While Spring is in bloom, here in the Pacific Northwest, the news is warning that the Northeast may see snow this week – up to a foot, in come locales. It may seem odd that snows will come this late in the season, but the Northeastern Summer will be better for them.

Snows melt; we all know that. When snowmelt happens, it creates surface runoff – an important source of water in the lowland watershed. Regular rains also contribute to lowland water levels, but the benefits of a rain come and go quickly. Snow contributes an ongoing source of water, melting slowly over time.

Events are like good snowfalls.

Events are great ways to engage your community. During an event, people are taking pictures and posting them on Facebook. Interesting conversations spill over onto Twitter and are immortalized on blogs. If you’re lucky, you might even make it into the evening news!

After the event is over, however, what’s left? Your customers all have memories – good ones, you hope – but new things come in to take their attention away. You can create new and timely content to continue engaging your community. These one-off initiatives are more like Spring rains – here today, and gone tomorrow.

However, if you plan your event correctly, you can create a bunch of content that you can slowly release over time. This content can remind those that attended your event of what a great time it was, and keep the conversation evergreen, just as snowmelt keeps many a lawn from turning brown and uninviting.

Creating Snowmelt Content

In order for content to be useful weeks and even months beyond your event, it must have ongoing value. Some suggestions:

1) Create content that is easy to acquire and that can be gotten from many different sources. While on the Gamerati Tour 2011, I started making short ‘I am the Gamerati’videos with people at my events. In each video, someone talked about something that happened during or because of gaming, each one ending with the phrase ‘…and I am the Gamerati’. I was able to record hundreds of these videos, and am still releasing them on Gamerati.TV, even though the Tour ended nine months ago.

2) Release portions of content over time. We’ve recently started a “Hanging Out” series of interviews on Gamerati+ during which Gen Con’s Peter Adkison speaks with an industry professional about life and gaming. Before each event, fans can submit questions via Google Moderator – a number of which are chosen and invited to the Hangout so they can ask them ‘in person’. Those fan questions, and the guest responses, are also recorded. However, instead of releasing a flood of videos all at the same time, we’re releasing the “Hanging Out” video first and using the fan questions as snowmelt content over the subsequent weeks to point back to the initial event.

3) Repurpose portions of content as part of subsequent releases. Instead of releasing portions of content over time, you release it all at once. However, you then use parts of the original content in conjunction with others and create new releases – sometimes combining like items, or combining a portion of an old piece of content with new content to make it even more fresh. The easiest example of this is using a photo from a past event to encourage people to come to a future one. You can get more sophisticated, though, and create content that is specifically designed to be modular. If you’re running a Settlers of Catan tournament at your game convention, ask the champion for ‘3 Tips for Tackling Catan’ and release that on your YouTube channel. Then, over the next three months, take clips of each Tip and use it as a seed for an entire article on your blog that digs deeper into that strategy.

You can tweak your content creation strategy in any number of ways so it acts more like a snowfall than a rain storm.

What events do you have coming up? How will you create snowmelt content from them?

Last year, I took the time to create an About page on my website. This is not a fun task. It’s hard to distill who you think you are down to a single document – one that you are willing to share with any person who might read it. Creating this About page, though, forced me to focus on who I am and who I want to be. In the end, I chose to describe myself in the context of what I care about: family, games, and faith.

To be sure, I’m not the father or husband I hope to be. Nor do I have the skills I need to run my business as I know it should be run. And I would be a prideful liar if I were to say I have the faith I desire to. The very act of creating my About page – by focusing my life story and writing it down – has helped motivate me toward achieving those things I desire most in life.

Giving voice to your desires in a public way will motivate you to focus on what is most important to you.

What I’ve learned about focus:

1) Focus must be personal. You can have mission statements and broad plans, but every person needs a focus. Every team needs a focus, one that incorporates and feeds off the focus given to each team member.

2) Focus must be clear. Spending more time with your kids is not focus; spending an hour with your kids every day is. Increasing your sales is not focus; growing sales by $2,000 per month is. Being kind is not focus, volunteering once a month at a local soup kitchen is.

3) Focus must be visible. You don’t need to write it on your website, but write it somewhere and look at it every day. I have a clear focus for each of the areas of my life I hope to improve. These are on my wall, above my computer, and (thanks to NudgeMail) sent to my In Box every morning.

In addition to the above, it is also imperative that you remove distractions from your focus. I spent years without the ability to say ‘No’ to a new idea. Every idea had to be tested… Now! Pretty soon, I was doing a dozen different things – some well, some not so well. Last year, I decided to disentangle myself from commitments that kept me from my focus. Some commitments were killed altogether; I left Iron GM in November, to focus on Gamerati. Others were incorporated into my central goal or pushed back until they made more sense; I took down my game review site, and will incorporate it into the Gamerati site once that is built.

Removing distractions includes removing distracted or distracting people. It’s hard to part ways with someone you work with, particularly if you enjoy having that person around. Letting an employee go often feels like a break-up. But, if that person is unable to focus on their job, or keeps you or your team from focusing on the task at hand, you need to let them go. In the end, they will be better off in a job they can focus on, and your other employees will get more out of their jobs when they can focus on creating value and changing the world.

What is your focus?

Is there anything in your life that is distracting you from that focus?

Recently, with the rise of Kickstarter, I’ve had the pleasure of running campaigns for a number of crowd-funded projects. Here are the best performing banners, each ran for Kickstarter projects looking for funding.

Each of the above banners received click-thru-rates that were more than four times the network average.

I was hired as a consultant by CCP Games to help refine their approach to social media; the contract ran from January 2010 to February 2011. Google+ hadn’t been released, yet, and the content team had a current editorial plan for the company blogs and YouTube channel, so my focus became Facebook and Twitter.

My directive: Generate traffic to CCP-owned websites, especially the EVE Online website.

My Key Performance Indicators:

• Site Traffic: Looking at the raw amount of traffic that passed from social media into the EVE Online website would give me an indication that the content posted on those platforms was engaging enough to result in an action – a click through to the EVE Online site.
• Source Rank: In addition to traffic, I tracked how each platform compared to all others as a source of traffic. Other sources might include search engines, paid advertising, blogs, news sites and outside message boards. By tracking this, I would be able to tell how important – in terms of traffic – Facebook and Twitter were, when compared to other traffic sources.
• Pages per Visit: It’s one thing to get someone to go to the EVE Online site. If the goal is to have them stay there and engage with our content, though, I needed a way to measure how ’sticky’ that content was. By measuring changes in the pages viewed each time someone visited the EVE Online website, I could get an indication as to whether I was pointing people to good / sticky ports of call.

When my contract with CCP ended in February 2011, these were the results of my efforts:

• Facebook: Traffic had risen so high that Facebook ranked as #3 (up from #46) on the list of traffic sources to the EVE Online website, with visitors viewing 324% more pages per visit than in January 2010. The only sources of traffic that were generating more juice for my client (in terms of traffic) were Google organic search (#1) and direct traffic (#2) from people typing a known EVE Online URL into their browser. For perspective, Facebook was generating more traffic to the EVE Online website than both paid advertising (#5) and referrals from other EVE-related URLs (#4).
• Twitter: Traffic was also up from this source as well, moving Twitter from is previous ranking (#271) to being the #14 generator of traffic to the EVE Online site, with visitors viewing 266% more pages per visit that in January 2010. This change in Twitter traffic was impressive, at it sat just under the traffic generated by the EVE Online newsletter and just above traffic from Bing (organic search) and Yahoo (organic search).

In addition, while my task was not one of customer acquisition, I was also able to track new customers brought in by my direct efforts. In the end, the value of customers generated by those efforts was greater than the cost to the client for my services – meaning my contract, when netting with revenues from acquired customers, had at least a neutral effect on CCP’s balance sheet.

I performed some other tasks before my contract ended, not related to my original mission. What I believe I’ve proven – at least for my client and myself – is that social media can generate a substantial amount of traffic, even to rival sources usually thought of as the defacto kings in this area. I also believe, based on this experience, that while social media is not best suited for customer acquisition, it can certainly help in this regard, even to the point of providing a positive ROI for your social media efforts.

Anyone that runs an analytics program estimate how many people visit a particular website. They can even get an idea of which country, or region of a country, those people come from. However, since most sites don’t merge their statistics under a unified analytics engine, they have no way of determining if Joe Gamer from Iowa goes to multiple sites. And if he does, they’d have no way of accounting for this, should they want to combine statistics to estimate gamer population (at least the online portion).

Because I manage the advertisements on a number of great gaming websites, I’m able to see a similar set of information as a website owner. However, because all those ads are served from a central server, I’m also able to get a unique perspective on gamer populations, accounting for unique visitors across multiple sites. So, when Joe Gamer visits multiple sites on my network, I can account for this and only count him once, if I want to estimate unique visitors across the network without double-counting.

According to Google, here’s a list of the gamer populations in the United States. All numbers are for unique individuals over the course of a calendar month.

The Gamerati network now serves over 25 million impressions to over 1.5 million gamers and comic book enthusiasts each month. To date, we’ve served over a billion banner impressions and recorded over 2 million clicks.

… Here are the best performing banners of 2011:

The average click-thru-rate for display advertisements on the network is 0.16%. Each of these banners received at least twice the average response.

From time to time, an event organizer or store owner will ask me to help them get a handle on how many gamers live in their area. I don’t have a perfect way of determining that number, but since I do manage ads on some of the best gaming websites, I do have the ability to speak to how many people in a location visit the sites I represent.

Today, I thought I’d use this ability to see how many of the people that live near me also visit these websites. Since I live on the border of two counties in Washington State, I decided to poll both.

Thurston County
During 2012, I will serve ads to 15,768 people in Thurston County, WA.

Pierce County
During 2012, I will serve ads to 16,869 people in Pierce County, WA.

In total, that’s 32,637 people that live within 30 minutes (or so) of my house. I wonder how many of these people I could make contact with this year, and how I could go about that task…

Oh, and just for fun, I also took a look at my home town: DuPont, WA. 278 people. Cool.

But, before I can go forward… I need to lay a foundation on which to build.

Over the last couple months, Josh Dalcher has been helping me build a user module – a little bit of tech to allow people to set up accounts on Gamerati.com so that they can interact with the site, and the content we’ll be putting there. I know, it sounds soooo sexy, right? It’s an important first step, though. I need something that is robust enough to tie together all the products and services that fall under the Gamerati umbrella, while also being flexible enough to allow the addition of new products and services in the future.

Here’s where we stand.

As of last week, we’re almost done with the core user module. While people will be able to create a Gamerati account from scratch, we’re also integrating user management technology from JanRain so that users can jump start the process using their existing accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. We’ve got most of this working, but still need to improve the login system. Before we can move on, we’ve got to:

* Implement the hashing/security mechanism for stored Gamerati account passwords. Right now they are being stored in plain text in the database, which is not acceptable.

* Implement session management across the pages we have created for Gamerati so far. This will make the UX better and allow people to flip around with their browser buttons from page to page without nonsense happening. This will help in the long run for current and future features.

* Ensure the database access code is not subject to SQL injection. SQL injection is how many database enabled web applications are compromised, and we need to spend a few days shoring the system up to prevent this from happening.

After these tasks are finished and the login system is done, we’ll be moving on to integrating one of the Gamerati services (probably the ad network). I’m talking with Josh right now about the possibility of inviting a couple hackers to help us ‘bombproof’ the user module – in essence, help us by trying to break it.

So, that’s where we stand right now. I hope we’ll have many more (and more exciting) updates for you about the future of Gamerati in 2012.

Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, thanks for making Dungeons & Dragons, which introduced me to the hobby side of games.

Frank Mentzer, thanks for designing the killer ‘Red Box’ D&D set that captured my imagination, even if Bargle got the better of me.

Mom, thanks for buying that Red Box for me, and being my first DM, even if for only a short time.

Brian Palazzolo, thanks for spending untold hours with me, playing D&D after school.

Tom Mcdonald, thanks for designing worlds with me and pawning over every issue of Dragon Magazine we could get our hands on.

Michael Jackson, thanks for handing me your copy of Dragons of the Autumn Twilight, and turning me on to fantasy novels.

George Vasilakos, thanks for the awesome art in high school, that kept my imagination alive. And thanks for Imagination Games & Comics, without which I would have had no idea where to get good gaming product.

Tracy Hickman, thanks for having a website so that I could find you on AltaVista back in 1996. And thanks for Starshield, my first experience with game design.

Bernie Trombley, thanks for inviting me to help playtest for New Millennium Entertainment.

George Vasilakos and Alex Jurkat, thanks for starting Eden Studios with me. I only wish I’d been smart enough to stick with it, instead of getting a ‘real job’.

Rob Placer, thanks for running a great game store, through which I met gaming friends I still keep in touch with, though we’re thousands of miles apart.

Gaming Outpost, thanks for being my home after leaving Eden Studios, and introducing me to the likes of Mike Mearls, Jared Sorensen, Peter Seckler, Nick Lalone, Graveyard Greg, Gareth Hanrahan, and The Scarlet Jester.

Clinton Nixon, thanks for ApartmentCon, my first gaming event ever.

John Wick, thanks for your Orkworld design series, and for introducing me to industry peeps like Greg Stafford, John Kovalic and Jonathan Tweet at Origins 2000.

Ron Edwards, thanks for responding to my letter about Sorcerer and opening my eyes to game design theory. Thank you for taking charge of The Forge, and making it more than I ever would have.

Gary Thompson, thanks for organizing GIDFA (Gaming Industry Disaster Fund Auction) after 9/11.

Wolfgang Baur, thanks for Open Design, which gave me a creative outlet while joining the Army. And thanks for Kobold Quarterly; I enjoyed every moment I worked with you.

Jon Morin and Ezra Davis, thanks for being my friends, in gaming and out. I love you both.

Chris Perrin and Paul Tevis, thanks for introducing me to podcasting and helping me cope with Iraq.

Dan Repperger, for showing me what community means.

Paizo, thanks for having a great community, without which I would never have tried my hand at freelancing.

Rick Miller, thanks for publishing my first article in The Oerth Journal. And thanks for working with me on our article in the Pathfinder Adventure Path.

Wes Schneider, thanks for showing me what a good editor is.

John Ling, thanks for inviting me to the Werecabbages. I made so many friends because of you.

Rone Barton, thanks for responding to my ideas, for designing games with me, for being my podcasting partner, and for being my friend.

Martin Ralya, Johnn Four and Yax, thanks for opening my eyes to what great game blogging is all about.

Adhocrats, thanks for being my brothers (and sisters) in arms and introducing me to the joys of wormhole life. In particular, thanks for Klokvarg for keeping me in EVE Online, when I almost left.

Erik Bauer, Mat Morton and Nick Bevilacqua, thanks for being great business partners and friends.

Josh Dalcher, thanks for working with me. Gamerati would not be possible without you.

Thanks to every publisher that makes the games I play, and the ones I have yet to play. Without you, I would still be wearing a suit and working in a cube 14 hours a day. Ack!

Thanks to every store owner that sells games, and provides a community where people like me can meet others, can learn new games, and can participate in this great hobby.

Thanks to every event organizer, from Emerald City Gamefest to Gen Con. You give us gaming pilgrims little pieces of paradise, even if only for a day (or four).

And thanks to every gamer who shares my love of games. You’re all unique and special, and I love you all.

While in Oklahoma City, as part of the Gamerati Tour, I had the chance to have dinner with the crew from Super Genius Games. According to the Geniuses, I just had to get some ice cream from Braum’s; and so we did. While standing in line, waiting to order, I noticed the menu displays above the counter (pictured above). These are the same displays you see at any number of fast food joints, from McDonald’s to Panera Bread. While staring at them, I began to wonder if the fast food industry can teach us something about marketing.

I wonder if a retailer might make use of the same display theory to communicate new releases and customers. The display doesn’t, per se, have to be as blatant – it could be as simple as posters above related book shelves – but the concept would be the same… Promote those items that are most likely to attract a customer’s attention, so as to induce a sale.

What about package deals? Most people grab the meal deal, even if they end up throwing away half the fries. Why? It’s convenient and easy to say yes to. Why not offer that new pirate adventure from Green Ronin with a ship map set from Savage Mojo, with a small discount to encourage purchase?

Could this be used at conventions, to drive sales at booths? What about placing such items above the check out area to encourage customers to pick up the custom Cthulhu dice that would ‘go great with’ that game they’ve got in their hands (your new release)?

What about marketing special events at the convention during registration? If I’m signing up for the Catan event, I might like to also know about (and pay for access to) the meet-and-greet tomorrow night, with famous board game designers in attendance.

The Gamerati network now serves over 25 million impressions to over 1.5 million gamers and comic book enthusiasts each month. To date, we’ve served over a billion banner impressions and recorded over 2 million clicks.

… Here are the best performing banners of Q3 2011:

The average click-thru-rate for display advertisements on the network is 0.14%. Each of these banners received at least five times the average response.

Why do you think these banners performed so well?

How do you think these compare to the last two lists?

The Gamerati network now serves over 25 million impressions to over 1.5 million gamers and comic book enthusiasts each month. Between April 2010 and March 2011, over 100 companies have run campaigns with us. To date, we’ve served over a billion banner impressions and recorded over 2 million clicks. That’s the sample size…

… Here are the best performing banners of the last 12 months:

(10) Voltron

(9) WebLords

(8) comiXology

(7) Dungeon Master Toolkit

(6) d20Pro

(5) Warmachine

(4) Battle Map

(3) NeonCon 2010

(2) Gaming Paper

(1) Dicecreator

The average click-thru-rate for display advertisements on the network is 0.17%. Each of these banners received at least five times the average response.

Why do you think these banners performed so well?

How do you think these compare to the last set of best-performers?

What is a vanity URL?

By default, your Facebook page has a URL that looks something like this:
facebook.com/pages/Your-Page/1234567890

A vanity URL looks like this:
facebook.com/Your-Page

Which one do you think looks better?

Watch this video to find out how to grab a vanity URL for your Facebook page.

Direct link to HD version of this video on the Gamerati Facebook page.

Links From Influencers Rock
In the first week, 1,862 unique people visited Loot 2,595 times. Most of these visits came from five sources:

* Direct Traffic (28%): People typing in the URL.

* Gamerati Banner Ads (23%): People clicking on ads I bought on my own advertising network for gaming websites (PDF).

* Facebook (19%): The daily Loot deals get syndicated to the Gamerati Facebook Page. With over 1,100 members, it generates a decent amount of traffic.

* The Geek (8%): I started posting board game deals to Board Game Geek and roleplaying game deals to RPG Geek. This isn’t something I intend to continue (more on that in a future post, perhaps) but it did help get us off the ground.

* Twitter (6%): I post the daily deals to my Twitter account, and numerous other people have been nice enough to retweet those deals. Thanks, by the way – keep it up!

On Monday of this week, I logged into Google Analytics to check on the site traffic and had a present waiting for me. Whereas my best day of Week 1 saw 617 visits, Monday of Week 2 had 1,318 – more than a 100% increase. Clicking on the Traffic Sources link, I saw why… Apparently, we were mentioned on GameSpy.com. A little more investigation led me to this article by Aaron Williams, he of Nodwick fame.

Take a look at Aaron’s article. Notice anything? That’s right, it’s not about Loot. The Loot love is all the way at the bottom, buried in a bunch of other links. And still… It drove a ton of traffic to my site. In fact, of the 4,334 visits to Loot this past week, 1,032 (24%) came from Aaron’s article.

The moral of this story? It’s nice when someone with some juice offers to share it with you.

Yeah. That’s nice. So what does that mean for me!?!
I haven’t spoken with Aaron in over a decade, not since I took the above photo of him at San Diego Comic Con International 2000. I didn’t ask him to talk about Loot, but would have if I’d thought of it. The evidence is clear, though, that people like Aaron can really help you.

So here is my gift for you. Three links:

* RPG Bloggers: If you want to connect with people who write blogs about roleplaying games, this is the place to find them.

* RPG Podcasts: Same for podcasts about roleplaying games.

* Board Game Podcasts: Ditto for podcasts about board games.

You may not be able to count on altruism from your own personal Nodwick link. What you can do, however, is build relationships with those people who do have audiences that read and listen to what they have to say. The bloggers and podcasters on those sites are passionate about games, as are their audiences. Most of them will gladly mention something cool and new that a friend is doing, especially if it’s something their audience might be interested in.

Sow some seeds. Make some new friends.

Oh… and while you’re at it, check out Nodwick and tell Aaron thanks for me.

Lesson 1: Good People Are Gold
The first thing you should know about Loot is that I didn’t do it on my own. I had the help of Josh Dalcher, who I met via his gaming blog. We worked on a couple projects together, during which I came to know him as a competent coder and a professional. Those two skills – competence and professionalism – must go hand in hand when you’re looking for people to work with. They can be the best at what they do, but if you spend more time waiting for things to get done or restating project specs because they don’t know how to follow instructions, you’ll wish you’d never met them. Similarly, the people you work with need a requisite level of skill in order to make the relationship work. In short, I’m lucky to have found Josh. He’s Gold.

Lesson 2: Gamer Like Dice
One of the first tactics I’m testing with Loot is the use of banner advertising. I have two goals here: to test click-thru-rates on my Gamerati Ad Network (PDF) and to learn what types of ads work best. We made three sets of ads. Each set included a leaderboard (728×90), a rectangle (300×250) and a skyscraper (160×600). One set focused on card games, one on board games and one on roleplaying games. After our first week of stats, the results speak for themselves… viewers click on ads that have dice on them. Our best performing advertisement was the RPG rectangle (below), which pulled a 0.48% CTR. But all the ads that had dice did very well, each netting a 0.22% CTR or better.

Lesson 3: You Need A Good Host
In the past, I’ve been a big fan of Go Daddy. They have decent prices and they have 24-hour customer service. However, they proved to be inadequate for me this week. We had our first Loot sale 8 minutes after we went live. Twenty minutes later… the site crashed. During the nearly six hours it was down, I spoke to two customer service reps and one technical specialist. None of them could help me. In veritable despair, I started poking around on my server blindly… and fixed the problem on my own. (NOTE: I know nothing about servers or internet protocols, etc.) The Go Daddy people were cordial and patient (professional), but knew next to nothing about their own product. The fixes they proffered not only didn’t work, but broke some of the other services I had on my server as well (incompetent). Needless to say, I’m looking for a new hosting company as soon as I have the time. I guess you could say that Go Daddy was not Gold.

That wraps up my thoughts on Week 1 of Loot. As I have more thoughts, or learn more lessons, I’ll make sure to let you know about them.

You can read my interview here. Also make sure to check out those given by Rone Barton, John Reyst, and VSCA Publishing.

“Hey, fellow RPG publishers, I’m thinking about PDF pricing. How do you price your PDFs compared to your books, and why?”

I haven’t been a publisher for a number of years, so I’ll leave the ‘why’ part alone. I thought it’d be fun to poke at product pricing using statistics, though.

I track sales of roughly 6,000 individual product titles while producing the RPG Countdown podcast. If I treat each individual product as a separate item, regardless of sales volume the average MSRP is $9.40. If I weight based on gross sales per product, the MSRP becomes $19.97. If I weight based on percentage of units sold, the MSRP becomes $10.47.

Sales Greater Than 100 Units
Here are the same stats for products that have sold more than 100 units:
Average MSRP: $9.95
Weighted by Gross Sales: $19.78
Weighted by Units Sold: $11.06

Sales Greater Than 250 Units
Average MSRP: $11.45
Weighted by Gross Sales: $20.79
Weighted by Units Sold: $12.08

Sales Greater Than 1,000 Units
Average MSRP: $14.45
Weighted by Gross Sales: $23.16
Weighted by Units Sold: $15.62

So what about print vs. PDF MSRP?
I’m going to assume for a moment that Vincent wants to sell more than 100 copies of his games. He may or may not care, but by limiting my sample size I only have to compare the prices of roughly 500 products. And in truth, many of the products I track that sell less than 100 copies, are PDF-only releases. As such, they fall outside the scope of what Vincent wants to know.

Discounts off MSRP range from 33% to 89%. Typically, larger discounts are given on Core Rulebooks, with lower discounts available on setting books and adventures. Statistically, though, the discounts appear to be fairly consistent when you look at the whole group – the mean, median and mode all land in the 50%-55% discount range. This holds true whether I discriminate based on percentage of gross sales or percentage of units sold.

Hope that helps, Vincent.

(1) Why is this game fun?

(2) What can I do in this game?

Answers to these questions are our first priority when we interview people for the Atomic Array podcast. They’re also the focus of the first two paragraphs of any review published on Game Cryer.

Without knowing why a game is fun, and how I can experience that fun, I’m not really interested in a full description of the setting, a list of skills and spells, a catalog of gadgets and weapons, or a historical timeline. So why don’t game books open with answers to these questions?

Most of the books I crack open start with a short story and/or a discussion of the setting. Some try to summarize the game in the Introduction, but this is usually condensed setting fluff that rarely answers my two most important questions. I usually have to skip the first 10-20% of the text before I find out why I should care about the Newfangled RPG.

What do you want to know when you pick up a new game?

Are publishers answering these questions for you? Are they doing it up front, or do you have to search for your answers?

Icon courtesy: Open Clip Art

As part of the Gamerati Analytics project, I went out looking for a way to render maps based on geographically significant data. I knew that I wanted to have data mapping available, but it seemed that would be just a dream without a hefty budget.

Then I ran into Pete Warden from OpenHeatMap.

Right now we’re working on ways to integrate his mapping technology with the Gamerati Analytics back end. To give you an idea of what this might look like, check out the map below (click image to go to map):

This is a map of the friendly local game stores that I have personally visited. Nifty stuff, right?

Added bonus, if you point your mouse at the map, it’ll tell you the name of the nearest FLGS (that I’ve been to) and how many miles away it is.

If you’re a publisher or retailer, we’d love to include your stats. Email me to learn how.

Getting sales information is one thing, but combining it quickly and accurately to create a ranked list is a chore. When I started the collection process, it would take more than 25 hours to collate all stats. Every two weeks, I’d spend the better part of three days mashing spreadsheets together. In order to save my sanity, I hired a programmer to help streamline the process. Much of the data collection is now automated, though it still takes me about 6 hours to get ‘the list’ for each episode of RPG Countdown.

Development and streamlining isn’t stopping. In fact, what I’d like to do now is give publishers and retailers a way to see more information about what products are selling. I’ve hired a programmer to, in essence, make a Google Analytics for sales figures.

I’m trying to make a laundry list of what analytics to develop for the back-end, so that I can make the tools that publishers and retailers need in order to get a better understanding of how their businesses run.

Any input you could provide, no matter how small or pie-in-the-sky, would be most helpful.

I keep going back to Google Analytics and using it as a model to be adapted. It’s slick and compact, while being imminently robust. If I can make something half as useful for tracking sales as GA is for tracking website traffic, I think the analytics will be very useful for the people that make and sell the games we Gamerati love.

So I’m building a ‘Gamerati Analytics’ suite.

The Dashboard
The graph at the top of the Google Analytics Dashboard reports Visits over a certain period of time. However, you can change it to show other metrics: Pageviews, Pages/Visit, etc.

For Gamerati Analytics, it would be nice to be able to show sales revenues, units sold, number of customers, etc. Can you think of any other metrics that would be useful?

You can also use Analytics to compare two metrics at once; Visits vs. Page Views, for instance.

For Gamerati, this would also be useful, allowing companies to compare sales revenues vs. units sold, etc.

Summary of Important Statistics
I think it’d be nice to see a summary of important statistics right off the bat: Sales Revenues, Customers, Orders, Percentage of Returning Customers or Percentage of First-Time Customers, Average Number of Products per Order, etc. What would you say are the most important questions you’d like to answer on a regular basis?

Map Overlay
A map feature would be extremely useful, in my opinion. Wouldn’t it be great for a publisher to be able to see that it sold $9,857 world-wide last quarter, and that $1,541 of that was sold to customers in Canada?

As with the Dashboard, it would be nice to be able to change the metric on the map, so you could see Sales Revenues, or Sales Volume, etc.

The Map would also be good for drilling down to local sales data. This would allow publishers and retailers to see which states and cities their customers come from, which would allow for better outreach and community development. Looking for a convention to attend, publishers? Why not go to one near a concentration of your customers so you have a ready pool of GMs to run events?

When combined with a retailer database and sales, publishers could learn which retailers are supporting them most actively, or even discover areas where they have a solid fan base but no retailers carrying their products.

Combining sales information with census data would allow us to see:

• Areas with the highest number of customers as a percentage of population.
  
• Areas with the highest sales revenues as a percentage of median income.

Can you think of any other ways in which geo-targeted information would be useful for you?

Sales Sources
Publishers, wouldn’t it be nice to know that 46% of your sales were generated by local retailers, 31% was generated by PDF eTailers, 17% came from direct sales off you website and 6% was from conventions?

Or what about being able to see which distributors generated the most sales for you, which eTailer was the most effective, etc?

Product Performance
This one seems simple, but there is so much a publisher (or retailer) would like to know at the granular product level, right?

• How many units of Product X have sold?
  
• How much revenue has Product Line Y generated?
  
• How does Adventure A compare to Adventure B?

What about putting in costing information so you can see your break-even point, or line up multiple like products, released at different times, so you can see what a typical sales curve looks like over the life-time of a similar product? Publishers, would that not help with budgeting?

Publishers, what else would you like to know about your products?

Retailers, what information would you like to have?

During that time, over 100 companies have run campaigns with us. To date, we’ve served over 725 million banner impressions and recorded over 1.7 million clicks. That’s the sample size…

… Here are the best performing banners, each receiving more than a 1% CTR.

(10) The Imperial Gazetteer (Open Design)

(9) Ancient Warfare Magazine

(8) Galactic Empire (Castle Games)

(7) Fear the Boot

(6) Gaming Paper

(5) Gnome Stew

(4) Noble Knight Games

(3) Great Victory Widgets

(2) Chez Geek (LocWorks)

(1) Roleplaying Tips

The average click-thru-rate for display advertisements on the network is 0.24%. Each of these banners received at least four times the average response.

Why do you think these banners performed so well?

Guest:

Mentioned:
* http://chattydm.net/
* http://www.perf.etsmtl.ca/
* http://twistimage.com/
* http://www.paxsite.com/paxeast/

Google Local is important for website traffic for local businesses. If you’ve already submitted your shop, good job. If not, make sure you’re listed.

IDEA: Sponsor game days at the local library. Bring in some games and demonstrate them. Don’t sell anything, just give people fliers with directions to your store (and the website) and a coupon good for a small discount. The flier will remind people where you are and help them get there. The coupon will help you track how many people came to you via the library.

While at the library, put a sheet so that people can sign up for updates from you about future events, both at the store and elsewhere. The important things you want are name and email address. With the email address, you can find out if they are on Twitter and Facebook, and invite them to join your fan page if they are. Don’t spam these people, just let them know you will keep them informed and do just that.

Bring games that are easy to learn and easy to play without a lot of explanation (FLUXX, for instance). You can bring an RPG if you like, but I would focus on family-friendly games. Leave the hard-core stuff for game conventions.

This idea was influenced by a talk I had with Scott Nicholson from Board Games with Scott. You can hear the whole discussion here.

IDEA: Find out if there are game clubs at local schools. Talk with publishers about sponsoring these clubs through you. Ask them to donate a couple copies of their games for this purpose. Put your store logo and website, etc on the boxes (a big sticker on the inside of the of the lid _and_ the back of the box / book would do fine) so people can find you. Treat these clubs like you do the library game days…

Ask the club leader to offer members a special discount card that gives them a small discount at the store. All they need to do is come to the store and pick one up – in exchange for their name and email address, of course (see above).

Keep in touch with the groups. Invite them to parties at the store. If you have two or three, maybe have club-on-club tournaments or competitions. Encourage the members to come in and demo games in the store so that they can breed new gamers for their clubs (and new customers for you).

IDEA: People that live in your area visit websites from time to time. Consider purchasing advertising that is only targeted to people that live in your area.

Victoria Comic Convention (Victoria BC)
http://www.victoriacomicconvention.com/

NeonCon (Las Vegas, NV)
http://www.neoncon.com/

Emerald City Gamefest (Kenmore, WA)
http://emeraldcitygamefest.org/

OryCon (Portland, Oregon)
http://www.orycon.org/

http://ephealy.com/transparentgames005.MP3

http://ephealy.com/transparentgames004.MP3

John,

At some point, we should have a little chat about ‘boring business stuff’—stuff like how we’re going to handle money, whether we’re going to pay for any contributions, or whether we’re going to look for people to share profits. Before we bring someone like Jess on, we should figure out, at least in part, how we’re going to split dollar bills.

Any thoughts on this?

- Ed

http://ephealy.com/transparentgames003.MP3

http://ephealy.com/transparentgames002.MP3

http://ephealy.com/transparentgames001.MP3

Third Eye Games: http://www.thirdeyegames.net/

A companion article to this episode can be found here:
Reviews: The Good the Bad and the Frustrating

The importance of reviews

There are two schools of thought when it comes to reviews. One regards them as an essential marketing tool, though one not without risk, and the other thinks they’re an unnecessary distraction.

Part of the problem is that it can be extremely difficult to correlate reviews with sales. But Adamant’s Gareth Michael Skarka has another perspective on why reviews might be overrated.

We’re a small, niche-market entertainment business. Gamers will pick up stuff that interests them—even if there are reviews that say a product is poor. They’ll pick it up to see what they think of it themselves. They don’t invest much in the “authority” of reviews, preferring to keep their own counsel. Gamers are opinionated and amplified by the internet. If there is a review that says it’s poor, there is bound to be another that says it’s good. Even in the face of ‘internet conventional wisdom’—for example, “this game is nothing but poorly designed power-gaming”—sales of the ‘poor’ products are largely unaffected. Gamers purchase what interests them.

So why do so many companies chase reviews? The most obvious benefit of having your product reviewed is the opportunity to let gamers know it’s out there, and to build buzz. It never hurts to have someone respected in the community endorse your product. Such an endorsement helps to separate you from the competition. Even if the review hasn’t convinced the reader to buy your game, when he comes across it in his local store, it’ll already be familiar—even if the review was less than positive.

For unknown companies with few products and little capital available for marketing, reviews offer a relatively inexpensive option. Thankfully, reviews are also more useful to companies with less brand recognition. As a company grows, and with it their reputation, customers are more willing to take a risk on it’s products, even in the absence of reviews. This is not to say that reviews do not benefit more established companies—only that reviews are proportionally more effective as a tool in the hands of those without an established customer base.

Reviews can benefit companies beyond tracking customer interest; the review itself can tell you a great deal about your product. It is easy to dismiss one bad review as an outlier. It’s a lot harder if the majority have concerns about your product. If this is the case, it might be time to take a second look.

You can also use reviews for marketing in less obvious ways. HinterWelt’s William Corrie uses reviews from retailers to open discussions with other retailers about his products.

Often, the hardest thing about contacting retailers about your product is the opening statements. With a review like those provided in industry magazines, you get a third party resource to reference. You can say things like “Scott Thorne of Castle Perilous said the Squirrel Attack books will sell well” or reference what a customer is saying as an independent reference. It is always difficult to just say to a retailer that your product is good… because. Whether it is a customer review, a retailer review or more informal reference to the comments of another industry professional, it can open doors.

So how do you make the most of the whole review process?

Useful reviews start with the right reviewer

To start, you need to find someone willing to review your products. It’s an accepted practice to offer a complementary copy of the product, and you can usually find any number of willing amateur reviewers. But remember, at the end of the day, you want a useful review, and that means a few things:

First, it means someone who’s going to actually analyze the product. Just listing off the table of contents may tell the reader something about it, but it doesn’t give you any information about what the reviewer thought. Similarly, a review that just says, “It’s great” or “It’s terrible” doesn’t tell you much about what’s working and what’s not.

Second, you need to take into account the reviewer’s audience. Are they the type of customers you’re trying to reach? If you publish board games, a model train forum isn’t likely to expose you to the right audience. More than that, any comments the review generates aren’t likely to be helpful, because they’re not coming from the demographic you’re targeting.

Preston DuBose, from 12 to Midnight, explains:

Seek out reviewers who prove, through other reviews, that they know how to analyze and review a product based on its merits. There’s nothing wrong with a reviewer expressing personal opinion, but good ones back it up with reasons why.

Audience is also important in other ways. Are they the type of audience that typically engages in conversation about reviews? If so, you’re much more likely to get useful information, whether or not the review is a positive one. And then, of course, there’s audience size to take into consideration. As Joseph Goodman says:

’Quality of the reviewer’ takes on a new meaning when it’s a reviewer with a well-read blog.

Finally, you don’t want to overlook the credibility of the reviewer.

…it’s not just his grammar skills, but his stature in the industry. An endorsement from Monte Cook can drive a direct increase in sales.

Once you’ve found a few people you’d like to review your product, setting up a review is very simple. Finding the right person and the right audience… that’s the trick.

What to do if you get a “bad” review

Now, of course, eventually, you’re going to get a bad review. It might be because there’s a problem with the product, or it might be because the reviewer had a fight with his girlfriend. The important thing is how you handle it. The last thing you want to do is to turn a bad review into a bad reputation for you.

Fred Hicks, of Evil Hat Productions, puts it all into perspective:

Thank your detractors. Yes, it may appear that a man possessed of little more than a simian intellect has just reviewed your product in some sort of strange moon-language, but the point remains that he invested time in writing something about your game. He probably has readers, too, some of whom will disagree with his opinion. Let them take on that job. Your job, as a publisher, is to be gracious in the face of any critique. Say thank you, perhaps offer a factual correction or two, stated neutrally and calmly, and make your exit. Exposure is exposure. Leave a link to your product behind, and you’ll probably net a few sales no matter what this joker said.

Besides, your goal here is to get useful information from the review, so in that respect, negative reviews are actually MORE helpful, because they point out ways you can get better. Maybe it’s too late to change this product, but there’s always the next one.

Just remember: many gamers don’t even read reviews

Reviews are just one tool in your arsenal—one you should use in conjunction with other marketing tactics. “Gamers purchase what interests them.” Reviews might help lead gamers to your product, but in the end it helps to remember that they can be more helpful to you than they are for your customers.

RPG Review Resources:

• DriveThruRPG
• Flames Rising
• Gamerati
• Out of the Box
• RPGnet

A companion podcast to this episode can be found here:
Eloy Lasanta (Third Eye Games)

NOTE: This article was researched and authored with Nick Chase.

Shel’s Blog: http://blog.holtz.com/
For Immediate Release: http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz/

gamerati: Shel Holtz (FIR)

I asked a number of industry professionals to join me for an informal chat about board games. We talked about a number of things, from the apparent strength of the current board game market to ways all levels of the industry can help each other bring more games to more customers.

gamerati

Hans Isaacson: President of Uncle’s Inc, with five retail locations (Uncle’s Games, Puzzles and More!) in Washington State. He started out in the industry in 1990 as a retail clerk (the store’s “game guy”) for the former parent company of Uncle’s (Book and Game Co.) and worked his way into a partnership position when the two founding owners parted ways in 1999. The “Game” in “Book and Game Co.” became Uncle’s Games. He is partnered with Shannon Ahern (founder of Book and Game Co.) and Karen Stephens.

Scott Nicholson: Host of Board Games with Scott, a video podcast about board games, and participant on the On Board Games program. An associate professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, Scott researches gaming in libraries as the director of the Library Game Lab of Syracuse. His upcoming board game, Tulipmania 1637, is due out from JKLM in 2009.
* Twitter: @snicholson

Jeff Tidball: Independent writer and game designer, and a co-founder of Gameplaywright. He has served as Vice President of Product Development at Fantasy Flight Games, worked on staff at Atlas Games and Decipher, and done freelance writing and design for a cast of thousands.
* Personal Home Page: jefftidball.com
* Twitter: @jefftidball
* Facebook: Jeff L. Tidball

Mike Selinker: President of the game and event studio Lone Shark Games. Some of his recent games include Pirates of the Spanish Main, Key Largo, Unspeakable Words, Link 26, and Stonehenge. Before that, he was a creative director and game designer at Wizards of the Coast, helping to relaunch Dungeons & Dragons and Axis & Allies, and writing such games as Risk Godstorm and the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game.
* LiveJournal: The Most Beautiful Things
* Facebook: Mike Selinker

Board Games (gamerati)

Jason’s Home Page: http://jasonfalls.com/
Jason’s Blog: http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/

gamerati: Jason Falls (Doe-Anderson)

Jason Henderson is the world’s leading expert on search engine optimization for the Miva Merchant shopping cart. We spoke about landing page optimization and email marketing.

Stan! (Super Genius Games) talks about market research, and treating your business like… a business.

Steve Russell talks about how the patronage model changed everything about the way he does business at Rite Publishing.

Related: Atomic Array 023 (Rite Publishing)

War Pig Radio broadcasts great programming 24 hours a day so you don’t have to search for something interesting to play over your store speakers. Industry news, product reviews, and interviews with the people who create the things we love—you can find it all on War Pig Radio.

On March 21st, Gamers everywhere will be playing Dungeons & Dragons and War Pig reporters will be bringing their stories to you live via internet radio.

War Pig: Radio for the Gamerati
Home Page: http://www.warpigradio.com/
POC, Ed Healy: warpigradio@gmail.com

Before launching War Pig, we contacted a number of our fellow podcasters, inviting them to contribute content for the station. Most of our initial contributors are now in place, including:

* Atomic Array
* Family Night
* Fear the Boot
* The Game Kennel
* Ogre Cave Gaming New Update
* Print & Play
* RPG Countdown
* Wapcaplets

We also have some new content launching shortly, including contributions from:

* The Escapist
* Sy Fy Radio
* Voice of the Revolution

With our current line-up we have great content, but not as much new material each week as we’d like. We’re looking for more.

War Pig is designed for a broad, public audience—including game stores—so we’ve determined a number of things we’d like to see from any shows we add.

1. It must be informative and entertaining.
2. It should be safe for listeners of most ages. No swearing or adult content.
3. It needs to be short-form. We prefer content that runs less than 15 minutes and will not likely be adding anything that runs more than 30 minutes.
4. It should offer something new—something that our current content doesn’t cover.
5. It should contain no irrelevant, divisive topics such as politics or religion.

If you have a show you’d like to submit, or a show idea you’d like to see us develop, contact us at warpigradio@gamerati.com.

Our other major objective is to increase the number of places where War Pig is available. We recently made it possible for webmasters to add War Pig Radio to their websites by embedding a special widget using only two lines of JavaScript. The widget pops-up a player that can be custom branded to your site. Even if you don’t administer a website, you can help by encouraging your favorite ones to add the War Pig player.

We currently have twelve gaming shops playing War Pig Radio over their speakers. We’d like to quickly increase this number. If you are a retailer and playing War Pig in your store, let us know so we can tell people about you.

There are hundreds of stores that don’t even know about War Pig Radio yet. Please help us get their attention by telling them about us. If you don’t feel comfortable asking your local shop owner, let us know how we can contact them, and we’ll do it for you.

Website: http://www.warpigradio.com/
Contact: warpigradio@gamerati.com

At least, it will be. We have a couple kinks to work out, and we need to work up some more killer content before we’re ready to really move on it, but it’s live.

The idea? Provide entertainment and information to the gamerati 24 x 7. As we add more content to the line-up, we’ll also be developing players so that webmasters can embed War Pig on their websites. I’ve also been in touch with a number of the people at your FLGS, asking what they would like to hear so that they can play War Pig in their stores.

Listen Now using Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media Player.

Are you a gamer? What type of content would you like to hear on War Pig?

Are you a webmaster? Send me an email; I’ll let you know when our flash player is ready.

Are you a publisher? We’d love to help you promote your products.

Are you a retailer? Let me know what content you’d like to hear over the speakers in your store.

Veteran game designer David “Zeb” Cook will also contribute regular reviews of wargaming products. David’s name graces the credits of too many products to list. We’re excited to be working with him.

Based on the feedback I received here, and other venues, I compiled a list of names – people considered to be the best. I approached each of them and asked if they would like to be a part of a new site that focused on quality game reviews. Many of them agreed.

Are you interested in quality game reviews? Come to Game Cryer (Game Cryer.com).

Current list of contributors:
- Gerald Cameron
- Dave Chalker
- Brian T. Clements
- Michael Erb
- Chris Gath
- Mark Gedak
- Ken Newquist
- Pookie
- Allan Sugarbaker
- Andy Vetromile

Up first? Gerald Cameron reviews Draconomicon I: Chromatic Dragons.

Listen the the show and let us know what your thoughts are on the subject.

I wish there was a current site like Jenga, a portal with information about geeky events I might like to go to. Such a site could have any number of features:

* the calendar
* press reports about each event
* search by location
* search by attending publishers
* search by event type
* search by all three? more?
* conventions could get the word out about their event
* publishers could look for con helpers
* media people could connect with publishers

Do you think such a portal would be useful? What would you like to be able to find / do on such a site?

Give me a couple names. I’d like to meet some of these people.