Hi fellow indie devs - I’ve recently released my first plug-in using JUCE and have received very positive feedback but am struggling to get many sales!
Currently, I’ve invested in some social media marketing (promoted Instagram and Facebook posts) and have had a few blogs write reviews of my plug-in however I’ve still only made about a dozen sales (in 2 weeks).
If there’s any indie devs out there that wouldn’t mind giving me some pointers to help get me started I’d be super grateful! Leave a comment here or send me an email: james@gramotech.co.uk
One quick thing I would say is that you’ve launched in one of the most difficult time periods. Not much is spent before Black Friday as most companies offer huge sales that week…
Oh yeah, I totally agree - wasn’t expecting to be able to quit my day job on day one! I guess part of what i was asking was what sort of numbers indie devs were getting in their first few weeks/months compared to what they get now and how they got from A to B.
That thread is great, I’ll give it a proper read!
Hadn’t considered this - being in the UK we don’t really do Black Friday so much! I will be updating the plug-in over the next few months so hopefully it will pick up after the holidays!
Definitely understand where you’re coming from . I started that thread looking for the same kind of information. There’s some good stuff in there, a lot of people chimed in to help.
@dave96 is spot on about black friday. One thing I’ve learned, that I’m not sure is shared in that other thread, is that people seem to exclusively buy during big sales events. I see almost no purchases outside of those events. So you did indeed pick a hard time to launch, but you also can take advantage of black friday with a sale.
I have a lot to say about this, and actually I’m currently going over my slides to share exactly this at ADC on Tuesday, so hopefully that will give you some good insight (I believe it will be recorded and put on youtube).
Without spoiling too much of my talk, I’ll say also that you’re doing well with the blogs & reviews, keep putting effort into that (like a lot of effort). And I’d say save your money on the social media advertising. Until you have a lot of data about your audience, the targeting is inneffective, and the conversion rate will be prett low.
Good luck! I’ll share my talk back here with all the details next week
How realistic is it to sell 100 synthesizer plugins a month? Maybe some of you have the experience and like to share. We have not yet finished our synth but we calculate from time to time. Is that number realistic? Is it too pessimistic? I know it depends a lot on the quality, of course.
I saw about this talk on the program, really looking forward to watching it!
Never knew Black Friday had this much of an effect! I can’t really make my plug-in any cheaper than it is though (£10) so maybe I’ll have to make a more solid plan for next year!
Thanks, I’ve been talking to a pretty big audio tech magazine and they’re doing a review on my plug-in soon so hopefully I’ll see some more users after that!
I am just about making a profit from the social media adverts but I’ll probably stop them before I start making a loss!
That’s not entirely true. We have products that sell continuously at a steady rate. We sell more if we have a sale, but there’s a list price run rate that’s good. I don’t know whether that’s because the products are brilliant, or inexpensive or maybe because we don’t do so many sales…
Well, we like to include at least 1 portion of fairy dusty for every 10 portions of DSP genius. But I’ve heard that it’s possible to reverse the ratio…
Not that I’m looking at any particular three letter company …
This is a concern for me - one of the main reasons I wanted to start making plug-ins was because I hated that as a student I could never afford the £100 plug-ins you see so often. And even if I did save up for one, it’s still only one - you realistically need a good range of plug-ins to have all the right tools so we’re talking £500 - £1000 on plug-ins… as a student!
Sadly can’t just up the price now but I’ll consider being a bit more greedy with my next release
There’s a lot of fairy dust in that stuff Probably some genius too, but it comes with enough myth that Roland Barthes could have written an essay or two about it…
Yes, IMHO the audio market is 95% driven by psychology and 5% by technology. Testimonials of well known producers or well known studios are definitely an important asset.
The best investment UAD made was probably the licensing money for the original brand names they model. I like their plugins, but a good part of the money ends up there, which explains, why they are not really inexpensive…
The reason to buy something “because I want to sound like him/her” is probably number one in audio industry
Right, yea I totally believe that. I should have clarified; my suspicion is that there’s something of a “critical mass” point at which you have some stream of incoming sales and spikes during sales. For a new player in the market, you have a ways to go before reaching such a “critical mass” point.
. I started that thread looking for the same kind of information. There’s some good stuff in there, a lot of people chimed in to help.
