Sell More Games

Last two months has been really busy and I haven’t put much attention to advertising. Actually, I haven’t done it at all. Until yesterday.

I hate advertising because I always feel like the only one that earns money is the Ad Server.  Even if clicks or impressions are not soo expensive it is hard to turn them into profits. Why? Games are either too cheap or too expensive.

But I read a book about AdWords and it gave me some inspiration. I also noticed that Pony World has quite good visitor to download ratio - over 40% of visitors download the game. With that ratio maybe it will not to that hard to turn AdWords into profits?

I created two ad variations for selected keywords and set up a daily budget of a little over $10. And today I got the results (that’s what I love about AdWords - almost instant results).

My ads received 90 clicks total: 51 for ad variation #1and 39 for ad variation #2. CTR for those ads: 1.55% for #1 and 1.22% for #2. Not so bad,  especially one you show it by keywords: the best CTR is 10.38% and the lowest one is 0.77%. The lowest one represents most of impressions and clicks.

Because that’s just 90 clicks I don’t know if it’s profitable yet or not, but we can do some estimations. Let’s go to Google Analytics and check if those clickers download the game. This is where we face first disappointment. Only 19.48% of clickers downloads the game. It’s still much better than what I had for Runes of Avalon campaign where only 11% of visitors downloaded the game.

If Pony World Deluxe has 1% CR (download to sale) then I need 100 downloads to sell one game. And I need 513 clicks to get 100 downloads. 513 clicks will cost me over $68. And I get only $17 out of each sale, so each sale makes me a loss of $51.

Judging just by those numbers you can for sure say that advertising is a waste of money. And it is if you do it wrong. It is if you aim short term. It is if you don’t tweak your ads, your game and your game description web page. It is if you don’t increase your visitor value.

It takes time to turn advertising into profits. Most people are not patient enough.

I made some tweaks to my ads and will do for at least few more days. If I can see improvements then I’ll keep advertising until I make a profit or run out of money :D

If I would have to name developer friendly portals, Reflexive would be on one of the top positions. Now, after release of Runes of Avalon 2 I can say that they are not only a portal that let’s you earn quite good percentage of sales price.

Do you need an e-commerce provider? Well, if you sell on your own for sure you need one. I use eSellerate, some use Plimus, a lot of developers uses BMT Micro and many others. But this may change… because if you set up affiliate account and sell your own game through it you can earn 90% of sales price, which usually is $19.95. That’s one of the lowest rates in the industry.

But that’s not all. Since they wrap your games (without putting Reflexive splash screen) you don’t have to worry about DRM. Forget about home made solutions, forget about Software Password.

And last but not least, you can use it as hosting service. No more worries about bandwidth.

The best thing about using Reflexive?

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

You can have Google Analytics anabled and working great, but if your e-commerce service is located on 3rd party domain, then you lose a lot of important informations, such as referral site, visits to purchase, days to purchase, etc. If you use the trick described below you will be able to track all this useful informations. I made it to work with eSellerate, but I am sure it can be done with Plimus, BMT and other e-commerce providers.

First of all, all your buy now links have to call a script that will save Google Analytics cookies to database. To match visitors with cookies we will use visitor IP. The script that will set the cookies on e-commerce domain will delete database entry right after retrieving it. It is not a perfect solution, but it will work in 99.999% (how many orders do you expect placed within few seconds from the same IP?). So instaed of calling:

store.esellerate.net/s.asp?s=STR4587075495&Cmd=BUY&SKURefnum=SKU41198308198

you call

www.yourdamain.com/buy/mygame.php

Mygame.php has to include save_GA_cookies.php script and then redirect to real e-commerce address. save_GA_cookies.php script looks like this:

<?
// this script should be called before you redirect to e-commerce shopping cart
// it saves Google Analytics cookies to database along with User IP

// include your database engine
include(”db.php”)

$dbga = new clsDBAnawiki();$IP = $_ENV['REMOTE_ADDR'];

$utma = mysql_escape_string($_COOKIE['__utma']);
$utmb = mysql_escape_string($_COOKIE['__utmb']);
$utmc = mysql_escape_string($_COOKIE['__utmc']);
$utmx = mysql_escape_string($_COOKIE['__utmx']);
$utmz = mysql_escape_string($_COOKIE['__utmz']);
$utmv = mysql_escape_string($_COOKIE['__utmv']);
$utmk = mysql_escape_string($_COOKIE['__utmk']);

$dbga->query(”INSERT INTO an_ga_cookies(ga_ip, ga_utma, ga_utmb, ga_utmc, ga_utmx, ga_utmz, ga_utmv, ga_utmk) VALUES(’$IP’, ‘$utma’, ‘$utmb’, ‘$utmc’, ‘$utmx’, ‘$utmz’, ‘$utmv’, ‘$utmk’)”);
$dbga->close();

?>

Then you need to insert into your e-commerce html template following line:

<script TYPE=”text/javascript” src=”https://www.yourSSLdomain.com/buy/set_GA_cookies.php” mce_src=”https://www.yourSSLdomain.com/buy/set_GA_cookies.php”>
</script>

set_GA_cookies.php reads GA cookies from database and sets them on e-commerce domain via JavaScript. The problem is that you need a SSL domain address otherwise your shopping cart will show unsecure site message. The good news is that this domain doesn’t have to be on your server or your own domain, though you will need to tweak my code to make it work on 3rd party server.

Here is the code for set_GA_cookies.php:

<?
// script generates JavaScript code that sets Google Analytic cookies on eSellerate.net

// include your own database library
include(”db.php”);

$IP = $_ENV['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$db = new DB();

$db->query(”SELECT * FROM an_ga_cookies WHERE ga_ip=’$IP’ LIMIT 0, 1″);

$jscode = ”;
while ($db->next_record()) {
$utma = $db->f(’ga_utma’);
$utmb = $db->f(’ga_utmb’);
$utmc = $db->f(’ga_utmc’);
$utmx = $db->f(’ga_utmx’);
$utmz = $db->f(’ga_utmz’);
$utmv = $db->f(’ga_utmv’);
$utmk = $db->f(’ga_utmk’);
$id = $db->f(’ga_id’);

$jscode = “setCookie(’__utma’, ‘”.htmlspecialchars($utma).”‘, 30, ‘/’, ‘.esellerate.net’, false) \n”;
$jscode .= “setCookie(’__utmb’, ‘”.htmlspecialchars($utmb).”‘, 30, ‘/’, ‘.esellerate.net’, false) \n”;
$jscode .= “setCookie(’__utmc’, ‘”.htmlspecialchars($utmc).”‘, 30, ‘/’, ‘.esellerate.net’, false) \n”;
$jscode .= “setCookie(’__utmx’, ‘”.htmlspecialchars($utmx).”‘, 30, ‘/’, ‘.esellerate.net’, false) \n”;
$jscode .= “setCookie(’__utmz’, ‘”.htmlspecialchars($utmz).”‘, 30, ‘/’, ‘.esellerate.net’, false) \n”;
$jscode .= “setCookie(’__utmv’, ‘”.htmlspecialchars($utmv).”‘, 30, ‘/’, ‘.esellerate.net’, false) \n”;
$jscode .= “setCookie(’__utmk’, ‘”.htmlspecialchars($utmk).”‘, 30, ‘/’, ‘.esellerate.net’, false) \n”;

}

if (!empty($id)) $db->query(”DELETE FROM an_ga_cookies WHERE ga_id=$id”);

?>

function setCookie(name, value, expires, path, domain, secure){
document.cookie=name+’='+unescape(value||”)+
(expires?’;expires=’+new Date(+new Date()+expires*864e5).toGMTString():”)+
(path?’;path=’+path:”)+
(domain?’;domain=’+domain:”)+
(secure?’;secure’:”);
}
<? echo $jscode; ?>

That’s it. I used PHP, but you can use any other web language to do that. Commands are self-explanatory, so I am sure you’ll be fine. Just in case you don’t want to copy the code from this page you can download zipped scripts.

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

Cross-selling is a simple trick for selling more (at least in the online world). Here is the definition of cross-selling on the web:

The strategy of pushing new products to current customers based on their past purchases. Cross-selling is designed to widen the customer’s reliance on the company and decrease the likelihood of the customer switching to a competitor.

Or easier to understand:

Cross-selling is the term used to describe the sale of additional products or services to a customer.

The trick is that you need at least two products to cross-sell. If someone decides to buy your game it is much easier to convince him or her to purchase an extra item. It’s good to offer a discount when cross-selling.

If you want to maximize your revenues try to cross-sell similar products. Offer a sequel or another game from the same genre.

Once I analyze my sales data I’ll post some stats regarding my results on cross-selling.

Few weeks ago, Nedzad Orman complained about his site CRd2p (www.yupgames.com). It was at a very low level of 0.19%. He wasn’t happy with it, especially considering the amount of time & work he put into the site. Today he reported that his site CR is up by 63%.

Yupgames.com has a very high ranking in Google. If you type download games it shows on the first page of results. Considering competition that exists in this market this is very good result. Most visitors come to yupgames from search engines (majority from Google), searching to download games. Number of completed (not requested) downloads is close to 2000 daily. Before he changed his website he had 3-4 sales daily. After the change he gets 5-7 sales daily and his site CR jumped up to 0.31%.

What I did: I set up my own tracking system, I do not use Reflexive ‘Game rank’ anymore, instead I have a script which counts downloads, other script which import sales from Reflexive Order xml feed and I count conversion. If a game doesn’t perform well or doesn’t sell at all, script flag it as ‘disabled’ and the game isn’t available at site anymore. A day after, conversion and sales jumped, and it’s 0.31% (still not much, but way better). Also, I force better conversion games to front page etc…

I don’t think anything is wrong with Reflexive Gamerank. I think some other reasons apply: every site has it’s own visitors demographic, based on traffic sources etc.

Anyway, together with even better Google positions of my site than few weeks back this is gona be my first month with more than 100 sales Not much for many of you, but I believe I’m on the right path.

It’s important to know your visitors. Even if game A sells great on portal X it doesn’t automaticaly mean it will sell great on your website. Once again, know your visitors, serve them what they want, serve them what they like.

I, just like many developers here, was suffering due to lack of sales. Creating games is fun, but when your game is done, you put in on your website and then wait… wait… and sometimes sales come, but mostly not.

I started to ask myself why is this happening. My games are great (don’t they? ;-)) so what’s wrong? Am I the only one that likes my game?

I started to read various blogs regarding making money online. No, not to make money selling ads, but to learn how to improve my website. When I finally got some results I decided to write few articles to help you find the right way.

So you want to know how to get more sales without spending a penny?

First of all, you need to know who is visiting your site and what one is doing. You need a good tracking tool. Because you don’t want to spend a penny, you can use Google Analytics (GA). That’s what I use and it works great. Installing Google Analytics is easy, so I won’t go deep into this topic today.

When you get GA working the next thing you need to do is to set goals. I recommend setting two goals, but you can have up to four. First one should be game download. Second one, game purchase.

I advise you to install same goal tracking code on all download pages. I assume that you have some kind of a page: “You are downloading…” and then this page is redirecting to binary file.

Google Analytics will track how many downloads you have and what is your site conversion to goal (CRd). What is even more important, GA can report this in depth, so you can find out CRs for each referral. This will let you choose sites that have quality traffic and you can invest some more money into advertising on those sites.

Tracking purchases ain’t that easy. Most of us make use of a 3-rd party shopping cart. I use eSellerate.net. A lot of people uses Plimus, BMT Micro, etc. If you want to track your orders you need to contact your e-commerce provider. eSellerate did a great job for me implementing GA.

You can meet a problem here. Your e-commerce provider my not let you redirect your customer to your site (thank you page), so you lose referral information. You can workaround this by using a mix of PHP and JS script that sets GA cookies on e-commerce service domain. I wrote that script for eSellerate and if you want I can send it to you (I’ll write an article about this later).

When all is set and working you need to wait a little bit to get some data. After that take a look at following metrics:

• visitors to download conversion (CRv2d)
• visitors to purchase conversion (CRv2p)
• download to purchase conversion (CRd2p)
• bounce ratio

You can improve each of this metrics. If you succeed improving it, you will get more sales without spending a penny. How to do that? You need to use Google Website Optimizer. You can read about one of my experiments in the post Improving Runes of Avalon website. In the nearest future I will talk about how you can make such experiments using Google Website Optimizer on your own.

In my previous post I wrote:

To get $10.000 (gross) you need to sell 500 units at $20 price tag. To sell 500 you need 50.000 downloads if your CR is 1%. To get 50.000 you need 100.000 visitors if your site conversion is 50%. To get 100.000 visitors you need to either be lucky or spend $5000 in advertising.

This may sound good, but boy, how this will sound to you if I say that numbers above are optimistic?

If the fact that 99 out of 100 people doesn’t pay for your game and quits after 60m play or sooner wasn’t bad enough I can tell you that so called 1% industry stundard is still an optimistic figure. At least for untargetted traffic.

Let me tell you that it’s hard to believe that only 1 person out of 100 will buy your game. It’s even harder to believe that it will be worse than that. Your site is small and you get a lot of new visitors. If you don’t advertise those are mostly people that come to your site by accident. Even if they dowload your game it doesn’t mean that they intend to buy it (even if they like it). It happens even to big portals, though they have more visitors that are customers… and customers are more likely to buy multiple games.

Your goal should be to get as much targeted visitors as possible. I will try to show you how to do that in next articles.