I can see the different stages of my journey in the graph above. There is a slight dip in May 2019. This is when I was ill. Prior to that, I had had slow but steady growth, primarily through different CCPs.
In May, I did nothing for a month, but from then on, I took nearly 6 months off to recover. I also started writing more, as I couldn’t do a lot of physical activity. You can see the step change at that point.
The next big step up is the start of the Covid pandemic. Solo roleplaying certainly made big strides forwards during that period. I wrote for the biggest and most popular games and made the biggest gains at that time.
The more books I release, the fewer big-name titles there are left to play. This has to lead to fewer huge spikes on release days, and a more steady but less exciting graph.
I decided in 2021 that I needed to diversify my income sources if I was going to build something sustainable. You can see these coming on stream from mid-2021. The one that has been the most successful is Amazon. That is the line that is trending upwards through 2022.
The other big one is going to be Kickstarter.
I try and do everything in-house. This means that I have to do my own research, build my business plan and then learn more lessons as I execute and revise that business plan. I had hoped and planned to run at least three Kickstarters in 2022, one in June, one in August (zinequest), and one in October. As it happened I got two done, one in July and one in December. But, two is better than none.
I want to be full steam ahead in 2023 and ideally run 8 Kickstarter in 12 months. Whether that is possible is yet to be determined.
In 2019 my DTRPG income was almost 50/50 CCP royalty to publisher. I have now turned that around to be much more publisher-heavy. Publisher sales build your mailing list, earn you more per sale, and earn publisher promotion points and publisher titles can be released elsewhere, such as Amazon and Itch.
So, 2023 will continue to be about diversifying my income, and building a solid foundation for my business.
I hope you are making plans for the year ahead.