Is it worth it for me (and others) to create a website for selling video game-related digital goods?

[A_Higher_Plane]

Please help me out. So I already have an itch.io store page where I sell various video game-related things including an RPG Maker MV game as well as things for video game development. I want to make more RMMV games and release them. I am wondering if I should hire someone to create me a website to sell my stuff and generate a higher profit. I mean, for example, I find this website selling RM games to be attractive: Aldorlea Games . I want to keep both my itch.io store as well as create this one. Would it be worth it and profitable (revenue vs expenses). I don't know what I should do about marketing though.

 

[estriole]

i don't think it will be profitable in the short run... you will have more expense than revenue until your website famous and many people purchase your game from the website... in the long run... it will depend on how your marketing...

also the reason of why lots of game put on platform like steam etc.... it's because they want to reach for that platform userbase... so if you're still new indie game dev... it would be better to release on those platform instead of making your own website...

but this is my personal opinion... hope this help.

 

[Celestrium]

Not an expert on marketing, but I will offer my advice. I don't think you need to hire someone to create a site for you, there are plenty of webbuilding sites out there. It takes time to become established, so understand that. Posting on social media is important. Relationships and connections I feel are most important. Take the time to say thank you, give free samples of art or say that looks awesome. I hope that helps!

 

[Shaz]

Aldorlea Games has been going for 12 years or more. I'm not sure how long it took for the site to really do well, but RPG Maker games (I think) were a lot more popular back then than they are now, and places like itch.io and Steam didn't exist. Aldorlea not only sells his own games, but sells games for others as well, so has to take care of all the accounting and tax and stuff on top of his own game development.

I think if I had games to sell, I would get better results selling them on Aldorlea Games than on the other two sites. His audience is specifically looking for games like these, and are willing to pay more than a couple of dollars for them.

@Indinera maybe you can weigh in on how much work is involved in starting a site like yours (and keeping it going), and if you see any other barriers to starting one now?

Do you think you're going to be able to compete with itch.io, Steam, and Aldorlea Games? Are you willing to wait several years to see the results?

 

[lianderson]

(cuts up accountant)

Hmmmmmmmm...

(paints pentagram)

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.....

(closes eyes and sees thousands of years into the future)

This medium still requires additional customers. so therefore... stonks! Get into the stonks!

Good day human.

 

[taarna23]

For selling merch? Probably not so much. From a purely marketing perspective? You 100% need your own website, and social media to match. Google heavily weights search results toward active, top-level domain websites. This means that if someone is looking for your game, and you have both example.com and itch/games/example (or whatever, hope my point is being made), the .com, provided it is actively posted to, will generally rank higher search-result-wise.

Marketing is often a complicated and scary beast... and marketing companies will usually take you for all you're worth for something they can largely do in their sleep. It kinda sucks (I used to work for one).

 

[Indinera]

You'll need to pay for your domain which costs about 200 usd a year.
Making the website itself isn't too difficult especially if you can code it and plan on adding the games progressively and not all in one go.
Your main issue would be traffic. Personally if I were you, I'd put my games on steam, make what they call a curator page at your name, and try to derives traffic to your website from there.
If your games are "classic" RPGs, they might also do well on Aldorlea, too.

<<I'm not sure how long it took for the site to really do well>>

From day 1, as it was powered by the mighty Laxius Force.