Saturday, December 2, was the second annual (I hope) Makers Market where I sold almost my entire remaining stock of the beta version of my Periodic Elements card game! I also learned a valuable lesson about pricing: A $10 game sells much faster than a $16 game.
I reduced the price of a deck to $10 as I am working to revise game play and wanted to reduce my stock of the beta version. I succeeded in that goal easily. Unfortunately, I was selling the deck at cost, so I didn’t make any money.
I am now looking at how to reduce the cost of producing the game elements so that I can sell the gamma version for as close to $10 as possible.
A lot of people asked if they could buy the demo board. I created the demo board to help me demonstrate game play at a busy Makers Market. My shoppers loved it and wanted to buy one to own as it made game play more enjoyable and easier to learn and follow. That will increase production costs, but I can sell the board separately as it’s not essential to the game.
The Makers Market was exhausting work, but I kept a smile on my face and kept on talking. There were a couple of gaming industry professionals who stopped by my Maker Booth and gave me lots of useful advice and ideas on producing and selling my game. One thing I did not know: Your box size to component weight ratio needs to be very small. Pack your parts into as small a box as possible as many gamers will judge the value of your game based on how full the box is. A smaller box is also cheaper to produce.
A lot of other kids were also at the Makers Market selling some pretty cool stuff.
AuroraDaybreak, Carlsons Cozy Crafts, Maggie’s Market, Samantha’s Knits were selling hand knitted and crocheted scarves, hats, potholders, washcloths, and stuffed animals.
Logan’s Dueling Arts had a great idea, in my opinion, on how to make money. He was selling modded Nerf guns, but he also said that if you gave him the Nerf gun you wanted modded, he would mod it, which was a great idea, because if he ran out of stock, he could still take orders. And it was also cheaper to have a Nerf you already owned modded then to pay for both a new Nerf gun and the modifications.
I was pretty impressed with Vulspera Verso, the Maker Booth right next to mine. It was really cool watching the buttons be made. I think I want to buy a button maker of my own now.
I also ate a lot of delicious cookies, bars and scones. I felt a little ill the next day.
I bought a really neat jar of candy.
