Let me start by saying that I am a fan of Todd Zircher’s work and he has helped me over the years. When I saw these SoloCutz products today, I could not help but think that Todd has sold himself somewhat short.
These are some of the things I would have done differently.
Pricing
I am not a fan of pay what you want, I know I released to PWYW titles this week, but that has just confirmed what I felt before. Compared to Itch, DTRPG users do not value PWYW titles.
These are priced at $2, except for one title at $3. That is cheap enough, but the way that DTRPG lists titles, they only show up as one page. The preview is also of one page. The problem with that is that what you are actually buying is two spreadsheets with tens of thousands of pieces of data. DTRPG does not highlight that at all.
Product Images
All these titles use exactly the same image. There is no product-specific title, just the series title. This does not help to differentiate the titles, nor does it help grab the attention, nor the eye of the potential customer. There is a product preview, and it is of the single page set of instructions, but not of the real substance of the product, the spreadsheets.
There are no screenshots of the actual spreadsheets in use or anything else to really show what the customer is buying.
In copy writing there is an acronym, AIDA. That is Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. The Action at the end is buying the product, or whatever else you want the customer to do. The product page is all about Interest and Desire. Your product thumbnail and the title is about Attention.
An attention-grabbing cover and title will get you that first click. Once the customer is on your product page you can create that interest and desire by showing them how what you have will give them pleasure, which is what we play games for.
Bulk Listing
DriveThruRPG has a cap on how many products they will add to the home page from each publisher. I believe it is set to 3 per publisher per day. By bulk uploading, all seven titles in the series in one day, more than half of them will get no homepage exposure at all.
If on the other hand they have been scheduled for one a day for a week, that would have given a constant drip of new traffic.
This image is from the DTRPG category for Historical Fantasy. Within less than 24hrs since release the two SoloCutz are already down to 4th and 5th place. If they had been released yesterday and today they could have been 1st and 5th.
Nothing that I have pointed out is earth-shattering or even new, but each could have added just a little to the success of these as commercial products. Taken all together I would hope that they would add a significant amount to their commercial success.