May project account balance

As I said in the last update, all the excitement generated by Fenoxo’s Trials in Tainted Space Offbeatr has rustled up a lot of donations for Fleshcult, but I’m starting to see that tail off dramatically in the last couple of weeks (Though there’s a nice spike today as everybody checks in to watch the countdown). It’s renewed the sense that I can’t run development indefinitely, and that there’s an end date I need to hit. Looks like it’ll be in August. I’ve been saying July previously, but I haven’t made as much progress in April as I’d hoped.

Details below.

Total pledged $12,062.00
Total collected (Less failed transactions) $11,457.00
Offbeatr Fee (20%) $2,291.40
Net Offbeatr Revenue $9,165.60
Gumroad gross (February) $1,640.00
Gumroad net (February) $1,514.75
Gumroad gross (March) $2,460.00
Gumroad net (March) $2,271.50
Gumroad gross (April) $1,785.00
Gumroad net (April) $1,648.25
Gumroad net (To date) $5,434.50
Paypal revenue $117.81
Total revenue $14,717.91
Income tax owed $2,052.62
Total revenue after tax $12,665.29
Cost of goods (eBooks) $288.00
Paypal fee $14.41
Total COGS $302.41
Salary (Weekly, backdated from crowdfunding end date)
01/02/13 $330.00
08/02/13 $330.00
15/02/13 $330.00
22/02/13 $330.00
01/03/13 $330.00
08/03/13 $330.00
15/03/13 $330.00
22/03/13 $330.00
29/03/13 $330.00
05/04/13 $330.00
12/04/13 $330.00
19/04/13 $330.00
26/04/13 $330.00
Total salary $4,290.00
Hosting expenses
For Feb 2013 $111.35
For Mar 2013 $72.15
For April 2013 $80.73
Total hosting expenses $264.23
Contractor expenses (to date)
Writing $580.31
Art $202.00
Total contractor expenses $782.31
Total expenses $5,638.95
Project balance remaining $7,026.34

5 thoughts on “May project account balance

  1. Shadow Knight says:

    Hm, interesting. How do you plan to keep supporting the hosting costs/salary/etc. once August comes along? Donation days, like Fen? Faux DLC? Setting up a monthly target goal like Flexible Survival and CoC?

    It really does seem like the funds are ever dwindling.

    • jackoekaki says:

      Hopefully banner ads will cover hosting costs (shown to non-paying players only), and I’m thinking about also doing content packs or faux DLC as you call them.

      They’ll probably be a bit intermittent as the limiting factor will be tracking down/signing up writers for the different themes. I won’t be drawing a salary by that point, so I’ll likely be splitting my time between Fleshcult content and another project.

      • Shadow Knight says:

        Ah, I see. And why not run donation days or the like? While I understand that donation days would likely end up with a huge, disproportionate amount of straight and lesbian content, I guess it’s a small price to pay to keep the game going strong.

        I ask mainly because, without the monthly donation target that CoC and FS have, I worry it might prove to be too expensive to maintain for an extended period of time (and I don’t have much faith in content packs. While they might be great for quick cash spikes, or as self-sustaining additions to the game, they don’t sound too profitable in the long-term).

        I trust you can’t run another Offbeatr in a year or two, once you’ve built up a greater fanbase?

  2. jackoekaki says:

    Votation has a lot of potential and I’ve considered it, but I’d want to build some kind of automated votation platform instead of doing everything manually. It’d require me to invest a fair bit of time up front but it’s not out of the question. DLC is an easier thing to try out because I already have most of the tech from account upgrades.

    (Fen managed to make it work manually without constant distraction during development by restricting votation to only a day. The drawback there is that the vast majority of the people who might’ve voted on impulse will have missed votation day. That works when you’ve got a fanbase of Fen’s size, but for me I’d need something like a monthly vote that’s open throughout the month, which means automation)

    I don’t think there’s anything that’d prevent me from running another Offbeatr other than how much it’d piss people off to see me asking for money again! It’d have to be for something really significant, like a character viewer or something.

    • Shadow Knight says:

      Well, a potential compromise would be to make the DLC temporary (a “get it now or never” kind of thing), and then make the offbeatr about a full-fledged expansion (kind of like one of the expansions for The Sims, which are nothing but extra-large content packs), that includes previously missed DLCs as reward tiers.

      The character viewer is an excellent idea, though. If Fenoxo’s site is any indication, people will definitely pay for that kind of thing.

      Other ideas for the potential offbeatr (or for ordinary donation rewards) is custom NPC design (donate 200 bucks, get a custom NPC in the game!), a souped-up character (which starts with a bunch of mutations or extra stats), or, if the forum is anything to go by, compile the most commonly offered suggestions (that are cool and implementable but are not within your plans) and set up a target donation for them. For example, “if you guys make it to 2000 bucks in total donations, I’m implementing turn-skipping” and stuff like that.

      While voting is always a good idea, you can also set up goals and see if people pay for them; there’s no great need to spend time designing an automation system for them until you have the 1.0 version up.

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