This year has been a steady but slow creative year for me, as a good deal of my energy has been going into projects around the house. On the plus side I got garden space, started fruit bushes, replaced a ton of landscaping, built a live-edge mantle, and lots of other minor projects. My main Fiverr client has finished up most of their projects, so commissions there have dried up. I released more DMsGuild products while my older ones have continued to rack up downloads and purchases, offsetting my drop in commissioned works. I upgraded a few features for my blog, reducing the amount of spam visits and links attempting to come through. Let me show you some stats, as compared to last year:
In total, I earned $105 in commissions on Fiverr, all from projects in the first half of the year. Dmsguild has seen an increase in total sales this year, earning me $215 in royalties along with almost 2000 downloads! This is in comparison with last year at $350 from Fiverr, $145 in sales, and 1400 downloads. Thank you everyone who helped support my work with a purchase, download, or pageview. Thanks go doubly to those who have taken the time to comment here or leave a review on dmsguild.
Resolving My 2017 Resolutions
Let’s see how I did on my resolutions from last year:
End with an audience at least twice the size of my current audience and get the returning visitors ratio above 30%. To do this, I will resume work on my popular series (dungeon maps, character archetypes, and art of being a monster) while adding more interesting tidbits to my less popular posts like my Mythoard unboxings.- My audience fell by a small amount, but comparing my countries of origin, I would guess that my audience has held steady with the bots and spammers getting blocked by my updates.
Encourage a stronger audience by engaging directly for more feedback. Be more social and triple the number of (non-spam) comments on the blog. Be the change I want to see by going to other blogs and commenting more often.- I don’t have a way to quantify this, but I have been leaving more comments on other people’s G+ posts about gaming, but that isn’t really what my resolution was about.
Get Improvisr to work from a page on my blog. I have no idea what I’m doing on this one, so if any readers are html wizards, I’d appreciate any help.- I did not accomplish this but investigating how it would work, doing so is fundamentally incompatible with the goal below, and I chose to implement that instead of this.
- Modify Improvisr to pull from a fully customize-able external spreadsheet.
- I got Improvisr to pull most of its data from an external spreadsheet, and it is awesome.
Practice mapping more often and write-up some past dungeons that have been languishing in folders.- I’ve doodled out a couple more maps, but have failed to do this. I am thinking of getting a green screen and creating my maps using my crafted and painted tilesets.
- Earn at least as much in commissions in 2017. Double my total royalties and affiliate earnings on dmsguild by releasing more and better products. Some teasers for product ideas: Exposed to the Elements (new elementals, elemental pets, and magic items), PrOFaNe and ProFOUnD (religious items, 1001 gods, boons, and banes), Exotic Foodstuffs (food related magic items, new consumables, in game rare meats/foods/recipes, and out of game snack recipes to match), PWYW Game Tools (camping/travel tools remastered, organization tool, and others), Riddle Me This (how to guide to riddles, puzzles, and more plus an index of some pre-generated riddles, plus a guide on how to create clues, and links to resources), and a few more.
- I almost doubled my royalties but my main client on Fiverr finished up their own projects. I’ll count this one as a half win.
- Become a better writer by drafting short stories from the perspective of my player’s villains and npc’s to go along with each campaign summary.
- I gave some short stories a go and I would like to do more but campaign summaries are tough to write, so I’ll need to continue practicing.
- Update the website design more often to better display interesting posts, free releases, and generally better reflect what I have to offer my fellow gamers.
- I didn’t have as many releases, but I did get better about updating to showcase them, so I’ll count this as a win too.
Resolutions for 2018
- Increase my total income supporting this site by 20%, whether it comes from royalties, commissions, or other paid work. This will help me afford more stock-art, purchase more products to review (and use at my own table =D), and pay for site maintenance.
- Create an update for Improvisr this year to fix bugs, add more content, and fix grammatical issues. Incorporate reader comments and suggestions.
- Get a greenscreen and post at least one map, town, or dungeon module using a map displayed that way.
- Write-up my backlog of campaign summaries, putting out at least three blog posts of campaign summaries written in an entertaining fiction style.
- Include a short link and summary to my favorite RPG related blog post at least once each month at the bottom of a blog post.
What are your blogging stats and resolutions? What were your favorite posts of mine in 2017? Thanks for following me here and supporting me with views, clicks, and feedback, I appreciate it all and I hope this next year is even better than the last.
AnarchyDice 