Daniel Solis

Happy new year, everyone! It's been a long time since I've done a proper sales report, which probably foreshadows the transitions from 2015. I kicked off the year knowing that I couldn't repeat the same pace I held in 2014, releasing one new game or product each month via DriveThruCards' POD service. That wasn't sustainable for the long-term, but it really yielded great rewards and I'm glad I did it. Without further ado, let's look at the numbers and break down some context. The Numbers Here are the sales numbers for each product in 2015 (in red) compared to 2014 (in blue). The good news is that every product that existed in 2014 sold more units than it did in 2015! Across the board growth is very positive. These are the gross sales numbers for each product in 2015 compared to 2014. As you can see with some small low-priced products like the Koi Pond promo cards, the sales numbers far exceed their actual dollar gross. These numbers fluctuat...

It's transparency time again for Smart Play Games! I think it's important to be open about how my business runs and how much it earns. When I began this experiment in high-intensity print-on-demand publishing, I had no real sense of what "success" looked like. But I knew it would depend on others jumping into this market as well. But with such an opaque business model, if anyone else wanted to start their own print-on-demand releases, I figured it would be best to show what goes on behind the curtain. Get on with it! All that said, here are the raw numbers for this quarter. Top 3 sellers each month are highlighted. Month Product Total Sold Gross Sales Earnings 1/1/2015 Arf! 4 $32.96 $9.74 1/1/2015 Bird Bucks 2 $13.98 $2.44 1/1/2015 Kigi 17 $156.69 $47.99 1/1/2015 Koi Pond: A Coy Card Game 19 $199.47 $29.48 1/1/2015 Koi Pond: Four Walls (Promo Card 2) 6 $5.94 $3.82 1/1/2015 Koi Pond: Four Winds (Promo Card 1) 6 $5.94 $3.82 1/1/2015 Koi Pond: Moon Templ...

Each month I make public my sales numbers for my print-on-demand card games. No sense burying the lede here, November was an awesome month for Smart Play Games ! To the numbers! 11-2014 2x Arf! (preview copies) 1x Bird Bucks +1 35x Kigi   +30 21x Koi Pond: A Coy Card Game -1 6x Koi Pond: Four Walls (Promo Card 2) -2 6x Koi Pond: Four Winds (Promo Card 1) -2 10x Koi Pond: Moon Temple +2 17x Light Rail +1 10x Monsoon Market -2 4x Nine Lives Card Game +3 3x Penny Farthing Catapult +0 7x Regime +7 3x Solar Senate -5 31x Suspense: the Card Game +16 1x Ten Pen +0 107 Total Sold $1,301.89 Gross Sales $361.80 Earnings Grand Totals for 2014 (to date) 1564 Products Sold $10,924.16 Gross Sales $3,170.55 Earnings Sales were up for many products after a brief post-convention lull. We exceeded July's numbers and fell just short of the August spike from just before GenCon/Pax/Essen. Holiday shopping began in earnest well before...

We're approaching the end of my year-long challenge to polish and release a new game each month via DriveThruCards. As a part of that process, I'm releasing sales reports for each month so you have some perspective on your own POD sales performance. First up, here are some charts! And here are the numbers! 10-2014 0x Bird Bucks +0 5x Kigi new! 22x Koi Pond: A Coy Card Game +4 8x Koi Pond: Four Walls (Promo Card 2) +3 8x Koi Pond: Four Winds (Promo Card 1) +4 8x Koi Pond: Moon Temple +0 16x Light Rail -10 12x Monsoon Market -1 1x Nine Lives Card Game -4 3x Penny Farthing Catapult +1 0x Regime -2 8x Solar Senate -10 15x Suspense: the Card Game +11 1x Ten Pen -1 107 Total Sold $ 829.11 Gross Sales $229.75 Earnings Grand Totals for 2014 (to date) 1564 Products Sold $8,809.34 Gross Sales $ 2,583.43 Earnings Summary Clearly August and September were the huge spikes in sales, converging around Gen Con sales. Since then, w...

Each month I share my sales numbers from DriveThruCards, hopefully giving you some perspective if you pursue this POD self-publishing model. Notable business events this month include the inaugural tiltEXPO, my first time boothing solo at a convention and pitching my POD games in person. You can read more about that here. I handed out a lot of business cards and a few discount codes. Hard to say how many sales came out of that push, but at least I planted some seeds of awareness around Durham. Unfortunately I couldn't nurture that in subsequent weeks because I came down with a double-dose of Con Crud from tiltEXPO and SPX the following weekend. Three weeks of coughing and sneezing really knocked out my promotion and production cycle. One new release, limited buzz, and no huge promotional discounts all contributed to a dip in sales for September.     And here are the hard numbers: 9-2014 2x Bird Bucks -4 18x Koi Pond: A Coy Card Game -16 5x Koi Pond: Fou...

Every month, I share my print-on-demand sales numbers so you can keep track of my year long experiment releasing one new game each month of 2014. The Bad News, Good News This was an odd month because it's the first this year in which my freelance obligations forced me to miss a release deadline. I also incurred some steep expenses hiring an artist for a future release and ordering inventory for the upcoming local convention tiltEXPO . However, these unfortunate setbacks were greatly mitigated by the joint promotional push by DriveThruCards at Gen Con and me from home on social media. On top of that, the Chinese edition of Koi Pond is far into production and the Brazilian edition of Light Rail is quickly gaining steam. Let's look at the numbers! Two MVPs Carry the Team You recall last month how my skepticism about promotions was totally thwomped, right? Well, consider it double-thwomped because August performed very well. All credit to DriveThruCards' aggressi...

In the spirit of transparency, I release my print-on-demand card game sales numbers every month. When I started out releasing games this way, I didn't have any metric against which I could compare my performance. So here's how July went... It was bananas. First, some background: When I was just starting out, the advice from DriveThruCards told me to price my games at whatever price I wanted, but to imply that it was marked down a couple bucks from some arbitrarily higher price. I thought "that's silly, surely customers are wise to that old trick by now." For a long time I resisted that tactic, just setting all of my games at a flat price. However, the success of my tiny Origins-timed promotion and my new early bird discount contributed to quite a recovery from a weak second quarter. Given that performance, I thought it would be worth a shot to participate in the Christmas in July event. I was skeptical that it would help, but I thought I'd at least ...