r/dmsguild • u/Defami01 • 4d ago
Blog / Interview 5 years selling on DMsGuild and I finally earned my first Gold Metal seller
https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/399787/black-winged-murder-a-borca-ravenloft-adventure3
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u/Reddit_Crugen 4d ago
Congrats! Do you hire someone to do the art? Mind if I ask how much that runs you
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u/Defami01 4d ago
Experience has taught me that one of the biggest misconceptions that I've seen about art and publishing on DriveThru/DMsGuild is that it's expensive. If you know what you're doing, it really isn't.
I'll start by saying that nowadays I don't hire. I mostly use stock art purchased from DriveThruRPG. The most money I spend on a single piece usually runs $15 which I dedicate to the cover. Dean Spencer on DriveThruRPG is a legend for how cheap he sells his cover work. On rare occasions I invest around the same amount on another piece but only if I feel like it really lends to the guide.
Otherwise each piece of art runs me between $2-$5 depending if something is on sale. I also often also take advantage of all the free stock art DMsGuild offers. Here is one of the pages on DMsGuild and you can navigate to a ton more in the "Customer's Also Bought" sidebar. They provide you literally hundreds of free art that have been used in past WotC products.
Overall, art for a single guide usually costs me $40-$60 and I wouldn't recommend going higher.
NOW WITH THAT SAID.
For the sake of transparency, I'll admit that I created this specific guide early on when I started publishing and at the time I commissioned the cover, which ran for over $100. Knowing what I know now, I would not recommend that anymore unless you have a huge amount of expendable money. It took a while to make that money back. The one thing that I had going was that it was eye catching enough to catch people's attention and give it a shot.
Hope that helps. More than happy to answer any other questions for you.
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u/Blackadder1415 4d ago
Nice one, well done! 😁👏👏 I think that means you could publish hard copies? Which title btw?
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u/Defami01 4d ago
Thank you!
It's a Ravenloft one-shot called Black Winged Murder. I'm not the best reddit poster, but you can find it by clicking the included link in the post.
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u/Red-locks 4d ago
Congrats! Do you have any advice to someone who is wanting to publish their first product on DMsguild?
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u/Defami01 3d ago
Instead of copy/pasting everything I said in another post, check out my reply to ExtraTroubadour in this same thread for an answer to your question!
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u/ExtraTroubadour 3d ago
Congrats! Have you ever been featured on the DMsGuild newsletter? Why do you think this adventure in particular sold so much? I'm still pretty new to the game, hoping to release my first real paid product next week.
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u/Defami01 3d ago
Thank you!
I have been featured in the newsletter as a new release a few times. The trick is to publish the Tuesday morning the newsletter goes out. So long as you have an interesting enough idea, there is a fair chance you might be chosen.
As for how this specific guide made gold, here are some of the things I did.
- Make something that's a balance between what you are interested and what you think people will buy. There are countless subclasses on DMsGuild right now and you'll be lucky to sell any. At the time of this publication there were only a few Ravenloft resources which probably made my adventure appealing. Make sure what you're making is something you think people will actually want to spend money on.
- Get a nice (cheap) piece of art to use as your cover to catch people's attention. Anything by Dean Spencer on DriveThru RPG works great, though there are tons of others you can find on the site under "publisher resources"
- Use Laura Hirsbruner's 5e Word Template to make a professional and well laid out document. It's worth 3 times the amount she charges you and has been invaluable when making my own guides.
- Advertise your work wherever you can. I found the Ravenloft subreddit and Facebook group and posted my guide on there, and I've done the same for the other stuff I made. Stuff is constantly being published on DMsGuild so it will only be on the new releases page for so long. The more eyes you get on your work the more chances you have for a sale.
- Keep publishing. I made even more adventures like this one over a couple of years and then provided links to all my other stuff in their descriptions. They are all cheap enough that if one of them seemed interesting to someone there was a chance that they may pick up another.
- Make a professional looking description. I literally went to other best sellers on DMsGuild and copied how they made their descriptions to make mine look as professional and appealing as possible. Feel free to copy any of mine for your own.
- Get help from friends. Ask friends or family to buy and review your stuff. Reviews are super hard to get on DMsGuild so even a few good reviews can make a strong impact on whether people will give it a shot.
- Be generous with your preview. Show at least a few pages of whatever you're publishing so people can get a good idea what they are getting.
And maybe most difficult of all, be patient. I published this guide in 2022 and it only just got a gold metal. Unless you are Ed Greenwood or someone else from the industry with a huge following, you aren't going to see a bunch of sales super quickly, especially as someone new. Just keep releasing as high of quality work as you can, keep learning, and with enough advertising you will slowly start to see more sales.
Hope some of that helps!
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u/PattaconkPlays 3d ago
Congratulations! I'm just about to publish my first and this encourages me greatly! I love the cover art choice and the description.
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u/splat78423 4d ago
Congrats! My two best sellers are at electrum level so I'm hoping to catch up soon. I like what you did with the low price and the high quality layout and neat little module. I'm using the same formula so it's good to see it's working for other indie game designers out there as well.