Software Developer Connects With Fans At The Altar

from the we-gather-here-today dept

It seems to me that there's a fundemental disconnect that occurs when we discuss CwF+RtB here at Techdirt. Some have trouble latching onto the concept, devolving it into a kind of asanine repetition of "putt putt golf" jokes and t-shirt discussions. It's much more than that, of course. It's a mantra, a way of being, more akin to a philosophy than strictly a business plan. I won't bore you with long-winded diatribes about karmic energies, just the short mention in the words previous. Examples tell the story better, from Kevin Smith merging his brand with the good will of his fans, to going where your fans are (even if that place is unauthorized), to actually taking off your angry artist hat and getting your fans involved in creating the art.

And now Anthony Biedenkapp writes in with the heartwarming Ars Technica story of two crazy kids in love with each other and a videogame, and the story of how the software developer loved them back. Jay Greschner and his fiance were big fans of the game Bastion, developed by Supergiant Games. On a lark, Greschner wrote an email to Supergiant Games asking if there was anyway they could provide some audio for his wedding. They did, in a big way:

"Soon after, Greg Kasavin (writer and creative director of Bastion) got back to me and we had a brief discussion. In my initial e-mails I had sent a couple of example lines but Greg replied that the Narrator had a certain tone that he wanted to keep even though this was out of game and was wondering if he could write some stuff up for Logan. I had no problem with this and Greg said that they'd try and record some lines before PAX Prime.

A couple of days later, I got another e-mail containing 4 recordings that the Narrator had done for us and was just amazed and honored that Supergiant Games would do this for me."

That's a true connection. We have this idea that businesses are these far away entities, disconnected from their fans by whatever middlemen are involved, be they record labels, publishing companies, or retail stores. But that's crap. Even in a big world like ours, true personal connections are possible. More to the point, in the digital era, the world has shrunk and those connections are even more possible than they were before. Kudos to Supergiant Games and many happy years to the Greschners.

Filed Under: connecting with fans, video games

E-Publishing The Chinese Way: Very Fast And Very Cheap

from the surely-worth-trying dept

Increasingly, publishers are joining the music and film industries in bemoaning the effects of piracy on the sales of digital products – and some are even starting to sue people for alleged copyright infringement (because that has worked so well elsewhere.) Perhaps they should take a look at what is happening in China: instead of whining about e-book sales "lost" to piracy, publishers there have come up with a business model that embraces the possibilities of the Internet:

Here in China, nearly 195 million people are hooked on a kind of literature that is virtually unknown in the West, but that is rapidly transforming its authors and a new breed of online media companies into the publishing stars of the future. Web literature or “original fiction” as it’s called in China is a new form of serial literature which theoretically allows anyone to become a best-selling author.

The system works through a growing number of self-publishing websites that host thousands of constantly evolving, free-to-read stories posted on the sites by their authors. These websites are incredibly popular with consumers, attracting over 40% of all China’s internet users every month, who come to read web serials that can be anything from realistic novels to historical epics, comics, sci-fi and fantasy.

The ingenious part of this publishing model comes in when an individual author’s serial gathers a critical mass of readers. At this point the self-publishing site invites the author to become a VIP, and their serial moves to a different section of the site where readers can sample some chapters of their work for free, but have to pay if they want to read the latest installments.

That may just sound like a typical bait-and-switch paywall approach - get them hooked then get them to pay - but there are a couple of things of note here. First, the speed at which new content is added: in a comment to the article quoted above, the publisher Lisa Zhang speaks of how "daily updating of the works on our platforms helps to build a close writer-reader relationship." Secondly, the extremely low paywall charges are designed to minimize any reader's urge to hunt out pirated versions of "VIP" content - prices are "around 2-3 Yuan (about 20p or 30 cents) per 100,000 words" according to the article.

Scale is clearly important here, and one of the big advantages that Chinese publishers have over those operating in most other countries. And that applies to the writing side as well as to the sales. In her comment Zhang writes: "by the end of June 2011, 1.4 million writers have been writing on our platforms. They have created 5.4 million titles."

Still, it's great to see publishers moving on from tired arguments about piracy, and spending their money not on lobbying for new laws to defend old monopolies, but on investments in new business models that have led to a huge upsurge in creativity – and profits. Maybe it's time the US started copying China for a change.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: china, ebooks, fast, publishing

How Just Talking About Your Creative Experiments Can Help Them Succeed

from the getting-the-word-out dept

You may recall that, last week, we wrote a short post about Kevin Clark's discussion of his Cucumbers & Gin project, which was a music video of an original classical composition by Clark, played on violin. What we thought was interesting about that was that Clark argued that even though the project had not made money directly, it was a success in many non-monetary ways. After we posted that, the story got picked up in a few different places, including actress Felicia Day tweeting about it. Clark has come back to note that just talking about his project on Step2 seems to have made the project itself much more successful:

As a result of posting here the project got a positive mention on Alarm Will Sound's facebook page for the Noteflight integration (I've worked with them on a commission project for Ken Ueno in the past), Mike Masnick (hi there!) wrote us up on Techdirt, which then got tweeted by Felicia Day, and blogged about by Minnesota Public Radio.

It's been fun to watch the viewcount on the video and my own site traffic over the last few days. I've been keeping the crew from the film up to date on the spike and it's been really great for them to see this day's work from last April paying off in some not insignificant internet outlets.

We can't promise that Felicia Day and Minnesota Public Radio will take notice of your project if you post about it over at Step2, but apparently it doesn't hurt your chances...

Filed Under: business models, case studies, kevin clark, success

Lessons Learned From 'Pay What You Want'

from the don't-knock-it-til-you-try-it dept

The 'pay what you want' business model is popping up all over the place. It has been applied to music, movies, games and even food. Some instances have been successful; some not so much. phreakindee alerts us to the results of one of the latest experiments in this business model.

Joost "Oogst" van Donge, the creator of the game Proun, wrote a very thorough examination of his 3 months long experiment with 'pay what you want'. It's really nice to see a developer so open with this much data. Very few companies or developers will do this. I really recommend that you read the whole thing. He shares some very good lessons about this model and how it can bring in some money, but maybe not enough to succeed as a game developer.

So rather than rehash all of his points, I want to take a look at his experience and what lessons we can learn from it when taken into consideration with the overall 'pay what you want' landscape.

One of the first things that come to mind when I read about these experiments is the Humble Indie Bundle (currently up to five sales). The Humble Indie Bundle made a name for itself by bringing together a number of great indie games and allowing the buyer to pay what they want. On top of that, they offered the buyer the ability to give all, part or none of the purchase price to two charities, the EFF and Child's Play. This could be seen as one of the biggest draws of that bundle and is something that Proun's sale lacked. While not a sure thing, a charitable option in these sales has been shown to change buyer behavior and pricing.

The roller coaster experiment showed that buyers paid 5 times more for the charitable version of the sale over the version that lacked the charitable option. This also brought in far more revenue than any option whether 'pay what you want' or not. Had Joost offered a portion of the buyer's price to a charity, he may have seen an increase in the number of people willing to pay and an increase in how much they paid. Again, that's not a sure thing but it would have added another variable to the calculations made by the customer. This could be something for him to try as he continues the experiment.

Let's look at some of the numbers now. The first interesting set of numbers spring from the fact that this sale allowed buyers to pay nothing for the game. As Joost points out:

The $0 price point here is people who used the same store as the paying folks but filled in $0. They didn't have to fill in there Credit Card details as a result. I cannot know the exact number of Torrent downloads, but since every install of the game contacted my server, I do know the total number of installs, so I can estimate how many people got the game from something other than my server.

Based on his estimates he found that 247,379 people either paid nothing and downloaded from his site or downloaded from a torrent. Now he did expect plenty of people to pay nothing. After all, he did offer that option. He is not mad and comes to a very valid conclusion to this:

I think the main reason why so few people chose to pay for Proun is this: the free version did not require a Credit Card transaction and was thus way easier to download.

That is quite the lesson and quite true. Users want things to be as convenient as possible when making a purchase. The more steps you add to the process, the less likely someone will make it to the end. This is a very difficult lesson for some game developers. Many game developers are adding more and more steps to not only the process to purchase the game, but also to the process of installing and subsequently playing the game.

Ask any gamer and they will most likely tell you, they simply want to get, install and start playing the game as soon as possible. Anything that slows that process down is a no go.

Next, we see that Joost recognizes that he may have made more money had he set a floor price on the game:

So I think if I had set a minimum price of $1, way more people would have decided to pay a couple of dollars for Proun. Simply because they already had their Credit Card out for the $1 and figured the game was actually worth a bit more. Fewer people would have played Proun, but I think more people would have paid, making Proun a bigger success financially.

However, that was not the main goal of this experiment as he says immediately:

Note the emphasis on financially: my main goal was to get as many people as possible to play my game, and the scheme I used was definitely a good choice for that!

If all you want is to get people to play the game, then, yes, you probably should offer a free version, even if the vast majority of people choose that option. This again is a hard lesson for some game developers. While the industry is trending toward free to play models, many other models that allow gamers to try a game for free have disappeared. We no longer see shareware games or even game demos from major game companies.

Next, we have some interesting trends in the prices actually paid. Most people who paid for the game chose a price between $2 and $2.99. Joost explains that $2 was the minimum price a customer needed to pay to get the free track along with the game. What this shows is that with a proper incentive, most people are willing to pay at least the minimum in order to get everything that is offered. This is also something the Humble Indie Bundle has shown. When it offered a bonus to people who paid higher than the average price paid, it tended to get even more money.

What this price trend also shows is that for a lot of people, $2 is about the max they are willing to pay for a game. We see this trend with the iPhone. When the iPhone was released, the price of games and other apps quickly shot down to the $1 range and the majority of the top grossing games are free to play. What this means is that when users have greater control over pricing, either through market pressure as with the iPhone or through a 'pay what you want' system, the price paid will almost always trend to the lowest possible price.

In the end, Joost is looking to continue the 'pay what you want' model, this time with a floor of $1. He feels that the first stage was a success. He got 250,000 people playing the game and hopes that word will continue to spread.

For the rest of us, we can look at this experiment and other versions of this and learn a number of valuable lessons. For me, I don't think 'pay what you want' should be your only business model. I think it works great as a promotional opportunity, but if you expect to make a living this way, you have a hard road ahead of you.

Filed Under: business models, pay what you want, proun, video games

Reminder: We're Giving Away $10,000 And Time Is Running Out To Get It

from the enter-now dept

Since launching Step2 a few weeks back, we've had a number of great discussions going on over there, and we've got a lot more things that will be coming up on that site (so stay tuned). So far, the discussions and the information shared has exceeded our expectations! Along those lines, we wanted to remind people that we're giving away $10,000 for the best case studies submitted to the site, and the deadline for entering is tomorrow night... so if you were hoping to get some of that money, hurry up! Thanks to everyone participating so far, and we look forward to continuing to build out the site in fun and interesting ways.

Filed Under: case studies

Does A Particular Project Need To 'Make Money' Directly To Be A Success?

from the plenty-of-non-monetary-benefits dept

Over at Step2, composer Kevin Clark has posted a fascinating case study concerning how he created "Cucumbers & Gin," a "music video" of a violin piece he composed. You can see the video below: In his case study, Kevin discusses how they raised funds to produce the piece via Kickstarter. But what struck me as interesting is that Kevin notes that, in the end, he did have to pay some out-of-pocket money to get the video made, but he still considers the entire experience to be a success. Why? Because of a large number of non-monetary benefits that came out of it, which are already opening up new opportunities and which will make it much easier to succeed in the future as well:

Why is it a success story?

Because a ton of good things came out of it. New connections with talented artists, a film to highlight my work and the violinist's, new audiences for the work (the staff at Noteflight for a start) and a list of 34 people who've already given money to support my work (including a fair number of complete strangers). It's also given my closest friends and family a taste of what it's like to write checks to make these things happen - that will make it easier the next time around when I'm looking for more money. That's really valuable.

Also, because I successfully managed a kickstarter project I've become a kind of resource to other artists who are thinking about doing similar things. This hasn't led to any revenue yet, but it has led to some great conversations, helping on awesome projects, and again, more connections and potential audience and supporters for my next project.

I think this is an interesting point that often gets lost in these discussions. Not every specific project needs to be directly "profitable." Many work as a way to build the framework for future successes. Hell, that's the very basis for marketing. You spend money in the hopes that down the road it pays off. Marketing is always an expense, but in the long run, you hope that it's indirectly profitable. Those who seem to insist that every project must be directly profitable are missing out on a ton of opportunities to lay the groundwork for profitability down the road.

As we do with our posts about case studies on Step2, we're turning off the comments here, but urge you to head on over to Step2 to take part in the discussion there.

Filed Under: business models, case studies, crowdfunding, kevin clark, lessons learned, success, video

Flipping The Equation: What Infinite Goods Can Physical Artists Use To Promote Their Works

from the great-question dept

Kyle Clements, over at our new Step2 discussion platform, has presented a really interesting question for discussion. We often talk about the importance of using infinite goods to make scarce goods more valuable, but we're generally talking about content creators whose main output is those infinite goods. What does it mean when the reverse is true. Clements produces physical artwork -- one of a kind pieces that he sells. As he notes, he has no problem building scarcities, but he'd like to figure out what kinds of infinite goods he might be able to use to make those physical works more valuable. It's a really good question. He notes that he can allow Creative Commons licensed images of his artwork to circulate, but that doesn't seem like very much. I was reminded of the Significant Objects project that allowed some creative folks to sell random trinkets on eBay for much more money than they were worth (on paper) by creating compelling stories around them -- and wondered if something similar might be done with the artwork. But I'm curious what other ideas people have. Once again, since the discussion is best suited for that Step2 discussion, we'll turn off the comments here and direct you over there.

Filed Under: business models, infinite goods, tangible objects

Last Chance For Musicians To Contribute To The Artist Revenue Streams Project

from the do-it-now dept

Earlier this year, we noted that the Future of Music Coalition was putting together a fascinating project to try to catalog all the different ways that artists are really making money today and to dig into the details of what that means for artists. It's a wonderful project and I'm excited to see the results. The project is almost over and I wanted to do a quick post making sure that any musicians (US-only, I'm afraid) don't miss out on their chance to take part. The FMC folks have put up a post over at Step2 explaining the details (and, yes, FMC is a sponsor of Step2) if you want to understand what this is all about. Or you can just go straight to the survey. Just do it before October 28th.

Filed Under: musicians, revenue

Is Greater Transparency A 'Reason To Buy'?

from the seems-like-it dept

Last year, we wrote about comic book artist Steve Lieber's experience watching his graphic novel Underground shoot up in sales after engaging with fans on 4chan, who had scanned the whole thing online. We later had a fascinating discussion with Steve and his studio-mate Erika Moen about the whole experience of connecting with fans in such a manner.

More recently, we wrote about the indie band Uniform Motion and its decision to be ultra-transparent in revealing the details of how much they were making from various platforms. The two things may not seem directly related, but in an interesting way they absolutely are.

We mentioned this in our launch announcement for our Step2 from the Insight Community platform, but Andy Richards from Uniform Motion posted a really fantastic case study, discussing whether or not transparency itself can be a "reason to buy." I didn't want the details to be glossed over in the focus on the launch of the overall platform, and I think the question itself is really worthwhile, so I'm writing this post as well. In the cases of both Lieber and Richards, these content creators really opened up and shared pretty specific details about projects they were working on... and found that this actually contributed to even greater success.

Uniform Motion's experience suggested that, yes, greater transparency absolutely did act as a reason to buy. I'd argue that it did a few things: it helped introduce the band to new fans, helped connect with those fans and then provided a greater reason to buy... all in one. And that's supported by the numbers that Andy shared:

In one month, we went from 380 active users on our Facebook page to 620. (+63%). Our mailing list grew from 732 emails to 990 (+35%).

If we compare sales, plays and visits to our website in September to the 3 previous months, here's what we get.

Visits to our Bandcamp page increased 300%. Visits to our website increased 240%. Plays on our Bandcamp page (which we use as a player on our website as well) increased 310%. Album downloads increased 225% and direct sales increased 90%. More importantly though, the download to purchase ratio went from 10:1 to 5:1.

This means that for every 5 people who downloaded our album for free, 1 person purchased something.

iTunes sales skyrocketed. +2000%. (The sales in June, July and August were rather low to begin with though - see raw data)

If you click on through to the full case study, he's also got some detailed graphs showing a variety of things, from visits to streaming plays to purchases.

I think there's something really interesting here, which I honestly hadn't thought that much about previously. I'd always thought that transparency represented a cool way to connect with fans, but I never thought of it as an actual reason to buy. But Andy's case study has me thinking that it may actually be both. I've talked about how authenticity can be a "reason to buy," and transparency really is just a form of authenticity. It makes people want to support a band like Uniform Motion.

I know that it's difficult for many content creators to be so transparent, but I do wonder, if more begin to recognize how well it's worked for some others, if it will become somewhat more common. Beyond just creating a connection, it'll often help show fans, very directly, how much of an impact their support has.

I'm keeping the comments closed on this post, because we might as well keep the discussion going over at Andy's case study.

Filed Under: andy richards, case studies, connect with fans, reason to buy, transparency, uniform motion

$10,000 Up For Grabs For Most Interesting Content Creator Case Studies!

from the case-study-contest dept

Along with our just announced brand new Step2 platform (a part of our larger Insight Community effort), we're thrilled to announce a case study contest! We're looking for detailed case studies of experiments that content creators have done, and how they worked out. And we've got $10,000 burning a hole in our pocket to give out to the best case studies.

You can click the link above for the official details, or you can look at the three examples we mentioned in the announcement post:

1. Amanda Palmer discussing her recent experiences with Kickstarter in funding a new project in conjunction with her husband, Neil Gaiman.
2. Or, check out Andy Richards of the indie band Uniform Motion (who we've written about a few times, discussing how his transparency about their revenue may have given fans additional reasons to buy, complete with detailed stats about how his transparency resulted in traffic and sales.
3. Or you can jump over to Zoe Keating's discussion over the question of whether or not doing art for purely strategic reasons is evil... while she also shares a bit of the secret of her success.

We want a lot more like that, and not just in the music space. We're looking for case studies from content creators in music, movies, books and video games and will award $1,000 to each of the top two vote getters who qualify in each of those categories. Separately, we're also looking for fan case studies of how artists in any of those fields connected with you. Again, the top two vote getters will get $1,000 each.

The kinds of case studies we'd love to see:

• Done an interesting/different/unique promotion? Tell us about it and share the results in as much detail as possible
• Tried an email marketing campaign? What worked and what didn't? Any key metrics?
• Attempted crowdfunding? How did you set the rewards? What did people like/not like?
• Used new or different platforms or technologies? What kind of results did you see? What could be improved?
• Attempted something different -- like a house concert tour? ebook-only release? letting fans take part? releasing unfinished works? What worked, what didn't, what did you learn?
• Experimented with "name your own price?" How did it work? What prices worked well? What efforts did you make to trigger certain price points?
• Set up a tiered pricing model? How did you choose the tiers? What worked? What did you learn?
• How are you connecting with fans? Facebook, Twitter, Podcasts? Google Plus? What works, what doesn't? What really seems to energize fans? What doesn't? Any empirical data that shows how your fans reacted?
• Surprise us!

If you're a content creator in any of the qualifying categories, please consider taking part. Some creators are always afraid to share too many details of their "secret sauce," but many who have done so have found that the transparency itself leads to greater connection with fans and -- perhaps more importantly -- getting detailed info out there will help inspire others to do cool things too. Step2 is about learning and helping each other succeed in a rapidly changing world.

If you're not a content creator who qualifies, please consider entering the fan contest, but also alert your favorite content creators in the qualifying categories that they should enter!

We're looking forward to learning about all the great and interesting experiments, success stories and lessons learned.

Filed Under: business models, content creation, cwf, cwf+rtb, rtb, step2, success models