The Digital Bits

You may recall that when we started the digital store here, I promised that I would keep things transparent and out in the open about our results. So, here ya' go. Clearly, iVerse/Diamond Digital is, at best, "people's second choice" -- ComiXology has won the day. Further, at least for now, the iVerse/DD store is missing a few keys players, like Marvel and DC, so it's hard to say if they COULD catch up.

I thought (and still think, actually), that I have one small potential advantage from a lot of sites: we're a well-established "brand" for reviews, and seamlessly connecting a store to that would seem like a bit of a no-brainer. The problem, of course, is that coverage here is very similar to what sells in the DM -- it's 70% or better for Marvel and DC, so there's not as many direct links as I would have liked.

(What, I have to tell you to buy Saga?)

So, anyway, here's what happened: in 2nd Quarter, we mad, after the split with the publisher and iVerse/Diamond, $21.92 from selling some 20-odd comic books. More than that were downloaded for free (like Saga #1!).

In the 3rd quarter, we sold exactly 3 comics, and made ourselves $2.95.

Somewhere in there, the store blew up due to something on the Diamond or iVerse end, and the store was down for "some amount of time" -- maybe a month, even. It got fixed in the fourth quarter, but not without a wholllle lot of testing by iVerse folks. In the course of that testing (as well as testing things like with Top Shelf's Double Barrel was actually up), and for something else that looked hella promising, but never followed through on, I made another $12.31 from various people testing various things. Not one cent of that $12.31 was from a consumer sale, however.

So, in year one, I grossed $37.08. Wow.

In exchange for all of these micro transactions, I had to pay PayPal an astounding $14.19 in fees (and that's much less that in would have been, if I didn't switch over to "micropayments")

So, my net was $22.89 in year one. Not bad for something that doesn't cost me any inventory or anything, but San Francisco minimum wage is current $10.55/hour, and I spent at least 20 hours of my life dealing with various things to do with the store and infrastructure, so HARDLY a productive use of anyone's time, really.  Esssspecially because that net amount? We split it evenly among SavCrit writers.  My personal share was under $4!

I'm, of course, hopeful that the store will continue to generate more money as time wears on (honestly, there was one test they did there which could be paradigm shifting.... but that was months ago, and the follow up hasn't happened yet [maybe at ComicsPRO, next month?]), but, as of right now "it isn't worth the time I've invested so far".

Either way, if you like this site, we always appreciate you supporting it -- if you buy a comic from our digital store we get (as you see) a small cut, but it's a cut nonetheless for something that, we hope, you were going to buy anyway.  You could also clock on the little "buy us a beer" button off the the right over there, and make a direct donation to us, if you wanted. So endeth the ad.

Time to go help Ben with his homework!!

-B