joeindie.com » 2007

Indie Is as Indie Does

Home | Blog | Articles | About | Contact

1/29/2007

Snake Oil Indie: A New Indie Strategy

Filed under:

Indie Lifestyle

— joeindie @ 5:04 pm

Snake Oil Indie: A New Indie Strategy

I'm sick and tired of making miniscule profits...

Tired of just “surviving” as an indie developer? Tired of hard work and long hours? Are you tired of making miniscule profits?

Then the New Joe Indie ~~Snake Oil~~ How-To-Make-a-Million-$ Strategy is what you’ve been looking for!

Name It…

Your game (or other indie software) is already making you money, isn’t it? Of course, it is. What you want is to make more money (who doesn’t???).

The first step is to think positive thoughts: You WILL make $1 million!

The second step is to tell yourself: I will make $1 million! Or, even better: I am making $1 million! Right now!

Now tell the world, via your blog (no blog, no problem, sign up here):

I’m making millions!

And make sure you tell them how you are making your millions:

I’m making millions playing my own game!

…and Claim It!

That’ll get people’s attention won’t it? You bet it will!

And then those people will be downloading your game and playing your game and sending you money, because everyone wants to be a millionaire! Just like you!

Stop struggling to Just Survive as an Indie, when you can leverage the POWER of the internet and your own blog to become wildly successful!

Eliminate the Negative

And don’t let the naysayers–and they are everywhere, looking to drag you back down into the quagmire of human mediocrity–IGNORE THEM and THEIR NEGATIVE SUCCESS-HATING VIBES.

You used to be like them, but now you’re above the negative!

You’re not lying. Far from it. Instead, you are tapping into the Positive Energies of the Universe and letting them flow through you!

You are looking the Universe in the eye, and you are telling it what you want, in no uncertain terms. And the Universe is listening, and sending you the people to make it happen for you.

You’re not exploiting the gullible. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You are giving people–desperate people, unhappy people, people who looking for a way out of the daily grind that is their current existence–you are giving these people Something To Believe In!

And in helping others, you are helping yourself. Helping others help you help others!

So, Start Today!

Open your heart, and let the Universe help you help others!

-David

Comments (4)

1/24/2007

Some Days I Wish I had a Treadmill

Filed under:

Indie Lifestyle

— joeindie @ 10:59 pm

Some Days I Wish I had a Treadmill

A daily grind.

A grindstone I could put my nose to.

A timeclock I could punch.

Just some guaranteed way to hand over a known quantity of X (e.g., time) and be able to calculate what I will earn in return (e.g., a paycheck): X * Y = take home pay (before taxes).

Some days, looking at the benchmarks and wanting the level to tick up just one more notch so I can stop wondering if today is going to Suck or Not Suck or (many sighs of relief) be a Good Day, and knowing that there’s nothing I can do today that will have an impact today, that it’s all out of my hands and has been out of my hands for weeks and maybe months, knowing that what I do today might pay off in a month, maybe, or take six months or a year to pay back, or will never see a return…

It can be stress-inducing.

On the other hand, good part-time, on-demand jobs are hard to find.

So I get over it.

-David

Comments (2)

1/19/2007

The Indie Game Development Survival Guide gets a New Printing

Filed under:

Indie Games

— joeindie @ 4:07 pm

The Indie Game Development Survival Guide gets a New Printing

I heard that this week.

I don’t know how many video game development books get 2nd printings, but … well … certainly not all of them. So there’s some exclusivity implied. Even some small success at sales.

So, yah, I’m pleased.

-David

Comments (3)

1/14/2007

Maybe It’s a Sign of Growth

Filed under:

Indie Software

— joeindie @ 3:31 pm

Maybe It’s a Sign of Growth

In the second half of 2006 I stopped caring (as much) how many sales of The Journal I got per day.

Before that, I’d been tracking “new sales” and “upgrades” on a daily basis for … a long time (The Journal is over 10 years old now, almost a preteen). The focus was on new sales, of course, because that’s where the most money comes from. Upgrades are a nice addition, but not a huge percentage of overall revenue.

In July 2006, though, I started paying more attention to “daily revenue” instead, combining sales revenue from both new sales and upgrades. For the very simple reason that daily revenue is, well, where the money is.

Daily revenue is also much easier to track, and you can know immediately if you’re hitting your goals or falling short.

A single “new sale” of The Journal (that is, a sale to a new user, and not an upgrade by an existing user) can range from $39.95 (or somewhat less, if there’s a discount involved) to $89.95. In other words, how much I take in from 10 new sales on Monday can be very different from another 10 new sales on Tuesday. And while having a strong average number of new sales per day is good … the bottom line is … well … yeah, the bottom line.

And so I created a new set of daily benchmarks. I have 2:

Doesn’t Suck
Good Day

“Doesn’t Suck” is set to be about 2/3’s of the way to “Good Day”. Days which come in below the “Doesn’t Suck” level, predictably, “Suck”. So I guess that’s 3 levels, but still only 2 benchmarks.

Back in 1996 and 1997, when I was struggling to get even a single new sale per day of The Journal, revenue-based goals didn’t seem that important or useful. Now, though, unit sales per day seem secondary to actual revenue from those sales. Which is why I say, “maybe it’s a sign of growth.”

At the least, I figure it Doesn’t Suck.

-David

Comments (2)

1/9/2007

Truth in Gaming

Filed under:

Indie Games

— joeindie @ 1:42 pm

Truth in Gaming

Ran into the Game Truth blog today, via Brinstar’s blog, Acid for Blood.

Cynical as hell and twice as bitter, Game Truth has a handful of amusing articles up already:

“The Unimportance of Hiring Earnest”

“No ideas? Merge”

“Lucky Bastards”

Here’s the “About” for Game Truth:

This is a blog about the truth behind the games industry, especially the truth behind game developers. This blog unveils the stories, portrays the good people and the bad people in their true light and, hopefully, will provide some sort of counter-balance to the constant flow of press releases and ego-inflating self deprecating crap from journalists who are too scared for their advertising budgets to actually dig for the truth.

Enjoy!

-David

Comments Off

1/3/2007

Everyone Wants a Slice of Your Pie

Filed under:

General

— joeindie @ 4:15 pm

Everyone Wants a Slice of *Your* Pie

People who are willing to earn a living based on pure commission, earning a percentage of the revenue they generate, are hard to find.

People who are willing to earn a living based on a percentage of revenue that *you* generate, though, are legion.

Everyone wants a slice of your pie. The bigger you build the pie on your own, the more people who can see the pie and imagine ways of convincing you to *give* them a slice.

They’ll make up all sorts of reasons why it’s not just you being charitable. For example, they might insist that “marketing is hard”. It must be. Because you’ll notice they do damn little of it until/unless your game/product seems to do well on its own.

Or that they are “giving you access to their market.” Nice of them to add you to their Web page, neh? Because making Web pages to list things is, like marketing, “hard”.

Or that “if you want to reach the widest possible audience, you need to let us take the larger percentage of revenue.” You’re just a producer, after all. Where would *you* be without *them*?

If you like giving away your pie, go for it.

My advice, though, is make sure that any and all “great ideas for making you more money” really are about making *you* more money. And not just another grab for a free piece of pie.

-David

Comments (1)