I'm the worst promoter

Cathode Ray · July 13, 2022, 07:39:21 PM

I think my RPG is fairly decent and would appeal to classic gamers (it has a 1980s theme), but I'm the worst at promoting it. Does anyone have any good tips? I even have physical edition which I wish to sell out of my home office.

oggsmash · July 13, 2022, 07:42:15 PM

Hire someone to put together some art with promotion for it. I think decent art does a whole lot to snag more people's interest. The saying a picture says a thousand words is a saying for a reason.

David Johansen · July 13, 2022, 08:35:00 PM

I'm probably worse...My games The Arcane Confabulation, Galaxies In Shadow, and Twenty First Century Plus can be found at uncouthsavage.com.

See! Worse

But not as bad as the Zweilhander guy...he takes worst to the next level.

Shasarak · July 13, 2022, 08:50:44 PM

You guys think you are the worst?

Have you even heard of Steve Jackson?

David Johansen · July 13, 2022, 10:18:35 PM

Yeah, he didn't promote GURPS nearly as much as I would have liked in recent years.

mudbanks · July 14, 2022, 01:21:52 AM

Quite an awful businessman too. Imagine how much he could have earned had he allowed Black Isle Studios to use GURPS

Spinachcat · July 14, 2022, 03:45:16 AM

Smart promotion requires effort.

If you don't want to do a Quickstart, you need your PDF to be free. That's fine as long as you can funnel the lookie-loos to your POD.

If you want to sell your PDF, you better have GREAT previews on DriveThru that really highlight your game.

Also, take the time to make at least one YouTube video describing the game and link that to your other promotions.

If you can, get other people to review your game.

But most importantly, you can either spend lots of money or lots of time doing marketing. Investing no money and no time means few sales.

David Johansen · July 14, 2022, 09:01:36 AM

Quote from: mudbanks on July 14, 2022, 01:21:52 AM
Quite an awful businessman too. Imagine how much he could have earned had he allowed Black Isle Studios to use GURPS

That's nothing, George RR Martin is a GURPS fan who runs GURPS.

THE_Leopold · July 14, 2022, 09:11:29 AM

Quote from: Spinachcat on July 14, 2022, 03:45:16 AM
Smart promotion requires effort.

If you don't want to do a Quickstart, you need your PDF to be free. That's fine as long as you can funnel the lookie-loos to your POD.

If you want to sell your PDF, you better have GREAT previews on DriveThru that really highlight your game.

Also, take the time to make at least one YouTube video describing the game and link that to your other promotions.

If you can, get other people to review your game.

But most importantly, you can either spend lots of money or lots of time doing marketing. Investing no money and no time means few sales.

THIS ^^^^

Find your target audience/market, go on youtube or twitch, talk to some of the content creators who either review or do livestreams of products and work with them. They'll get views and sale referral bucks and you'll get sales. Win/Win.

VengerSatanis · July 14, 2022, 11:00:11 AM

Niche is King... doesn't matter if it's RPGs or porn. Find your niche and focus on that, building your brand as you go.

What's helped enormously for me, on multiple levels, is making the stuff for yourself specifically. And then use your stuff, talk about it, show others, include them in your gaming fun, and hopefully it'll take off.

I HATE THE DEMIURGE I HATE THE DEMIURGE · July 14, 2022, 11:50:56 AM

Astroturf like crazy.

You can get comprehensive Reddit marketing solutions for a little over a grand. Then you can also contact the useful idiots over in rpg.net and ask them how much it would cost to write a review. If you got the money, Critical Role does do advertising as well. Basically, you gotta spend money to make money.

Mad Tom · July 14, 2022, 04:48:33 PM

You might also want to look at Facebook ads. My wife runs a small press and a local business and she swears by them and Instagram. You can get really focused on your target keywords if you're going for a specific niche within the RPG community.

This site runs banners for $30 a month also. Plenty of old-school players and grognards to be found here.

As someone else said, make a YouTube demo. You can also offer to run some online games via Discord or VTT to do live demos of the game and offer a discount code to players who participate.