[Steampunk Crescendo] Out on a limb
dindenver:
David,
Good question. I am not expecting this to make a lot of money. So, in order to keep the costs at an acceptable level, it is necessary to keep the cost of marketing and promotion as low as possible.
I am willing to promote things at Conventions I am already going to, but will not travel or sign up for conventions just to promote my game. I wanted to treat Gaming stores in a similar fashion.
I am willing to spend effort if the idea has a chance to get my game in front of prospective buyers, just don't want to spend a lot of money.
Did you have any ideas?
David Berg:
Various cheap ways I can think of to reach fans of vampires, victoriana, and punk:
- Make a cool website with those aesthetics.
- Make free sample game content available on said website, with said content speaking to those aesthetics. Art, stories, play reports, play aids, simplified rules documents, etc. Give cool free stuff and collect email addresses. Then if you have anything worth telling folks directly, you can.
- Join online communities for fans of Vampire, Buffy, True Blood, Dracula, Twilight, steampunk, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Hellboy, Brazil, The Clash, Radiohead, Fallout, Misspent Youth, and any other appropriate cultural entities (TV, movies, music, novels, comics, video games) you can think of. Look for appropriate places therein to mention your game. Start quizzes or contests and offer your game as a prize for the winners.
- Mention your game on RPG sites, hopefully with some engaging stories to read or art to look at so it isn't just a pitch and nothing else.
- In any place where you mention your game, offer deals or events or limited free stuff or any other reason for someone to check it out now, before they forget.
- Make posters and put them up wherever you can find a space for posters on college campuses, punk clubs, or near a retailer that carries the game.
- Offer to make posters for retailers if they'll carry your game, hyping their store as well as your game.
- Make small cool things to give out free at cons, like pins, postcards, posters, or dice.
Just brainstorming here. I'm sure you can cross some of those off and come up with better ones.
Without a website, you'll be limited to those people who'll buy the game just based off of whatever pitch you give, plus the product details on Lulu. I do not know this for a fact, but I think your odds of turning first contacts into sales are way better if you use a website as a stepping stone. If you want to save money on domain registration and webhosting, I could stash a page for you somewhere in one of my domains, but I think you'd be better off shelling out the $70 or so per year.
David Berg:
Oh, another one:
- contact con organizers, see what kind of exposure you can get, offer to help out in exchange for featuring your game in some fashion
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