck? Not only Armadillo doesn’t protect you against piracy (Runes of Avalon had been cracked one day after release) but they force you to buy new license (300$) to get your software compatible with new Windows.

Lucky me, Vista users correspond to only 12% of ANAWIKI website visitors so I can focus on finishing Runes of Avalon 2 before switching to home made DRM solution. I will either go with separate demo/full version or online activation. We have to do something for Mac and Linux anyway, so no point for paying for new Software Passport that is not cross-platform.

Yeah, I know it’s odd to post New Year resolutions in the beginning of February. My thinking is that if you post them so late then actually they are worth anything.

Year 2007 was not a very good one for me. I had great plans in the beginning, but in December I started to wonder why it didn’t happen? The first half of the year wasn’t so bad, but the second one was devastating to all my plans.

• We released Pony World… and then received request to translate it to 6 different languages. We had a contarct and we couldn’t deny request and each translation took so looong, because Pony World is a complex game with a lot of written and rasterized text. If you ever want to translate your game, make sure it doesn’t use rasterized text or make it data driven. Each menu, caption, buttons, icons should be defined in a file that you can change without the need to recompile the game.
• We started 2 or 3 game projects and run into cash-flow issues… I didn’t expect that getting money from released game takes so long.

Well, there are other minor things that made it difficult, but 2008 looks much different.

Year is very long… and it’s very difficult to predict in detail so I decided to split my predictions into 3 parts: short term (first quater), medium term (first half of the year) and long term (second part of the year).

My main goal is to improve company efficiency at making games and selling them. Making games is time consuming so when I written down all our projects I was shocked. If I want to finish them as I plan I should release a new game almost every 2-3 weeks. Yep, it’s sounds unbelievable… though we create games in a way that we can easily make add-ons and sequels.

So here it goes:
• Pony World Deluxe - should be released in Feb
• Runes of Avalon 2 - should be released in Feb
• JigSaw Quest: Avalon - scheduled for release in March
• Alice Adventures - scheduled for April
• … and 5 more games to be released in the first half of the year
• … and 2 more in the second half of the year

Sounds crazy when I look at it… though first four titles on the list are in production or near completion at the moment. We just have to focus on finishing it one by one instead of making little steps in each game. In the second half of the year we will release only two games. If game development is your business, then monetizing comes first and if you have no games to monetize you run out of the business.

In Get the most out of your banner ads article I presented you technique to select the best banner for your advertising needs. In this article I will present you results of one of my tests.

A while ago I created a banner ad for Runes of Avalon. I’ve run couple of campaigns and had a feeling that it is not doing the best job. I decided to create new version and test if it will do better than the old one.

In one of my experiments with Google Website Optimizer I’ve learned that qouting a good review can increase page effectiveness very much so I wanted to check if it will work the same for banners. I added same review quota to my banner: one version with review on the top and one with review on the bottom.

I’ve set campaign details and waited couple of days for results. After about 60000 impressions I had a winner.

Screenshot above presents you results of last test. Previous test showed that banner with review on top has the worst CTR so I dropped it in final test.

As you can see original banner is 50% better. 0.09% CTR is still low, but it’s much better than 0.06%. Results prove once again that you always need to test, test and once again test. There is no 100% sure solution for advertising.

Cross-selling is one of the easiest way to maximize your revenue per order. Cross-selling is not only the easiest, it’s also effective technique. I started using this technique in August 2007 and I wish I have started using it earlier. Here are stats from www.ANAWIKI.com from August till mid November.

I created 7 cross-selling groups. I’ve selected suplementary games that are similar to primary item (the first one that visitor puts into the shopping cart). Here is the list of groups and their effectiveness:

Maggie X - 13.6% effectiveness.
Runes X - 0% effectiveness!
Maggie X - 14.3% effectiveness.
Runes and Path of Magic - Windows - 50% effectiveness.
Path of Magic and Runes of Avalon - Windows - 13.8% effectiveness.
Runes and Path of Magic - Linux - 90% effectiveness.
Path of Magic and Runes of Avalon - Mac - 14.81% effectiveness.

Thanks to this technique I made $577.92 more than I would without using it (before I started cross-selling I had only 1 or 2 orders with multiple products). The best thing about it is that I didn’t have to pay a penny for it to get this extra revunue.

Effectivenes depends on suplementary game. It is a great way to sell sequels or level packs. It doesn’t work if you sell game for kids with puzzle game (that’s why Rune X had 0% efficiency). It works better if primary game is more expensive than supplementary game (50% of Runes of Avalon ($19.99) customers ordered Path of Magic, but only 14% of Path of Magic ($9.99) customers ordered Runes of Avalon).

Now, while I was writing this article I found out that Runes of Avalon for Mac was set up with wrong cross-sell group (Runes X). That mistake probably cost me around $200. Remember, always test your sales machine. If it is not set the way you want it to be set you will most probably lose money.

If you live in one of EU countries you can double your game development budget. You need to send an application to MEDIA EACEA/17/07 program. First deadline passed on November 15th 2007, though there is second deadline on April 15th 2008. There’s plenty of time to prepare.

How does it work?

You need to send an application and if it wins, you get 50% of development budget refunded. 75% upfront and 25% after project completion. So you can either double your development budget or increase ROI.

I sent my application 2 days ago. It was one of the easiest applications that I’ve seen to gain EU funds. It has 26 pages, but most of them is filled with instructions on what to do or just an honorable declarations that you need to sign. But don’t be fouled. When I filled up and printed it all it weighted 730g! That’s because you need to send your project description in 3 copies and you need to attach proof of distribution of one of your games. In my case it was a publishing deal (13 pages).

The hardest part about it was creating a design documentation for upcoming game. You don’t want to spend to much time on it, because you don’t know if you win and you need to make it as great as possible, so you’re chances of winning are as high as possible. The problem is that you need to think about the game that you will want (and be able) to start developing in 6 months (that’s when you’re going to find out if you won). You don’t want to start unless you know that you received funding. Another problem is that you should include a lot of elements such as GUI concept, visuals or interaction description (and it takes time to create it good looking).

Each country has it’s own consulting agency and all papers localized. The agency was pretty helpful, though I was the first one that was applying for game development so in many cases they didn’t know what proofs or documents should I supply.

The whole thing looks very indie friendly. While you can’t be an individual (you need to be a registered company), there is a lot of restriction that don’t let big companies take part in this program.

Last week I featured Tom’s Hen House and Maggie the Gardener 2 on MacZOT (Nov 3rd). I made it a bundle with retail price at $22.94 and the discounted price at $13.65. My bundle was featured for 24 hours and it managed to get 12 orders. Not much, but that 12 orders I didn’t have to pay to get them.

Besides 12 orderers I received 89 visitors from MacZOT (yes, you can link to your website) with 27% convertion to download ratio (though most of people downloaded the game directly via MacZOT download links).

MacZOT is a website that offers great Mac apps at great prices. We work with independent Mac developers to bring you special ZOT discounts on some of the best Mac applications available today. We have a new offer just about every day. The offer period is for 24 hours only (or as indicated on the time clock on the main page), during which time you can download and demo the featured product by clicking on the TRY button. If you decide to go for it, you simply return to the main page and click the BUY button. We use PayPal to process our payments, and it is very simple and quick. You do not need a PayPal account to purchase using PayPal.

MacZOT takes a fair share of the price (40-60%), but you can get all custumer emails if you need/want to (you need to send them serials or links to full version somehow). On most portals you earn much less than that.

I’ve spoken with Lisa Biskup from MacZOT to find out more about their service:

Probably only sold that many because the games are not well known already and because of that, not that many people downloaded them to try. Also, game bundles are good, if the games are well known, but maybe not so much if not.

The games that do the best are like Monopoly, Scrabble, Bejeweled 2, etc. when they are discounted down to about $10.95 or $11.95.

Anything that is $9.95 sells way more than $13.95. Our customers are definitely looking for a great deal. And they will buy it even if they don’t have a chance to try it because what’s $10.

Also, our audience likes games but we sell a lot more of productivity type apps, so apps that help people make more money or make their job easier. We only do games on the weekends for that reason.

I’d love it if you’d share your experience with macZOT. For some developers 12 in one day is a lot and for others it is nothing. We have had several 1000s sell in one day of bundles and of single apps over 1000 as well. It just really depends on how great the deal is and what the app is.

It is a good way to promote your app and we obviously like to make some too in order to keep our business alive. We can’t just run apps that will make us $50 per day.

Do you have a great Mac game? If so, contact me and contact MacZOT :)

Have you ever wondered how much time average customer needs to buy your game since downloading it? I wonder all the time, but now I have some statistics to show.

Days to purchase statistic:

Visits to purchase statistic:

As you can see most of purchases occur on day 0 (same day visitor entered my website) and within one visit on my website. It’s reasonable that people buy on day 0. They download, play, trial ends and if they like it they make impulse buy.

The problem is that they should need mostly 2 visits, not 1. First visit to download the game, second visit to purchase it. So what happend? There are 5 possible explanations:

• people downloaded your game elsewhere and visited your site only to purchase the game (game downloaded from portal, download sites, etc.)
• people downloaded the game from your site using different browser than the one they used to purchase the game (buy now button opens default browser, which may be different than the one your customer uses mostly)
• Google Analytics counts it as one visit because it happend within short time frame - by default GA is sets sessions to 30 minutes, if your trial is short or player buys before trial expires, then it might be true. Some of my games (Maggie, Path of Magic) have trials shorter than 30 minutes.
• your sales copy (game description) is so great, that people buy your game without downloading it :)
• cookies are off or deleted regularly