Explicit naked sales figures

[cliffski]

JULY:

Starship Tycoon-----38 copies
Planetary Defence(half price)-----14 copies
Planetary Defence(full price) -----1 copy
Kombat Kars-----1 copy
Asteroid Miner-----2 copies
Starlines INC-----1 copy ( + realgames sales)

Just thought some people might be interested, people are always asking what sales to expect, here are mine. :)

[Hamumu]

Okay! Here are mine for July, with the exception of games I didn't make (XOP and Dungeon Scroll), since I didn't ask the creators for permission:

Dr. Lunatic - 7
Supreme - 30
Loonyland - 22
Stockboy - 4
Amazin' - 1
Pumpkin Pop - 3
Eddie - 7
and 1 upgrade from download to CD.

I had an average of 1.17 items per order, my average ticket was $25.30, and the ratio of downloaded games to CD games was 71.43% (very abnormal, usually hovers right at 60% downloads).

[lakibuk]

I am proud of my july sales,too. They were the best i've ever had.
Bound Around: 42 copies (not included are affiliate sales)

[techbear]

4 Battlepets: Avalar
1 Battlepets
1 More Aggressive (which I'm not even selling from my site anymore!)

Don't feel bad for me; I'm not paying very much attention to www.aggressivegames.com right now, I'm working on my turn-based game engine.

[robleong]

Amazing sales figures, guys! Well done to all! Now, where did I go wrong...? :)

[Andy]

cliffski - is "cheater"!!! Don't trust him! :D
He was doing really hard and wide promotino for his (pretty great!) Tycoon!

So, say us what was the profit cliffski. Ah?.. :D

We were doing pretty well in July as well. But again we just published our INVASION WAVES so it wouldn't be fair digits as well. That's why I will keep silence about them ;)

But we are better than cliffski, hamumu and lakibuk together...
...pause...
...pause...
...pause...
Kidding guys! Just kidding... ;)

[mkovacic]

Ah, well...

Caribbean Puzzle - 4 copies
Light&Shadow - 0 copies
Bundle of both games - 4 copies

[princec]

Alien Flux - 6 copies. Hurrah! Not bad, only had 700 downloads.

Cas :)

[arcadetown]

July was a kick butt month. Slightly odd as traffic was down slightly but not nearly as much as prior years and referrers was pretty constant yet sales up quite nicely. Can't say specific #s but can say 12 games that did 20 or more sales and 5 that did 50 or more. These are purely #s through our store and don't include partners.

If you've got a high quality good selling title would be quite interested in running it here.

[MattInglot]

I don't want to say exact details either but CustomBar (http://www.custombar.net/) has sold in excess of 50 copies in the past 30 days.

These sales figures are really interesting and big thanks to everyone that is posting them. Another thing that might be fun to know is if July was a good or poor sales month. I can't answer that question myself because CB was only released in July ;)

[tewe76]

Your sales are about 50-60 units a month, as i can see...eh, how much do you get from every unit? i mean, if the price is 20$, you win...what? 10$? what are the costs of selling a game? online-publisher, web hosting, taxes, marketing on download.com and so, etc?

I'm now thinking about starting as fulltime shareware developer and i need to know how many units i need to sell to make a life from it. Sincerely, i thought you were selling more, i mean, i thought you needed to sell more for keeping on the bussines (now i'm happy you don't :rolleyes: )

PS: always, always, excuse my english, hehe :rolleyes:

[cliffski]

arcadetown sounded interesting saleswise so i went to take a look, but I dont appreciate it trying to foist some dodgy download of 'gain supported adware' plus a load of dodgy flash adverts and popups all over the place.
I'm suprised you get any customers.

[Andy]

Yeah, I have noticed that as well. I suppose it wasn't so terrible before.
Let we make some calculations.

12*20*10$=1200$
5*50*10=2500$
3700$ per silent summer month.
Without any advertising money and partners as it was said!

Brian, isn't that enough to exclude at least that adwares and strange popunders trying to install some strange devices onto my PC. Note, that I wasn't even trying to play something. :(

[ggambett]

arcadetown sounded interesting saleswise so i went to take a look, but I dont appreciate it trying to foist some dodgy download of 'gain supported adware' plus a load of dodgy flash adverts and popups all over the place.
I'm suprised you get any customers.
I don't quite like ArcadeTown's website design, and I've told Brian before; however I must say our experience with ArcadeTown has been great, they have been selling BBB for 8 months now with no problems whatsoever, and Brian himself is a great guy. Give them at least the benefit of doubt!

[Jack Norton]

I think that putting all those nasty things on a website is the best way to scare away customers... at least intelligent ones ;)
I simply hate autoinstalling ActiveX contents... don't know why but remind me of porno sites :D

[arcadetown]

We do limit or block negative ads but unfortunately our advertising networks sometimes slip in things we don't like so we'll have to take a look and block as necessary. Since we are a free content site advertising in general is simply necessary. Yes our users want free stuff and our CR is lower like we've stated many times before but we get a lot of visitors and do drive sales. Some partners do quite well with us.

Seeing one interpretation the #s were a little confusing and we're simply sharing this info to be nice... 12 games 0 - 20 sales, 7 games 20 - 50 sales, 5 games 50+.

Wildsnake, it's quite odd how you always have something to say about potential or ex partners where things fell through due to your difficult and sometimes absurd requirements. Please concentrate on your business and not others.

[MattInglot]

Your sales are about 50-60 units a month, as i can see...eh, how much do you get from every unit? i mean, if the price is 20$, you win...what? 10$? what are the costs of selling a game? online-publisher, web hosting, taxes, marketing on download.com and so, etc?

I'm now thinking about starting as fulltime shareware developer and i need to know how many units i need to sell to make a life from it. Sincerely, i thought you were selling more, i mean, i thought you needed to sell more for keeping on the bussines (now i'm happy you don't :rolleyes: )

I see $13-$15 for each $19.95 copy of CustomBar sold. Exact amount varies based on advertising done and payment method used by customer. It is not generating enough right now to make a living off of, though at this rate it just might some day. Lizardsoft also provides web hosting and software/web development services, so CB isn't the only source of revenue (in fact it's a very new source).

Money spent on marketing right now has been very minimal and mostly consisted of buying a 1 month Shareware Tracker license and a $79 download.com download. Working on getting banner ads up. Been making use of all the free sources of traffic available first :) Being a web host makes hosting costs $0 since there's always plenty of excess server space to let CB mooch off. In fact I'll probably be selling some file hosting bandwidth off really soon to put a server that's just lying around to use. PM me if interested. Using a merchant account instead of a full service shareware payment gateway, mostly because it's already available as a result of aforementioned web hosting business. Not using any publisher. Development tools cost a pretty penny but luckily last a very long time.

Don't assume that everyone here is making a living off these sales. The clear winners in this thread are the people with multiple products on their sites. It's very interesting that the sales figures for so many different products here are falling into roughly the same ballpark area (30-60). Looks like making several programs that sell like that is better than trying to make one hit program that sells enough on its own!

[Andy]

Wildsnake. Please concentrate on your business and not others.

OK.

But Brian... I'm not WildSnake I'm Andy - check my nick and signature. (I desided to change my nick in this new forum specifically to lower my opinion down to my personal)
I didn't get anything about "potential or ex partners" but anyway I wasn't planning to offend you somehow. I just suppose that this is really bad for your site and business and OUR online business in common. No?

[indiemaker]

Thanks for the sales figures guys. That's very generous of you guys to do that. I've always wondered how indies are faring. It seems to me that the majority of us really are doing it for the love of it since it doesn't look like you can get rich.

These figures don't dissuade me at all from still pursuing this line of work. I tell ya, it's so hard. I personally am having a hard time wearing so many different hats, but I'm slowly plodding along. :D

Anyway, keep up the good work guys!

[Jack Norton]

I think that very few members of this forums live with indie earnings. I myself live with them but I don't have to pay rent neither expenses (I still live with my parents! hehe) so I am a cheater :D
I think you need at least 3-4 very successful games, with an average income net of at least 500$ month each. This would give you 2000$ net and is very hard to get that.
Example: I sell 50 copies of a 19.95$ game
50 x 19.95$ = 997.5$ GROSS - 10% commission = 897$
you pay taxes on that, let's say 30% (varies depending on country) 269$
so 897 - 269 = 628$ at the end...!!!
For european, add that the dollar to euro conversion is poor so in the end you may end with little more than 500 euro net!!! and believe me getting 50 copies AVERAGE is quite hard... (I sold even more than 100 UBM on may but for example July was worse for me selling "only" 55).
The only way I see it possible is to keep making good games, at least one every 4-5 months, but isn't so easy at all!!! :cool:

[David York]

I just wanted to say thank you to all of you who submitted these figures. I recently quit my MS job, and I'm doing the Indie thing full-time now. The more information I have about the financial feasibility of this endeavor, the better off I am in a big way.

I really appreciate this.

[NuclearNova]

July was my best month yet, here are the figures (ALL MAC SALES, NO PC)

GL Golf - 62 @ 15
GL Golf Expo Pack -13 @ 10
GL Golf Combo - 35 @ 25
Escape - 3 @ $10
Escape Expo Pack - 3@$10

Sales have slowed down a little, but for a 17 year old I am doing pretty good :)


EDIT : Anyone wanna port GL Golf to the PC? Its in Objective-C with OpenGL (You will have to redo the interface but thats easy, just make it windows specific)

[GBGames]

Not to hijack the thread or get too offtopic, but could someone tell me what they mean by "can't" give out figures? Is it that legally you can't disclose, or is it that you would prefer to not do so? I guess I never discovered the disadvantage of giving such information out.

[gmcbay]

Many people are adverse to sharing any kind of financial information, whether it be their sales or their salaries or whatever. Usually if you try to get an exact answer out of them as to why they *can't* tell you, you won't get one... but it is a pretty common thing. For whatever reason, I think Americans are less likely than others to want to talk about these things.

[luggage]

May as well join in...

For July...

Party Bowling - 3 @ $19.99
Puzzle Word - 29 @ $19.99
Snowball Frenzy - 1 @ $9.99

[BongPig]

There are valid reasons for not sharing this kind of info.
For example, a team of 3 equal partners wouldnt be happy if one of them shared that kind of info without consulting them. The more people involved, the harder it becomes obviously.
If I worked on my own, I personally wouldnt mind sharing.

[dan]

The main reason for not sharing is embarrassment... ha. And you shouldn't be embarrassed about sales.

But there are other reasons as well.

Even if you're really doing well, that may be less reason to share. This industry is rather lemming-like, and that includes indies. Puzzle games are quick to make and sell well at portals? Everybody make one! Etc. Ditto for breakout clones. And solitaire. And mah jong.

I'll share how my next game does as long as it doesn't sell great. If it sells great, I'll be vewy, vewy quiet. Shhhh.

[Jack Norton]

I'll share how my next game does as long as it doesn't sell great. If it sells great, I'll be vewy, vewy quiet. Shhhh.
Hello there! Just saw now that finally some indie is making CRPG :)
I've decided to make one anyway, no matter how others will do, simply because I love those kind of games very much!

But I hope that you'll remain very quiet ;)

[tentons]

...could someone tell me what they mean by "can't" give out figures?

The only information you can glean from sales figures is how well (or poorly) a company is doing, so I also don't understand the secrecy. It's not like you can steal trade secrets from sales numbers. :)

The benefit is that other indies can see the reality behind all the assumptions and conjecture that happens before you dive in. That's very helpful and generous and far outweighs the "reasons" for not sharing your figures.

I'll release numbers when I have some to share. :p

[Escotia]

The only information you can glean from sales figures is how well (or poorly) a company is doing

You can't even glean that. Most of our sales are from the big portals, while Cliffski, say, may get all his sales from his site. We sold 29 copies of Puzzle Word from our site. What have you learned from that? Puzzle Word is our top selling game. I can tell you that without even needing to mention figures.

Sales figures with no extra information is just so much knob waving.

[princec]

Sales figures give encouragement to those starting out. I know that I'm encouraged to see people with more sales than days in the month, because I'd like to be that way one day. So it brings a cheer to my day to know for sure that other people are hitting the targets that I set myself.

Cas :)

[dan]

Hello there! Just saw now that finally some indie is making CRPG :)
I've decided to make one anyway, no matter how others will do, simply because I love those kind of games very much!

But I hope that you'll remain very quiet ;)

Well, we made one before called RuneSword II (ver. I was freeware). The scope of RS was waaaay too broad. We did finish it, and we're proud of it, but our resources were spread way the hell too thin for a traditional CRPG, let alone one that was also a construction set. A huge scope forces compromises.

And needless to say, releasing a freeware version with a very similar look was just sheer idiocy on our part. Our publisher pricing RSII at $45 made us winners of the Homer Simpson trifecta. It's a wonder we sold as many as we did.

But I digress.

Our new baby has been designed with a much tighter scope with the emphasis on speed, humor, and tasty production values. It may not be a CRPG to the purists, but it will be fun. I think it's a good sign when you're deep into development and you're not sick of your own game....

So anyway, my advice on RPG's is to really think long and hard about scope and content with an eye toward reducing them as much as possible. Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb does a nice job with his games because he doesn't worry about eye candy, his engine makes Mac/PC ports a snap, and he concentrates on the adventure story -- his strength. He's built a nice following because he's found a niche. We're trying for an entirely different niche, but the point remains... find... a... NICHE.

There are so many indies who attempt CRPG's and fail miserably that it's almost a joke. In almost every case, they're trying to make a 5 developer, 10 artist game with 2 people. At the most extreme, I've seen a couple kids thinking they can make the next Morrowind.

[Jack Norton]

Well surely CRPG are hard to make.
But I'll attempt to make one on my own :)
I'll use an artist for some graphics (she already made some nice portraits, Baldur's Gate style). The game will be probably like Dungeon Master.
My extimate release date is december 2004 but probably will slide to jan-feb 2005 ... I have to finish another game first ;)

[Chris Evans]

Obviously these sales figures don't give the entire picture, since I'm sure the majority of peple here have other deals with budget retailers and onlne publishers.

But it's nice to know how well some Indies are doing self-publishing through their websites.

[Jack Norton]

Hmm what makes you think that "MAJORITY" of people use publishers or has retail deals (even more difficult)?
I had only a deal with BFG for my puzzle game Spin Around and nothing more for example :)

[Chris Evans]

Maybe "majority" is too strong a word. But I see a lot of Indie games around here on various online portals. I also hear many of them getting approached by small budget retail publishers. I'm not saying they're all rich from it, but a portion of sales come from other avenues aside from their website.

My point was, the sales figures posted aren't necessarily an indicator of how successful the company is (although it could be), but it gives a good idea how well they self-publish through their website.

It's interesting to hear how well GL Golf is doing considering it is only a Mac release. It's encouraging to me since I'm also having a Mac release and will be promoting it extensively within the Mac community.

[Mirage]

My sales in July:

AirHockey 3D: 20 @ $14.95

As I see it's not so bad as I thought ;)