I thought I had this locked down, but then I really ran the numbers including shipping costs and all that, and now I'm not so sure.
Was thinking about a $49 price point, including shipping in the US (subsidized to ship elsewhere). $18k Kickstarter goal.
When you include handling costs, KS fees, and all that, with a 1000 unit minimum print run, I will lose money outright at $18k (350 units). That's not even including sunk costs like art and marketing. I'd have to sell about double that ($35k) to break even overall.
Now, the game does include a lot of stuff (12 large map tiles, 3 sheets of tokens, 10 dice, etc). I could JUSTIFY a $59 price, no problem. I just don't know if I'll lose backers moving over $50.
Could also bump up my KS minimum, but I do want to produce this game, even at a small additional loss.. I'm hopeful that my marketing efforts will pay off and get me at least 350 backers.
Any thoughts welcome on pricing.
Heroes & Treasure
http://www.heroesandtreasure.com
Comments
Lots of questions related to pricing unanswered here.
What is your landed price per unit from the manufacturer?
Where are you manufacturing (China/US/EU/Other)?
What kind of marketing have you done already and plan on doing?
How much of a mailing list do you have built up?
Are you including fulfillment in your KS pledge or charging afterwards?
How big is the box (length/width/height + weight)?
Have you contacted fulfillment centers for prices on shipping to backers yet?
I Will Never Grow Up Gaming
Where are you manufacturing (China/US/EU/Other)?
What kind of marketing have you done already and plan on doing?
How much of a mailing list do you have built up?
Are you including fulfillment in your KS pledge or charging afterwards?
How big is the box (length/width/height + weight)?
Have you contacted fulfillment centers for prices on shipping to backers yet?
I'm including US shipping, and I think it'll be a $10 surcharge to Canada/EU (EU-friendly). I think $10 is a reasonable estimate of S&H within the US, but I'll have a much more precise number later this week.
I have some ads going up during the campaign on relevant sites (geekdad.com, etc.), plus several reviews that should hit by the KS date. I'll add a little targeted reddit and project wonderful money as well, plus I have a good coupon for google ads :). My mailing list is still pretty small (double digits) but I'm hopeful for a small viral campaign later this month to build that up.
I'm using $14 as the landed price, which isn't exact but should be pretty close including customs and a fudge factor. It's around $2.50/unit just for the boat ride.
With a $14 landed cost you'd
With a $14 landed cost you'd be looking at a $70 to $84 retail price. Going as low as $49, shipping to the US included could be rough. Doable, yes, but certainly not enough to do a reprint if needed. Have you figured out your shipping? How much will it cost you to fulfill each backers game?
A rough calculation: KS Pledge - 10% - Landed $cost - fulfillment $cost - 10%
for incidentals or errors - relevant taxes/fees = approximately what will be left. If you're still over $0 after all that, you should have it covered.
Sunk costs are another story; some say you absolutely should include them in your goal, others do not.
Production costs should absolutely be covered by your campaign. You don't want to go into debt producing 1000 units and end up with 600 of them sitting collecting dust hoping to sell them to recoup some of that money.
So I guess another good question is, do you plan on making this a one-off production?
Reviews are a necessity, of course, but I wouldn't rely on them to drive a lot of traffic (depending on the review and the reviewer, of course; the bigger the name, the more traffic it will drive to your page).
I found website ads to be hit or miss personally. Some got a decent return on investment, others got zero return. Again, this totally depends on the ad, the site it's on and the amount of traffic that site generates so I would not recommend against it, just to be cautious where you are spending your $.
I found Facebook ads to be my best return on investment on my campaign. A $200 spend on facebook ads in the first 2 weeks of my campaign returned $1800 in backers .. 9x return on investment is phenominal! I wouldn't expect it to scale or to be the same from one campaign to another but I was happy with that.
Reddit .. I got zero from Reddit. Self promotion is a huge no no so you need to hope to get someone else to push for you there (and then not have them get downvoted into oblivion too).
Also, try to get distribution and retail set up before you go to kickstarter. Sales after kickstarter are the life blood of any game.
I Will Never Grow Up Gaming
Well put.. I was trying to keep it cheap, but, yeah. Too cheap I think.
I'm considering them sunk :) If we go over goal, great.
Good question.. no. It's a system that easily supports add-on modules, and I'd like to make add-on modules. Having a user base for THIS game will let me expand later.
Ultimately, this is why I'm willing to target this low, at least for the goal amount.
Oh yeah, facebook too :) I'd heard that was a good spot.
I think that's a good summary of the situation :)
I don't think I can mentally handle that addition to the equation, but I'm starting to think about it now. :)
shipping costs
Okay, I got actual shipping costs, and I think I guessed pretty much right. $8-11 to ship in US (including box), plus $2 handling. $40-45 to ship someplace like Australia, Brazil, or Russia. For the EU and Canada I intend to bulk ship there and use a local fulfillment house.